[Vision2020] The Petition
Joe Campbell
philosopher.joe at gmail.com
Thu Dec 20 07:13:30 PST 2012
Great points Sunil. There is a nice pair of passages in the article "The
Simple Truth about Gun Control," posted by Art/Wayne earlier today. Here it
is:
"As I wrote last January, the central insight of the modern study of
criminal violence is that all crime—even the horrific violent crimes of
assault and rape—is at some level opportunistic. Building a low annoying
wall against them is almost as effective as building a high impenetrable
one. This is the key concept of Franklin Zimring’s amazing work on crime in
New York; everyone said that, given the social pressures, the slum
pathologies, the profits to be made in drug dealing, the ascending levels
of despair, that there was no hope of changing the ever-growing cycle of
violence. The right wing insisted that this generation of predators would
give way to a new generation of super-predators.
"What the New York Police Department found out, through empirical
experience and better organization, was that making crime even a little bit
harder made it much, much rarer. This is undeniably true of property crime,
and common sense and evidence tells you that this is also true even of
crimes committed by crazy people (to use the plain English the subject
deserves). Those who hold themselves together enough to be capable of
killing anyone are subject to the same rules of opportunity as sane people.
Even madmen need opportunities to display their madness, and behave in
different ways depending on the possibilities at hand. Demand an
extraordinary degree of determination and organization from someone intent
on committing a violent act, and the odds that the violent act will take
place are radically reduced, in many cases to zero"
Joe
On Thu, Dec 20, 2012 at 6:55 AM, Sunil Ramalingam <
sunilramalingam at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Paul,
>
> Just like Roger you are building your argument on a defective premise or
> on assumptions. You don't know how much planning 'they' put in. You say,
> 'If the people that commit these atrocities didn't have guns readily
> available, they would have stolen them or bought them on the black market.'
>
> How do you know? How do you know it would happen every time? Let's pretend
> one could not legally buy an AR15 variant (or any other high capacity
> semi-automatic). Would this kid's mother have gone out and bought one
> illegally? You don't know that. And in this world I just made, these guns
> are going to be a whole lot more expensive on the black market. How many of
> 'them' are going to be priced out of that market?
>
> How do you know they're going to make car bombs? It's a lot easier to pick
> up the gun in the other room, or to take it our of the safe, than it is to
> build a car bomb.
>
> Why should we accept your assumption, 'If these guys had really wanted to
> make their statements or whatever they thought they were doing, they could
> have made pipe bombs or a few molotov cocktails from common household
> chemicals. They could have ran their victims over with a vehicle. They
> could have terrorised them with a chainsaw, or set the school on fire.'
>
> Well, maybe some of those things might happen, but I think it's more
> unlikely than not.
>
> I'm not advocating banning gun ownership, but I think we need to be
> thinking intelligently about how to control access to them by the folks who
> shouldn't have them. I don't think we can absolutely prevent all such
> access, but we can certainly improve on what we're doing now. And I think
> part of thinking about it intelligently is by not accepting bad premises
> for arguments.
>
> Sunil
>
> ------------------------------
> Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:04:42 -0800
> From: godshatter at yahoo.com
> To: philosopher.joe at gmail.com
> CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Petition
>
>
> These shootings don't just happen spur of the moment. They are planned
> and prepared for for a long time beforehand. If the people that commit
> these atrocities didn't have guns readily available, they would have stolen
> them or bought them on the black market. If these guys had really wanted
> to make their statements or whatever they thought they were doing, they
> could have made pipe bombs or a few molotov cocktails from common household
> chemicals. They could have ran their victims over with a vehicle. They
> could have terrorised them with a chainsaw, or set the school on fire.
>
> The sad fact is that the price we would have to pay to truly protect
> ourselves from these kinds of incidents is just too damned big. We would
> have to give up too many of our liberties for too little gain. Meanwhile,
> orders of magnitudes more people will die from cancer, heart attacks,
> traffic accidents, and other common causes.
>
> The same thing goes for protecting ourselves from terrorists. It's too
> costly, both in money and in civil liberties, and all we've done is made it
> worse.
>
> I don't know what the answer is. I just have an ugly feeling that
> whatever gestates from this current climate of fear and outrage will be
> worse than the current situation. The Law of Unintended Consequences is
> real and should be given due respect. We shouldn't just jump at the
> nearest boogie man, whether it's assault weapons or large magazines,
> without giving it the careful thought it requires. I doubt we are in a
> position to have that conversation on a national stage right now.
>
> In both cases (school shootings and terrorist attacks) the root causes are
> complex and are for the most part being ignored. Another sad fact is that
> in this world of sound bites and instant Internet memes no politician is
> going to look at the real causes. They will look for the low-hanging
> fruit, and pretend it's more than just putting a bandaid on a gaping wound.
>
> Paul
>
> On 12/18/2012 09:20 PM, Joe Campbell wrote:
>
> Matt,
>
> This sounds sensible. Again, I don't have a "plan" about what to do. More
> interested in exploring solutions -- and this does just that. I like the
> idea of stronger background checks.
>
> Note too that if you think of the latest episodes of gun violence -- the
> ones we've all heard about at least -- gun theft did not play a role. Most
> of the shooters were young, as well. In general, the school shooters were
> young and required their guns from family members, or purchased them
> themselves. These are not folks who are stealing guns.
>
> Joe
>
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 9:06 PM, Matt Decker <mattd2107 at hotmail.com>wrote:
>
> Joe,
>
> I believe some want to ban these guns but allow current owners to be
> grandfathered in. This could allow these guns to be on the streets for
> years to come. I agree with stronger regulation into the future owners of
> guns. Maybe a longer waiting period along with stronger background checks.
> Classes or prior military would help as well.
>
> Matt
>
> ------------------------------
> From: philosopher.joe at gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:06:10 -0800
> To: donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com
> CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The Petition
>
> This makes no sense. Just to use an example, if you banned assault rifles,
> no one could steal them. I'm not saying that's what we should do. But we
> should look at ALL possible solutions. Again, research Australia and gun
> control. Best, Joe
>
> On Dec 18, 2012, at 7:58 PM, Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> They steal the guns. So I don't think the laws would change the
> situation, unless you ban their production.
>
> Donovan J. Arnold
>
> *From:* Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
> *To:* Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>
> *Cc:* Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>; Moscow Vision 2020 <
> vision2020 at moscow.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, December 18, 2012 7:49 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] The Petition
>
> Some form of gun control has got to be part of the solution. And I
> believe all the guns used in recent shootings were legally purchased.
> That's why some form of gun control has got to be part of the solution.
> Australia did it, so can we
>
> On Dec 18, 2012, at 7:11 PM, Donovan Arnold <donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
> Gun laws are not the answer to this problem. Not allowing for the
> public release of the gunman's name would go further then gun laws, as they
> usually do it for fame. Education of staff, students, and community
> members, and better protection of schools would also help. This kid did not
> get the guns legally, and no reasonable restrictive gun law would have
> prevented it. There are a host of other things that would have helped
> though.
>
> Donovan J. Arnold
>
> *From:* Tom Hansen <thansen at moscow.com>
> *To:* Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, December 18, 2012 6:54 PM
> *Subject:* [Vision2020] The Petition
>
> <image.jpeg>
>
>
> Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .
>
> "Moscow Cares"
> http://www.MoscowCares.com <http://www.moscowcares.com/>
>
> Tom Hansen
> Moscow, Idaho
>
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