"RMDumse" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Oct 20, 3:20 pm, "Ed Huntress" wrote:
"Ed Huntress" wrote in message news:...
I see now you meant "good guys" make the solemn resolutions. Again, if
that
were true, you wouldn't need to be armed, and I would. Since the opposite
appears to be true, based on actual crimes committed, there is something
wrong with your theory, eh?

Okay, Ed, I see you're trying. Thank you for the corrections. But we
are still not at concensus. If we want to agree to disagree, I can
live with that.

But assuming we're talking because we're trying to understand each
other, I will try to make my point which is missed above.

If someone is a good guy and has solemn resolution, he takes a stand
and some things just aren't going to go down without a response, and
if that person is at all effective, then that someone is armed.

The issue is not whether you should, or I should. The issue is not
whether you do, or I do. My point is we both need to be armed to
secure our neighborhoods, or rely on someone else who actually is. If
not you, you can be sure someone in your neighborhood is armed. If you
choose not to be armed, and you live in a good neighborhood, then
someone else has to take up your slack, and they're the one you need
to thank for your safe neighborhood.

I suspect we will disagree, Randy, and this probably is the core of our
disagreement. I don't want to belabor my thinking or background on this
issue, but maybe I should point out that I've owned guns since 1959; joined
NRA in 1961; was a rifle instructor for 15 years, certified by NRA and the
state of New York; was a range officer in the (then) DCM program; was an
editorialist opposing NJ's "assault weapons" bans in the late '80s and early
'90s; was an unpaid lobbyist in Trenton for the NJ affiliate of NRA; and
presented testimony opposing the bans in the NJ state Senate. There is more,
but that should give you the idea.

After much research and thought about it, my opinion is that the most
important thing that will keep gun rights from going away is to be
absolutely pragmatic about it, relying on evidence instead of theories,
being sensitive to the fears, rational and irrational, of ordinary citizens,
and keeping in mind that our only strength lies in having popular agreement
for the positions we take. Anything else is destructive to the end. Thus,
when the evidence is that there is no relationship between being armed to
the teeth and reducing crime in a neighborhood, the evidence-based, rational
position is that individuals may choose to arm themselves but making a
morality play of it by claiming your "solemn resolution" is making the rest
of us safe is going to be received as evidence that a lot of gunowners are
crackpots who live in a B-movie that's running in their heads. Sorry, but
that's the way most people will see it, and it's just too easy to pull up
evidence that there's no factual support for the idea that having lots of
guns around makes you any safer. A few anecdotes will not make your case.
Your enemies will make mincemeat of the proposition. Most people have a good
gut feeling for what is true in this matter and what is not. My town versus
your town, of which there are thousands of parallel examples, will make the
point.

That's not to disparage your principles; it is to say that trying to promote
them as abstract ideas justifying being heavily armed, in conflict with the
evidence that is all around us, reinforces the idea that our heads are not
screwed on quite tight. No amount of philosophical arguing from your
position will change that. And that is the key to the troubles we've had in
recent years over gun ownership in the US: we've gone over the top with
philosophical arguments that just don't connect with what most people see in
the world around them.

Add to that the fact that millions of ordinary citizens have dropped out of
the shooting sports and active gun ownership, and that a lot of crackpots
and emotionally challenged folks have *not* dropped out (they were always
there, but the percentage they make up is rising, like the guys at my local
range with the digger hats who like to shoot TEC-9s), and you have a
situation in which we are under scrutiny all the time. You may be totally
trustworthy, but a lot of your fellow gun owners are evidentially of
questionable stability. They pout about being denied flash suppressors; they
go into fits like teenage girls because they can't have their Black Talons
and bayonet lugs. They're so transparently obsessive and self-centered that
the average citizen loses trust in the idea that gun owners should be
trusted. They wonder what's really on those peoples' minds, after all. And
gun ownership, especially the promotion of being heavily armed for
self-defense, is something that goes down well in the population at large
only when the people doing the promoting are perceived as being steady as a
rock, level headed, cool and calm, mature, and sensitive to the fears and
concerns of others.

