quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Given what we know or at least heard, murder doesn't make sense either.
That was my response as well but after looking at the legal definitions of second degree murder and voluntary manslaughter, I think second degree murder is the appropriate charge. A killing resulting from an assault in which death of the victim was a distinct possibility is second degree murder. Voluntary manslaughter would only be the charge if the killing took place "in the heat of passion." For example, second degree murder is the most common charge when someone is killed in a bar fight. If you kill someone in a fight, a charge of voluntary manslaughter would imply you entered the fight in a heat of passion.
An assault is an action that creates an apprehension in another of an imminent physical attack. If the fight between Martin and Zimmerman started because Martin thought that being followed and then chased indicated an intent to physically attack him -- then Zimmerman is guilty of 2nd degree murder not manslaughter.
If I had been walking near my home and a stranger in a car first followed me, for no apparent reason, and then got out of their car to chase me, I would apprehend that as a threat of imminent physical attack. I think most people would.
In my mind, it matters a great deal that Zimmerman was carrying a gun. Any weapon increases the chances that a fight will lead to a killing. When someone chooses to carry a deadly weapon, they have a greater moral responsibility to avoid fights than an unarmed person. I have no idea what the law says on the subject, but a moral law would demand a higher standard from an armed person.
When Zimmerman got out of his car with a loaded gun and started chasing Martin, Martin's death was a distinct possibility.
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posted
Ugh, yes, rivka, that's a much more straightforward and likely possibility, I think. Shoulda thought of that!
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic.
That was my first response as well but given all the controversy, I think it would be extremely difficult for the prosecutor to avoid a trial at this point.
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posted
Still a question of betting on cost/benefit estimates.
If murder 2 goes to trial and he gets off, wouldn't you bet post-O.J.-type riots would be likely? I would. But if after a few weeks the prosecutor's office announced that after re-evaluation, the evidence might not be enough support a murder 2 conviction, plus the cost to the taxpayers, yada yada, but we have a deal for a manslaughter conviction . . . well, I expect there would be rumbling and grumbling, but probably no riots.
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posted
I think a lot would depend on how much more evidence and what sort comes forward, and how it's released. This just feels a lot murkier, in terms of...hmmm, certainty of public outrage?...than the Rodney King beatings, since there was of course video of that, as well as a major city well known for police mistreatment of minorities.
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posted
I agree. we are just starting to find out the meat and potatoes of the case, and if they think they can make Man1 stick, I'd like to see them try it.
I can foresee reasonable doubt though, unless Rakeesh is right and they have a bombshell waiting.
I hope they are doing it because they think it can stick though. If they are doing it because of political pressure, they may overcharge him and then if he gets acquitted.......it will be Rodney King all over again.
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posted
I really don't see King style riots in the cards, unless some pretty damning evidence of Sanford law enforcement or malevolence turns up. While of course a dead kid is worse than a beaten adult, it's nearly a full generation later. The race kettle isn't simmering as hot as it did then to start with. It's in Sanford, so there's a lot less built-in giving a damn. Also, however dangerously stupid Zimmerman was (and boy, was he), the law may actually be on his side in ways it wasn't back in King. Finally and perhaps most important, there isn't video footage that can be played over and over again, that presents as clear-cut evil in as short a time.
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I didn't say -- or mean -- King. Those were huge. There were little ones after O.J., IIRC. (I can't find anything about them online, but I think I remembered them.)
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posted
Rivka: I feel like I remember those too, but I also can't find anything to support my recollection.
I'm not even sure who I imagine was rioting. I definitely remember there was a big fear that there would be riots if the jury came back with a guilty verdict, but obviously they didn't, so...
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posted
Huh! You know, I just thought you meant King and it was an infamous-LA-trial typo. I don't remember any rioting after OJ either, but then I very well might not.
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posted
There was definitely huge LAPD (and BHPD, which I was a ham volunteer with at the time) prepping in anticipation of riots pre-O.J. verdict. Maybe that's what I'm remembering, but I really don't think so.
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posted
I remember alerts in case he was found guilty, and parties when he wasn't.....but no real riots.
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posted
Note to everyone who doesn't care about my philosophy (A.K.A. everyone but Destineer and possibly Sam), if you'd prefer we take our crazy tangential thread drift to a new topic, let us know, okay?
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:Originally posted by Dan_Frank: I have no idea what a professor of philosophy would say about it, Sam. Actually, off the top of my head most general philosophy experts deeply misunderstand Popper and consequently dismiss him for what I and other Popperians would call illegitimate reasons.
But you know, I really have no interest in playing a game of appealing to authority with you. You won't be persuaded by anything I say, categorically, because you're more concerned with things like status and authority (an attitude Popper strongly criticizes).
The people who I'd say understand Popper's theories best have zero academic credentials in the field of philosophy (they're mostly physicists and programmers, as far as I can tell), which to you means their opinions are, I guess, worthless. Or at least, worth less.
Obviously you have a palpable personal distaste against the notion of authority in the world of philosophy, and missed that nothing about my argument hinges on an argument to authority. Which you drew even further towards determining on my behalf that I apparently need academic credentials from a philosopher to consider their views worthwhile.
To avoid this particular minefield of yours, how would you have responded to my question if you replace "a professor of philosophy" with "A person who is well-versed and intimitely knowledgable, if not partial, towards Popper's ideas" — what changes?
Heh, I don't have any "palpable personal distaste" of arguing from authority (re: philosophy or any other topic), I just think it's generally the wrong approach and very perniciously omnipresent in our society. Sorry that I came off as hostile!
To answer your question: I'm not sure. See my previous post where I mentioned the vanishingly small pool of people I know of who actually seem to be well-versed in Popper's ideas. There are some pretty big misconceptions about him (see elsewhere in this post where I address one of those with Destineer), and those misconceptions seem to catch most philosophers who study Popper.
So, I'm still not really sure how to answer your question, sadly.
quote:Originally posted by Samprimary:
quote:So what's the point of continuing this? As I said in an earlier post, there's a reason I try to keep my posts here focused on particular topics (like self-defense), and not stray into broader underpinning issues like epistemology.
This is a question to ask yourself, before repeatedly committing only superficially to a series of extremely controversial and weird positions that you will later not want to substantiate well enough to make them credible. If you commit only to the superficial level, then it turns from a dialogue into just a summary as to why the statements you make aren't credible. I'm fine with either.
That's fair! I do try to pick my conversations carefully and avoid these topics because in most casual settings like this I expect the responses to mostly just be "that's weird" and not particularly substantive.
So I try stick to more generally accesible topics... bear in mind we got here from discussing a moral perspective on self-defense, and generally speaking I really don't think you need to share my outlook on epistemology or psychiatry to have a good view of self-defense. I think Objectivists generally get self-defense right, for example. They simply define certain nuanced parameters differently (like what kind of exceptions are made for crazy people).
But anyway, you're right insofar as I was probably wrong to shy away from this discussion. Destineer has asked some really excellent questions, at the very least, so it would be silly to drop it now.
quote:Originally posted by Parkour: I actually do sort of envy the idea of having the opportunity to have lived a life free of the personal experiences that would make it impossible to continue to believe szasz.
Not sure what to do with this, man. An appeal to personal experience, I guess? Sort of like authority, only even less credible and even more common.
For what it's worth, you're dead wrong. From a psychiatric perspective several mental illnesses run in my family, particularly alcoholism (and other substance abuses) and bipolar. Three of my five immediate family members have been diagnosed with one or both of those, and one of them used to get diagnosed as schizophrenic before she spontaneously got less crazy or the criteria changed or something and she got downgraded (upgraded? I don't know) to bipolar.
I'm a little flippant but this topic actually strays into stuff that was pretty hard to deal with growing up. Ultimately I'm just not very sure your accusation was relevant, and I'm thinking I probably should've just let it lie, but I've already typed this up so it'll stay.
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Since it looks like we are getting into the mental illness issue here, I have a couple of things to say.
First, I've read a bit about Szasz before (sndrake is, or at least was, into him as well), although nothing that's convinced me to devote the needed time to reading one of his books.
From what I can tell, the weak point in his position is obviously this (well summarized at the link Dan offered):
quote:Many of Szasz’s critics object that we may yet find that schizophrenia, say, is caused by some currently unknown change in the structural or chemical properties of the body. And indeed, they must discover such changes: how else can we explain very odd behaviour of a person diagnosed with a mental illness? There are two other explanations. The first explanation is that a person can lie about his own beliefs and actions to get committed, or he can lie about the beliefs and actions of other people to get them committed. The second explanation is that a person might actually hold odd beliefs. Most people throughout most of history have held beliefs that are now considered odd, e.g. - the idea that Jews or witches poison wells, or drink blood, or murder children en masse.
Now, the first possible explanation is obviously terrible. Perhaps it helps in this regard to have had trusted friends who were mental patients; I know these people wouldn't lie about such a thing.
The second explanation is vastly insufficient to the task of explaining the observed data. Maybe it works for schizophrenia, but it provides no explanation whatsoever for the kind of dramatic memory loss that comes with bad mania (for example). The fact that someone holds "odd beliefs" can't explain why they forget every conversation they have.
I agree with you that focusing on the first explanation is the wrong idea; it certainly happens, but it's not even remotely satisfactory as a primary explanation, not the least reason being that it'd essentially be predicated on a conspiracy carried out by every crazy person & every psychiatrist on the planet.
However, I think your dismissal of the second explanation is hasty. To addres your specific example: Does sexual molestation cause a brain disease? Some people who were molested as children forget/suppress the experience, right?
So either molestation causes an infection in our brain (and I think a substantial burden of proof would call on anyone claiming that) or our minds are sufficiently powerful to actively do things like suppress memories, all by themselves, without clear, explicit, active effort on our part.
Right?
quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Add to this the fact that we can already tell whether or not someone is depressed from an fMRI, and the position appears quite untenable. Indeed, falsified, as Karl Popper would put it. Szasz's hypothesis that mental illnesses are not brain diseases is in contradiction with the data, at least in the case of clinical depression. The effectiveness of drugs like lithium and antidepressants offer corroborating data for this point.
Szasz's hypothesis isn't quite that mental illnesses are not brain diseases. He actually fully allows for the potential existence of other specific brain diseases like neurosyphilis, but observes that when we discover diseases like that, they are not treated by psychiatrists, but rather by infectious disease specialists, neurologists, or other specialist MDs.
