Monday, February 09, 2009

Reasoned Discourse.

I know this is a late hit, but what the heck... I'm always up for some reasoned discourse with the... er, "developmentally challenged".

I didn't waste my time with him yesterday afternoon, and he's taken his ball and left in a snit since then, but let's go over his hackneyed talking points, shall we? For practice. Using him as a tackling dummy, as it were...
Sworn police officers are professionals, trained in the law and crisis management, and know when and how to apply measures up to and including deadly force. They are also required to constantly prove their marksmanship on the range and are more likely to hit what they aim at than most civilian handgun owners.
This is a mixture of truth, falsehoods, and irrelevance. Most big departments do attempt to offer training, but it's debatable how much of it takes. Use-of-force law usually gets drilled in pretty well, but it's not terrifically complicated.

As far as "constantly prove their marksmanship on the range"... well... The better departments qualify twice a year, but many (if not most) only have to qualify annually. The qualification courses aren't tough; it's certainly possible to fail, but if you possess the hand-eye coordination required to tie your shoes and can aim at the ground and hit, you'll pass. Certainly anyone who shoots a pistol competitively would probably find them a little simplistic, if not actually remedial.

The fact of the matter is, Skippy, that cops aren't gun experts. I wouldn't go to a police officer for gun advice because he carried a Glock any more than I'd go to him for radio advice because he carried a Motorola. He drives a Crown Vic every day, but that doesn't make him a race car driver.
As the son of a police officer, I am unconvinced by the vigilante rhetoric. The handful of “righteous” (i.e., legally-justifiable) handgun shootings by civilians is statistically insignificant.
We'll skip the argument from authority, as who his daddy is has no bearing on the facts...

Anyhow, this is a tired old tactic whereby "defensive handgun use" is made to equal "justifiable homicide". Never mind that in the vast, vast majority of DGU's, no shot is even fired, with the perpetrator aborting the crime upon realizing his intended victim is armed. Even when shots are fired, the perpetrator is hit somewhere between half and three quarters of the time (depending on which set of statistics you buy into), and then only a small minority are fatal. Mikey only counts them if they result in a toe tag on the goblin; the rest didn't happen.

So, yeah, "lies, damn lies, and statistics."
And Chicago citizens are being killed — at an alarming rate — with Indiana handguns.
You can substitute "Los Angeles" or "New York City" for "Chicago" and "Arizona" or "Virginia" for Indiana, but the lack of reaoning behind the statement is still just as funny. I mean, obviously it's not the guns themselves that cause the crime, else Arizona, Virginia, and Indiana would be knee deep in the dead, and the murder rate would lessen the further you got from the source of the guns. Instead it's practically an inverse correlation. I wonder how Mike would explain that. Probably by telling me his daddy was a cop, and then throwing in some unrelated ad hominem...
Why 15? Why not 18, 21, or 25, key ages in legal codes? Why do you omit kid-on-kid handgun violence (including homicides) and youth gun suicides? That pile of cold young bodies is much bigger than you pretend.
Apart from his sick fixation with "cold, young bodies"... Okay, I won't go there. (Not that I'm above a spot of ad hominem myself. Especially if it's funny.)

Anyhow, he refuses to separate out the statistics because when you do, you find that the number of kids who accidentally get "killed with mommy and daddy’s handgun “protection” every year" is lower than the number of tots who drown in mommy and daddy's five gallon buckets every year.

See, if you use the total number of gunshot victims under the age of twenty, well, that includes Ice Dog and Ray-Ray whacking each other over a sales district boundary dispute, and all the emo teens who listen to too much... well, whatever emo kids listen to these days... and off themselves because mom won't let them wear black nail polish to grandma's for Thanksgiving. Curmudgeonly middle aged voting types don't feel much sympathy for those classes of "childhood gun deaths" so it's better to make them all sound like accidental toddler tragedies.
Why do handgun advocates omit inclusion of handgun suicides from gunshot death totals?
Because removing handguns from the picture wouldn't stop those suicides. See, someone who rides the bullet is pretty serious about checking out of the net. That's not a "cry for help" or a ploy for attention, it's "Good Bye."

