isn't a statement of fact. It's speculation about an extremely unlikely event. — Bitter Crank

Your describing it as "unlikely" is equally mere speculation. By the way, I never prefaced the pragmatic reasons I gave by saying that they were indubitable facts, since we're talking about possible future events.

Because our societies are not fundamentally different. — Bitter Crank

I never responded to Michael's post about there being something very wrong with American society, so your claim here is not in reaction to anything I said. As for the claim itself, I don't know what you've packed into the word "fundamentally," so I can't say whether I agree with it or not.

I didn't yesterday, but I had the thought of responding with a tu quoque to Michael's post. That is, if there's something wrong with American society on account of there being mass shootings, then there must likewise be something wrong with British society on account of the mass killings it has experienced recently.

What you need to stop embracing and appropriating are precisely all of these philosophies and religions you keep citing with reckless abandon. You are not a Platonist. You are not a Muslim or a Sufi. You are not a Christian. You are not a Jew or Kabbalist. You are not a Hindu. You are not a Buddhist.

If you have discovered the truth, and that truth is not exclusive to any one particular religion, congratulations. My advice would be to stick to better articulating it, instead of employing in a superficial manner various mystics, religious founders, and philosophers as a crutch to lend credibility to your views, whatever they are.

I take it though that we're in agreement guns are generally not used accurately even within a distance of 6 feet? — Benkei

Handguns are not, certainly.

Even the police regularly hits innocent bystanders as a result (google it) — Benkei

The key word here is "regularly." They obviously do hit bystanders occasionally, but to elevate that adverb to "regularly" would require citing some statistics.

we're talking about handguns mostly, which I imagine are the most accurate after rifles — Benkei

No, it's precisely the opposite.

So that said, why not limit gun ownership to handguns and rifles? — Benkei

It already is, lol.

I can see how a handgun can be a deterrent in a dark alley even if you can't aim properly if your life depended on it. — Benkei

Indeed. Often, one doesn't need to fire a single round, as the mere threat of using a gun is enough to prevent crime. This is what the CDC included in its estimates about cases of defensive gun use, for example, which, as I noted, runs into the hundreds of thousands each year.

The most likely outcome of a police officer firing their gun is that they'll miss. — Benkei

Except that I was responding to CTW's claim that such misses will involve accidentally killing innocent bystanders. I don't know what kind of scenarios he's imagining take place, but I doubt most people, whether private citizens or policemen, would try to take down a perp who's fleeing in the midst of a crowd or some such situation.

Good thing he did, for the pope clearly had a confused notion of creation ex nihilo and the big bang.

I don't doubt that, as I conceded earlier that getting people to buy more guns certainly seems to be part of the NRA's agenda. I'm only trying to point out that that's not all they do. By the way, I appreciate the tact and civility with which you have inserted yourself into this debate.

You appear stranger with each new post. If you "with all sincerity" can recite the shahada, then you are in fact a Muslim. Go find a mosque.

No.

One last time: show me these "two contradictions and one diversion."

Lol. Put up or shut up. Point them out to me or it is you who refuses to have a discussion.

He suggests giving up the only thing you have; your own autonomy — charleton

No, he doesn't. He wants you to join the Catholic Church. Unlike certain other religions, you are free to leave the Catholic Church if you want to.

So you are saying you get into heaven by reducing your skepticism about god to a weak willed acceptance? — charleton

What I said was clear: the first step is being open to conversion. If you aren't, then what he says doesn't apply to you.

Personally I’m a universalist and I think everyone’s going to heaven. — MysticMonist

So why haven't you undertaken a murder spree yet?

What would you have to do to get into heaven, according to Pascal? — charleton

The first step would be not to axiomatically reject the possibility that God exists or that a particular religion houses the truth. He addresses his Pensees to those open to conversion and who want to believe.

Based on the ratio of bullets fired in most gun violence incidents and bullets actually hitting someone — Benkei

Most gun violence incidents do not involve lawful gun owners, such as members of the NRA, so this has no bearing on my assertion.

