Gun Control Discussion 2

[IamMe90]

12 hours ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

No you couldn't. Because the only clear subordinate clause is "being necessary to the security of a free state." "A well regulated Militia" and "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" are both independent clauses. Therefore, the subordinate conjunction "because" either connects the subordinate clause to the first independent clause or the second. Not both at the same time. All I did when I altered the sentence is add a conjunction (not a subordinate one) "and." Clearly in my example, the subordinate clause is modifying one of the independent clauses. I haven't changed it much at all. You on the other hand have changed an independent clause into a dependent one, thereby altering its meaning. It's not "silly" if you appreciate the nuances of grammar.

"A well regulated Militia" is not an independent clause: it doesn't contain a predicate. Not sure you're qualified to lecture about the "nuances" of grammar if you don't know what constitutes an independent clause. 

[King Ned Stark]

The founding fathers made it fairly clear their intent with the second amendment through numerous letters they wrote and speeches they gave.

I understand why the left wants to argue the wording and intentions of the second amendment, but it’s subversive.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I'm not sure which thread I'm most enjoying them spamming up, this horseshit or the NBA one where they are adamant that LeBron is shite. 

What next, an impassioned defence of Weinstein? 

Word.

Also, as a culture, have we reached the point where enough time has passed and we’ve stopped caring about the worst mass shooting in our country’s history so we don’t actually have to do anything about it? Cause it’s starting to feel like that to me.

[IamMe90]

53 minutes ago, King Ned Stark said:

The founding fathers made it fairly clear their intent with the second amendment through numerous letters they wrote and speeches they gave.

I understand why the left wants to argue the wording and intentions of the second amendment, but it’s subversive.

 

Note that I didn't bring this argument up, Mother Cocanuts did. I'm saying (and explicitly did say) that it's a bad argument to make on either side. 

[Mother Cocanuts]

3 hours ago, IamMe90 said:

"A well regulated Militia" is not an independent clause: it doesn't contain a predicate. Not sure you're qualified to lecture about the "nuances" of grammar if you don't know what constitutes an independent clause. 

It doesn't contain a predicate because it's an elliptical clause. That means that the predicate can be left out. Issues of my being "qualified" to lecture on the nuances of grammar is subjective, but I can tell you that not only have I studied the subject extensively, but also I've aced every grammar class I've ever taken. So believe me, if you want to continue along the lines of grammatical debate, I'm more than willing to go down that route.

1 hour ago, IamMe90 said:

Note that I didn't bring this argument up, Mother Cocanuts did. I'm saying (and explicitly did say) that it's a bad argument to make on either side. 

And my bringing this argument up was a response to the argument that the NRA changed the meaning of the second amendment. It's not a bad argument to make on either side because one side is right: the NRA. The statement, grammatically, does not set as a condition inclusion in a well-regulated Militia. It's clearly an ablative absolute construction; therefore, the argument that the second amendment doesn't refer to private use is invalid.

 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

3 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

And my bringing this argument up was a response to the argument that the NRA changed the meaning of the second amendment. It's not a bad argument to make on either side, because one side is right: the NRA.

God forbid you should admit you were wrong about the Bill of Rights being immutable though, right?

[Darth Richard II]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Word.

Also, as a culture, have we reached the point where enough time has passed and we’ve stopped caring about the worst mass shooting in our country’s history so we don’t actually have to do anything about it? Cause it’s starting to feel like that to me.

I think we passed that point sometime last week, yes.

[Mother Cocanuts]

17 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

God forbid you should admit you were wrong about the Bill of Rights being immutable though, right?

There's nothing wrong with being wrong. If I'm wrong, then I'm wrong. I can't help that. But you, lamMe90, dmc515, and Rippounet have not shown how the Bill of Rights have ever been changed. dmc515 refuses to explain himself; you and Rippounet have attempted to point out this obviousness that's clearly not obvious; and lamMe90 seeks to invalidate the grammar argument. You have two choices: put more rigor into your arguments and make me eat rancid crow or disengage/ignore me. I'm fine with my arguments being proven wrong (I can learn from that); however, I'm not fine with giving credit to weak arguments. That would be intellectually regressive.

