Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw) Guest Blogger
You may recall that after the horrible Tucson shooting massacre, I wrote a piece for this blog suggesting that it might be a good time to consider banning deadly weapons and the high-capacity magazines of the type that the alleged killer used on that fateful day. It was a difficult issue, but I thought then and still think now that it is an important issue that needs to be discussed by not only us, but by the American public through their Representatives and Senators in Congress. With that prior posting in mind, I was shocked to read a story earlier this week about the president of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre, who blamed the shootings on government policies in a recent speech to the CPAC conference on Thursday, February 10th.
You did read that correctly. The head of one of the biggest lobbying organizations in the country went in front of those “reasonable and moderate” CPAC members and made the claim that it wasn’t guns or ammunition that caused the deaths of 6 people and the wounding of 13 bystanders. “LaPierre said U.S. gun laws provide more protection to killers like the Virginia Tech and Tucson shooters than to the victims of their attacks, and suggested the current environment puts women at risk for rape. He condemned “gun-free zones and anti-self defense laws that protected the safety of no one except the killers and condemned the victims to death without so much as a prayer. “Government policies are getting us killed,” he said. “ CBS News.com
Mr. LaPierre goes on to give the usual response that guns don’t kill people, people do. He even suggested that if people with guns were there they could have prevented some of the death and destruction. I guess he didn’t bother to read that one gentleman who was packing a gun at the event, almost shot one of the people trying to subdue the alleged killer. Doesn’t he know that people can carry a concealed weapon already in Arizona? Where is this “gun-free zone” that he was referring to? It certainly wasn’t in Tucson. I also am confused how the Virginia Tech shooter was aided by the government?
Why is it asking too much to limit even the size of a magazine? Why does the NRA continually blame government policies that weren’t even applicable in the Tucson shootings? Wouldn’t it make sense to at least discuss making it harder for mentally ill people to buy guns legally? Why does anyone listen to the NRA at all? As usual, I have more questions than answers, but I was hoping you would help me!
Submitted by Lawrence Rafferty, (rafflaw), Guest Blogger
Can anyone here add something new other than parrot Brady propaganda? For example
“The U.S. was first at 14.24 gun deaths per 100,000 people. Two other countries in the Americas came next. Brazil was second with 12.95, followed by Mexico with 12.6”
Is the issue gun deaths or murder rates? The above stat is misleading. for MURDER rates, the US is 24th at 5 per 100,000. Brazil is about 20. Mexico also has a higher murder rate. Both have stricter gun control laws. Look up murder rates from objective sources. Brady is as if not more dishonest than the NRA.
Also, why should anyone who knows nothing on a subject tell anyone what they “need”?
Please put on your critical thinking caps.
I seriously need to seek professional psychological help?
I did that.
I also sought professional psychiatric help.
Both are well documented in my doctoral dissertation.
That is how I got this way.
Boink!
“Stupid enough to know and understand better than to ever really live in an adversarial world?”
The nature of reality – the measurable, verifiable and testable reality – is rife with adversity. From intra- and inter-species competition (as one with biological training, you should know that as a fact already) to conflict for control of resources to the battle of competing ideas, ideals and philosophies. This is hardly a comprehensive list of the adverse situations present in every day existence upon the planet Earth. The world you choose to live in? The one with perfectible people and no need for law and/or adversarial process?
It is pure fantasy, Brian.
I still think you’re a troll using a sympathetic mask, but just in case you aren’t? Your delusion is so severe as to merit regular therapy if not hospitalization. You are not just a memetic danger to society by the antisocial views you espouse, but if you are so removed from reality you don’t realize the adversity inherent in the natural and societal world around you? You are a danger to yourself and possibly others albeit probably indirectly to others.
If you are not a propaganda troll?
You seriously need to seek professional psychological help.
Wonder if one of them thar hypertheticles would be youseful?
Imagine you are a quadrillionaire and you want a custom Ferrari that can fly at Mach 33 and get 800 miles per gallon of used french-fry oil, and imagine that, for a mere 93 trillion dollars, Ferrari can and will build it. And you buy it and it works better in every way than you had hoped it would.
Driving on a mountain road in the French Alps, a rock crashes down and dings a front wheel. Driving carefully, you get to a service station where the dinged wheel is replaced with the spare. Only the service technician overlooks the final torquing of the lug nuts. Off you go, and one after another, the lug nuts fall off and cascade down the nearby ravines. Finally, the wheel comes loose, just at the beginning of a fenced-in space with a large building inside it.
Being a quadrillionaire, you never needed to get your hands dirty and never did any meaningful physical work. Someone comes from the big building and walks as close as possible inside the fence and asks if he can help, asking also what is the problem.
The quadrillionaire explains that the lug nuts are gone and that there is no way to continue driving. The man inside the fence, noting that every wheel has six lug nuts, suggests taking one lug nut from the front tire still on the car and two from each of the rear tires, so that both front tires can have five of the usual six lug nuts and the rear tires, with their lesser load, can have four each.
The man inside the fence then mentions a service station about ten miles down the mountain.
The quadrillionaire removes the mentioned lug nuts, and, with directions from the man inside the fence, properly sets up the jack and installs the wheel that came loose as suggested.
When the jack and lug wrench have been put back where they belong, the quadrillionaire asks how the man inside the fence knew what he did, and why the fence.
The man inside the fence answered, “I am insane and I am not stupid.”
So, to my pejorative critics, I avow that, within your adversarial world, I am far beyond blatantly, outrageously insane, and infinitely so beyond any possibility of doubt.
Oh. Sorry. I wonder.
Just how stupid am I?
Stupid enough to know and understand better than to ever really live in an adversarial world?
Methinks your task is one for which you are not properly trained or suited.
To be a lawyer, a lawyer needs to know how the law works AND how it doesn’t work.
Bioengineering is the application of concepts and methods of physics and mathematics to solve problems in life sciences, using engineering’s own analytical and synthetical methodologies.
Your profession has jacksquat to do with the law or legalism. You have, in effect, brought a knife to a particle beam weapon fight. You are no more qualified to critique what doesn’t work in law than I am to critique what is wrong with a potential cure for cancer.
Your task is easier simply because you don’t know what the Hell you are talking about. You have a demonstrably anti-legalist agenda you wish to promote by hiding behind your completely inappropriate and inapplicable education and calling what is actually your faith-based opinion “your work” to give it a clothing of respectability and credibility when it has neither. That, at best, makes you as delusional as a zoologist thinking they can design space stations and, at worst, a complete an utter propaganda troll.
Methinks you are exposed once again.
RE: Buddha Is Laughing, February 14, 2011 at 10:23 pm
“So, it is beliefs which are actually dangerous, and nothing else.” – Brian Harris
################################
I find I may have understood enough about the language of the world of the Adversarial Principle to give a simple, though likely to be misunderstood, account of my research methodology.
Being autistic as I am, and so having no access to a “theory of mind” as commonly defined in autism research, I developed a method of psychoanalysis simply to survive kindergarten.
I let all variables run free save one, the independent variable countertransference; and carefully observe the dependent variable transference; using longitudinal control.
If that not be perfectly clear, a good place to start may be the collected works of Heinz Kohut and the collected works of William Ronald Dodds Fairbairn.
To be a lawyer, a lawyer needs to know how the law works.
To be a bioengineer, a bioengineer needs only to know and understand how the law does not work.
Methinks my task regarding law is vastly the easier of the two.