What do you think of the gun control Obama is proposing?

Was my pointing out to him that "common sense" has some really substntive hitorical precedent on the side of our Republic , rqther than merely KKK qnd Fascist references?
I cannot buy those assertions as fact in my alternative reality.

What triggers this evaluation? I think that financial issues tend to drive most declarations of mental incompetence. I think the most effective (but perhaps more onerous) method would be for each gun buyer to be evaluated for mental capability, background checks and a gun safety test.

But I suspect you find that too much, even though it would be a more targeted and direct way of handling this concept (that if I'm not mistaken you agree with in principle?).



If this is true I think it is not ideal, but I do want to posit that your qualification that someone must be declared "dangerous" is too limiting in my view.

Your average 1 year old is not "dangerous" but is clearly not mentally fit to operate a firearm.

So it should be obvious that there is a certain degree of mental incapacity that might not make someone inherently dangerous but perhaps not fully capable of operating a firearm without being dangerous.

I'm thinking of those cases of very old confused gentlemen shooting pizza delivery guys at their door. They probably don't pose a threat to society except when being senile and operating a firearm.

Obviously the line at which this should be drawn is hard to set, but do you not acknowledge that there is a certain level of mental incapacity that represents a danger with firearms while the person might not otherwise be dangerous?

Nobody is gonna declare all toddlers to be dangerous people but we obviously recognize that a toddler with a gun is a potentially dangerous person.



I think this kind of dramatic flair really does your intellect no favors. You are obviously above average in intelligence but when you make overstatements for rhetoric it doesn't make your arguments commensurate with your intellect.

You know that the people you oppose are not doing this "for no reason". They simply differ from you in that they see reducing mortality rates as more valuable than the right to have guns. This is not "no reason" it is merely a reason that you do not agree with and not because of anything other than that you have different axiomatic values than do they.



I don't think this will be a tiny few, but this might owe to our fundamental disagreement on whether they must be inherently "dangerous" or only dangerous when equipped with a firearm.

Some old lady who is completely senile and delusional is not dangerous. Give her some deadly weapons and that changes.

Do you not see that this could be considered a positive? That there may be many people who are not able to be declared dangerous (that is not an easy distinction at all, and almost no perps of mass killings could have easily been able to be identified and listed using criteria that would not cause similar false positives) but that might be better for us all not packing heat?

The line between dangerous and not dangerous is almost impossible to draw until there are instances of danger occurring. But if you can declare that someone is delusional and has a tenuous grip on reality do you really think we should let these folks have guns and see if they end up being dangerous or not?

Mental health is not easy, you should expound on how you seek to determine only the dangerous ones. I personally prefer the line differently drawn, to include people who we do not think are fully connected to reality enough to responsibly deploy a weapon. I don't want senile grannies who always think their grandson is a random stranger answering their doors with a gun. Do you?



Sure, but you are being facetious here again, you know very well that a list of mentally unfit people (even if the criterion for addition to this list is not ideal) is much more likely to improve mortality rates (the reason your political opposition has, by the way) by using this list than eye color right?

Not all analogies make sense and it's patently obvious that a list of mentally unfit people, however imperfect, is a much more targeted and intelligent attempt to address gun mortality rates than is eye color.



I think the problem is that you see constitutionality as being "factual" or not when it is a living breathing document and constitutionality is adjudicated by processes that have not agreed with you. In effect until you have it legally declared unconstitutional it's just a subjective opinion relying on your interpretation.

Your penchant for calling this kind of thing a "fact" and then doubling down on the strength of conviction is your big leak in argument strategy. You are a smart person and should be able to argue your position while acknowledging that interpretations of constitutionality are all just opinions until they are adjudicated.

Your proclamations about constitutionality are not facts, they are subjective opinions. There is no such thing as a canonical interpretation of the constitution, we rely on the ongoing processes we have to interpret it and no those processes might not agree with you (making your constitutional proclamations moot).



That may be so, I am not a constitutionalist (again, I am more concerned about discussions about what should be, not splitting hairs over what is) and this may end up being the prevalent interpretation.

But do you concede that while you think this that enough people have not agreed for this interpretation to be codified? And that there is a distinct possibility that it will not?

I hope not, but if so, that is a strong argument for our system where the will of the majority is to be ignored when it comes to matters of human rights.



Not really.