[IamMe90]

18 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

It doesn't contain a predicate because it's an elliptical clause. That means that the predicate can be left out. 

One should be able to discern the omitted predicate in an elliptical clause from the context of a sentence with ease. I don't see how it's obvious at all what the "missing" predicate in this supposed elliptical clause is, and if it were, there wouldn't be this debate. 

[Mother Cocanuts]

15 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

One should be able to discern the omitted predicate in an elliptical clause from the context of a sentence with ease. I don't see how it's obvious at all what the "missing" predicate in this supposed elliptical clause is, and if it were, there wouldn't be this debate. 

It is obvious once you determine its construction. The predicate involves some conjugation of the verb "to be." (And you can tell because of the subordinate clause that follows it.) What there isn't lamMe90 is a missing subordinate conjunction subordinating "A well regulated Militia" to "the right of the people to keep and bears shall not be infringed." Try this exercise, and rearrange the clauses:

"Being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."

"Being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia."

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia.

"The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State."

Where in any of these rearrangement is it shown that "A well regulated Militia" is a dependent clause? (And it MUST BE dependent in order to set a condition.)

[Hereward]

Pathetic rejoinder - @ those reacting to Mother C.

But what is not being addressed is the actual problem. Forget the constitution for a moment. Constitutions can be changed; incredibly difficult to do, I admit, but they can be changed.  Now, a well-regulated militia is no longer required for the purpose originally envisaged now that a standing army, which the framers were frightened of, a) exists and b  ) is more powerful than any other military force on the planet. So, the purely pragmatic argument is whether there is a societal benefit to bearing arms that outweighs the massive human and social cost.

The US murder rate is 40 times greater than in the UK. The argument that Mother C has deployed is that the murder rate has not declined after a gun ban in the UK. Well, possibly true. However, what has declined is mass shootings, and with a murder rate so low, and mass shootings being a once in a decade event, it's difficult to extrapolate. An incredibly rare event, owing to massively stringent gun laws, became even rarer.  What's not to like? Now, if there had been a spike in people dying at the hands of gun-wielding criminals of the non-mass shooter type, you might have a point.  What can be said is that the US murder rate is not in any way comparable with other advanced societies. It's comparable with gangster states like Honduras, El Salvador and Russia. Is that what you want to be for a notional right that has never been exercised?

[IamMe90]

26 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

It is obvious once you determine its construction. The predicate involves some conjugation of the verb "to be." (And you can tell because of the subordinate clause that follows it.)

But it isn't obvious, even the way you've phrased it belies that. In every example of an elliptical clause I could find (and I made sure to read several examples of all the different types), the predicate is immediately and fully identifiable. For instance: 

"John can play the guitar, and Mary the violin."

The predicate is "can play." That's obvious. You haven't even told me what the predicate is, other than that it is "some conjugation of the verb 'to be.'" Which, and why? What are the contextual clues that led you to that conclusion?

30 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

What there isn't lamMe90 is a missing subordinate conjunction subordinating "A well regulated Militia" to "the right of the people to keep and bears shall not be infringed."

I said it was not an independent clause, but I did not say it was a dependent clause. It is a sentence fragment. The way it is constructed, it doesn't make sense to include the phrase. 

[Week]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/gun-waiting-periods-prevent-hundreds-of-murders-according-to-45-year-study/

Quote

A few days to cool off and think things through may be enough to prevent hundreds of homicides each year, according to a new study in PNAS.

A study tracking handgun laws on wait periods over a 45-year period found that a delay in obtaining a firearm after purchase reduced gun homicides by 17 percent. That breaks down to about 36 homicides per year for the average state. As of 2014, such laws in 16 states and the District of Columbia prevented about 750 gun homicides per year. If all 50 states required a wait, around 910 more lives could be spared, the authors report.

