Encogitationer, here's your chance to explain it to us.

[Unseen]

You seem to agree with the NRA that guns make us safer because when a bad guy shows up with a gun, the solution is a private citizen (a “good guy”) who is armed and at the ready to eliminate the threat.

However, gun ownership has proliferated over time and yet over the same time, mass shootings have proliferated as well. Twenty years ago, they hardly happened, ten years ago they were now and then. Now, it seems, it’s at least one or two in the news almost daily, with who knows how many others don’t make national news.

Speaking of the news…

Is this your idea of guns making us safer? Do we need more guns out there?

 

[Noel]

I think the gun lobby hands out pamphlets on how to answer questions like this by sticking to rote answers. It’s robotic; bad guys, blah,blah, blah, hunting,blah,blah, government,blah, blah blah. To them it’s all lies and stage actors; just ask the idiot of info wars.

Heard a Brit friend of my daughter, while talking about 9/11, say that Americans are at their best when they are threatened. Hope we get to the “Threatened” part soon so we can start trying to be our best.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

The NBC video you posted just admitted that the mass shootings are taking place in cities with some of the strictest firearms laws in the nation. Chicago, Philadelphia, Richmond, Orlando I might add Baltimore as well.

What did I tell you? What have I been telling you?

Obviously, guns and gun laws are not the only factor explaining crime. To say otherwise is as reductionist and absurd a method of Criminology as when Phrenology blamed crime on skull shapes or Eugenics blamed “bad genes” or various flavors of Socialism blame poverty or random idiots blame ‘a Full Moon.”

[TheEncogitationer]

Noel,

I think the gun lobby hands out pamphlets on how to answer questions like this by sticking to rote answers. It’s robotic; bad guys, blah,blah, blah, hunting,blah,blah, government,blah, blah blah. To them it’s all lies and stage actors; just ask the idiot of info wars.

Well that’s not me. I am part of no lobby and no fan of Alex Jones’ lunacy. I subscribed to the NRA’s American Rifleman for one year over 30 years ago until I seen that they were more interested in fundraising and peddling magazines, T-shirts, bumper stickers, and embossed tchoskes, gee-jaws, and gimcracks than the were in actually defending the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Otherwise, they would have actually repealed one of the 20,000+ laws and regulation restricting and violating this Right.

Also, I asked their NRA General Counsel a serious legal question about gun restrictions and got the smarmiest, most condescending, bitchiest of a reply.

Heard a Brit friend of my daughter, while talking about 9/11, say that Americans are at their best when they are threatened. Hope we get to the “Threatened” part soon so we can start trying to be our best.

That day is here every day for a lot of us who deal with mean streets, such as myself, who has been chased down on the road twice in a lifetime, got my car destroyed by a hit-and-run driver, assaulted at work thrice and threatened numerous times, and most recently has had to deal with two attempts at cutting off and looting my catalytic converter in about one year’s time. And the latter is an act of aggression not just against me, but everyone who has to breathe.

All of this could be avoided if these punks had to look over their shoulder instead of the rest of us.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by TheEncogitationer. Reason: Punctuation and spelling and correction

[Noel]

Eco said: “That day is here every day for a lot of us who deal with mean streets, such as myself, who has been chased down on the road twice in a lifetime, got my car destroyed by a hit-and-run driver, assaulted at work thrice and threatened numerous times, and most recently has had to deal with two attempts at cutting off and looting my catalytic converter in about one year’s time. And the latter is an act of aggression not just against me, but everyone who has to breathe.
All of this could be avoided if these punks had to look over their shoulder instead of the rest of us.”

Damn Eco! All of that happened to you in North Carolina?

I know what you said about the North East, hell hole and all, but I have lived and walked down some dark ass streets at night in the middle of Crown Heights Brooklyn and East Harlem and the worst that has happened to me is some homeless person asking for change.

You gotta’ get out of North Carolina. Either that or stop being out after 12:00 AM. You’re a magnet and “Nothing good ever happens after 12:00 AM.”

All those guns you carry and you’re still not safe or, from what you just posted, feel safe within’ your own neighborhood. Maybe time to hit the bricks. I say this to you the way I would say it to a friend. The way a friend said it to me when I told him I was dating a girl from the Projects in East New York, at the time one of the diciest neighborhoods in Brooklyn. He said, “You ever go back there again I’ll kick your ass.” I hear New Hampshire and Maine are nice this time of year.

[jakelafort]

Enco, phrenology aint all that far off. Recent headlines include size of pupil correlated to fluid intelligence. Also brain shape may be more significant in function than neurons which came as a complete surprise.

so watch out for close beady eyes, high criminal forehead and other telltale indications of character.

https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2023/06/01/our-brain-shape-geometry-influences-how-it-works-landmark-study-finds.html

https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/pupil-size-intelligence/

[TheEncogitationer]

Noel,

I appreciate the kind thoughts and as I have said earlier, I’d love to be able to take a ferry boat to New Hampshire or Maine.