To the extent that people's mood and feelings can be manipulated by drugs, which is certainly a real phenomenon and just as certainly not a universal phenomenon, specific drugs can produce relatively consistent reactions in people. The fact that MDMA generally causes feelings of euphoria, coupled with the idea that euphoria is generally a "good" feeling, is not prima facie evidence that people are suffering from an MDMA deficiency. Right?
quote:Originally posted by Destineer:
quote: To take the Popperian angle, before discussing psychiatry we'd probably need to discuss things like "What are ideas and how are they formed?" which is a question I think Popper answered (though Deutsch expanded on his answer, especially with Dawkins' meme theory).
Dan, I'm surprised that you go in for meme theory (in the sense of believing it's true; no denying that it's cool) while implying the science of psychopathology is on a weak footing. Memetics really is entirely untested experimentally. Indeed, a lot of critics have gone after it for being unfalsifiable, which has always made it seem a little weird to me that Deutsch brings it in to buttress Popper.
ETA: It's interesting, too, that the question of "what are ideas and how are they formed?" is supposed to be a question for a philosopher to answer, rather than a scientist. As a philosopher, this seems a little surprising! Especially since "ideas," the way we usually use the word, seem to be neuro-physiological aspects of certain animal species (our species included). I fully believe that it's part of the philosopher's job to propose speculative theories about how animals' brains function, but to determine which of these theories is right seems like a job for scientists. None of this is to say that the actual scientists working on this question have answered it fully or correctly. But the idea that a philosopher has done so is pretty hard to believe.
Characterizations of Popperian epistemology as Falsificationism are, to put it bluntly, gross misunderstandings. Popper's criteria of demarcation does stress that the strength of any idea comes from its vulnerability to criticism, true. And in the realm of empirically testable scientific theories, that vulnerability comes from the theories straightforward and obvious falsifiability (i.e. the theory of gravity is extremely strong because it is so falsifiable: if it fails in a single instance then that is a criticism of extraordinary significance).
However, Popper also recognized the value of non-empirical (nonscientific) theories, such as, well philosophy! Ah, you know what, I hope you don't mind, but I'm gonna cop out and link you to a piece by Elliot Temple, because I think he says it better than I am. Read the whole thing (it's not long!) but particularly this quote:
quote: Popper never had a problem with empirically unfalsifiable theories. Popper proposed many theories of this type, such as his solution to the problem of induction, his theories about the "Who should rule?" question, or his arguments against focussing debates on definitions of terms.
They are not science but they may be good theories. Then, within science, Popper praised theories with a high degree of empirical falsifiability -- theories exposed to refutation. That's because hiding theories from criticism sabotages progress and exposing them to criticism helps us know things better.
Popper also liked theories outside of science which were more open to non-empirical falsification. This can be achieved with, for example, clarity and boldness.
Now, meme theory, at least insofar as Deutsch uses it (full disclosure: Deutsch and other Popperians are my only exposure to meme theory, as I actually haven't read Selfish Gene yet. *ashamedface*), is about the implicit transmission of ideas. It's not really an empirically testable scientific theory. At least, not without doing some epistemology first. Why do I say that?
Because in order to understand any results you gathered scientifically, you first need a good grounding in epistemology and other nonscientific theories by which you can explain your results. When you present interpretions of data (that include things like moral and epistemological judgments) as if they were empirical fact, you're practicing what Popper called Scientism (link is another good, short essay by Elliot Temple).
For good measure, Elliot actually happens to have a related criticism of psychiatry in his Scientism article, so that's handy.
So, when we talk about things like "how are ideas formed" we don't mean "what happens in the brain when we have an idea," we mean things like "Does induction exist? If not, by what process do we learn things?" which is a philosophical question, not a neurological one. Make sense?
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Manslaughter certainly would be an easier charge to make stick.
Either the prosecution has a smoking gun witness, or the audio they have is stellar, or the autopsy is absolutely damning to Zimmerman's story.
Some combination of those forces almost certainly must be true, otherwise I can't imagine they would go for Murder 2.
Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
This - all of the above - is exactly what I was thinking, but Rivka makes a good point, too. I don't know that there has to be a trial. Pleading down to manslaughter or even reckless homicide would, I think, have been enough had they done it in the first place. Maybe it still would be.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Surprised that no one posted this yet, as I waited a bit but meh.
How to execute a 68 year old former marine who happens to be black.
quote: On November 19, 2011, a 68-year-old ex-marine named Kenneth Chamberlain rolled over and accidentally activated his medical alert bracelet. A signal was sent out to dispatchers.
An hour later, Kenneth Chamberlain had been shot twice by a police officer responding. Tragically, all police recordings of the event were either turned off before the shooting or mysteriously lost. What are the odds, right?
quote:
MAYO BARTLETT: Well, the police arrived. They immediately—first, they properly asked him, Mr. Chamberlain, whether he was all right. He said, "I’m fine." And at that point, he seemed to be very rational and calm. And they asked him to open the door. He said, "I don’t want to open the door. I didn’t call you. But I’m fine. Everything’s OK." And the police refused to leave at that point. They began banging on the door. And it’s a steel door, so you can hear a very loud sound. The first time we heard the banging, it startles you. It almost makes you wonder whether shots are being fired at that point. And this is at 5:00 in the morning, and it’s a 68-year-old man, who didn’t call them and wasn’t expecting them to be there, because this—
AMY GOODMAN: But who has a heart condition.
MAYO BARTLETT: And who has a heart condition. And at that point, the taser video actually shows them outside. They use a device to actually pry that door off of its hinges. First they break a lock, and the doors open what appears to be five or six inches, so it’s cracked open. And by the time they finally are able to take that door off its hinges, after about an hour of continuous effort to do so, the door is taken off.
You see, through the—basically, the vantage point of the taser, Mr. Chamberlain with no shirt on, with boxer shorts on, with both arms at his side, standing straight up. He doesn’t say anything. He is not advancing toward the officers. And the officers don’t say anything to him. They don’t give him an opportunity to do anything. They don’t tell him or ask him to put his hands up on the wall or to put his hands behind his head. They don’t ask him to do anything. They immediately charge that taser, and you can see it light up, and then they discharge it in his direction. And that has to be outside of the use of protocol or the protocol for the use of force, which generally is a use of force escalation.
AMY GOODMAN: But then you hear something in—
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, but not only that, but there’s the issue of why—if you know that you’re going to see someone who has a heart condition, why would you fire a taser at them?
MAYO BARTLETT: I would definitely wonder why you would do that. I would think that there’s certainly less deadly uses of force. But I think, at that point, when he’s standing there with his arms at his side and the boxer shorts and no shirt on, 68-year-old man, there’s no need for use of force at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Then talk about what you hear on the taser video.
MAYO BARTLETT: Well, on that taser—well, you can see on the video, you see them, and you see Mr. Chamberlain standing what appears to be possibly eight, maybe even 10, feet away from them. And you can hear them—someone says, "Cut it. Cut it off." And at that point, we believe that that means that they’re aware that they are recording their actions. And at that point, the video and audio feed from the taser end.
One of the things you hear is he’s telling the officers, repeatedly, "I’m OK. I didn’t call you. Why are you doing this to me? Please leave me alone." The officers are telling him pretty much no, that they want to get inside. He’s saying, "I’m a 68-year-old man with a heart condition. I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to come in here, and you’re going to kill me." You hear at one point one of the officers say, "Why would you think that? We’re not going to do that." But he said, "Yes, you are. You have your guns out. Why do you have your guns out? Oh, you have a shield." Now, I’m thinking to myself—
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean, the shield?
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: A ballistic shield.
AMY GOODMAN: A full-body ballistic shield.
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: A full-body shield, yes. So, you hear that. And I’ll even go so far as to say that you even hear on there my father is referring to a black police officer that’s there, too, and he says, "Black officer, why are you letting them do this to me?" So these are some of the things that you hear in the audio. And again, you hear him give his sworn testimony on the audio.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: He says, "My name is Kenneth Chamberlain, and this is my sworn testimony. White Plains police officers are going to come in here and kill me."
JUAN GONZALEZ: Now—and, of course, we discussed, as well, that the use of a racial epithet at the time also is caught on tape.
KENNETH CHAMBERLAIN, JR.: Yes, yes. When he asked them why are they doing this, "Please don’t do this to me. Why are you doing this?" one of the officers say, "I don’t give a F," and then use the N-word and says, "Open the door." So, I was very clear in the beginning, when all of this happened, that I wasn’t trying to turn this into any type of racially motivated killing, until we heard the audio. Then, and only then, did I bring that up and say, OK, because, I mean, any logical mind, if you hear that, and then you say, well, what was the outcome? He was shot twice.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic.
I hadn't thought of that, but as others have said, it's a spot-on observation.
posted
Thanks for the interesting replies, Dan. Here's a book in response (I wish I could write papers as quickly as I write posts).
quote:However, I think your dismissal of the second explanation is hasty. To addres your specific example: Does sexual molestation cause a brain disease? Some people who were molested as children forget/suppress the experience, right?
If 'disease' were synonymous with 'infection,' you would be quite correct. But heart disease is not normally an infection of the heart, for example.
A better analogy is probably with diseases that come about through stress on the body. In college I developed bursitis in my left hip, from over-stressing it through competitive fencing. There was no infection in my hip, nor would it be right to say that I developed a chronic condition. Yet what I had was a disorder, developed as a result of mistreatment of my body, and requiring treatment from a doctor and physical therapist.
The analogy with mental illness should be obvious. Like the joints, the brain can be "injured" by mistreatment or misuse. The illnesses that result from mistreatment or misuse are quite different in their source and effect from the type that occur through infection or genetic predilection. Which explains why the methods of the psychiatrist differ from those of the neurologist, at the present stage of medical science.
quote:So either molestation causes an infection in our brain (and I think a substantial burden of proof would call on anyone claiming that) or our minds are sufficiently powerful to actively do things like suppress memories, all by themselves, without clear, explicit, active effort on our part.
I'm trying to parse out why you focus on "clear, explicit, active effort" here. I gather it's because, as you've mentioned previously, you think mentally ill people should be held responsible for the behavior we typically count as symptoms of their illness. So what I would call their "symptoms," as you would have it, must result from decisions on their part, albeit decisions that are unconscious, in the sense that they don't feel like they're making these decisions. The symptoms may feel involuntary, but are in fact voluntary.
