would that not be considered time travel? — unintelligiblekai

I don't think that would be considered time travel, you would still be moving forward through time while you change the environment. Theoretically, if you also knew the exact placement of every particle in the past you could recreate a past situation, but recreation would not be traveling back and viewing it in time it actually happened. The only way to see into the past would be to somehow transfer yourself to a far distant place with a telescope to view earth as it was in the past. Also you can already travel forward in time by going very fast.

And are you saying that because the bad guy will find some way to be bad, that he should have a gun anyway? — tim wood

No thats not what i'm saying at all, what i'm saying is that it is an environment and mental health issue, if a person who will do a mass shooting doesn't have a gun, that mass shooting will turn into a mass bombing, or fire, etc. So it would be smarter to try and solve the mental health and environment issue, rather than the gun issue.

he other the assumption that people or a person, having a gun constitutes the ability to defend. — tim wood

Doesn't it though? If you and me get robbed, and I have a gun and you don't, who is in a better position to defend themselves? If someone is going to break into a house, and they know one owns a gun and the other doesn't, what house do you think they will try and break into? Better weapons means that I can defend myself better if need be. Just like a ufc fighter can defend themself better than someone who doesn't train because there ability to use there body as a weapon is better.

I think that it should be as hard as possible to get guns. I think there should be mandatory psych evaluations for the buyer and the immediate family. I don't think that taking the peoples guns will do anything but make the government more powerful and make it easier for people to commit crime. After all people smuggle millions of drugs into this country everyday so I don't see how it will be different with guns. Also I don't feel that mass shootings it is a mainly a gun issue, if you have someone who wants to create panic it will switch from guns to something else. So it is a better way to combat mass shootings by understanding the signs and stopping it before it happens rather than taking peoples ability to defend themselves.

But wouldn't that entail that you don't think there are moral facts, since you think that no one has found any? — Bob Ross

Not at all. We discover things everyday that we didn't know the day before, i'm sure there is a ton of facts that we don't know of at the moment that we can discover.

but I don't believe there is a moral fact in this sense that I'm uncertain what such a fact would be or mean. — Moliere

Perhaps "fact" is the wrong word then. Maybe a better word would be "truth", Where there is a best or correct moral ideal, that may not have a burden of proof as high as "fact". Because while "fact" and "truth" may have different levels of burden of proof, they come to the same conclusion, being that there is a correct moral theory.

f morality is real why is the disagreement so disparate in relation to, say, mathematics? — Moliere

I would say that the reason why there is so much disparity is because we don't have a language like mathematics to describe these situations. Mathematics is a language where its components always mean the same thing. 2 will always mean 2 no matter what mathematician you talk too, but you talk to two philosophers in your own department they may define things vastly different. So if we could create a language with concrete definitions we could perhaps come up with these truths. Obviously that begs the question of "what should be the concrete definitions be?" and "how do we find them?", but I feel that those questions also have truths to be found.

would say that in order for mathematics to have facts, it must exist mind-independently and not contingent on subjects. — Bob Ross

I would say that moral facts do exist in our psychology. Every culture and person has some idea of what morality should be. Which to me doesn't say that morals are inherently subjective, but that all people want to know what it is to be moral. I would say that no one has found these facts, but they do want to find them. Which shows that our psychology wants to figure out what is moral.

What it doesn't do is assert why we ought to believe in moral facts, though. — Moliere

To be honest at the moment I do not have a concrete argument as to why we should believe in moral facts, which is why I am only arguing that the arguments for moral nihilism doesn't necessarily rule them out. So, the only argument I can posit for is that we should continue to try and uncover them. That argument being that since the arguments for moral nihilism don't necessarily mean that moral facts can't be real.

I swear it's related, even though it sounds like it's out of nowhere: do you believe that astrology is factual? — Moliere

I don't believe in astrology lol, But I would differentiate claims like astrology and something factual by saying that things like astrology don't have any repeatable theories. A factual moral theory would have repeatable outcomes. For example, you would be able to know what is moral and immoral, and how to navigate moral situations. Astrology cannot make repeatable theories. For example, everyone who is a libra will not be extroverted, or possibly most of them will not be extroverted. Therefore, things like astrology cannot be facts.

"What have I missed?"
- Tom Storm

I think you have missed that to conclude that things can't be a fact without a tangible grounding then plenty of things that we consider facts have to be subjective, also that the field of metaphysics would be useless to talk about because all of its findings would be considered subjective. Also you did not answer the question about mathematics. If math was discovered instead of invented what, grounds numbers and mathematics? Because while math has a lot of ground-able applications, there are plenty of mathematical facts that are entirely abstract.

"many people think we discovered math and didn't invent it"
- Tom Storm

I agree that it is a debate that we don't know whether we invented math or discovered it, but what is the concrete realm where numbers lie? I guess you could say that because math can be used to predict so many systems in the concrete world, but what about facts that are purely mathematical?

"Moral nihilism says that there are no moral truth"
-Tom Storm

I'm sorry I should have been more precise, I mean why do the arguments for moral nihilism conclude that there are no moral truths? Because the best arguments for moral nihilism don't seem to point to no moral truths.