Maybe the point is labels don’t mean much. — MysticMonist

Oh but they do. You ought not to call yourself a Christian or attend a Christian church if you reject the truth claims of Christianity. If you're open to conversion and merely curious, then obviously it would be fine to attend church, but that still doesn't make you a Christian.

Thorongil is right that Perennialism basically says all religions are wrong and are mistaken about Reality. I don’t think this is accurate. — MysticMonist

I didn't say that. I defined perennialism as the view that there is absolute truth and that religions merely approximate it in various ways and degrees, but that no one religion can lay claim to this absolute truth. This is in contrast to religious inclusivism and exclusivism. The inclusivist says of his own religious tradition that it contains the absolute truth, but that other religions still contain confused approximations of it. The exclusivist says of his religion that it alone contains absolute truth and that other religions do not contain any truth.

I don’t think God cares about theological accuracy. — MysticMonist

You've given us no reason to think this.

This idea that there is good in most religions helps answer why I’ve met very holy and wise people in conflicting faiths and why I’ve personally found each of them meaningful. — MysticMonist

The inclusivist can say the same thing, so this doesn't mean your brand of perennialism is true.

There’s nothing wrong in mixing them to make my own blend, since there is no required formula for avoiding damnation. — MysticMonist

On the contrary, there is something wrong in mixing them if it is incorrect to do so.

I'm not exactly guessing, because he was talking about the NRA, and the NRA offers and encourages training. And I think this is true of most vocal second amendment proponents. I dare you to find one who didn't know how to properly handle a gun safely or fire it with accuracy.

I'm in favor of making training a requirement to own a gun. But I might add to your previous comment the observation that most active duty police officers carry handguns. They've had training to use them, of course, but I don't think it would be very much different from what training one is able to procure as a private citizen.

If one is cornered in the street at night by a would-be thief or rapist or drug dealer, for example, which is statistically more likely than confronting some mass shooter who's meticulously planned his attack, there's no time to call the police, who will merely show up to the scene with the same handgun one could have used to ward off one's assailant and prevent the crime in the first place.

to what extent is it likely that those who scamper to get handguns and concealed-carry permits whenever there's been a shooting and the NRA and others are shouting that they're gonna take our Second Amendment rights away, spend significant time training in their use? — Ciceronianus the White

I think a majority of them. The people who fall into the category you describe above are the people who would likely be found at gun ranges practicing, at education events, gun safety events, etc.

I will quote myself:

My position is that perennialism, irrespective of whether it's true or not, is a fruitless position to hold. That is to say, it has no implications with respect to the life, and its quality, one leads. Before I explain further, let me try and say what I mean by perennialism. Consider the following two questions:

1) Is there any truth in religion?

2) Is any religion true?

The perennialist is someone who answers the first question in the affirmative and the second in the negative. Religions glimpse a single truth exclusive to none of them. They each merely point to this truth with words like God, Brahman, Nirvana, Tao, etc.

The religious inclusivist, by contrast, is someone who answers both questions in the affirmative. Let's take the Christian inclusivist as an example. For him, God, as revealed in the person of Christ, is the ultimate standard of truth, but dim, incomplete reflections and expressions of this truth can still be found in other religions. Thus, the perennialist subsumes God under a neutral truth X, whereas for the Christian inclusivist, God occupies the place of X (for there is nothing beyond God), just as Brahman does for the Hindu inclusivist, and so on.

Now, what follows from perennialism? I answer: nothing. If it turns out that all religions are merely groping in various ways toward some truth exclusive to none of them, then one has, ipso facto, ruled out belonging to any one of them. Apart from Unitarianism perhaps, every religious tradition proposes a set of exclusive truth claims that it is incumbent on followers to accept. But more than that, every religious tradition makes certain practical and behavioral demands of its follows. The Catholic must attend Mass, the Hindu, puja, the Jew, synagogue, and so on. The follower is obliged to pray, meditate, fast, give to charity, go on pilgrimage, etc.

