Tuesday, June 17, 2014

Jack Kingston and the NRA hate not only facts, but any research about gun violence

Facts are the life blood of the debate about gun rights and gun control.  In online sparring at several sites, I found myself presented by a lot of interesting information about guns.  What was uniform was the conviction that guns as forms of protection are important and that (mostly) no forms of regulation have ever had any effects on gun violence.  Most importantly (RP and others), gun violence primarily targets young black men.

While these individuals are convinced, the NRA is not, nor our different Congressional representatives who are blocking, and have blocked in 1996, appropriations to the CDC to study gun violence.  Pehaps some of my erstwhile online sparring partners will ask Jack Kingston of Georgia, among others, to stop and allow the research to be done.

As is a familiar refrain, Kingston justifies himself by claiming that this is research for the sake of gun confiscation.  Everything is about confiscation.




4 comments:

  1. From the linked article:

    "The aim of such research is the same as research into any other health threat, like car crashes or smoking: to use scientific methods to chart the dimensions of a threat, identify remedies and address the problem collaboratively."

    Bullshit. We've seen this play before. The aim of such "research" is to justify with "medical" basis the policy goals of the gunbanners. There is plenty of research; they just don't like the result. So they'll make up their own.

    Not with my tax dollars, thanks. Want to go get outcome driven predetermined research? Do it on your own dime.

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  2. Evidence may suggest that gun violence is not uniformly problematic across the US, say, in comparison to other countries and that there is no specific causality linking gun ownership (extremely high in the US) with gun violence. But it is high in certain places, like DC or New Orleans, for example.

    But that doesn't mean that meaningful research can't be done on different aspects of gun violence. And it doesn't mean that teh future will resemble the past. Things change and research needs to continue.

    If you really can't trust scientists, then that is a different issue. If you don't like what they are saying, that is yet another issue.

    Look at it from a different perspective, we both want to commit to stopping something like Newtown, or black urban violence, or suicide from happening. Can't we agree that research into these things might help? That does not commit us to banning guns.

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  3. Niccolo - that's the problem. For those who push this sort of stuff, the goal is ALWAYS to ban guns.

    It doesn't matter what they say; their actions speak otherwise. The President spend much of his election campaign telling us he wasn't interested in banning guns, and he had not even been inaugurated yet and was calling for gun bans.

    You yourself have called for gun bans. The Brady folks, the Demanding Moms, Bloomberg's astroturf millions - the goal for all of them is to ban guns. If they want "research" to support that, well Bloomberg's got billions; let him pay for it.

    They're liars. They've always been liars. They'll always be liars.

    No. We've compromised our liberties enough; we now tolerate suspicionless, warrantless searches to get on an airplane. We've gutted the Constitution to the point that parts of it are no longer identifiable. No more.

    No compromise. Not one single additional law. In fact, lets roll them back. I as a non-prohibited non-felon individual should be able to buy, without restriction, any weapon that any law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over me may buy.

    I'll sign on to that reform. The rest you can keep.

    Also - you wrote above that "I've never been terribly impressed by the power of facts." That's problematic, because there IS NO REASON WITHOUT FACTS. Much of what we think we know, intuitively or through "reason" (which is inherently biased) is wrong. Facts must form the basis of reason - otherwise you have nothing.

    And thus you have nothing. I think I'm done here. Good day.

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  4. Mathematical reason, which is not based on any facts, is the basis for making sense of scientific facts. So, you are quite wrong that there is no reason without facts. In fact, most logic is not based on "facts." Imagine if we needed equal facts to be the basis for the principle of identity! I'm an expert in this area, while not one in gun matters. You don't know what you're talking about.

    If you really think anyone who says that they want to talk about guns are liars then you should not bother talking with anyone about gun rights. And you clearly have problems trusting people.

    Last thing: the responsibilities of a LEO far exceed that of a citizen. Why should the latter have access to the same guns as the former? What would be the basis for that? SHould we add equally that the citizen should be able to enforce the law just as the LEO does? Clearly not, therefore ...

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