“Waiting periods would therefore reduce gun violence without imposing any restrictions on who can own a gun,” according to the authors, led by Deepak Malhotra, a negotiation and conflict-resolution expert at Harvard Business School.

About 33,000 people die in America from gun violence each year, mostly from suicides. The researchers found waiting periods reduce suicides as well, but the association wasn’t as strong and varied in different analyses from a 6 to 11 percent reduction. That would work out to a range of about 17 to 35 fewer suicides each year for an average state.

There are common sense solutions that could be enacted that would not run afoul of 2A. 

Quote

“As health care professionals, we don’t throw up our hands in defeat because a disease seems to be incurable. We work to incrementally and continuously reduce its burden. That’s our job.”

That's our job as humans. As citizens in a country that we want to have pride in.

[Mother Cocanuts]

2 minutes ago, Hereward said:

Pathetic rejoinder.

 

2 minutes ago, Hereward said:

But what is not being addressed is the actual problem. Forget the constitution for a moment. Constitutions can be changed; incredibly difficult to do, I admit, but they can be changed.  Now, a well-regulated militia is no longer required for the purpose originally envisaged now that a standing army, which the framers were frightened of, a) exists and b  ) is more powerful than any other military force on the planet. So, the purely pragmatic argument is whether there is a societal benefit to bearing arms that outweighs the massive human and social cost.

The US murder rate is 40 times greater than in the UK. The argument that Mother C has deployed is that the murder rate has not declined after a gun ban in the UK. Well, possibly true. However, what has declined is mass shootings, and with a murder rate so low, and mass shootings being a once in a decade event, it's difficult to extrapolate. An incredibly rare event, owing to massively stringent gun laws, became even rarer.  What's not to like? Now, if there had been a spike in people dying at the hands of gun-wielding criminals of the non-mass shooter type, you might have a point.  What can be said is that the US murder rate is not in any way comparable with other advanced societies. It's comparable with gangster states like Honduras, El Salvador and Russia. Is that what you want to be for a notional right that has never been exercised?

First, a well-regulated militia was never required. This is merely a non-sequitur of those who don't grasp the semantics of the statement. Second, despite the U.K.'s gun ban in 1996, violent crimes increased in 1997 and 1999. I think that sometime around 2007 to 2009, the U.K was known as the "Violence Capital of the World." Third, the massive human and social cost of the mass shootings is not the liability of the law-abiding gun owners who have not committed violent offenses. It's the liability of those lunatics who commit these murders. And last, you're flirting with a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Has there been any evidence that mass-shootings have stopped because of the stringent laws, or are you just assuming that because the lack of mass shootings came after the stringent laws, the laws must be its cause?

[Kalbear]

10 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

First, a well-regulated militia was never required.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State"

10 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Second, despite the U.K.'s gun ban in 1996, violent crimes increased in 1997 and 1999.

This is like me saying despite seat belt mandatory requirements in the 1950s airplane accidents went up. No one has said, once, that violent crimes as a whole would be reduced by gun bans.

10 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

I think that sometime around 2007 to 2009, the U.K was known as the "Violence Capital of the World."

It was known as the violence capital of Europe. Which is funny, as in the article itself it indicates that it isn't as high as Sweden. And again, this would be an issue if we were saying that we want to reduce violent crime as a whole. 

10 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Third, the massive human and social cost of the mass shootings is not the liability of the law-abiding gun owners who have not committed violent offenses. It's the liability of those lunatics who commit these murders.

It's also the liability of the rules and laws of society that allow them, the companies that promote them, etc. This is not anything new. Car companies are held liable for bad designs, tobacco companies are held liable for attempting to addict their customers. 

10 minutes ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

And last, you're flirting with a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Has there been any evidence that mass-shootings have stopped because of the stringent laws, or are you just assuming that because the lack of mass shootings came after the stringent laws, the laws must be its cause?

This is true, but largely impotent as a gun nut argument. There has been ample evidence that gun bans result in fewer mass shootings. There is literally no actual evidence - correlative or otherwise - that indicates that more lax gun laws results in fewer mass shootings.