I dispute this. I think that, at least in many cases, the symptoms of mental illness can be involuntary.
Think about the manic person's memory loss. The question of whether this is voluntary is really very much the same as the question of whether he should be held responsible for the resultant behavior. I tell the manic guy, "Remember to turn off the nuclear power plant tonight, or else it'll melt down." With manic confidence, he says, "Of course I will!" Of course he forgets, and hundreds die. Do we hold the manic guy morally responsible for those deaths?
Well, from his conscious perspective, it didn't feel like he made a decision to forget to turn off the plant. The best explanation for why he forgot has to do with the fact that he was manic, and the best explanation for *that* is probably that bipolar disorder runs in his family, and maybe there was some event that triggered this particular episode. The reasons why he did what he did were things he had no control over: the genetic predilection, and maybe the triggering event. So it seems ludicrous to hold him responsible.
Tourette's is an even better example for this purpose. Should we hold people with Tourette's responsible for the stuff they say? Do they *decide* to say those things? To them, it feels like a compulsion. Like a reflex, if you will. Analogy: someone makes a loud noise, startling me, and I drop the vase I was carrying. Did I decide to drop it? No. Dropping it was my behavior, it was something I did, but it was a reflex, not a decision.
quote:To the extent that people's mood and feelings can be manipulated by drugs, which is certainly a real phenomenon and just as certainly not a universal phenomenon, specific drugs can produce relatively consistent reactions in people. The fact that MDMA generally causes feelings of euphoria, coupled with the idea that euphoria is generally a "good" feeling, is not prima facie evidence that people are suffering from an MDMA deficiency. Right?
Of course not. But as Szasz's opponent in this debate has pointed out, drugs like antidepressants and lithium have vastly different effects on mentally ill people. A depressed patient who takes Prozac will likely notice a dramatic improvement in symptoms. A mentally healthy person who takes Prozac will likely notice nothing, except maybe the drug's side effects.
quote:Characterizations of Popperian epistemology as Falsificationism are, to put it bluntly, gross misunderstandings.
Of course I'm aware that not every sort of knowledge falls under the rubric of 'science' for Popper. How else would he know that the falsifiability criterion is the right one to demarcate science from non-science, since that "hypothesis" isn't falsifiable. I guess I was assuming you thought memetics was a science. That's certainly Dawkins's position, and I thought it was Deutsch's as well.
In any case, this gets to one of my major objections against Popper: he thinks that Science is a very different sort of inquiry, different in kind, from other ways we have of learning about the world (Science requires falsifiability, other ways of learning do not). I disagree. It's obvious to me that the scientific method is simply an organized way for many people to go about learning things the same way we individually learn things throughout our lives, by forming explanations for empirical evidence.
quote:Now, meme theory, at least insofar as Deutsch uses it (full disclosure: Deutsch and other Popperians are my only exposure to meme theory, as I actually haven't read Selfish Gene yet. *ashamedface*), is about the implicit transmission of ideas. It's not really an empirically testable scientific theory. At least, not without doing some epistemology first. Why do I say that?
Because in order to understand any results you gathered scientifically, you first need a good grounding in epistemology and other nonscientific theories by which you can explain your results. When you present interpretions of data (that include things like moral and epistemological judgments) as if they were empirical fact, you're practicing what Popper called Scientism (link is another good, short essay by Elliot Temple).
Of course, it's absolutely true that epistemology is prior to science. You need to know how to learn things from experiments and theories before you can say what you've learned. I will even grant that psychologists (esp evo psych types) can be very bad about smuggling in hidden assumptions!
That said, every scientist makes epistemological assumptions (and I think that even in physics, they go far beyond anything Sir Karl, or Deutsch, would be comfortable with). The notion that the data supported Einstein's relativity over its competitors (which also predicted the same experimental outcomes!) was an interpretation of the data that went beyond the empirical facts. It just happened to be the correct interpretation of the data. I think the same goes for many explanations in psychology.
Now, there is a flipside to this coin: when doing epistemology, or any form of a priori philosophy, one needs to be very careful about not smuggling in assumptions that are actually empirically testable matters best left to scientists. Philosophers have been very bad at this throughout much of history! I'm not sure what you mean by the "implicit" transmission of ideas, but can you see why an assumption about how ideas are transmitted looks like something for scientists to study? Say your epistemological theory rested on the assumption that ideas are transmitted through telepathy. I think science would have something to say about that!
Similarly, I actually think the question about whether memetics is the correct theory of how ideas are transmitted is a question for science. (Although memetics isn't falsifiable; I reject the falsifiability criterion. Theories in cosmology are also not falsifiable, but they are good scientific theories.) And there has been scientific criticism of the meme idea. For example, from the great Wikipedia:
quote:Luis Benitez-Bribiesca, a critic of memetics, calls it "a pseudoscientific dogma" and "a dangerous idea that poses a threat to the serious study of consciousness and cultural evolution" among other things. As factual criticism, he refers to the lack of a code script for memes, as the DNA is for genes, and to the fact that the meme mutation mechanism (i.e., an idea going from one brain to another) is too unstable (low replication accuracy and high mutation rate), which would render the evolutionary process chaotic.
If this guy is right, then the empirical evidence we have shows that ideas don't undergo natural selection in the same way that genes do. Of course it only makes sense that empirical evidence should matter to this question. Obviously it matters in the case of genes! And I think we can both imagine, without much effort, how beings might be very much like us mentally but still not transmit ideas via "memes" (they could use telepathy!).
Point being: I think the notion that memetics is part of epistemology, or something to be learned through a priori philosophy (pure reason alone) is pretty hard to accept.
I should perhaps say: I'm not a huge fan of this Elliot Temple guy. His articles seem to come at things from a very superficial level, ignoring loads of potential criticisms and hidden assumptions. A common habit of scholars who spend more of their time preaching to the choir than engaging with qualified critics. And sometimes it's just sloganeering! Like that Scientism article; it doesn't contain any valid arguments from premises to their logical conclusions, not that I can discern.
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Blayne: I suspect it hadn't been brought up yet because it doesn't seem nearly as controversial as the Zimmerman case.
To be clear, I mean "controversial" literally. In the Zimmerman case, there are two blurry and disputed "sides" people tend to take, plus a lot of media distortion that even undecided parties have taken exception to.
In this case, it pretty much seems like an open-and-shut case of a heinously racist and murderous cop bloated on his own sense of power. It's horrific, and tragic, but I don't think many people are clamoring to defend him either. Are they?
Let's see... trying as hard as I can to apply a positive interpretation to the actions of the cops, I'm just about coming up empty. I mean, I could point out that even rich white folks are generally forced to let the cops in when they show up responding to a call, but even that
1) Ignores the fact that the "call" was a medical alert bracelet, not someone calling in who'd heard a scream or some such thing, where there could be a more serious risk of someone dangerous inside.
and
2) Ignores the fact that once they got in and saw an unarmed man in his underwear they proceeded to shoot him.
So, it basically requires that you gloss over the two most salient details of the case.
Yeah, I'm not seeing a whole lot of potential for controversy here. Just a really tragic event that had better result in at least one cop going to prison, but very well may not.
(You know, if that cop walks and Zimmerman goes to prison, that would be a pretty stark illustration that government employee privilege/elitism can be at least as big of a problem as racism in our society, in its own way)
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quote:Note to everyone who doesn't care about my philosophy...
I'm interested, but just lurking for now. This thread or another doesn't matter to me but it probably makes sense to split it off.
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Blayne, I did actually link to the Kenneth Chamberlain shooting on page 2 (along with a couple other shootings of unarmed black men). The link is broken now, though.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Let's just clear a few things up quickly. First, I don't assume anyone with a concealed premit automatically has bad judgment. I assume-with some very solid reasons-that about Zimmerman.
We agree about Zimmerman, but that isn't what you said, you said:
quote:Is it supposed to be a GOOD thing that random concealed weapons permit citizen is on the scene, armed? Or would it be better if that same person were replaced by someone who was keenly observant, level-headed, and good at keeping other people calm?
Replace person with gun with person who is calm and level headed. The assumption is that the person with the gun isn't calm or level headed, right?
quote:I base my anxiety on concealed weapons permits not because I mistrust gun owners as a class of people, but because I know how very easy it can be to get or retain a concealed permit when one shouldn't have one. For example, Zimmerman.
There we agree again. I personally think that to get a concealed weapons permit you should have to pass (and pay for) a psych eval.
quote:Finally, as for your hypotheticals. Well, goodness! We ought certainly to set our laws based on the most unlikely, most extreme situations. After all, one never knows when a bank robbery-itself an uncommon event-will turn into a murder spree, especially since with cameras a murder spree gains no criminal anything, in most cases.
Those weren't hypothetical...ripped from the headlines, true events.
quote:That is why your statement was silly. It is a *terrible* idea to say, "We need concealed weapons permits because what happens if a grocery store robbery goes wrong?!"
I'm afraid you won't find that I've said that. What I said is that -if- someone has a valid reason to carry a gun, the validity does not dissolve upon entering a store, and the statement that carrying a gun while shopping is -as stupid- as loosing your child's college fund in Vegas is worthy of ridicule.
quote: But this just-in-case vigilantism is dangerous, it's nonsense, and it helps cause much more trouble than it solves.
I agree with you now, as I did then and doubt highly you can find any post which contains a sentiment that could reasonably be considered disagreement.
quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: ]Even in your scenarios there are as many people who should not have a gun as there are people who should.
IIRC that in both those cases the criminals were not using legal guns nor had permits for them.
Guns are just a reality of this country so unless we are talking about magic wishes, making all of them go away is not going to happen. By definition, if you make a law banning guns, only law abiding people will turn their's in. Thusly only criminals will be armed.
Zimmerman is a great example of someone who should -not- have a carry permit, possibly not even be allowed to own a gun (a much harder question). But he is a poster child for reforming the laws of who we allow to carry, not that "guns are bad".
If we were to have a magic wish and disappear all the firearms, then crossbows would be the new hot topic of debate, then bows, then swords, spears and other melee weapons, then large sticks and pointy rocks until it was illegal to make a fist.
Weapons are not good or bad, people's choices are.