I don't really have an opinion about this and am not going to dispute this but am still (perhaps vainly) trying to get you to admit that constitutionality is not black and white.

If this is 100% unconstitutional why then is it still law? My take on what is and is not constitutional is that it's more of a probability that it will be codified (when adjudicated) as that ends up being the law regardless of our opinions.

You seem to be a one extreme or another kind of guy, but I think if you were to be honest about this you would have to admit that this is some probability less than 100% that it will be codified the way you would like.

Well you taught me that term almost 20 years ago, but my understanding of it now is that no it would not apply, though perhaps so in spirit.

I've acknowledged that I may not which is why I wrote "on the face of it."

I have also argued that President Obama and his administration have given conservatives and gun-rights advocates (not always mutually inclusive) reason to mistrust him and his intentions versus his stated plans.

I don't for one second believe that this Administration isn't prepared to stretch the fine points of whatever legislation is passed to the breaking point, and perhaps beyond, to achieve its political and ideological agendas.These people, including Obama, know they only have 8 years to "rule" the land and they want, very much, for whatever changes they have managed to be lasting.

The only reason Obama ever expressed admiration for Ronald Reagan was related to Reagan's presidency transforming the political landscape and the tenor of America. Anyone with eyes and ears knows that Obama has from the outset sought to transform America; and usher in a new age.

He certainly doesn't want that transformation to end with his presidency, but while Reagan was able to effect transformation through reigniting the engine and spirit of America, Obama has to, largely, rely on legal trickery, hoping that his transformative plantings with have spread their roots deeply enough in four years that they can't be ripped out of the soil by future administrations.

In addition he will no doubt take credit for changes that he largely watched rather than directed, (e.g. Same Sex Marriage) and attempt to mischaracterize outcomes that he did engineer (the end of the Iraq war and the nuclear deal with Iran) as fundamentally transformative events.

All presidents want to believe that their years in the White House mattered and that the nation was better off when they left than it was when they arrived. Unfortunately there is no shortage of sycophants, including members of the press and historians, who are happy to tell them what they want to hear. (How any historian can make an objective and reasoned assessment of Obama's presidency at this point or a year from now is beyond me). This is certainly the case for Obama, but time will tell.

The difference between Obama and prior presidents is the scope of his desire which is fed by the size of his ego. It will not be enough for him to say that the nation is better off now than it was eight years ago. He wants to be able to say the nation has been fundamentally transformed and is on an entirely new path from what it traveled eight years ago. In this sense his aspiration is more like an emperor's than a president.

Fortunately the reality of Washington politics was something much larger and formidable than all of the barriers he had brushed by in the past. Congress contained people as bright as him and as determined. They weren't the adoring faculty of Harvard. And they had as many able strategists and dirty tricks to play as he did. Of course he won a number of battles, but he lost a lot too. He also didn't have, among the American people, quite the number of swooning supporters he so frequently was energized by during his campaigns (one of the reasons, I believe, he loves campaigning so much). Of course he had enough to get him elected to two terms, but not enough to keep Congress in Democrat hands for eight years and thank God for that. We can only imagine the "transformation" he might have pulled off if his narcissistic fantasies hadn't been impeded.

As it is, it will take quite a leader to repair the damage he has done and I'm not sure any of the GOP candidates are up to the task. Certainly Trump isn't. If he wins we'll be lucky if he doesn't eff things up even more.

Mental healthcare is not a slippery slope, but having the government determine who is mentally ill enough to be denied certain right is.

I'm not as wont to point out the fallacies of others in arguments these days. Both because I find that it ends up making for less edifying and more contentious arguments but also because quite frankly we are all guilty of logical fallacies (of varying degrees) with routine frequency.

But I have tried to gently point out here where I think you might have slipped into some. For example I think you are begging the question repeatedly when your posts devolve into the mantras of you being up against "bad" people while you champion "civil rights".

This assumption that you are on the "good" side of "freedom" and "civil rights" vs simply "bad people" is also a fallacy of equivocation in that these terms are ambiguous and whether or not this even applies to those terms would first be in dispute before you could declare that axiomatic to the argument. After all, some pedophiles see pedophilia as a "civil rights" case too, and I'm pretty sure you don't consider anyone who opposes pedophilia to be an automatically "bad person".