If you take that person's handgun away, they'll just go chug a frosty Drain-O margarita, do a half-gainer off the nearest multi-story building, or play Stop-The-Locomotive. Do you really want to take their handgun away? Yeah, me neither. I just hope they'll have the decency to nip off into the woods and not involve any unwilling bystanders in their personal drama, like they would if they didn't have a handgun and decided to plant a kiss on the front end of the 5:15 Amtrak out of Cleveland.


I could go on, but there's a whole big internet out there to make fun of this morning, and I've got other typing to do. Feel free to continue putting the boot in on Mikey-Mike in the comments section.

17 comments:

  1. By no means should you EVER let actual- you know- FACTS interfere with the promotion of his FEELINGS.

    I am perpetually reminded that IQ is a measure of your brain's clock speed. It is not a guarantee that the data input is meaningful, nor how accurately the processor deals with the information. This is a classic example. Apparently, Mikey is capable of turning on and operating a PC (or, well, a mac) and even types well (OK, that COULD be spellcheck) but actually looking at FACTS, at the INTENT OF THE FRAMERS OF THE CONSTITUTION (that pesky old piece of paper) and the reality of the shape of the world today, as well as the blatant demonstration everywhere of the utter stupidity of typical gun control, is well beyond his ken. A typical product of the "if it feels good, do it" mentality.


    Ray ray? Amy Winehouse's friend?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TZLDjzS5gk

    (Skip to .38) (it's Special)

    Captcha: Rastorm. A rain of Bob Marley

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  2. I'd luuuuurve to leave some comments smacking him around with the CDC data (which I've extensively covered in the past), but alas the coward closed shop.

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  3. That last paragraph was beautiful, Tam. Pure poetry.

    Re: police officers being more trained than civilians, I was a student at Ball State when Michael McKinney (drunk off his ass at the time) was shot by a rookie campus police officer. One thing the incident drove home for me (besides not ever, ever getting that drunk) was that police officers are just as human as we are. The uniform does not make them flawless performance machines.

    captcha: flanneg. I don't know what that is, but it sounds itchy.

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  4. You really think some underpaid Virginia waiter is gonna tell an armed smoker to snuff out his butt?

    This calls for a bit of recursion.

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  5. "Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length."

    and apparently the acceptable length is now nada...

    yikes, i just used that "reasoned discourse" blurb in a retaliatory taunt to someone in your comments section the other day; i'm glad i threw "adult" in the middle to differentiate from this particular "reasoning".

    as for mikey, he seems to have a pretty bad daddy hangup...'cause his dad was the perfect embodiment of training, authority, and infallibility i guess, and maybe to mikey he was.

    but it may upset him to know that most departments psych eval their prospects to eliminate those who would invest too much thought or reasoning to their rote training. i'm not going to rag on cops too much, because i knew enough of them intimately enough to know that most are decent guys with an earnest desire to "do good", and Lord knows i wouldn't want to deal with what they actually have to do on a day-to-day basis (which involves a lot more handholding, paperwork, and marital counseling to lowtones than marksmanship), but there weren't many of them that i couldn't outshoot when i was doing a lot more shooting than i am now, and very damn few that i would trust to make the decisions of life, death, and well-being of my family that are uniquely mine to make.

    jtc

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  6. and btw, your post encompasses some of the most hilariously snarky "reasoned discourse" i've seen in a while...:o) jtc

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  7. Don't forget also, that VPC declares anyone under 21 a child, and includes in their stats of "children killed with handguns" those who were lawfully killed in self-defense. (Even if by our hand-wringer's daddy, the cop!)

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  8. Meanwhike, even some of our "friends" need educating -
    *Guns?*

    "But too many lose sight of the fact that the Heller decision was a 5-4 decision. Four justices - only one short of a majority - adopted the liberal argument that the Second Amendment does not involve any rights whatsoever for private citizens. The Second Amendment was only a single vote away from being eradicated from the Constitution."