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Guns are a reality in this country because we decide that they are a reality. We make them, sell them trade them, discard them. If we didn't do that, they would eventually cease to become a reality.
Earlier in this thread it was noted that one can kill people without a gun. This is true. Here is one of the big differences.
In one city. In one day. None of them were the "intended targets". Difficult to accidentally kill or wound bystanders or babies in their cribs with your fists. Now, the argument is that if we are armed too, we can defend ourselves from people with guns. Do they make a gun for seven year-olds? Babies? That mothers can use while asleep against stray bullets?
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What's your plan to disarm America boots? I'd love to hear it.
I just don't understand why you feel -guns- are to blame, as it illegal and immoral to open fire on someone's house like that. Guess if they had been using pipe bombs you would want to make those illegal too...oh wait, both randomly shooting and throwing pipes ARE ILLEGAL. Huh.
Know what else is illegal? Driving a car into someone's house. Maybe we should ban cars too?
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quote:Replace person with gun with person who is calm and level headed. The assumption is that the person with the gun isn't calm or level headed, right?
No, that isn't the assumption. The assumption is that 'random person with a concealed weapons permit' is really not at all enough to say that that person is cool-headed with good judgment, reaction time, and is an excellent shot. It's just not. Here's what it's a good basis for saying: that the person in question almost certainly doesn't have a history that includes felony convictions or some other kinds of criminal activity, or mental illness. That's about it, really.
Now maybe you're willing to just trust in the good decision-making capability and marksmanship skills of anyone who can pass the rigorous muster of a concealed weapons permit process, but I think that's foolhardy. And it doesn't just need the Zimmerman shooting to point out why.
quote:Those weren't hypothetical...ripped from the headlines, true events.
Before we go toe to toe on a headline contest for gun violence in this country, I'd just like to ask if your response when it inevitably turns against you will be the unfalsifiable assertion that we can't know how many people were saved every hour by the presence of concealed weapons, with it's unspoken addition of 'and therefore I disregard your figures'.
quote:I'm afraid you won't find that I've said that. What I said is that -if- someone has a valid reason to carry a gun, the validity does not dissolve upon entering a store, and the statement that carrying a gun while shopping is -as stupid- as loosing your child's college fund in Vegas is worthy of ridicule.
That's kind of what you actually said-I just checked. See, I was talking about people such as Zimmerman who apparently took his gun with him to Target...just to take his gun with him to Target. If he actually DOES have a reason why a reasonable person would need a firearm, then *probably* that reason wouldn't evaporate if he went to the store, though there are several possibilities where it might. Example: commutes through a dangerous neighborhood to work or visit family. Target is in abother direction. There, that was easy.
quote:I agree with you now, as I did then and doubt highly you can find any post which contains a sentiment that could reasonably be considered disagreement.
What, specifically? Sure. Few would come out word for word in favor of it. But what Zimmerman was doing by all accounts WAS just-in-case armed vigilantism, and there's been more than a little criticism of the criticism of it, in fact. Not hard to find at all.
quote:Guns are just a reality of this country so unless we are talking about magic wishes, making all of them go away is not going to happen. By definition, if you make a law banning guns, only law abiding people will turn their's in. Thusly only criminals will be armed.
I just...wow.
quote:Weapons are not good or bad, people's choices are.
Wow again. From the pages of fortune cookies. First of all, yeah, weapons are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, which isn't the same thing as 'good'. It would always, in every single case that's ever existed, be better if weapons weren't necessary.
Second, as to the other aspect of this fatuous statement: even if weapons were neither good nor bad, know how to make a bad decision much, much, much, much worse? Toss a gun in the mix! Or a knife bat brick or smashed bottle, if you'll next pivot to the argument that people will kill people if they REALLY want to, foolishness that that is. Because of course none of those things are as dangerous.
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Wow. I didn't actually think you'd go that way. I am surprised.
quote:What's your plan to disarm America boots? I'd love to hear it.
I just don't understand why you feel -guns- are to blame, as it illegal and immoral to open fire on someone's house like that. Guess if they had been using pipe bombs you would want to make those illegal too...oh wait, both randomly shooting and throwing pipes ARE ILLEGAL. Huh.
Because of course it's just as easy to make or obtain, and then use, a pipe bomb as is a firearm? Because of course pipe bombs are so common that I could have one for a little money and some asking and a lack of scruples within just a few hours of this very minute if I really wanted one?
Here's why guns are worse than PIPE BOMBS, and I can't believe that argument was actually made by a supposedly serious-minded adult: guns are vastly more common, easier to use, cheaper, more likely to be used by accident by children or drunks or fools, more...ugh. Pipe bombs.
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Pipe bombs can be made for less then ten dollars from components found at any hardware store in the country!
The point is that using a gun in a bad way is already illegal! Not locking your guns so that kids can find them is illegal! Using a gun while drunk is illegal!
Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer, laws that remove the ability to defend yourself from criminals, criminals who will likely not be effected by the laws against guns, but who will be much more confident that their law abiding victims will be unable to defend themselves.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: First of all, yeah, weapons are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, which isn't the same thing as 'good'. It would always, in every single case that's ever existed, be better if weapons weren't necessary.
I'm not really here today, but I wanted to make a quick comment on the above.
Let me distill your criteria here into a broader principle, if I can.
quote:Rakeesh's Law: If it would always (in every single case that's ever existed) be better if X item were not necessary, then X is fundamentally bad.
That looks to me like a really straightforward translation of what you said into a rule, right? Tell me if I warped it, of course, because that's not my intent.
If I got it right...
Take a few moments to think about what other things we encounter or utilize in daily life that this could easily be said for.
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Stone Wolf, perhaps because pipe bombs are illegal and difficult to obtain* there have only been a handful of deaths by pipe bomb in the US - and most of those have been suicides. Maybe a dozen? Ever?
How many thousands by gun? Every year?
* Imagine if we had legal pipe bomb shows and shops and mail order pipe bomb outlets. Or if you could get them at Walmart!
quote:The point is that using a gun in a bad way is already illegal! Not locking your guns so that kids can find them is illegal! Using a gun while drunk is illegal!
A quick, easy-to-understand reason why this sidebar is just absurd: whether it's the laws or some other factor, violence with pipe bombs is almost totally unheard of.
I mean for pity's sake, or are we going to continue down this ridiculous NRA talking point road?
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Rakeesh...I'll accept that you were not intentionally implying a lack of calm level headedness, but you are still assuming that just because someone is armed that they will start shooting the robbers. And -again-, that goes against the training and the law. They specifically train you to give up possessions, especially other people's possessions, and only shoot someone if you believe harm is eminent.
quote:Before we go toe to toe on a headline contest for gun violence in this country, I'd just like to ask if your response when it inevitably turns against you will be the unfalsifiable assertion that we can't know how many people were saved every hour by the presence of concealed weapons, with it's unspoken addition of 'and therefore I disregard your figures'
Way to discredit me before we even get into it. I was simply pointing out that those two circumstances were not hypothetical and in no way starting a "headline contest".
quote:That's kind of what you actually said-I just checked.
Let's see the quote, because I bet you can't find one.
quote:...though there are several possibilities where it might. Example: commutes through a dangerous neighborhood to work or visit family. Target is in abother direction. There, that was easy.
Because you can think of one -possible- reason why someone wouldn't -need- to bring a gun to Target, your previous statement that bringing a gun to Target is as stupid as blowing your child's college fund in Vegas must be true. You are being ridiculous and argumentative for no other reason that I can see that you don't like to admit when you are wrong.
quote:What, specifically? Sure. Few would come out word for word in favor of it. But what Zimmerman was doing by all accounts WAS just-in-case armed vigilantism, and there's been more than a little criticism of the criticism of it, in fact. Not hard to find at all.
I have no idea what you are talking about, but I double dog dare you to quote me as saying something that refutes your statement,
quote:But this just-in-case vigilantism is dangerous, it's nonsense, and it helps cause much more trouble than it solves.
and would appreciate an apology when you fail.
quote:I just...wow.
[sarcasm]Brilliant rebuttal.[/sarcasm]
quote:Wow again. From the pages of fortune cookies. First of all, yeah, weapons are bad. Sometimes they are necessary, which isn't the same thing as 'good'. It would always, in every single case that's ever existed, be better if weapons weren't necessary.
See Dan's post above.
quote:Second, as to the other aspect of this fatuous statement: even if weapons were neither good nor bad, know how to make a bad decision much, much, much, much worse? Toss a gun in the mix! Or a knife bat brick or smashed bottle, if you'll next pivot to the argument that people will kill people if they REALLY want to, foolishness that that is. Because of course none of those things are as dangerous.
Unless of course one person is making bad choices, and the other person has the gun and stops them before those bad choices become permanent to others.
quote: Because of course it's just as easy to make or obtain, and then use, a pipe bomb as is a firearm?
Only a million times more easy in every single category. I'm not going to post the step by step process of making a pipe bomb on the net, for obvious reasons, but let's just say, a trip to the hardware store, $10, 10 minutes and some basic tools and you are good to go.
But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs. Why in the world do you think more laws are going to solve a problem that current laws are already not dealing with?
quote:A quick, easy-to-understand reason why this sidebar is just absurd: whether it's the laws or some other factor, violence with pipe bombs is almost totally unheard of.
I mean for pity's sake, or are we going to continue down this ridiculous NRA talking point road?
It seems you are being dishonest, doing everything you can to dismiss what I have to say without ever addressing the real point. Is my real point that pipe bombs are a huge national threat? Why would it be? Please stay on topic and keep the theatrics to a minimum.
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quote: Because of course it's just as easy to make or obtain, and then use, a pipe bomb as is a firearm?
Only a million times more easy in every single category. I'm not going to post the step by step process of making a pipe bomb on the net, for obvious reasons, but let's just say, a trip to the hardware store, $10, 10 minutes and some basic tools and you are good to go.
But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs. Why in the world do you think more laws are going to solve a problem that current laws are already not dealing with?
quote:A quick, easy-to-understand reason why this sidebar is just absurd: whether it's the laws or some other factor, violence with pipe bombs is almost totally unheard of.
I mean for pity's sake, or are we going to continue down this ridiculous NRA talking point road?