With that in mind while I was at the dentist today I thought that perhaps my arguments herein might border on the fallacy of an appeal to popularity. I don't necessarily intend them as support for my position and to use them that way, I'm just commenting in a descriptive and not proscriptive point of view when I talk about that most of the time but they imply as much and can detract from the argument in similar ways.



Been a while since I've seen people toss the liar this and lie that around. Another thing I try to express with less acute tone and that tends to result more frequently in more interesting exploration of ideas instead of the same contrary retort and recriminations ad nauseum.



This kind of rhetoric only works on the person saying it and their sycophants, it only makes your arguments look weaker with this kind of dramatic and feckless overstatement.

Sorry for being so damn preachy, and I know that others do the same to you (which I spoke to briefly) I like the thoughtful ollaroy much more than the obdurate and dogmatic ollaroy. Anyone can ratchet up the strength of conviction to the levels you can but not everyone can be as thoughtful as you can be and I wish you were able to remain more dispassionate as I always enjoy discussions with you right up to the point where you become the dogmatic bulldog with nothing more to say.

Ollaroy since you've asked for the logical fallacies to be pointed out I would like to note that this is a guilt by association fallacy. Again, not trying to lord this over you or anything I have often committed a fallacy or two before breakfast.

Abut 13 years ago I was trying to deal with chronic fatigue syndrome. I was so weak at times I couldn't lift a glass to my lips. Even the muscles controlling my eyes were affected and my left eye tended to drift slightly off center.

When you have a long term health problem you will hear from people you barely know offering you' vitamins and such' tres expensive and they are always the distributer of said product.

Two of my neighbors, ladies who belonged to a Church I considered a little on the crazy side, would badger me to buy this stuff to cure my condition, One used to stop with a big frosty glass of some thick frothy green stuff in it that really didn't smell great and urge me to drink it so I could marvel at it's curative ability.
As much as I like to be neighborly, nothing would convince me to even take a sip. I just am not that accommodating.

They kept at me, and I used every polite method of refusal I could think of, like "I really need to check this out with my doctor" "I take daily medication, I have to see if there are any risks with my regular meds." "How bout I take a sample and the pamphlet to my doctor and see what she thinks". They didn't stop until I changed my tone. Sometimes being polite tells the other person you just want to be persuaded. How many times can you listen to the same claptrap politely until you just can't muster the 'polite'. Tones are going to change, hopefully not off the deep end, but conversations here get spirited.

I don't recall that specific exchange and don't really want to nag and preach any more than I have. I'm just saying that there are many levels of disagreement. An essay by Paul Graham that I read in my youth has stuck with me ever since and it espoused the idea that ideally disagreement should focus on refutation of the central point, that is the highest form of disagreement. Beyond that ideal it is useful to focus on refutation of substance (not tone etc). The most common form of argument on the internet is mere contradiction, pretty much anything that fits an opposing case in any way. And from there the level of discourse sinks to responding to tone (which is, depending on tone, often inevitable) which is useful to shape the tone of arguments we want to have but sheds little light on the subject we are discussing. Beyond that disagreement devolved into ad hominem, and name calling.

This discussion was sitting right at average before it dipped further into more about tone and seems on its way to the name calling part. I would simply prefer we all try to keep it as high a level of discourse as we can and am not pointing any specific fingers, it's a reminder to myself as well.

Well arguing that it is without substantiation is not a strong argument (why it's considered a fallacy) because you can say that about anything on earth.

"Removing the government from mental health is a slippery slope to anarchy" Now that's more deliberately extreme to make the point, but it can be said about anything but if you really want to make a slippery slope argument it needs some explanation of why it is so, why would that lead to more?

He may not be lying about anything concerning gun control. I haven't read or heard all of his statements on the subject, but he has lied on other issues when he felt it politically expedient to do so, and therefore I assume he would have no qualms about lying about gun control if he felt it was necessary.

I don't expect everyone to be as suspicious of the man as I am, and I would be very surprised (though pleased) if they were. I know there will be those who reject that the following is true, but I am suspicious of anyone and everyone who wields power, including Republicans. Some, though, are more dangerous than others, and in my opinion Obama is among them.

It is his desire to transform America that has always worried me (I have just written about this so will not repeat myself). It's not that there weren't things that needed to be changed when he took office, but there was no need for a transformation, and in any case, leaders with such grandiose ideas about themselves and their destiny scare me.