The perennialist is estranged from all this. If he claims that he can still engage in certain of these practices without formally belonging to any particular religious tradition, that may be so, but a religion of one is, in reality, a religion of none. It isn't religion at all, but a form of eclecticism, for religion is an inherently communal and institutional enterprise. Such a person is seeking the benefits of religion without the costs, the costs being assent to a specific set of truth claims and obedience to religious authority, both of which are especially hard for modern man to accept. Simply put, it isn't certain that the benefits of religion can be had outside of it. Nor is it certain that they can be had within it either, but one may and ought to wonder whether they are better had within it than not. The religious hermit, for example, for all his solitude, still chooses to formally bind himself to a particular belief structure and religious institution, no matter how physically distant from the latter he may be.

In sum, perennialism leaves one in precisely the same set of circumstances one was in before its acceptance. For the individual who sees the possibility, merit, and even urgency of personal transformation, perennialism will be an empty consolation.

I get pissed off by:

1. Internet forums
2. Lists
3. Irony
4. Lists
5. Repetition

You have a right to own a gun the way Nazis had the right to commit genocide - after all, it was legal! — tim wood

An ironic example, given that Nazi Germany banned Jews specifically from owning guns.

The goal would be to replicate what we have here in the UK. The question is how best to go about it. — Sapientia

What, in addition to the things I listed, does UK law include that bars someone from legally owning a firearm?

It is comparatively true that in the U.S.A., just about any old schmuck can get their hands on a gun. That ought to change, and that ought to be the goal, irrespective of the finer details about the means. — Sapientia

What, in addition to the things I listed, do you think ought to bar someone from legally owning a firearm?

like this interpretation of the second amendment as a so-called natural right for just about any old schmuck to own a firearm — Sapientia

But said right doesn't and ought not apply to just any old schmuck. Convicted felons, the psychologically impaired, and, I would add, the untrained don't possess it. They have forfeited it.

I doubt the majority of those good guys have spent or will spend the time necessary to learn to shoot accurately — Ciceronianus the White

Why would you doubt this? Do you have statistics to prove it? Most gun advocates, like the members of the NRA, are very well trained and encourage proper training and gun safety.

Consider the following from a CNN article (hardly a pro-gun outlet):

The organization's overall revenue, which includes membership dues, program fees and other contributions, has boomed in recent years – rising to nearly $350 million in 2013. The majority of this money funds NRA initiatives like member newsletters, sporting events and gun safety education and training programs.

As for this:

The NRA leadership, with its ties to the gun manufacturers, sanctions the "good guy with a gun" argument for only one reason, I think--to sell more guns. — Ciceronianus the White

From the same article:

Some political funding comes from big corporations, many within the gun industry, which donate millions to the NRA. But companies are barred from donating to the NRA’s political action committee, which the agency uses to fill campaign coffers, run ads and send out mailers for and against candidates.

Contributions came from nearly 30,000 donors, with around 90% of donations made by people who gave less than $200 in a single year. According to the NRA, the average donation is around $35.

Only one person has donated even close to the maximum amount allowed by federal law, which is $5,000 per year: a computer programmer from Houston.

In addition to its PAC, the NRA also has a powerful lobbying arm, the nonprofit NRA Institute for Legislative Action, which lobbies for new laws and runs issue-based campaign ads of its own.

Unlike the PAC, it isn’t able to donate directly to candidates. But it is able to receive millions of dollars in donations from corporations. The group is not required to disclose the names of its contributors or the details of these contributions, though some major gunmakers like Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger & Company have announced large donations in the past (though the NRA says that the vast majority of money comes from individual donors just like the PAC).

I'm not saying that the NRA isn't in bed with gun manufacturers to sell more guns, but to pretend that that is its principle reason for being, one would have to ignore all the evidence that points to the organization principally being one that wants to protect the second amendment and provide gun information and training to its members.

