Speaking of common threads...

[rrneck]

Americans have an unhealthy penchant for seeking simple solutions to complex problems. It is a myopia born of self righteous arrogance and laziness that kills meaningful change before it can begin.

Life is hard? Pull the trigger and blow your brains out. No hope for the future? Take your family with you. Wife leaving you? Pull the trigger on her. Bullied at work? Pull the trigger on your boss. Some punk kicks your door down? Fuck him. He made a bad decision. Pull the trigger on him. Problem solved in a flicker of an instant.

Tired of reading about the misery caused by senseless violence? Outlaw triggers. Fearful when you take out the properly separated and collated trash? Ban triggers. Sight of a weapon remind you how quickly human beings can become barbaric animals? Dehumanize and ostracize the owner of the trigger.

The moment when the trigger is pulled is an event horizon that stands between a catastrophic collapse of lives on one side and an catastrophic reshuffling of them on the other. Nothing good ever leads to pulling a trigger. No good ever comes from it. The trigger just is, and it will never go away because sometimes there is no other choice but to pull it.

This juvenile and ghoulish fascination with the trigger does nothing to heal the walking wounded that will surely suffer from it. Nor does it help us assume responsibility for our actions after we pull it. We waste so much effort on lock time entire lives wither for lack of attention.

When we learn to manage our lives and assume responsibility for the lives of others the triggers will take care of themselves.

[tridim]

1. Family Guy money quote: "If you squeeze me, I make bad people go away!"

[rrneck]

19. Heh. I love it.

Reminds me of:

[sharesunited]

2. Good thoughts about bad decisions. But you still love guns too much.

[Tim01]

3. I'll bet you got picked on a lot at school. nt

[sharesunited]

4. A gun would have solved all my problems.

[Tim01]

9. You would make a really annoying school shooter. nt

[sharesunited]

11. Okay now that's rich. Your implication being that there are benign, inoffensive shooters?

That viewpoint comes from an exaltation of guns and their rightfulness everywhere, even in school.

Gun love is like inbred racism. You don't even recognize when you're doing it!

[Tim01]

35. My implication is you would be unbearably annoying, in addition to the other things.nt

[rrneck]

5. Your sanctimony is misplaced.

You don't have the right, the qualifications, or the ability to evaluate what I may or may not love.

[sharesunited]

6. Didn't you intend your words to communicate your value system?

Well you succeeded.

[SteveM]

7. Do you really enjoy degrading others? Does moralism allow you that?

[sharesunited]

10. Huh? I said something degrading? Re-reading my posts now, looking for it.

Strong point of view concisely stated and without abusiveness. Looks good.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rrneck]

12. Lets try again.

While we're on the subject of values, lets have a look at yours.

1. Passive aggressive baiting of others in a place where you know they can do you no harm.

2. Sanctimonious projection disguised as compassion.

In the unlikely event that your values exhibit evidence of something more than obtuse self satisfaction and myopic selfishness then, maybe, a solution might be discussed. Until then; lead, follow, or get out of the way.

[sharesunited]

14. Do me no harm??? Like what, shoot me?

Do me no harm for challenging the antisocial opinions of those who are at the core of the problem?

The only solution is to turn the ship around and begin to diminish the proliferation of guns and ammo in the hands of the general public.

There can never be agreement between such fundamentally divergent viewpoints.

Sanctimony in the face of such profound and widespread gun love should be regarded as a badge of honor.

Shaming the indifferent is the only tactic available.

[eqfan592]

15. Wow, how amazingly arrogant of you.

And counter productive, as usual, especially given that "guns" are not even the core of the problem, nor the people who defend our RKBA. The problem is not simple, but rather a very complex series of socioeconomic issues that must be resolved to put an end to the viloence as a whole. Sure, you can try and take the guns away, but you'd fail. And even if you COULD get them all away, all you'd succeed in doing is giving an upper hand to those who have no use for the law anyway, and people would go right on killing each other using different implements.

No, you have no real interest in putting an end to violence. You just hate guns. And you hate people who don't agree with you. You're filled with so much hatred you are no longer capable of rational thought on the issue.

[sharesunited]

16. Strongly held opinions do not equate to hatred.

You are the utopian, if you think you can solve the complex issues which comprise human nature.

My straightforward proposal will always be to make it less easy to kill each other. Now THAT's something we DO have control over.

[eqfan592]

17. Your "straightforward" proposal fails.

It fails because it goes against what the nation stands for, which is civil liberty. It fails because it wouldn't solve the core problem. It fails because it wouldn't even meet it's primary object effectively. And it fails because it would never gain the support necessary to even be put forward, because of the aforementioned problems.

It boils down to this, Shares. The people of this nation, on a whole, will not stand for disarmament. It is simply a BAD idea. Any good that may come of it would be totally out weighed by the bad, and that's what you fail to understand, because YOU are the Utopian.

Can we ever totally be rid of violence? No, and I never said we could. But we can tackle many of the root causes of violence in order to minimize it, something that your plan totally fails to address. This is not a lofty goal. It will be a long, hard struggle, but it IS atainable, given the dedication and will. And we can do this without compromising our basic principles, which your plan requires us to do.

Your plan may be straightforward, but that does not mean it is has any merit whatsoever.

[rrneck]

18. Now that's more like it.

Do me no harm??? Like what, shoot me?

Yes.

