HelixDab

No, you were quite clear; you aren't actually interested in real solutions, you're interested in gun control for the sake of gun control.

I used to be a member of the NRA too, but I'm not willing to pay for some dude's $15,000 suits while he's kissing the asses of people that want to overturn every part of the constitution that isn't 2A rights. I'm slightly more okay with SAF and GOA, but they still often shill for Republicans.

The fact that a gun has a 'purpose' of killing is reductive and not useful. Killing is, by itself, neither good nor bad. Killing can be justified and moral, or it can be deeply immoral.

So, as I asked originally, if you could reduce the number of illegal and immoral uses of firearms without reducing the ability of people to exercise their civil rights, would you be open to that?

Fewer guns doesn't, by itself, mean less violence. We can see that in Australia and in England, where the combined rates of all violent crimes (battery, robbery, forcible rape, murder) are comparable to the US, and possibly higher, but the lethality is reduced. On the other hand, reducing the amount of violence in society, through programs that attack root causes in the most affected communities (which, notably, is not harsher policing and sentencing, but more like community improvement and poverty reduction), reduces both rates of violence and the homicide rates. Chicago actually had a pretty good violence intervention program going for a number of years before it was senselessly defunded.

You've avoiding the question.

Would you be open to solutions that do not involve removing guns, or is that the only solution you would accept?

Kimberly Edds, spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, told NPR the decision was made "as a result of having insufficient evidence" to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.

...Which is pretty much par for the course for a lot of sexual assault cases as well. RAINN reports that, out of every 1000 sexual assaults, 310 get reported to police, 50 result in arrests, and only 28 result in convictions. So the DA dropping the case before even going to trial isn't all that surprising. It doesn't mean that he isn't guilty, just that the DA didn't think they were going to be able to prove it in court.

Love that people just ignore that violence doesn't happen in a vacuum, and since violence must happen in a vacuum without any causes at all the only solution is to remove the tools.

Guns are tools. A knife is a tool. A car is a tool. Even high explosives are tools.

BTW, I do have a kitchen gun, because that's where I need it when there's a problem bear outside. (Yes, bear - one of those 300+ pound animals with teeth and claws that are sometimes extremely aggressive.)

I assume that you want safe communities; would you be open to solutions that increase safety if they didn't involve removing firearms, or is that the only solution that you'd accept?

RIP Vicki and Sammy Weaver.

Huh. I got 1312 confused with 1349, and was wondering why left libertarians would care when the black plague arrived in Norway, or why they'd all be super into a black metal band.

But yeah. 1312.

I guarantee that it will first be available to the wealthy, and they will shut the door to prevent anyone else from accessing it. The result will be a very few people will continue to amass wealth and power.

This is not a liberating idea.

For Leviticus 20:13 to not be hate-speech, you have to start by proving, first, that any god at all exists, and second, that the Hebrew bible is the word of that god. The approach advocated in Leviticus assumes that morality is predicated on the will of a god; if a god wills a thing, then that thing must be moral, because that god creates morality. So unless you can demonstrate that a god exists, and that the translation that we have of Leviticus is the will of that god, then it should not be assumed to be moral. Perhaps you could prove the morality of it in some other way, but you haven't made that attempt yet.

The Hebrew bible also explicitly condones slavery and rape, which implies that god says those things are moral. Would you then agree that slavery in the American south prior to 1860 was a moral practice? Would it be a moral practice if it started again? The bible advocates for genocide; is genocide moral?

BTW there's disagreement about the meaning of that verse, from rabbinical scholars no less. Seems to me that evangelicals might want to do a little more studying to understand context before they make assumptions about the foundations of their religion.

Mmmmm, it's more like no one can reasonably demonstrate the truth of any god, rather than any specific god being demonstrably false. It's an important distinction. You can't disprove a thing, but you can prove that alternate explanations are far more probable, or that the thing doesn't fit the evidence.

I don't have to; you have to provide good sources to back up your claim. If I say that god exists, and then claim that the bible proves is, well, I'm not proving my point because I haven't yet given any solid evidence to my claims. This is how a debate works when your arguing like a rational adult.

And, for the record, CNN/NYT/et al. are also biased, but they're (usually) more factually based. Bias is not the same as factually incorrect; bias is reflected in which stories you choose to report, and what language you use in reporting. And example of a source that would be both unbiased and highly factual would be Reuters News Service, or the Christian Science Monitor. Similarly, Jabocin is strongly left-biased, but also highly factual.

Three of the sources you cited are not credible because they continually play fast and loose with facts and don't bother verifying information. One of them was unsourced entirely, and the backup you provide is not in English--or based in the US--which makes determining the veracity difficult.

In short, you aren't acting in good faith.