Sunday, June 13, 2010

Promises, promises...

Kevin claims to be putting a final polishing on his latest epic tl;dr. It's almost done. Really.

I will note that his explanation for the delay runs to nearly eleven hundred words. :p
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11 comments:

pdb said...

I heard that Baker and Whittle started collaborating on an essay, but they ran the intarweb out of tubes.

9:11 AM, June 13, 2010
DJ said...

Remember, it's free. Don't complain that it's late.

12:05 PM, June 13, 2010
Anonymous said...

Guy's a f'n machine...productive, but needs a tweak now and then. AT

12:27 PM, June 13, 2010
Anonymous said...

Tweak's one of those formerly perfectly good words that's been hijacked...I should said "lube job" instead. Oh, wait...AT

12:30 PM, June 13, 2010
TJP said...

I'm going to step in before the Baker Strato-bomber arrives. No offense intended for James, but he is arguing from a position of ignorance. I would think he'd be sensitive to this, as he has in the past taken jabs at Americans' mostly pre-Victorian understanding of UK government.

source: http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2010/06/why-being-right-isnt-good-enough-for.html

1. How many of the attempted crimes allegedly foiled were actually genuine?
One of the criticisms I've held is that the Kleck study is not repeatable. Depending on location, government attitudes, and criminal opportunities, there may be strong incentives to keep quiet. He's arguing from the gap: journalists don't pursue non-events, and police don't waste time collecting anecdotes.

2. How many of the attempted crimes were serious and how many were petty?
An implication that criminals commit crimes while strictly adhering to arbitrary categories. The infamous Cheshire, Connecticut case started as a burglary, then progressed to armed robbery, assault, arson and murder. Hindsight enables us to make uninformed judgements about the severity of crimes.

3. How many of these crimes could and would have been averted anyway, without the use of a gun?
Again, only possible using hindsight. The frivolous requirements of legislation are impossible to apply in a situation where several seconds is considered a generous margin. Only in self-defense is such perfection demanded.

4. How many of these alleged crimes would have been attempted had it not been for the prevalence of guns in American society?
This question requires a mind-reading device of unfailing accuracy. It's also a "pro-gun": if the device is sufficient to give confidence to the criminal, then logically it will deter him should the defender posses the same.

5. How many guns start off as legal but end up being held illegally?
A gun can be either or both, at any time. I'm not going to defend the logic, much less explain it; the Contraband Fairy is imaginary.

6. How many of the 'crimes prevented' can be put down to the values of a paranoid, brutalised society which teaches its children that the next threat is always round the corner, and that 'freedom' can only be won down the barrel of a gun?
Not a question. I don't care what most people are doing--I'm paranoid?

7. How many people were unnecessarily killed or injured by someone 'defending themselves'?
The closest we have are statistics on negligent manslaughter.

8. How many guns being used for defensive purposes have been wrested away and used by an attacker?
I imagine the count is very low, since both the police and the media would find this notable. Let's present the whole truth: there are also cases where an offender's weapon was turned on him.

9. How many accidental shootings have there been from guns that were used carelessly, or not stored properly?
Since negligence is a defect of human behavior, I'm offering that none, most or all could be attributable to negligence, since negligent people tend to be so in all their endeavors. It's not curable through legislation.

10. How many suicidal people have found a quick and easy way out due to having a gun handy, when otherwise they might have stopped to think for longer and found a better solution?
Impossible to answer without mind-reading. It's also a waste of time. It's more effective to treat depressed individuals than maintain a massive bureaucracy that punishes an entire populace based on abstracted relationships with inanimate objects, invented by ignorant but imaginative social engineers.


The 185 children under 14 who died as a result of negligent use of firearms, while tragic, represents something close to a base level of death-by-stupidity in human society. It is not limited to firearms, and simply removing firearms from the mix isn't going to reduce the dangers of negligence.

4:32 PM, June 13, 2010
Dixie said...

Good, fast, cheap-- choose any two.

I'd never spend that much time trying to rebut someone who SHALL NOT BE REBUTTED! (Parry, dodge, riposte!)

I've gotten to the Andrew Breitbart stage... I don't desire to be polite to them anymore, just because I'm tired of them. It's like a game of whack-a-mole that doesn't need quarters...

WV: ingen-- We bring bad things to life.

5:10 PM, June 13, 2010
NotClauswitz said...

It's Kevin - he's actually more fun to shoot with than dodge his massive catapult-load screeds, especially when dealing with the utterly familiar inchoate cognitive dissonance of his detractors.
I really read him for the Master Class comments (not mine). :-)

7:23 PM, June 13, 2010
Kevin said...

I never said "almost finished." I said "delayed."

Right now there's about 5,500 words set to pixels, and I'm maybe a third of the way into it. This will need massive editing to get it into the 10k word range I think it needs. And it will need to sit and steep for a bit for that editing to take place.

I need a break.

9:09 PM, June 13, 2010
lboykin said...

He went home to wordsmith it this morning after we finished shooting bowling pins. So it should be coming out of the oven soon.

9:45 PM, June 13, 2010
Tam said...

Kevin,

I keed, I keed. ;)

11:05 PM, June 13, 2010
Kevin said...

I know, I know! ;-)

WV: stste (Is that an abbreviation for "Sistene" or am I just projecting?)

9:55 AM, June 14, 2010

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