I can't see what, if anything, he has up his sleeve. I'm just saying I don't put it past him to have something up there. The fact that a majority of the American people feel one way or the other about anything is not something that he allows to get in the way of what he wants to do. The most significant aspect of the transformation process he has set out to complete is a transformation of the way Americans think. I believe he thinks he is right about virtually everything, but I think he's also so convinced that he is right, that he feels confident that if he can engineer a change that the American people think they don't want now, they will change their minds once the benefits of his decision are experienced.

If you have this much confidence in your beliefs, the fact that a majority of people disagree with you is immaterial except to the extent it makes it difficult to implement the change you want to make. For Obama, and progressives in general, the end justifies the means, and if in the end everyone is happy and better off, that the necessary means to reach that place are not exactly kosher, is immaterial. There is a twisted logic to this that is only visible to those who are 100% certain that their decision will prove very successful. For them, the institutional checks and balances and restraints of ethical behavior that are intended to prevent megalomaniacs from doing anything they please are not only unnecessary, they are harmful. If you are 100% certain that what you want to do will improve everyone's lives why wouldn't you do whatever it takes to make sure it gets done? The people who objected will thank you later, admit they were wrong and praise you for not allowing silly barriers to get in your way.

Because he is this way doesn't mean that he has been able to always govern this way (thanks to the Republicans whom he very clearly despises with a visceral hatred that this incredibly controlled man sometimes can't hide and is shocking in its intensity), but time is running out for him and I fully expect to see all sorts of tricks that he's had up his sleeve played. Being a "lame duck" is not a option for a president with a phone, a pen and a date with destiny.

I'm not all that in favor of strong gun control though I've never been too convinced by all the really awful arguments on both sides, but I do really think some people are "gun nuts" in that they are single issue people who have no flexibility or further though invested in their positions. These guys aren't bad, and I avoid using loaded terms like that if I can but I do really see them as a bit nutty, in the same way anyone can get a little too obsessed with anything.

And I have come to believe that the utility of guns does not outweigh their cost, though it is certainly not as stark as I thought as a child (soon learning from my research that population density etc has a bigger impact than gun to human ratio etc).

I've also recently crystalized my view to seeing the prevalence of gun ownership as directly linked to certain subsets of gun deaths. Specifically mass killings and suicide (gang related violence and non gratuitous crime will be less affected statistically).

While I do believe that according to the ideal of the most happiness for the most people that a gun free society poses the best environment for it I recognize that is impossible (in the US, not everywhere) and think that it just makes sense to regulate them and track them well to minimize the destructive costs.

But it's just not a hot button issue for me, and while I think that many people who are dogmatic about guns aren't being reasonable and some of them (the ones to whom no amount of cost would change their calculus) have positions I take a dim view of I think reasonable people can disagree in the middle of this debate.



I was thinking about this trust issue last night. Was recalling how little I had for Bush and I didn't think it paranoid. I guess paranoid is just a value laden way to disparage the argument most of the time, but I do often think the fears are unfounded.

For example, the way I see the political landscape I would bet my very life on most of these fears being unfounded, I see no chance for Obama to do almost anything they fear. I understand the fear, there is a growing opposition to their viewpoint that I predict will one day (in the next two decades, not soon) tip but I don't think anyone has anything more to fear on guns than this weak attempt that is really just a capitulation to the NRA position of strengthening existing gun laws and not really making any new meaningful ones.



Well I do want to reduce gun ownership. I don't see anything wrong with that. The fewer guns other people have the safer I am in general and if we can make it hard for the criminals and the least responsible members of society I am in favor of it. Not because I see this as a step to taking all guns away but just like I think that making the right to drive less inclusive (maybe raise the age and be less inclusive with senile drivers) would make our streets safer too.

I don't want to do it "artificially" but when I say I want regulations one of the goals is fewer guns in circulation which would make the society a bit safer and as long as the focus is on the people we all agree that are least capable of being responsible for them I think it's the general concept is right.

For example, many law abiding citizens would not pass a gun safety course the first time, just as many won't pass the driving test. I am fine with this attrition to ownership and driving.

Ultimately the point for me really is to take it from being completely accessible to being a bit harder to access (but still possible for the average mentally competent person).




Sure but they have no room here, there's nothing he can do. The NRA has a fait accompli right now. This will not change for a while whether or not you trust Obama because he has no power to do more than what he is trying to do and this is all there will be out of him on it.



