Trying to get ignored again

James Kelly is at it again with this:

Another tragedy? Not to worry.
An absolutely heartbreaking story on CNN about a three-year-old girl who accidentally shot her two-year-old brother. In the past, I would have instantly jumped to naive and inappropriate conclusions about this event, viewing it as a fairly clear-cut example of a totally avoidable death that could not possibly have occurred without the lax gun laws in America. However, thanks to my recent long-overdue education on these matters, I now realise that having lots and lots of deadly weapons around doesn’t cost lives, it saves them. If you feel that this story appears to contradict that statistically proven fact, you need to bear in mind the following factors –
1) Guns are mere tools, and are no more dangerous than any other inanimate object. If the girl had not accidentally killed her brother with a gun, she would simply have done so with any other tool that happened to be to hand.
2) Legal gun owners have no problem keeping their weapons safe and secure, and out of the hands of children or other vulnerable or dangerous people. This is something that ignorant European liberals simply do not understand. Therefore, this tragic incident is either a figment of your imagination or not statistically significant.
3) You are either far too stupid, or far too stubborn, to understand the arguments. There is overwhelming statistical evidence to prove this is the case. It’s too complex to go into in detail here, but suffice to say it has something to do with the Tottenham Outrage of 1909, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and some chap you’ve never heard of called Colin Greenwood.
Enlightenment is a wonderful thing.

 

I responded with a comment that apparently is being blocked. When I pressed the “Post Comment” button I received a message of “Your request could not be processed. Please try again.” I tried changing some of the HTML but it still wouldn’t post.

Oh well, I’ll post it here where it will get more views anyway:

If one wants to ignore the specific enumerated right guaranteed by our constitution for the moment and look merely at the cost/benefit ratio I’m willing to do that.
James, you need to look at the actual numbers of lives saved versus lives lost because of the “mass legal gun ownership”. You do a fine job of expressing your opinion but not backing them up with facts. Which is the entire point of Just One Question. Which you still have not answered. You have come up with plausible hypotheses as to why it might be that firearms restrictions in the U.K. have not improved public safety but you have no numbers which show that it has improved public safety.
Until you can give us numbers you have nothing but opinions. And until you have numbers to back them up you are no different than someone ranting about how terrible it is that Jews, blacks, or homosexuals are “spoiling the neighborhood”.

I’m probably just going to get ignored by him again. But as Kevin says, it’s not because I hope to convince him. It’s because it might convince someone else.

Update: I apparently successfully added the following comment to his moderation queue:

I find it very telling that you are proud of your “gun death” rate but make no mention of your murder or violent crime rate.

Again, you avoid answering Just One Question.

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7 thoughts on “Trying to get ignored again

  1. Here’s my comment

    “Let’s see:

    You have yobs wandering about destroying property and attacking your fellow citizens. And if someone should try to defend themselves, they get charged and jailed for their presumption.

    You have enclaves of hostile Muslims who have created no-go zones in your towns and cities.

    You’ve had the English interfering in your internal affairs for better than nine centuries, and running the place for just over three. You know, it took us less than a decade to run the poxy Brits out of here, so I’m not really sure what you are waiting for.

    You’ve got Gordon Brown, who has been described as the worst PM ever, openly worrying about a revolution. (BTW, if anyone is serious about that, I can donate a No4 Mk2 Rifle with bayonet and 750 rounds of .303 loaded into Aussie MkI bandoliers).

    And let’s not forget the gift that keeps on giving: the EU.

    And you take the time to look down your oh-so-superior nose at our gun situation. I guess it’s a nice break from your otherwise wall to wall Eurovision coverage.

    I’m not suggesting your point of view is without merit, but you really ought to clean up your own house before casting aspersions on someone else’s.

  2. I also got the “your request could not be processed” thing. The capcha timed out. I hit the Post button again, got a new one, and it’s now in Moderation Limbo, FYI.

  3. Here’s what I wrote:

    Okay, James, you want one of us to admit it? I admit it. The price we Americans pay in the form of an average of 853 fatal and 16,647 injurious firearm accidents each year is worth the right to effective self-defense with a firearm, which, according to the U.S. Government, occurs 108,000 in each one of these average years. The number rises to between 770,000 and 1.6 million times each year if you trust Gallup.