    Where has Mr. Blackwell been since, oh, a couple of hours after the decision? Is he unaware (barely acceptable) or is it something else? ALL NINE JUSTICES EXPLICITLY STATED THAT THE AMENDMENT DECLARED AN INDIVIDUAL RIGHT! Three thought that while it might be unConstitutional the case should go back to a lower court for more work, while one claimed that the "regulations" were not a "ban" and so were not in violation of the Constitution.

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  9. Well, I suppose we can take his closure of comments as an unconscious admission that his position is completely indefensible and illogical - otherwise, he would have no problems defending it and standing up for what he said in the past.

    Unfortunately, I doubt there is any hope for him - I wish we stood a chance in hell of convincing him otherwise, but this man has thoroughly confused "rights" with "privileges".

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  10. Because removing handguns from the picture wouldn't stop those suicides. See, someone who rides the bullet is pretty serious about checking out of the net. That's not a "cry for help" or a ploy for attention, it's "Good Bye."

    I've often thought that if I ever am so unlucky as to get a fatal, incurable disease that's going to make my final weeks on Earth a painful misery, that suicide under those circumstances might be an option. And if I decided to take that option, I would strap every gun and rifle I own all over my body -- and then hang myself. And leave a note that says: "Gee, the guns didn't have a damn thing to do with me killing myself, did they?"

    Just to give a concrete, real example for the rest of you to use to silence the gun banners' silly "suicide" drivel.

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  11. Did you notice that he closed the comments, then made two more comments?

    what an ass!

    _Ted_

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  12. Q: "why do the police carry guns everywhere?"

    A: "So you don’t have to. "

    Is it possible that he:

    - Actually believes that a policeman will always be present should he be a victim of violent crime?

    - Actually believes that everyone else always has a policeman handy to protect them and prevent criminals from harming them?

    - Is so utterly ignorant/blind that he does not know that unarmed people are frequently held up, robbed, beaten, raped, and killed, etc, by criminals, and that no police magically show up with their guns and stop the crime?

    And the thousand dollar question: Does he really believe that the police have any sort of obligation or responsibility for his or our safety? and is he ignorant of all the court decisions indicating that the police are NOT, in fact, in any way liable for our safety, and have no obligation to intervene on our behalf no matter what the circumstances, even if a policeman happens to be present when one of us is being victimized? Or that the police usually take longer to respond to a 911 call than it takes for a criminal to finish his business and get away scot-free?


    What's easy to believe is that, as a child of the nanny state, he fully relies on the state to take care of him and provide for his well-being. He takes no responsibility for himself: he entrusts all to his wise and benevolent overlords. The police don't carry guns to defend themselves from criminals, they carry them to take care of him.

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  13. Ignorance is supposedly remediable.

    Unfortunately, anti-gun political beliefs aren't based on ignorance, but rather in wishful citing of a magical alternate reality.

    And what better venue for that, than wallowing in the warm self-drawn bath of a blog, where one can turn off the 'hot and incoming' spigot, when the temp gets a bit uncomfortable and unruly.

    DAMN those TRVE Believers!!!! They just won't leave fellow to slosh about, and contentedly watch his toes pucker. Ya know?

    "inglumm"

    1. a small and overcrowded off the coast of Europe

    2. how our 'present topic blogger' felt, as he read the growing pile filthy detestable fact and reason pile up on his nice sanitary self-indulgence.

    J t R -- saying be sure to kick them in vital areas, when you've gottum down. That's right: really, really HURT his feelings.

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  14. Le Bolide, Yeah that would explain why the police stop all the murders in his home town of DC.

    You don't need a gun in DC, it's PERFECTLY safe. Meanwhile in rural Maine where EVERY house has a gun cabinet FILLED with guns, most loaded, and they need to call the country Sheriff to get a LEO on scene with likely a 20 min response time. THOSE areas are the dangerous ones, Obviously.

    Never let logic get in the way of a good argument

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  15. When I was a on the job (firefighter) and in arson investigations, us fire dudes consistently outshot the cops at quals.

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  16. Q: "why do the police carry guns everywhere?"

    A: "So you don’t have to. "

    They use prophylactics, too. A load off my mind, so to speak.

    WV cupse. Two girls, one goat.

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  17. ROFL!

    Anon 10:50 wins the internets!

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