[Vision2020] [link added] We, Intoleristas . . .

Joe Campbell philosopher.joe at gmail.com
Tue Jan 1 10:51:36 PST 2013


I didn't say guns CAUSED shootings. I said guns were CAUSAL FACTORS. How?
Well, pretty clearly if there WERE no guns, there would be no SHOOTINGS.
Ergo, among the factors present in ANY shooting must be a gun.

In a previous post you claimed that BULLYING was a causal factor. You can't
suppose that bullying CAUSES gun violence because of course it doesn't; not
all victims of bullying become killers. Does bullying contribute to gun
violence? Is it one of the causal factors? That is debatable. But what is
not debatable is that GUNS are causal factors in shootings.

So by your argument if all we're allowed to look at is CAUSES, then it
would be hard to do anything to limit gun violence. There is no reason to
discuss the topic at all and certainly no reason to discuss bullying or
almost any other contributing factor. On the other hand, if we're going to
look at the CAUSAL FACTORS that contribute to gun violence it makes no
sense to ignore the fact that guns are essential to gun violence.

Joe

On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com>wrote:

>
> How does a gun CAUSE a shooting?  The only way I can see a gun being at
> fault for a shooting is if it fires accidentally.  It was certainly a
> factor in the shooting, hard to have a shooting without one, but it didn't
> cause it.  It requires a human being to choose to pick up a gun and do
> something with it.
>
> Paul
>
>
> On 01/01/2013 02:14 AM, Joe Campbell wrote:
>
> How could you possibly claim that a GUN was NOT at least one of the causal
> factors in a SHOOTING? I don't want to insult you but ...
>
> On Dec 31, 2012, at 11:06 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>   On 12/31/2012 10:20 PM, Saundra Lund wrote:
>
>  Although, I could easily use Paul – with respect to the Newtown murders,
> he recently made a comment about shooters, Columbine, and bullying that was
> factually wrong, too  J
>
>
> Was the Columbine shooting not related to bullying?  I'm no expert
> historian on this subject or anything, but that was what I remembered from
> when we were trudging through the aftermath of that event.
>
> My point, if I recall correctly, was that we should be focusing on the
> causes of these spree shootings, instead of trying to make them go away by
> taking away one set of guns.  So if the causes of Columbine did not involve
> bullying, then we should be focusing on what those causes actually were.
> That's a more direct and probably more cost-effective solution, imho.
>
> You see, that's the thing.  I go into these things expecting to have a
> conversation.  Someone says something, others provide more information,
> ideas get bandied about, I learn something, I find I'm wrong in some areas,
> right in others, everyone walks away with a better idea of what's going
> on.  Instead, I'm supposed to be a member of a college debate team or
> something.  And people are keeping score and I don't even know what rules
> they are using.
>
> Paul
>
>
>
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