[Hereward]

1 minute ago, Mother Cocanuts said:

Second, despite the U.K.'s gun ban in 1996, violent crimes increased in 1997 and 1999. I think that sometime around 2007 to 2009, the U.K was known as the "Violence Capital of the World." Third, the massive human and social cost of the mass shootings is not the liability of the law-abiding gun owners who have not committed violent offenses. It's the liability of those lunatics who commit these murders. And last, you're flirting with a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. Has there been any evidence that mass-shootings have stopped because of the stringent laws, or are you just assuming that because the lack of mass shootings came after the stringent laws, the laws must be its cause?

It's utterly ridiculous to say that the UK was the violence capital of the world in 2007 to 2009 when the total number of murders was 13 per million. The US rate was 49.

It's also irrelevant to say that violent offences increased after the gun ban without noting that firearm deaths massively declined. Yes, more people punched people, or even stabbed people, in arguments and disputes, because they didn't have a firearm. Fewer people actually died and there were no mass shootings.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Hereward said:

It's also irrelevant to say that violent offences increased after the gun ban without noting that firearm deaths massively declined. Yes, more people punched people, or even stabbed people, in arguments and disputes, because they didn't have a firearm. Fewer people actually died and there were no mass shootings.

Yeah, this line of argument seems entirely counterproductive. If you're wanting to point out that violent crime isn't reduced by gun bans, sure - but this points out that violence as a whole is a baseline in a given culture, but shooting people to death because of that violence is not. 

In fact, a gun ban advocate might argue that one reason to ban guns is because humans get violent. And the difference between a serious assault and a homicide is often, in fact, a gun. Similarly, the difference between suicidal ideation and suicidal success is, in fact, a gun. 

[Guy Kilmore]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, this line of argument seems entirely counterproductive. If you're wanting to point out that violent crime isn't reduced by gun bans, sure - but this points out that violence as a whole is a baseline in a given culture, but shooting people to death because of that violence is not. 

In fact, a gun ban advocate might argue that one reason to ban guns is because humans get violent. And the difference between a serious assault and a homicide is often, in fact, a gun. Similarly, the difference between suicidal ideation and suicidal success is, in fact, a gun. 

I always scratch my head when I see the whole violent crime isn't reduced argument brought up.  That would be like saying we are having a ton of fights in the school yard, so let's give everyone knives.

[Mother Cocanuts]

12 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

But it isn't obvious, even the way you've phrased it belies that. In every example of an elliptical clause I could find (and I made sure to read several examples of all the different types), the predicate is immediately and fully identifiable. For instance: 

"John can play the guitar, and Mary the violin."

The predicate is "can play." That's obvious. You haven't even told me what the predicate is, other than that it is "some conjugation of the verb 'to be.'" Which, and why? What are the contextual clues that led you to that conclusion?

It's obvious because the assumption is that it merely exists because it does exist. So if I write "Peaches." That's not a fragment. It's elliptical. In the absence of any other action, I assume it is. So the extension of the statement would be, "They are peaches." It's both a complete sentence and independent clause. When we see "A well regulated Militia," the obvious predicate is "It is." (Now I personally think that the predicate is "There shall be" but it doesn't really matter.)

22 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

I said it was not an independent clause, but I did not say it was a dependent clause. It is a sentence fragment. The way it is constructed, it doesn't make sense to include the phrase. 

Let's assume you're correct, and for argument's sake, "A well regulated militia" is a fragment; then, the NRA's point that the second amendment doesn't exclude private use is valid. If its inclusion makes no sense as either an independent or a dependent clause, then it cannot serve as a condition to the right to bear arms. Therefore, the argument that the right to keep and bear arms is exclusive to "well-regulated Militias" is invalid, right?

[Darth Richard II]

14 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

I'm not sure which thread I'm most enjoying them spamming up, this horseshit or the NBA one where they are adamant that LeBron is shite. 

What next, an impassioned defence of Weinstein? 

The Weinstein stuff is so fucking disgusting that I've actually come to close to almost actually vomiting.