It seems you are being dishonest, doing everything you can to dismiss what I have to say without ever addressing the real point. Is my real point that pipe bombs are a huge national threat? Why would it be? Please stay on topic and keep the theatrics to a minimum.
Yes. But making and distributing pipe bombs is illegal. Making and distributing guns is a billion dollar business. Which is why guns are a problem and pipe bombs are not. How on earth is it easier to obtain a pipe bomb than I gun? Is there a pipe bomb aisle at Walmart? You are only "good to go" if you don't get arrested or blow yourself up.
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The problem with your arguments, Stone Wolf, is that you keep referencing a supposed "need" for a firearm among those with concealed carry licenses. In most cases, there is no such thing, and no such requirement. Many states have "shall issue" laws.
Bringing up pipe bombs was a tactical error in your argument, just like bringing a pipe bomb to a home invasion robbery or drug deal would be a tactical error for a criminal, which is why they use firearms instead.
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Boots, but firearms are highly regulated, and guns are used by military, police, hunters, sport shooters and in self defense.
quote:How on earth is it easier to obtain a pipe bomb than I gun?
Guns are hundreds of dollars, require background checks, waiting periods, etc, where as pipe bombs can be made in ten minutes for ten dollars by anyone who can google search "how to make a pipe bomb".
quote:You are only "good to go" if you don't get arrested or blow yourself up.
The same can be said of using firearms illegally, except replace "blow yourself up" with "shot".
Parsimony, I don't remember saying anything about a "need for concealed carry licenses" other then people should have to prove they have a "need" before getting them...and then calling for stricter testing and training.
Pipe bombs are simply a comparison of illegal activities...here is a better one: Using a car dangerously or homicidaly is also illegal, but you don't see anyone calling for the banning of cars.
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SW - That is the part I was addressing. People do not have to demonstrate a "need" for a concealed weapons permit in order to obtain one. Many states are "shall issue" states, and further, many states that aren't share reciprocity with "shall issue" states who have no residency requirement.
In answer to your next post, I don't foresee instituting a "need" based permitting system as feasible. How would people demonstrate their need? If I say that I am receiving verbal death threats, who could validate such a claim? If I say I need a concealed carry permit for general protection, is that demonstrating a specific need?
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quote: As the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the failure of authorities to arrest his killer, George Zimmerman, continues to grab headlines, many conservatives and gun rights advocates insist that race has nothing to do with it. Some have also rallied to the defense of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, the self-defense legislation under which Zimmerman was able to avoid arrest. Yet not all stand your ground claims are so successful. Not too far from Sanford, Fla., a black man named John McNeil is serving a life sentence for shooting Brian Epp, a white man who trespassed and attacked him at his home in Georgia, another stand your ground state.
It all began in early 2005, when McNeil and his wife, Anita, hired Brian Epp’s construction company to build a new house in Cobb County, Ga. The McNeils testified that Epp was difficult to work with, which led to heated confrontations. They eventually decided to close on the house early to rid their lives of Epp, whom they found increasingly threatening. At the closing, both parties agreed that Epp would have 10 days to complete the work, after which he would stay away from the property, but he failed to keep up his end of the bargain.
On Dec. 6, 2005, John McNeil’s 15-year-old son, La’Ron, notified his dad over the phone that a man he didn’t recognize was lurking in the backyard. When La’Ron told the man to leave, an argument broke out. McNeil was still on the phone and immediately recognized Epp’s voice. According to La’Ron’s testimony, Epp pointed a folding utility knife at La’Ron’s face and said, “[w]hy don’t you make me leave?” at which point McNeil told his son to go inside and wait while he called 911 and headed home.
According to McNeil’s testimony, when he pulled up to his house, Epp was next door grabbing something from his truck and stuffing it in his pocket. McNeil quickly grabbed his gun from the glove compartment in plain view of Epp who was coming at him “fast.” McNeil jumped out of the car and fired a warning shot at the ground insisting that Epp back off. Instead of retreating, Epp charged at McNeil while reaching for his pocket, so McNeil fired again, this time fatally striking Epp in the head. (Epp was found to have a folding knife in his pocket, although it was shut.)
The McNeils weren’t the only ones who felt threatened by Epp. David Samson and Libby Jones, a white couple who hired Epp to build their home in 2004, testified that they carried a gun as a “precaution” around Epp because of his threatening behavior. According to Jones, Epp nearly hit her when she expressed dissatisfaction with his work at a weekly meeting. The couple even had a lawyer write a letter warning Epp to stay away from their property. Samson testified that after they fired him, Epp would park his car across the street and watch their house, saying “it got to the point where my wife and I were in total fear of this man.”
After a neighbor across the street who witnessed the encounter corroborated McNeil’s account, police determined that it was a case of self-defense and did not charge him in the death. Nevertheless, almost a year later Cobb County District Attorney Patrick Head decided to prosecute McNeil for murder. In 2006, he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
McNeil’s attorney Mark Yurachek told Salon that “DAs throughout the country enjoy that kind of flexibility of deciding who to prosecute, but it’s curious that he took a year to do it.” While he said there’s no way to know what swayed the DA to prosecute, Yurachek revealed that letters, which he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, were written to the DA’s office demanding that McNeil be charged. “They were mostly emails from people cajoling prosecutors to investigate,” says Yurachek. “One was from Epp’s widow. Others were written anonymously.”
In 2008, McNeil appealed his case to the Georgia Supreme Court with all but one of the seven justices upholding his conviction. The sole dissent came from Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears who argued, “the State failed to disprove John McNeil’s claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt.” She went on to write:
Even viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, the evidence was overwhelming in showing that a reasonable person in McNeil’s shoes would have believed that he was subject to an imminent physical attack by an aggressor possessing a knife and that it was necessary to use deadly force to protect himself from serious bodily injury or a forcible felony. Under the facts of this case, it would be unreasonable to require McNeil to wait until Epp succeeded in attacking him, thereby potentially disarming him, getting control of the gun, or stabbing him before he could legally employ deadly force to defend himself. This is not what Georgia law requires.
As a leading gun rights state, Georgia has both a stand your ground law that permits citizens to use deadly force “only if he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily injury,” as well as a Castle Doctrine law, which justifies the use of deadly force in defense of one’s home.
Thus far, gun rights advocates such as the NRA and former Cobb County congressional Rep. Newt Gingrich have been silent on McNeil’s conviction, though it’s unclear whether they are aware of the case. The NRA did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Still, Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP State Conference, argues, “The NRA would be screaming about the injustice of his conviction if John had been white and shot a black assailant that came at him on his property armed with a knife.” (McNeil grew up in North Carolina, where the local NAACP chapter, led by Barber, was the first to pick up on his case in Georgia.)
Barber was clear that the NAACP remains firmly against stand your ground laws because “they give cover to those who may engage in racial profiling and racialized violence,” adding that “There is a history and legacy of discriminatory application of the law” that continues to this day. “African-Americans are caught in curious position. On one hand, we fight against stand your ground laws, but once the laws are on the books they aren’t applied to us.”
Civil rights activist Markel Hutchins agrees and has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Georgia’s stand your ground law because the law is not applied equally to African-Americans. He accuses the courts of accepting “the race of a victim as evidence to establish the reasonableness of an individual’s fear in cases of justifiable homicide.”
Meanwhile, Barber argues that McNeil’s treatment stands in stark contrast to that of George Zimmerman, who has been afforded the benefit of the doubt despite his victim being unarmed. “America’s always had a difficult issue dealing with race, so rather than face it when it’s exposed, the tendency by some is to try and dismiss it. But the reality is you do not see this kind of miscarriage of justice when it comes to whites.” He adds, “John’s whole life has been taken away from him. His wife is very ill with cancer and she has lost a husband, his sons have lost a father and society has lost a man that was contributing to his community.”
quote:If it would always (in every single case that's ever existed) be better if X item were not necessary, then X is fundamentally bad.
No. For one thing, I didn't intend it to apply to just any item. For another, I didn't intend it to apply only to necessity. Let me put it another way: can you think of a single situation in which a gun, when used on another human being, was ever a 'good' thing in and of itself? By that I mean can you think of a time or an example in which a gun could be used or threatened on another human being that nobody would think was 'good' except that it averted a worse likely outcome if the gun hadn't been involved?
That is all I mean. I'm not intending to make some broad philosophical statement about the virtue or wickedness of all 'items' everywhere in all cases, and to be honest it seems a little strange to distill my remarks to that extent.
I do believe that guns can often be used to avert very bad things. That doesn't mean I think guns are 'good'. When used to deal with people, they're intended only to threaten, injure, or kill. So, yeah, bad. Sometimes necessary but still bad.
---------
Stone_Wolf,
quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pipe bombs can be made for less then ten dollars from components found at any hardware store in the country!
Alright, clearly you're intent on sticking to this pipe bomb argument. So a direct question: how many cases have you heard, or even heard of, a case in which someone said, "I need to defend/attack someone. Hmmm. Easiest way? I know! I'll build a pipe bomb!" Can you even tell me the last time you heard of a pipe bomb being used anywhere without resorting to Google?
Guns are not like pipe bombs in the USA. It is a fundamentally silly comparison to make. Cars aren't like guns either, for that matter, or at least they're not treated that way. If you buy a gun, as long as you keep to yourself and don't cause trouble, nobody will come and inspect it. You don't have to pay insurance on it to drive it. You can't be pulled over almost on a whim and compelled to prove your sobriety for your gun. As a rule, for everyone, you don't have to go to a government office and prove-to whatever low a standard-that you ought to be trusted with a car, but rather you only have to submit to the government's checks that you're not a dangerous criminal or lunatic. And, of course, cars have a whole helluva lot more necessary-to-living applications for the overwhelming majority of their users than do guns for theirs.
Will you insist on making these two comparisons as we continue?
quote:Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer, laws that remove the ability to defend yourself from criminals, criminals who will likely not be effected by the laws against guns, but who will be much more confident that their law abiding victims will be unable to defend themselves.
Actually, quite a lot of our laws are helping. A big part of the problem, though, is that anytime anywhere someone says, "Hey, isn't it at least a little bit too easy for damn near anyone to obtain lethal force and then not be accountable for it?" You know what's never far behind? Groups and people talking about pipe bombs and cars or something.