Psychological projection (or projection bias) is the unconscious act of denial of a person's own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are ascribed to the outside world, like the weather, the government, a tool or another person or people. Projection is one of the most profound and subtle of human psychological processes, and extremely difficult to work with, because by its nature it is hidden. It is the fundamental mechanism by which we keep ourselves uninformed about ourselves.

There can never be agreement between such fundamentally divergent viewpoints.

You are at the far end of that spectrum.

Sanctimony in the face of such profound and widespread gun love should be regarded as a badge of honor.

Main Entry: sanc·ti·mo·ny
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural sanc·ti·mo·nies
Etymology: Middle French sanctimonie, from Latin sanctimonia, from sanctus
Date: 1534
1 obsolete : holiness
2 : affected or hypocritical holiness

Especially for those suffering acute projection bias. (See above)

Shaming the indifferent is the only tactic available.

Now that's funny. I guarantee you have yet to cause anyone here to feel the slightest twinge of shame. Your sanctimonious haikus only serve to support your self delusion.

[sharesunited]

20. Putting up all the newspaper clippings of gunshot murder suicide is intended to shame.

It is ineffective to shame the shameless, of course.

The standard response of the shameless is: Such A Tragedy, Now Carry On Dying Ya'All!

[rrneck]

22. Wrong.

In your case it is intended to assert moral superiority. Your bigotry undermines your efforts.

"It is ineffective to shame the shameless, of course."

People who own firearms are not incipient sociopaths. If you have an accusation to make man up and make it. And then prove it.

[sharesunited]

23. People who advocate more guns and ammo in the hands of the general public

are willfully blind to the harm such an attitude is causing.

Clucking disapproval about all the killing while still maintaining that it's all worthwhile is true sanctimony meeting the dictionary definition thereof.

[eqfan592]

25. The only "willfully blind" person around here is yourself.

If you took a second from your preaching, you'd notice that there is not statistical evidence pointing to an increase in crime rate being associated with an increase in firearm ownership. In fact, there's even some small statistical evidence to show that increase firearm ownership causes a small reduction of certain crimes.

You ignore all of this, shares, and that attitude is doing far more harm than anything else, because it is distracting from the real issues.

[sharesunited]

26. Rampage killings and murder suicides are just too sensational, I guess.

I overlooked the bright side. Thanks for pointing it out.

[eqfan592]

31. Way to dodge the point completely :P (nt)

[rrneck]

27. Your myopia is showing.

"still maintaining that it's all worthwhile"

From the OP reproduced here for your convenience.

Nothing good ever leads to pulling a trigger. No good ever comes from it.

[rrneck]

28. By the way,

I'm still waiting for the proof to support your accusation.

[friendly_iconoclast]

34. If we deny the use of a tool, *surely* no other would be used instead

And their hearts will gentle and their spirits will be enlightened along with it, of course

You remind me of the character Sledge in the classic Jack Williamson story:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands

[eqfan592]

13. That's a damn good post.

Thank you. It's good food for thought, that's for sure. And I couldn't agree more that Americans (and maybe people in general?) are way to obsessed with "simple" solutions.

[X_Digger]

21. One correction..

From reading your post, you'd think we have a high suicide rate- we don't, compared to other nations.

http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide_rates/en/index.html

Thoughtful post, rrneck. K&R

[spin]

24. True, and many of the gun control schemes are also simple solutions to complex problems....

People use handguns in drive by shootings and massacres. Solution = ban handguns.

Assuming the effort was successful, the shooters will use shotguns and rifles which are far more lethal than handguns.

Banning all guns would still not stop the black market of weapons. Honest citizens would merely be defenseless.

[rrneck]

30. They sort of remind me

of a phrase I read years ago when catalytic converters were new; "Tailpipe Solution". The writer figured that all this effort trying to catch pollution before it got into the air was a waste of time. The real problem according to him was what went into the carburetor.

Or as Bill Cosby once said, "Novocaine doesn't stop pain. It just postpones it."

[PavePusher]

29. Small Correction: "No good ever comes from it."

If I shoot someone who is unlawfully trying to injure/kill me or a third party, I save the good people and remove (at least temporarily) a bad person from the street.

Win/win all around.

[rrneck]

32. A good point and well taken.

It looks like rhetorical flourish got the best of me.

Saving yourself or another from harm is an obvious good.

To my mind it's not entirely win/win because the bad guy lost when you shot him. And he's not the only one that lost. Maybe he had parents, kids, friends or a spouse. Even a girlfriend would surely mourn him. He certainly lost the chance to do better.

I won't try to rhapsodize about class warfare here except to say that violence begets violence, and the violence that we do, even in self defense, has repercussions beyond the event itself. Just as there are a multitude of unfortunate circumstances that lead to a fatal confrontation, there are an equal number of unfortunate consequences that flow from it. I don't think we can see any of them coming or going or even adequately measure them, we just know they're there.

Rather, I'll let the professional rhapsodizers rhapsodize for me.

Henry V / Act 4, Scene 1

WILLIAMS

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at
such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063227/

Eleanor: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians! How clear we make it. Oh, my piglets, we are the origins of war: not history's forces, nor the times, nor justice, nor the lack of it, nor causes, nor religions, nor ideas, nor kinds of government, nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breed wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can't we love one another just a little - that's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.

[PavePusher]

33. Touche. n/t