Thus I'm not inclined to accept your arguments. They're far-out theory,
which you would be unable to demonstrate, if we were to get into a
statistical debate, is connected to the evidence as the real world presents
it to us. They are counterproductive. In my experience, lobbying and writing
editorials, arguing with legislators and anti-gun politicians (not to
mention a hellbender I got into with the then-Communications Director of
HCI, back in 1992), there is no way you can posture behind theories and
philosophies and win the confidence of the public at large. And that is
exactly what I have set myself to do, for nearly two decades now.


Alfred North Whithead had this little phrase he used to describe
people who don't get the complex issues. He said they labor under "the
fallacy of misplaced concreteness".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy...d_concreteness

Good for Al. Nobody cares about philosophy when the issue is being shot at.


Here's what I think is overlooked in your argument. When it comes to
the safety of a neighborhood, Its not you, and its not the
neighborhood, its not dead end streets, and its not (exactly) looking
for people who look out of place. It certainly isn't that it's
difficult to buy even pellets. Ultimately, it comes down to someone is
armed and willing to use those arms.

But there is no one like that around here. You're living a fantasy that
doesn't exist, because the evidence is that we're safer here than in most
places, without those armed people around.

Guess where you are, its the
police, and their honest, brave, and actually think like the rest of
the community.

I think the key issue is that they have the support of the community. They
feel close to the community, and vice versa.

Where I am, it's difficult to get the police to come
out, so any order that exists there is from people who are willing to
arm themselves and provide for the security of themselves and their
neighbors.

And that's what we were arguing about in the first place. It's too easy for
one to move in this country, and staying in a threatening
situation --especially when you had a fortune -- is not the rational or
responsible response to the threat.

From the bad guys it's the knowledge that there are a few
of them out there, so they'd better keep it down or go somewhere
else.

Baloney. It doesn't work in the real world. Spend a few days with the FBI's
Uniform Crime Reports. I've spent literally hundreds of hours with them,
building cases to write editorials. The facts do not support your
proposition. Again, it's all in your head.


I don't need his protection. What's far better for me and my family is to
be
in a place where we don't have enough violent crime to worry about.
That's
what we have, and what you apparently don't.

I take it, by extending your reasoning (admittedly, as best I can
understand, base on what I understand of what you've told me), you
don't think our military is necessary for our safety either?

That has nothing to do with anything. "Extending one's reasoning" often is a
cover for reducing the argument to the absurd, which usually leads you to a
cockeyed conclusion. That's the trap that runs ideologues into the ditch,
Randy. Just stick to the facts as they are; there's plenty of evidence to
clarify the real situation.

The criminals aren't German tankers, and you guys aren't the 82nd Airborne.
d8-)

You can always just move to somewhere that's free and safe and any kind of
defense doesn't figure into it? Is that the essence of your argument?

We've been here for 29 years. We don't exactly have to keep moving around to
find safe places. And that was the result of using our heads in the first
place, when we decided where to live. We could have had much a bigger house
6 miles away, but this was the best town.

If so, yes, that clears things up. Possibly it meansthat bumper
sticker, "If you can read this thank a teacher, and if you can read
this in English, thank a vet", doesn't make any sense either?

The bigger question is, what in the heck does that have to do with what
we're talking about?


In any case, Ed, I'd like to thank you for carrying on a civil
conversation about ideas. You show a great deal of character and
restraint for doing so, rather than slipping to flame. For that, I
hats off to you.

Randy

OK, I try not to flame unless I'm flamed. d8-)

This is a serious conversation but it's 'way too much for sensible
discussions online. I've had most of it in person as well as online and the
important fact is that the real deciding issues are ones that go on under
the radar, relating more to trust than to philosophy. My concern is, as it
has been for years, that most gun owners have little sensitivity to what
arguments and discussions build and break trust with ordinary people who are
skeptical to begin with. In many cases, they don't even seem to care.

--
Ed Huntress