Here's a question for you: which major American city, with one of the highest rates of gun violence on the planet, recently tried to take a decisive step towards limiting the future availability of firearms within its limits? How exactly were they stopped, and by whom?
quote:Rakeesh...I'll accept that you were not intentionally implying a lack of calm level headedness, but you are still assuming that just because someone is armed that they will start shooting the robbers. And -again-, that goes against the training and the law. They specifically train you to give up possessions, especially other people's possessions, and only shoot someone if you believe harm is eminent.
No, I'm not. To parrot you, you're welcome to quote me where I said that. What I said was that the chance someone armed will shoot the robbers (go ahead, ask a cop if they think someone with a concealed weapons permit ought to shoot the robbers, I dare you, outside of the highly-EXTREMELY-unusual case of robbers-turning-proclaimed-mass-murderers-by-announcing-it-in-advance, that is)...the chance that someone who is armed will shoot the robbers is a lot greater than someone who isn't armed will shoot the robbers.
As for this training...yes. I'm sure the government's training in these matters is rigorous, ongoing, and appropriately skeptical. For instance, once I pass the withering testing process to obtain a concealed weapons permit, I'm sure that pretty much everywhere, I need to go and renew my license and submit to the same testing, yes? And I'm sure the training includes rigorous programs on how and when to use deadly force, right?
Of course right. I mean, to do otherwise would just be crazy!
quote:Way to discredit me before we even get into it. I was simply pointing out that those two circumstances were not hypothetical and in no way starting a "headline contest".
Well I didn't think you were, because it would be such a poor proposition. But anyway, if you don't want that sort of challenge, think twice before you start bringing up things that have actually happened, because for every one of your statistically rare vigilante stories...http://www.nij.gov/topics/crime/gun-violence/ (this also applies neatly to your talk about pipe bombs and other weapons. It's illegal to attack people with knives, too, but look at how much less common deaths are from knife attack? I wonder why on Earth that is?)
quote:Let's see the quote, because I bet you can't find one.
Alright: "While I tend to agree with most of what you have said, although not the tone it was said in, the above quote I disagree with vehemently. I'm not sure how it works in Florida, but when my dad got his carry permit in Minnesota he had to have a valid reason to want to carry. Some examples were, "Dangerous line of work, carries lots of cash, death threats, etc."
Now I don't think given Zimmerman's history he should have been issued a carry permit. But if you have reason to need a gun, and you have a legal carry permit, you don't leave it at home because you are going to the market.
Markets get robbed, and if you have a valid reason to need a gun, it is still as valid in a market as anywhere else."
You started off acknowledging some of the reasons someone might wish to have a concealed permit. Dangerous line of work, for example. Carries lots of cash. Well, SW, unless that dangerous line of work is driving to Target with sacks of diamonds, I suspect that right there there are two reasons why just because you have a concealed permit, doesn't mean your reason to have it applies everywhere. You have the RIGHT to carry it everywhere, heaven help us, which isn't the same thing at all.
There, that was super hard.
quote:Because you can think of one -possible- reason why someone wouldn't -need- to bring a gun to Target, your previous statement that bringing a gun to Target is as stupid as blowing your child's college fund in Vegas must be true. You are being ridiculous and argumentative for no other reason that I can see that you don't like to admit when you are wrong.
Yes, it certainly has nothing to do with you bringing in first-stage gun ownership arguments that illustrate a serious lack of thought and research on the issue, and might have been taken word for word from an NRA lobbyist.
They were reasons you brought up, by the way, not me. And my point was never-obviously, by the way-that nobody who has ever had a concealed weapons permit would have a reason to carry with them to Target. Rather that Zimmerman didn't.
quote:I have no idea what you are talking about, but I double dog dare you to quote me as saying something that refutes your statement,
Hey, the criticism of the criticism is rampant. It's in nearly every post of yours to me on this thread. So...whew! Dodged that double-dog-dare there. That was close.
quote:and would appreciate an apology when you fail.
Still a fan of insisting on apologies, I see.
quote:Unless of course one person is making bad choices, and the other person has the gun and stops them before those bad choices become permanent to others.
Which is an argument first against the other person not having a gun, not of both people!
quote: Only a million times more easy in every single category. I'm not going to post the step by step process of making a pipe bomb on the net, for obvious reasons, but let's just say, a trip to the hardware store, $10, 10 minutes and some basic tools and you are good to go.
Yes, I know that, because I'm a nerd who likes reading and knows how to use Google to research action movies when I want to. I suspect most Hatrackers around here do, too. And yet, in spite of this penetrating analysis on your part...pipe bomb violence in the USA is at an all-time low!
quote:But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs. Why in the world do you think more laws are going to solve a problem that current laws are already not dealing with?
A better question: why in the world is 'it's already illegal' an argument for 'whelp, legislation has utterly failed and is forever doomed to failure, time to just give up!' Another comparison, just for fun, that is a whole helluva lot more relevant than your pipe bomb comparison (not that that would be difficult): it's been illegal for a man to rape and/or beat his wife for quite some time pretty much everywhere in the United States. And yet, for much of that very same length of time, despite there being some very clear laws on the books against such activities...domestic violence continues to be a let's just say non-trivial problem throughout much of that very same country. Ought we just throw up our hands and say, "Man! It's already illegal, and if writing a law doesn't solve this problem, then we just don't know what will," or is that rather an argument in favor of, I don't know, finding out if maybe we can't do a better job writing and enforcing laws?
quote:It seems you are being dishonest, doing everything you can to dismiss what I have to say without ever addressing the real point. Is my real point that pipe bombs are a huge national threat? Why would it be? Please stay on topic and keep the theatrics to a minimum.
Shall I whine for an apology, after having just been called a liar? Or will I merely ask what is dishonest about pointing out how nonsensical your pipe bomb comparison was, and asking just how pointing that out is dishonest? I think I'll go with the latter.
quote:Guns are hundreds of dollars, require background checks, waiting periods, etc, where as pipe bombs can be made in ten minutes for ten dollars by anyone who can google search "how to make a pipe bomb".
As neat an illustration as I've ever seen as to how out of touch you are. Legal firearms are hundreds of dollars, background checks, and waiting periods (those latter two, by the way, you're welcome to guess if they were greeted favorably by gun rights activitist or bitterly opposed).
But even in the case of legal firearms, I get to keep the lethal force pretty much forever unless I draw attention to myself. And yet how often do I have to pass a background check?
quote:Pipe bombs are simply a comparison of illegal activities...here is a better one: Using a car dangerously or homicidaly is also illegal, but you don't see anyone calling for the banning of cars.
I pointed out above why this comparison to cars, aside from being a very standard and thoroughly rebutted gun rights bit of nonsense, is absurd. But I'll reiterate: cars are actually quite a lot more thoroughly regulated than firearms. By an enormous margin, on the local, state, and federal levels.
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Here's a question for you: which major American city, with one of the highest rates of gun violence on the planet, recently tried to take a decisive step towards limiting the future availability of firearms within its limits? How exactly were they stopped, and by whom?
*raises hand
Ooooooo...was it the one where three kids were shot by random bullets yesterday?
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quote:If it would always (in every single case that's ever existed) be better if X item were not necessary, then X is fundamentally bad.
No. For one thing, I didn't intend it to apply to just any item. For another, I didn't intend it to apply only to necessity. Let me put it another way: can you think of a single situation in which a gun, when used on another human being, was ever a 'good' thing in and of itself? By that I mean can you think of a time or an example in which a gun could be used or threatened on another human being that nobody would think was 'good' except that it averted a worse likely outcome if the gun hadn't been involved?
That is all I mean. I'm not intending to make some broad philosophical statement about the virtue or wickedness of all 'items' everywhere in all cases, and to be honest it seems a little strange to distill my remarks to that extent.
I do believe that guns can often be used to avert very bad things. That doesn't mean I think guns are 'good'. When used to deal with people, they're intended only to threaten, injure, or kill. So, yeah, bad. Sometimes necessary but still bad.
I know you weren't doing that, because I was!
But seriously, I'm curious why you wouldn't commit to it in principle.
If it would always, in every circumstance, be better if X wasn't necessary, why not call X bad?
(By the way, do you distinguish between "bad" and "immoral" in this context? Here I am thinking of them interchangeably, but I'm not sure if you are so I want to check.)
Because here's the thing, I not only reject that guns are bad, I reject the premises you use to get there. Threatening, injuring, or killing someone is not inherently immoral either. The morality of those acts, like the morality of guns, is contextual.
I distilled your statement because it seems like you're saying "in a perfect world, we wouldn't need guns, right? Therefore they are bad."
But in a "perfect" world we wouldn't need food, sleep, oxygen, cars, etc.
Because we would generate our own nutrients/rest/oxygen inside our bodies using nanites and be able to teleport wherever we wanted. Or whatever.
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quote:If it would always, in every circumstance, be better if X wasn't necessary, why not call X bad?
(By the way, do you distinguish between "bad" and "immoral" in this context? Here I am thinking of them interchangeably, but I'm not sure if you are so I want to check.)
Well with guns, that is what I'm doing. I still don't see how that amounts to 'if you believe that, why doesn't it apply to all things everywhere in every situation'?
As for the latter, I don't use them interchangeably here. For instance, let's say if your husband who has brutally beaten you dozens of times tracks you down on your way back to the battered women's shelter after stalking you relentlessly and demands you return home with him or he'll kill you...then no, threatening him with a firearm would of course not be immoral. The gun is still, ultimately, bad thing though-in this situation, it's a tool that has to be used in the last extremity of, well, wickedness. Why is the idea that something you need to resort to when things are really awful is bad while still being necessary so unusual?
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Oh, it's not unusual at all. It's just wrong!
If something is a vital and necessary tool to accomplishing something good, it makes no sense to me to call the thing itself bad. I know that's a really common thing to do, but I disagree with it.
Perhaps an example of something bad used to accomplish something good would be murdering a child infected with a highly contagious deadly disease. In that sense, you could argue you did something good (prevented X millions from dying) but the argument that you still did something bad (murdered a child innocent of wrongdoing) has a pretty good case too. The bad doesn't wash out the good, because the "bad" here is actually itself an immoral act.
I don't see how a gun, inherently, is bad.
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I think part of the disconnect here is that while I would use 'necessary' or 'best possible course of action', shades of meaning like that, I suspect you would skip right over to 'good'. Put another way, sometimes the right thing to do simply isn't, itself, a good thing to do. The person who did it ought still be credited for it, but that's still not the same thing as saying 'it was good'. There's some dissonance there...but only if you insist on asserting your particular take on things as the truth of the world to begin with, I think.