The thing is that not everyone even agrees that the right should exist. Things like the no-fly list come much closer to a civil rights battlefront because we all agree that we should have the right to fly and if people are incorrectly prohibited from doing so this is an infringement on their rights that they would not want.

However with guns there is a growing demographic that does not want this right for them, they want the right to live in a gun free society. This is why while this can be construed as a civil rights issue like anything can I do not expect this to be one of societies civil rights issue, if anything I think in the next two decades gun regulation will become more similar to the rest of the developed world and that gun rights is likely to be eroded. Not because Obama's doing anything tricky but because I predict society will value the right to guns less as it evolves.



I think it sounds absurd to some, but that it's the inevitable flip side of all "rights" and "freedoms". They are lest aptly described as "rights" but it is still the diametric opposition. One side wants to live without the fear of guns, the other wants to live without the fear of not having guns.

When this gets into names like "rights" think people are just trying to bestow some honor and value to their position but ultimately these are just competing desires about how our society should operate and people who talk about their "right" to guns are is much the same place as those who want gun control. They are negotiating how a society works and there is no such thing as an inherent "right" just those that are negotiated within your society.

So if there are enough people trying to negotiate the regulation of guns in a democracy the "right" to guns may well just go away, and it's not some inherently good and noble thing to be a "right" these are just social constructs that societies often get wrong (such as the "right" to own slaves).



Very true that this is not a direct democracy but those who prefer greater gun regulation are in the majority, and I see this as trending toward a growing majority that at some point will get their way if it continues on this trajectory.



I'm not gonna argue with any of the qualms you all raise, I agree with them and it seems like you all agree with the general concept of restricting gun sales to a certain subset of the list, I'm all for making the list accurate and am surprised that some of the more fundamental gun rights folk agree to the concept at all.

If all we have is minor disagreement on implementation there is much less air between our positions than I had thought.




I disagree, this is what's called a "nirvana fallacy" (look at me being all mr fallacy this and that now...).

The imperfection of a solution is not a reasonable indictment of a solution as there is no perfect solution. This argument must establish, to have merit, that there is enough flawed about it that it outweighs the good. Not just that it is imperfect as all solutions would be.




All our legal systems are flawed, we have executed and imprisoned innocent men. Given your above argument we should, in theory, throw the baby out with the bath water and scrap every single civic system that we have since I can find a flaw in each of them.

I am all for better systems, but we can't achieve perfection and just as I won't scrap the justice system just because it makes mistakes I am not very swayed by the argument that a few mistakes means this is not worthy.

The argument that would sway me is not the theoretical existence of mistakes but the scale of them. At some point I would consider the rate of false positives unacceptable, but that is not any number greater than 0 and nobody here has made any effort to quantify this at all, just talk about theoretical flaws.

So to put it to numbers I'd say that as long as the false positive rate is in the single digit percentages to start I'd accept the list and hope to improve it to below 1%.



If enough people think less of this this document can change. And given that I don't think this document is perfect I am not personally swayed at all by the constitutional side of the argument except as it relates to practicality (for example I am not in favor of eliminating guns entirely in the US due to the practical considerations).

But to me this is just like citing the Bible, I like to talk about what is ideal for the future of societies, not what some old desert dwelling gents thought was ideal in primitive societies.



Sure, I don't expect that to change in my lifetime at all. But that doesn't mean we have to treat these "rights" as moral equals. At some point the right to own slaves was the law too, that was daft and everyone is perfectly free to adopt the opinion that the 2nd amendment is daft too if they want, and while it is the law of the land that doesn't settle any arguments about its inherent merits or daftitude any more than the Koran or the Bible does.

BTW, I reply quickly as I read and often find a point I made is one you make yourself or concede after I've replied to the first paragraph. Don't want to appear to be talking past you in those cases, I'm just being lazy and replying while reading and before getting to the end of your posts.

I think I've already posted the stats on guns: injuries 84,000+ and deaths 11,000+.

. Send this one to oristar so we can test her skills at "quickie English"

I think I saw it but just posting numbers with no point attached to them wasn't something I had a response to.

These are personal decisions. Someone taking an ak 47 and killing 14 to 20 people who dident want to die dosent equal drinking oneself to death. This is also a poor arguement.

Left them in the ignation?