I’m attempting to just make just one pass before moving on. We’ll see. In any case I wanted the three erroneous assumptions in a place I could find them easily in the future.
Someone in the U.K. commented to a post by Kevin and Kevin engaged him in an email debate. I responded with my own email:
From: Joe Huffman
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2007 7:39 AM
To: nhpud AT[NOSPAM] hotmail.com
Cc: gunrights AT[NOSPAM] comcast.net (Kevin Baker @ The Smallest Minority)
Subject: You comment at The Smallest Minority.You wrote:
It is unbelievable that there are people like you lot who can defend guns as ‘harmless fun’ or seriously state that ‘guns make you safer’. If you weren’t so dangerous the absurdity of it all would be hilarious.
I love how the topic quickly moves from your gun fantasies to your racial genocide fantasies in one swift paragraph.
I particularly like the idiocy of these comments.
“if you’re not a young black male living in an inner city, your likelihood of dying by homicide (regardless of weapon) is about equal to that of someone living in Europe.”
“if you remove the crimes committed by blacks and latinos, the U.S. violent crime rate is almost identical to that of Canada.”
Like duh!! What a surprise eh? So if I remove the most deprived higher crime areas and people from the US figures and then compare it with the average in Europe (that includes all their deprived higher crime areas and population) it is ‘roughly similar. Is there no amount of distortion of statistics you lot will go to to justify your idiocy? Let alone your thinly disguised prejudice against black people. Deny black people opportunities so the majority end up in poverty stricken neighbourhoods with little or no prospects and then when they act all dysfunctional, use this to justify your superiority and racial fantasies. I despair for humanity when there are dumb f***s like you walking the planet.
Boy am I glad I don’t live next door to you guys.
PS Gun deaths have dropped from 368 a year to 163 since we banned handguns in the UK. You might want to follow our example and save 15,000 US lives a year by halving your gun deaths as well.
I have Just One Question for you:
Can you demonstrate one time or place, throughout all history, where the average person was made safer by restricting access to handheld weapons?
Basically your error is due to three unstated assumption:
I look forward to your answer to my question.
-joe-
If he’s a typical, garden variety Leftist, he will not respond, except to repeat himself, or degrade further into personal attacks.
If he’s one of the rare leftists who are leftist out of default (everyone around them is a leftist, so its only natural– I call them “dupes”, having been one myself) and yet still has retained some ability to think for himself, he will do some fact checking and reply with a more reasoned and less vitriolic answer.
He is at a huge disadvantage, however, due to the fact that he “knows” you are an idiot and that he is much smarter, more insightful, and holds the moral high ground. Getting a person to let go of what he knows to be “ultimate and undeniable truth” is the most difficult thing in the world. When it happens though, the former dupe, after his epiphany, will begin to change his entire world view and acquire more self respect, and respect for other people.
What lies outside the scope of this limited exchange is the question of whether the individual has any rights of his own (and what those might be if he hasn’t the right to preserve his very life in the face of aggression) or is merely a ward of the state. Since the Revolution in the late 1700s, the European, and by extension the British, mind has never been able to fully comprehend the American Principles of Liberty verses the failures of socialist theory (a good many Americans, regrettably, share the same limitation). But that is another subject and maybe it would best be a matter for another discussion.