What’s worse, one of the chasings took place in the morning and all of the workplace violence and threats happened before Midnight at supposedly “civilized” hours. Who knows when they tried to get the catalytic converter, but most likely at night. My mechanic said he once saw a whole parking lot of cars stripped of their catalytic converters! These vermin work fast with battery-charged buzz-saws.

When and whether I carry is need-to-know, but all the times I was a victim I wasn’t armed and I was in a place where arms are forbidden or were heavily restricted.

That much I can say is true. What goes through the minds of the perpetrators is probably as varied as they are.

[Unseen]

Another repost of a lost discussion due to the server changeover (sigh):

Gun-huggers will say that since gun laws have failed to stop gun crimes, which is arguably true, what they ignore is the abject failure of lax gun laws to stop gun crimes. Which are the states with the most gun deaths, the states that at least try not to be overwhelmed by guns or the ones that go out of the way to tolerate and/or encourage guns? I actually can answer that question.

They will also say, well, if someone can’t use their gun, they can still kill you with a knife or a club. That’s undeniably true, but they might not. Why? Because instead of being able to shoot me from 10 feet away, across the room, or from afar (sniper style), they’ll have to engage me in a fight much of the time. Using a knife or club means they have to take the risk that I’ll either be a better fighter than they are or am just going to have a very lucky day.

It’s seldom mentioned that even if someone is the victim of a fatal knife attack, they can still kill their attacker while defending themselves, only to die of exsanguination perhaps in the ER.

So, Enco, if you want to kill me, please leave your gun at home and attack me with a knife or club.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

First of all, many Southern States have stricter gun laws than you may think, such as laws requiring a permit to purchase which a Sheriff may turn down due to “bad character,” a law that kept Martin Luther King Jr. from purchasing a handgun, along with many other blacks and minorities throughout the Jim Crow Era and even afterwards when the anti-gun laws were left in place.

Two, with a spread-out, isolated population in Alaska and Western States such as New Mexico, Wyoming, and Montana, the nearest law enforcement can be dozens of miles away. This gives a green light to criminals to commit all manner of crimes, including gun-related crimes.

They will also say, well, if someone can’t use their gun, they can still kill you with a knife or a club. That’s undeniably true, but they might not. Why? Because instead of being able to shoot me from 10 feet away, across the room, or from afar (sniper style), they’ll have to engage me in a fight much of the time. Using a knife or club means they have to take the risk that I’ll either be a better fighter than they are or am just going to have a very lucky day.

It does take exceptional strength and speed to win in close-quarters combat with a knife, club, or bare fists….but in a world without guns fantasized by hoplophobic gun control freaks, such people of superior strength and speed would have the advantage over everyone else.

A world without firearms would be no world for either the very young or the very old, no world for the ill, infirm, or handicapped, no world for physically weaker women, and no world for numerical minorities of any kind. That means Atheists too.

It’s seldom mentioned that even if someone is the victim of a fatal knife attack, they can still kill their attacker while defending themselves, only to die of exsanguination perhaps in the ER.

As opposed to when the would-be victim has a firearm, in which case, the would-be criminal attacker just, colloquially and literally speaking, “brought a knife to a gun fight.”

So, Enco, if you want to kill me, please leave your gun at home and attack me with a knife or club

For you to assume that I want to kill you just because I defend the Individual Right to keep and bear arms and you deny that right just shows that you are a delusional dumb-ass. While being a delusional dumb-ass is not justifiable grounds for homicide, it is justifiable grounds to no longer engage you in rational discussion on any topic. You are dismissed. ‘Bye!

[Unseen]

@Enco

And yet, where there are more guns, there is more gun crime. Just like where there are more cars, there are more car-related deaths. More swimming pools, more drownings.

Countries with fewer guns (which is all other civilized countries) have extremely fewer gun deaths. Not only that, their citizens are not in constant danger of attack or death by firearm. Actually, neither are Americans, but the NRA wants us to think we are in order to sell more guns. Still, the presence of guns does actually make us less safe than citizens of those other lands. Guns are doing the exact opposite of increasing our safety and security.

Evidence: As guns proliferate, we are having more and more mass shootings. Over the July 4 holiday there were several. Ten years ago, mass shootings were occasional, two or three a month maybe. Twenty years ago, they were a rarity. I don’t know how you can look at the situation and have such a skewed analysis of it.

[TheEncogitationer]

Unseen,

Didn’t your read anything I’ve written in the threads on this subject? And didn’t you read my last post?

You are dismissed! ‘Bye!

[Unseen]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Unseen, Didn’t your read anything I’ve written in the threads on this subject? And didn’t you read my last post? You are dismissed! ‘Bye!

We’re having more guns on the streets and things are going to shit. I read your propaganda and it fails to explain that fact or why places with far more gun control have relatively little gun crime.

Do you think you can refute that as concisely as I set it out?  In 30 or 40 words? A hundred at the outside.

[Author]

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