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posted
Rakeesh, *sigh* you seriously make me sad for you. Again we are fighting tooth and nail over the 10% we disagree about an issue, ignoring the 90% we agree, and I think it is because you so enjoy arguing and using such emotionally biased phrasing you don't seem to care about truly sharing perspective or entering into a real honest discussion. Here is an example.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Alright, clearly you're intent on sticking to this pipe bomb argument.
I already answered this -twice- before you asked it.
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: But you guys are missing the point. The point isn't that pipe bombs are such a big threat, the point is that the problems with guns you are describing are illegal, just like pipe bombs.
And even with it already explained, you ignore the explanation and fire off sarcastic, superior (unrelated) barbs as if I'm the one with difficulty understanding.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: "I need to defend/attack someone. Hmmm. Easiest way? I know! I'll build a pipe bomb!" Can you even tell me the last time you heard of a pipe bomb being used anywhere without resorting to Google?
And here you dismiss my comparisons without actually addressing my point. Of course when you compare things they aren't gong to be exactly the same, the whole point of comparing them is to point out their similarities to show an underlying concept. I'm sure you could compare two exact same things, but I suspect that it would be ultimately pointless, as with zero contrast you couldn't really show anything. The only similarity I was pointing out about pipe bombs and guns used in crime is that they are both illegal already.
quote:Guns are not like pipe bombs in the USA. It is a fundamentally silly comparison to make. Cars aren't like guns either, for that matter, or at least they're not treated that way.
Continuing on, your arguments that there are differences between cars and guns (obviously there are differences) sufficient to make any comparison useless are easily nullified. (Although I appreciate that you at least made an argument instead of just dismissing out of hand.)
quote:If you buy a gun, as long as you keep to yourself and don't cause trouble, nobody will come and inspect it.
If you get a carry permit, you need to requall, to submit to safety and competency testing multiple times a year to keep your license (at least in my state). So, -just like a car-, if you simply "park" your gun in your garage, then no inspections needed! It's when you want to -use- the object that testing comes into play.
quote:You don't have to pay insurance on it to drive it.
Drive a gun? Anyway, as an idea, this actually has merit worthy of further discussion, the requirement of insurance to get a permit to carry.
quote:You can't be pulled over almost on a whim and compelled to prove your sobriety for your gun.
You get pulled over for using a car not owning one, try -using a gun- without police involvement! Of course you could go to a shooting range, the equivalent of a closed racetrack, but you don't really see any black and whites cruising the racetrack do you? (Just FYI, DOJ officers often frequent shooting ranges looking for illegal weapons, from what I'm told.)
quote:As a rule, for everyone, you don't have to go to a government office and prove-to whatever low a standard-that you ought to be trusted with a car, but rather you only have to submit to the government's checks that you're not a dangerous criminal or lunatic.
Before you can purchase a handgun you have to pass the Handgun Safety Certificate Program test (formerly the Basic Firearms Safety Certificate for both long and hand guns, now only for pistols, not sure why) (again, in my state), -just like you need a license to buy a car-!
quote:And, of course, cars have a whole helluva lot more necessary-to-living applications for the overwhelming majority of their users than do guns for theirs.
Yes, it is true. But guns also have a much more every day use then only being used in crime or crime prevention. Hunting, sports shooting, collecting, male bonding, etc (notice that 3/4 of those are also true for cars).
quote: Will you insist on making these two comparisons as we continue?
I'm not insisting on anything, the points I'm trying to bring up are not being addressed. The truth of the matter is that cars, like guns, are dangerous tools that are heavily regulated and often cause tragedies when not handled properly. You seem to like to lump me in with NRA types who are calling for no regulations when it comes to firearms, and this is blatantly unfair and really needs to stop. Were I in charge we would have more training, testing and regulation of firearms then there is now...all with the shooters flipping the bill, that is to say, people should pay for the services they use directly instead of using general tax money, just like the funds of vehicle registration going to road repair.
quote:Actually, quite a lot of our laws are helping.
Yet another thing we agree on. If you look at my posts more closely I said: "Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer... "
quote:A big part of the problem, though, is that anytime anywhere someone says, "Hey, isn't it at least a little bit too easy for damn near anyone to obtain lethal force and then not be accountable for it?" You know what's never far behind? Groups and people talking about pipe bombs and cars or something.
This is the lowest kind of emotional heart-string tugging...groups of people...are not me, and really do not belong in this discussion. If you are having talks with said groups of people who do not have an actual point, unlike myself, then feel free to lump them together and dismiss what they have to say without addressing it, but please leave me off that list.
quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: ...you are still assuming that just because someone is armed that they will start shooting the robbers. And -again-, that goes against the training and the law.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: No, I'm not. To parrot you, you're welcome to quote me where I said that.
quote:The assumption is that 'random person with a concealed weapons permit' is really not at all enough to say that that person is cool-headed with good judgment, reaction time, and is an excellent shot.
Unless you are assuming they are -shooting the robbers- then their reaction time and how good a shot they are is irrelevant. You don't need to argue every single point of contention into the ground dude. I know you like to "mix it up" but I really don't. So please cut the boxing match out, no one is keeping track of points.
quote:What I said was that the chance someone armed will shoot the robbers (go ahead, ask a cop if they think someone with a concealed weapons permit ought to shoot the robbers, I dare you, outside of the highly-EXTREMELY-unusual case of robbers-turning-proclaimed-mass-murderers-by-announcing-it-in-advance, that is)
I think you don't understand what I'm saying since -I'm saying- that you shouldn't shoot robbers unless they say they are going to or actually start killing people.
quote:...the chance that someone who is armed will shoot the robbers is a lot greater than someone who isn't armed will shoot the robbers.
The chance that people with fingers can type 90 wpm is WAY higher then double amputees, but it isn't a safe bet that everyone with fingers can type that fast or at all. Here is my point that you are not getting: For every story of someone (Zimmerman) doing something tragically stupid or wantonly homicidal with a legal carry permit there are thousands upon thousands of stories you -don't hear- about people with guns who didn't pull them because they shouldn't have. How is it possible to take into account all these nonevents? Zimmerman's tragic tale -should- welcome in reform in our laws about who gets a carry permit, and what is tested to get one. I think that is part of the 90% we agree on.
quote:As for this training...yes. I'm sure the government's training in these matters is rigorous, ongoing, and appropriately skeptical. For instance, once I pass the withering testing process to obtain a concealed weapons permit, I'm sure that pretty much everywhere, I need to go and renew my license and submit to the same testing, yes? And I'm sure the training includes rigorous programs on how and when to use deadly force, right?
Of course right. I mean, to do otherwise would just be crazy!
I suspect you are attempting sarcasm, but this is exactly the case (again, in my state).
quote: It's illegal to attack people with knives, too, but look at how much less common deaths are from knife attack? I wonder why on Earth that is?
Never heard the phrase "Like bringing a knife to a gun fight."?
quote:There, that was super hard.
I could get heavy into this one, but I don't really care that much. I don't think that for a single second you really believe that I'm pro vigilantism, and your insistence that I am just comes off as more of the "argument game" which I really have no interest in. Let me clear this up for you once and for all, I am against citizens playing cop. I am for citizens being able to defend themselves. The difference is this: Playing cop involves looking for trouble, while defending yourself just plain doesn't.
quote:Yes, it certainly has nothing to do with you bringing in first-stage gun ownership arguments that illustrate a serious lack of thought and research on the issue, and might have been taken word for word from an NRA lobbyist.
I accept that you are not going to admit that your statement about Vegas was ridiculous, but you can keep throwing icing on that turd, it ain't never gunna be a cake.
quote:Hey, the criticism of the criticism is rampant. It's in nearly every post of yours to me on this thread. So...whew! Dodged that double-dog-dare there. That was close.
I'm no longer even a little surprised when instead of clarifying and attempting to understand people's views, you just argue and get snarky.
quote:Still a fan of insisting on apologies, I see.
Was I insisting? Since when is a polite request insisting? I guess when it serves your needs to paint a picture of other people, regardless of...oh, I don't know...the truth.
quote: And yet, in spite of this penetrating analysis on your part...pipe bomb violence in the USA is at an all-time low!
Condescension aside, this is -again- something that has been addressed, and it is not honest of you to keep flailing your arms about and shouting "But pipe bombs are rare!" instead of actually addressing my point.
quote:A better question: why in the world is 'it's already illegal' an argument for 'whelp, legislation has utterly failed and is forever doomed to failure, time to just give up!'
This wouldn't be a question for me...since I'm calling for stricter laws for carry permits. This wouldn't be a question for any reasonable person, as it isn't an intelligent question.
quote: Another comparison, just for fun, that is a whole helluva lot more relevant than your pipe bomb comparison (not that that would be difficult):
I have no idea how you think you can occupy the moral high ground and act like a first class jerk at the same time.
quote:Shall I whine for an apology, after having just been called a liar? Or will I merely ask what is dishonest about pointing out how nonsensical your pipe bomb comparison was, and asking just how pointing that out is dishonest? I think I'll go with the latter.
I thought you said I was insisting on an apology before...now I'm whining for one, eh? You are a rude person on the internet, I wonder if you are in real life. I doubt it, as being rude in real life actually takes some bravery. Try actually addressing my point instead of ranting about how I am trying to get that point across is not worthy.
quote:As neat an illustration as I've ever seen as to how out of touch you are. Legal firearms are hundreds of dollars, background checks, and waiting periods (those latter two, by the way, you're welcome to guess if they were greeted favorably by gun rights activitist or bitterly opposed).
Who cares what "gun right activists" think, try actually talking to me instead of making up positions for people not in this discussion to oppose. Again...my point is that illegal guns are...illegal already. No need to confuse better enforcement of our current laws with the need for stricter laws.
quote: But even in the case of legal firearms, I get to keep the lethal force pretty much forever unless I draw attention to myself. And yet how often do I have to pass a background check?
If you become a felon, or beat your wife or otherwise disqualify yourself from gun ownership, the cops come and take your guns dude.
quote:...cars are actually quite a lot more thoroughly regulated than firearms. By an enormous margin, on the local, state, and federal levels.