    Similarly, it is regrettable that each year, an average of 39,651 Americans each year die the 4.4 million more are injured in motor vehicle accidents. That is the price we pay in exchange for ease of transportation (unless otherwise stated, all numbers from the CDC website).

    I fail to see how these things are so very different. Guns and cars are both dangerous machines that can kill if misused.

    But I imagine your rejoinder would be that guns, unlike cars, kill if used properly. Well, of course. That’s the whole point. But what’s so wrong with that?

    I must admit that I am perplexed at your hesitancy to classify guns as inanimate. Of course they were created with a mind toward killing efficiently! That’s the whole point, just as cakes were designed to give the body a massive, unhealthy overdose of sugar. Knives were designed with penetrative stabbing and cutting in mind. Rat poison was designed to snuff out animal life. Gasoline is refined so that it can be detonated violently. Etc etc etc.

    But I also believe that diabetes and obesity are no reasons to restrict cake, and cobblestones’ usefulness in being hurled through windows is no reason to regulate them, nor is the possibility of offense to agnostics such as myself reason to clamp down on the publication of church newsletters.

    Guns, cars, cakes, purple shirts, cobblestones, fire extinguishers, knives, pencils—these things are all just tools. Some are more dangerous than others to be sure, and some, unlike others, are designed for violence. But to deny access to tools of violence is to deny that violence itself is ever necessary.

    This is an easy assertion to make sitting in the comfort of your home typing away at your computer.

    But imagine you are a woman whose phone lines have been cut and a man who has rape on his mind is smashing his way through your basement door. You may be forced to abandon your thesis in quite a hurry.

    Forget guns, even if somehow they were all totally eliminated, there would still be rapists and murderers. Such as the man in this story, for example, who didn’t even have a gun. But it was an armed woman who stopped him. Had she been unarmed, think of what would have happened to her. No, really, think about it. Her power is down, her lights are out, and her door is being battered down. She is unarmed. What is your solution for her predicament?

  4. His solution would be the same as the solution suggested by other anti-self-defense advocates. Lie down and enjoy the ride and/or die. Sorry we couldn’t do anything to help (and wouldn’t let you do anything to help yourself either).

    What’s for dinner tonight, dear?

  5. To be fair, I get the same error every time I attempt to leave a comment at any weblog hosted by Blogger and using that newfangled javascripty commenting engine. Something about the captcha just breaks, and I have found that if I hit the “submit” button twice (and accurately fill out the captcha both times), the comment still goes through – at least for me.

    That said, James seems to be “moderating” my comments now and not allowing them to see the light of day any more, without cause or reason, and certainly without expressing either. Unfortunately, this guy believes what he believes is right, and no amounts of facts, statistics, or reality will change that… The least we can do is put up our side for the undecideds, though with practicioners of “reasoned discourse” like James, here, putting it up at our own sites is definitely the best course of action.

  6. I’m sorry guys but you will never convince someone like James with the application of mere facts.

    He is sitting in his socialist utopia with his fingers in his ears and because he is moderating comments you will never give your side to his readers. Anyone stupid enough to follow his drivel won’t be very interested in facts either.

    Keep posting on your own blog though and use his full name and blog title. The hits you guys get should bring you higher in Google and no one will read him before reading you.

    Oh and Peter, Thanks for the offer. If I could think of a way of doing it safely I’d take you up with that. Unfortunatly, over here the mood is ugly but we are still a long way away from charging the barricades. There will be riots on the streets first then we shall charge the barricades. I would say keep it handy because I wonder if you guys will need it before we do. I have several very sharp sporks for when the time comes.

  7. Mr. Kelly is so correct!

    Motor vehicles are the leading cause of accidental child deaths in the US. Surely registering cars and licensing drivers, and restricting access to driving will…wait, we already do that.

    OK, then poisoning and falls. Many many more of these than accidental firearm discharges
    http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/12/10/car-crashes-falls-top-list-of-accidental-injuries.html

    Surely we can regulate things so that no childhood ever has to confront a potentially harmful Z axis till adulthood. And get rid of all poisons altogether. Which is bad news for the boxed breakfast cereal industry.

    Meantime, accidental gun deaths among children are down 72 percent:
    http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=5234

    Of course it always helps the anti-gun people that “children” in these these studies is defined as up to 24 years old.

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