Unpossible
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September 16th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Don’t forget the CPD officer that shot his kids before killing himself.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Unpossible: Uncle’s favorite straw man! 🙂
September 16th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
How is it a straw man when it does address the specific claim that gun controls reduce crime?
Straw man: Tom’s favorite straw man.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Show me where any prominent gun control advocate has ever seriously claim that strict gun control laws would completely eliminate shootings, and I’ll give you the point. Until then, you’re full of shit, because nobody ever said shootings are “unpossible” where there’s more gun control.
Unless, of case, you’re a complete fucking moron, incapable of understanding the difference between “reduce” and “eliminate,” but I know you’re not that dumb.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I guess since I used the word reduce, I’m not a fucking moron.
Coincidentally, I made up the word unpossible. Perhaps you’re confused to it’s meaning? After all, I’m not saying impossible, now am I? And there is a word for that.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Of course, I’m sure that any apparent similarity between “impossible” and “unpossible” is completely coincidental and imagined…
Bottom line, the plural of “anecdote” is not “data,” and a single shooting incident is “evidence” that gun control doesn’t work to the same extent that an unusually hot day is “evidence” of global warming.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
You’re pretty smart! Of course there is.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I know. And it’s not like, since Heller, Chicago has the most gun controls in the nation. And one of the highest murder rates. Or anything like that.
September 16th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
When it’s me and the ruling elites enforce unarmed status on me with their hired guns (like they do in Chicago)…then I’m easier prey for criminals than if I can choose to keep and carry arms for self defense.
If gun control laws work, then why don’t the ruling elites apply them to themselves???
September 16th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Tgirsch wants ‘data’. OK:
Chicago dropped it’s former percentage of 60% of Illinois murders for 2007.
It dropped to 59%
It has 22% of the population.
It’s murders/100K went from 16.4 to 15.68.
It was still 5x higher than the rest of the state at 3.08 .
All of these drops for the city have been negated so far in 2008. As of the July Chicago crime report, it now sits at over 18/100K .
Cook County, as per the 2006 IL UCR,the most current available, accounts for over 70% of the murders in IL w/ about 45% of the population.
No reductions have correlated w/ any ‘gun control’ laws.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
tgirsch; instead of arguing over semantics, try a hard look at the data. You apparently have a great respect for data, verses anecdote. Look at the data and enlighten us as to the efficacy of gun restrictions in reducing violent crime. This has all been done of course, so I have to wonder if you really care about facts. Your rather strange obsession with a word would tend to suggest to me that you’re avoiding getting to the heart of the issue, playing instead the standard little game of “ignore and redirect”.
Posit. Lets say we have a criminal, intent on causing harm, and we have an intended victim. Governor Douchebag, ignoring the constitution, passes a law effectively banning the possession of handguns. The intended victim is a law-abiding person. The criminal, by definition, is not. The intended victim, obeying the law, is disarmed while the criminal gets a gun illegally from his criminal friends.
We now have a situation wherein the criminal is given what is in effect a government-enforced monopoly on the use of handguns. You fill in the rest of the story, taking into account the historical failure rate of other bans such as on alcohol and certain drugs.
This is of course to completely ignore the overriding issues of human rights and the constitution.
Did you read my post, “The Practical Application of Principles”?
Rule 3; “When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.” — Ayn Rand
Now lets stay on the clearly and openly defined principles, where we on the pro-freedom side will win every time.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:16 pm
third, that’s unpossible!
September 16th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Unc; Or is it non anti unpossiblistic?
September 17th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
thirdpower:
That’s all fine and dandy, but it’s not a terribly useful comparison, because as I’ve noted before, crime of all sorts is markedly worse in urban areas than in rural areas. A meaningful comparison would be to find someplace where the population demographics are similar to Chicago’s, but where the laws are much more pro-gun, and compare them to Chicago.
For the record, my gripe is not with the assertion that gun control is ineffective — I generally agree with that assertion. My gripe is with bullshit arguments, even when made in support of positions I agree with. As I said before, the tendency of pro-gun people to point out shootings in places where there are strict gun control laws as if those instances are in and of themselves “evidence” of any meaningful sort, is bullshit, and I don’t hesitate to call it that. Just as the tendency to point out a single unseasonably hot summer in a limited area as though this is “evidence” for global warming is also bullshit (and I hold that AGW is real — that doesn’t mean that there aren’t bullshit arguments in support of it, or that those arguments should be given a pass).
At the end of the day, I’m working too hard for it, though. The bottom line is, Uncle probably doesn’t really think he’s making an “argument” of any kind when he does this. He just likes to snark. 🙂
September 17th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Lyle:
See above. You clearly misunderstand my position.
September 17th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
The unpossible happened to me last week. Someone broke into my car and stole stuff, even though we have laws against breaking into cars and stealing stuff.
September 17th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
tgirsch:
It’s been done. The best answer? Inconclusive. Yet ‘gun control’ is always pushed as an answer to decrease crime. That was the exact justification used for the Chicago and DC gun bans along w/ every other gun ban presented. When it didn’t work? Do it harder.
September 18th, 2008 at 9:32 am
thirdpower:
That’s all dandy, but not terribly relevant to my point at #14, paragraph 2.
Xrlq:
Cut that out. You know it wigs me out when we’re roughly on the same side on something!
September 19th, 2008 at 6:55 am
Yeah, but you seemed to cool with agreeing on Terrance and Phillip, so I thought I could get away with this one, too.