As well they should be, as they are WAY more common then guns in everyday use. It doesn't mean there isn't a valid and useful comparison that can be made for purposes of discussion.
quote: I do believe that guns can often be used to avert very bad things. That doesn't mean I think guns are 'good'. When used to deal with people, they're intended only to threaten, injure, or kill. So, yeah, bad. Sometimes necessary but still bad.
Guns are inanimate objects, they just sit there, hunks steel and plastic doing nothing at all until someone picks them up and makes choices which are morally good, bad and everything in between. Any inanimate object can be used for good or bad, and without choice there is no morality. And preventing something bad from happening -is good-.
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Or if you're a conspiracy theorist...they chose murder 2 KNOWING they couldn't make it stick, but wanted to charge him to mollify critics of the case. In other words, it could all be theater.
Or they figure they charge murder 2, and then settle for a deal of manslaughter, and save the cost of a trial.
Less conspiracy; more cynic.
It would be highly, highly unethical for the DA to ask for an indictment and to charge someone with a crime unless he believes that person to be guilty, and guilty of that specific crime.
While plea deals do happen routinely, charging for a crime more grave than what the law allows would be an ethics violation that could land the DA and ADA in jail for contempt, and it could get them disbarred. Charges are only brought when the DA can reasonably account, to a judge, for the crime being charged at the preliminary hearing.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: It would be highly, highly unethical for the DA to ask for an indictment and to charge someone with a crime unless he believes that person to be guilty, and guilty of that specific crime.
Which is not what I said. They can absolutely believe all of the following:
that Zimmerman committed murder 2;
that they (the DA's office) have enough evidence to bring Zimmerman to trial on that charge, and with a decent chance of conviction;
that a deal for a lesser charge, such as manslaughter, is a better use of the city's resources than a chance, however decent, of a conviction
quote:Rakeesh, *sigh* you seriously make me sad for you. Again we are fighting tooth and nail over the 10% we disagree about an issue, ignoring the 90% we agree, and I think it is because you so enjoy arguing and using such emotionally biased phrasing you don't seem to care about truly sharing perspective or entering into a real honest discussion. Here is an example.
I don't want your pity, but in any case I don't think I actually have it. As for emotionally biased phrasing...look, I realize you don't think this about yourself, but you *opened up* this post with an expression of pity that implicitly assumes a posture of moral superiority. That sort of style isn't new from you, either. So don't let's hear any more from you about 'emotionally biased phrasing', shall we?
quote:And here you dismiss my comparisons without actually addressing my point. Of course when you compare things they aren't gong to be exactly the same, the whole point of comparing them is to point out their similarities to show an underlying concept. I'm sure you could compare two exact same things, but I suspect that it would be ultimately pointless, as with zero contrast you couldn't really show anything. The only similarity I was pointing out about pipe bombs and guns used in crime is that they are both illegal already.
Yes, obviously comparisons won't be exactly the same. They need to be CLOSE to be anything other than silly, though. Example: it's illegal to tie someone up with rope and lay them on train tracks, but of course trains are not unusual and neither is rope. So let's talk about making a comparison between guns and ropes/trains.
Also, when you say that the only comparison you drew was on illegality, well, that's simply untrue. You also likened them to ease of illegally obtaining and use.
quote:Continuing on, your arguments that there are differences between cars and guns (obviously there are differences) sufficient to make any comparison useless are easily nullified. (Although I appreciate that you at least made an argument instead of just dismissing out of hand.)
I wonder if you're even aware of the striking hypocrisy in your words? In the very same paragraph that you complain of me making an argument for a change...you just say they're 'easily nullified'. Oh, yes, that good old Stone Wolf double standard!
quote:If you get a carry permit, you need to requall, to submit to safety and competency testing multiple times a year to keep your license (at least in my state). So, -just like a car-, if you simply "park" your gun in your garage, then no inspections needed! It's when you want to -use- the object that testing comes into play.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concealed_carry_in_the_United_States Go take, I don't know, five or ten minutes to review just how rigorous the standards are throughout the nation for concealed carry permits. Oh, fun fact that I knew but didn't connect: the majority of such permits go to males, yet strangely women are more likely to actually need a concealed permit because they're more likely to be the victims of violence than men. So I guess your 'reason' for owning a lethal force firearm of 'male bonding' is certainly true.
quote:Drive a gun? Anyway, as an idea, this actually has merit worthy of further discussion, the requirement of insurance to get a permit to carry.
Yeah, well, good luck with that. The folks on your side of this particular aisle have a lot invested in that sort of thing not happening. The same sorts of people who, for example, helped in my state to make sure it's legal to bring a firearm to work in your car, even if your employer doesn't want one there.
And yeah, they are on your side of the aisle. Not unlike other disagreements you've had with myself and others, you don't seem to realize that not consciously intending to support an idea doesn't mean your arguments don't support it.
You get pulled over for using a car not owning one, try -using a gun- without police involvement! Of course you could go to a shooting range, the equivalent of a closed racetrack, but you don't really see any black and whites cruising the racetrack do you? (Just FYI, DOJ officers often frequent shooting ranges looking for illegal weapons, from what I'm told.)[/quote] Which highlights yet another difference between cars and guns. Outside of target firing and hunting, there isn't a single aspect of using a gun that the people-that is to say the government-ought to be interested in. As for cars, everywhere you go, you have to go forth and demonstrate your ability to safely use that car...and you're much more likely to drive safely than you are to, say, thwart a sudden grocery store robbery turned mass murder safely.
quote:Before you can purchase a handgun you have to pass the Handgun Safety Certificate Program test (formerly the Basic Firearms Safety Certificate for both long and hand guns, now only for pistols, not sure why) (again, in my state), -just like you need a license to buy a car-!
Well I know I feel better knowing that kind of test is what it takes before someone has the option of armed vigilantism!
quote:Yes, it is true. But guns also have a much more every day use then only being used in crime or crime prevention. Hunting, sports shooting, collecting, male bonding, etc (notice that 3/4 of those are also true for cars).
Not one of those uses is actually necessary to living throughout the United States. You never drove your children to school on your 12 gauge, or went in to work on a weekend on your 9. And, of course, children have a harder time, usually, sneaking into your car in your garage and killing one a other by accident than they do with guns. If someone demands your wallet at knife point, you're less likely to drive at them, miss, and go plowing through the wall of a house twenty yards away and kill someone who didn't even know you were there.
quote:I'm not insisting on anything, the points I'm trying to bring up are not being addressed. The truth of the matter is that cars, like guns, are dangerous tools that are heavily regulated and often cause tragedies when not handled properly. You seem to like to lump me in with NRA types who are calling for no regulations when it comes to firearms, and this is blatantly unfair and really needs to stop. Were I in charge we would have more training, testing and regulation of firearms then there is now...all with the shooters flipping the bill, that is to say, people should pay for the services they use directly instead of using general tax money, just like the funds of vehicle registration going to road repair.
If this is what you really do believe, that's great. In that case, try not to use arguments so neatly dovetailing with, say, the NRA, for example-or to criticize the criticism, and there won't be this confusion. Until then, prepare to be misunderstood, since you're communicating badly.
quote:Yet another thing we agree on. If you look at my posts more closely I said: "Making more laws (since apparently our current laws aren't helping, according to you guys) is the answer... "
Which is a classic straw man in this issue, used especially by the people you disavow. Nobody here has said 'no amount of laws can ever work, thus we need to just say they're all illegal now, and that will solve everything'.
quote:Unless you are assuming they are -shooting the robbers- then their reaction time and how good a shot they are is irrelevant. You don't need to argue every single point of contention into the ground dude. I know you like to "mix it up" but I really don't. So please cut the boxing match out, no one is keeping track of points.
Reaction time, hand-eye coordination, and judgment are tested in your car comparison if you'll insist on it. Why on earth not for *concealed lethal weapons*? What possible use of such a permit exists in which it isn't in the public's interest to be concerned about those things?
quote:I think you don't understand what I'm saying since -I'm saying- that you shouldn't shoot robbers unless they say they are going to or actually start killing people.
First, I'm saying it was a stupid hypothetical to raise in the first place. But if we are going to discuss it, unless the would be hero has been tested on judgment, reaction time, hand eye coordination, marksmanship, it's probably safer for everyone to just run all at once than for the one guy to start lighting villains up-and that if we're going to be in this business of concealed permits, we ought to check.
quote:The chance that people with fingers can type 90 wpm is WAY higher then double amputees, but it isn't a safe bet that everyone with fingers can type that fast or at all. Here is my point that you are not getting: For every story of someone (Zimmerman) doing something tragically stupid or wantonly homicidal with a legal carry permit there are thousands upon thousands of stories you -don't hear- about people with guns who didn't pull them because they shouldn't have. How is it possible to take into account all these nonevents? Zimmerman's tragic tale -should- welcome in reform in our laws about who gets a carry permit, and what is tested to get one. I think that is part of the 90% we agree on.
In these cases, what would change if they hadn't been armed? Nothing. If they DID need a gun but didn't have it, things might have gone very bad-but then they might have gone very bad if they used their gun improperly. Sometimes even if they didn't! And in all that time, their gun is at home or in their trunks, there, waiting, available for any number of situations where it isn't called for-vastly more than for when it is.
quote:I accept that you are not going to admit that your statement about Vegas was ridiculous, but you can keep throwing icing on that turd, it ain't never gunna be a cake.
My statement that it is stupid and dangerous to bring a gun to go grocery shopping *just to have a gun while grocery shopping* is one I stand by.
quote:I'm no longer even a little surprised when instead of clarifying and attempting to understand people's views, you just argue and get snarky.
People? Naw. Only some people. Why just the other day, I disagreed strongly with something Senoj said, but he made a good case that more than held its weight. The sarcasm with you is learned, not general.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Thanks for the link, I honestly was not aware of the situation in the whole country, just my state (Cali).
You skipped addressing some good stuff, and I can't say as I agree with most of your post, but in the end it is just not worth it to put any substantial time into trying to argue with you, so I won't.
quote:My statement that it is stupid and dangerous to bring a gun to go grocery shopping *just to have a gun while grocery shopping* is one I stand by.
I still disagree, but at least with rewording it doesn't sound so god awful.
I would appreciate it if you could keep the sarcastic jabs to a minimum, and I'll try and do the same, okay?
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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