The killer had a felony on his record and so owned firearms illegally. So how could this shooting have been prevented, except with greater vigilance in enforcing already existing gun control laws? The only solution would be to ban all guns, but this isn't really a solution for a variety of reasons, which I shall summarize once more:

The principled reason is that we have the second amendment, which is based on the natural right to self-defense. The pragmatic reasons are that 1) there are hundreds of millions of guns in circulation, such that it would be impossible to confiscate all of them, 2) those who would do the confiscating, the police and military, are themselves made up almost entirely by people who privately own guns and support the second amendment, such that they would never follow an order to confiscate guns, and 3) even if such an order were followed, armed citizens would defend themselves with their guns to prevent the latter from being confiscated, which would force the government to engage in mass murder of its citizens in order to confiscate their guns, such confiscation originally being meant to prevent... mass murder by guns. Ergo, guns will never be banned in the U.S., and those who believe that they can or ought to be are both ignorant and naive.

As for statistics, there are conservatively hundreds of thousands of instances a year of law abiding citizens preventing crimes and protecting themselves with the use of a gun, which dwarfs the number of gun deaths per year. So one can quite easily say that guns protect more than they harm.

No, that's an aspect of being allowed to trade with other countries, which the Eastern bloc wasn't allowed while it was communist. (and it wasn't because the communists didn't want to trade). — Agustino

When you allow for private industry to a greater extent than it previously existed, then that industry, and thereby the country, can make more money by trading the products of that industry internationally. A free market usually applies to a domestic economy and free trade to the international economy. They are complimentary.

That's more of the combined effects of economic isolation and brutal dictatorship, not just command economy. — Agustino

Well, all three tend to be inseparable.

Right, well you've only read in your history books, which are also propaganda to a certain extent, what happened. To expect that the enemies of communism would have said nice things about communism in their history books is of course silly. As I said, there were good parts and bad parts. I for one would not have thrived under communism, nor would I have liked it. But that's me. For some people it really was good. — Agustino

I never thought I'd see you making a seemingly relativistic point here. It was really good for atheists who hated Christianity, the family, the kulak, the Jew, and so on, for example. I won't deny any genuine goods provided by communism, but whatever they are, they could have been provided by another system, which means that communism still doesn't deserve any praise.

Little do you realize that there are and have been many people in Western history departments and among the general Western intelligentsia sympathetic to the Soviet Union. There are plenty of Marxist historians and economists in the West. Far too many, in my opinion. The crimes of communist regimes are largely ignored or forgotten, thanks in part to the whitewashing attempts by many of these aforementioned professors and activists. Instead, the focus is almost entirely on the Holocaust and the crimes of fascism. Both ideologies were exceedingly murderous, but communism has by far the larger body count, a fact many communists like to downplay in various ways. I hope that's not what you're doing when you insinuate that my criticism of communism is because I've somehow been brainwashed by Western history books.

Let me also say this: Putin is someone who has contributed to the economic isolation of Russia, is dictatorial, and is a craven political opportunist. I sense in the background of your remarks the positions of Putin, who pretends to be an Orthodox Christian, yet admires the Soviet Union and is a warmonger of the worst kind. So I hope also that you're not simply aping Putin here.

So what makes them neoliberals? They did not, so far as I'm aware, use that term to describe themselves.

He notes that the "neo" in neoliberal means "fake" not "new" as it is normally used, these days. — Bitter Crank

I said earlier that neoliberalism seems to be antithetical to liberalism, so I guess I'm not the only one who sees that.

No, that's not what happened. — Agustino

Okay, whatever you say, comrade Agustino. ;)

If I'm working for the government, charged to open a factory and get it going, I'll do my work the same way and even better than if I'm an entrepreneur on my own. Government support always helps one be bold. — Agustino

No you won't. This is proven time and time again. Command economies are inefficient and ridden with corruption. Compare Chile to Venezuela today, for example.

Nope, opening up trade with the world did that. — Agustino

Yes, that's an aspect of freer markets for these countries. :-|

Many were brought to the cities, given housing, education etc. — Agustino

They were forced to the cities because of collectivization, given shitty housing, and provided propaganda in lieu of education.

It's not the free market though, it's just industrialisation and mass production. — Agustino

Don't be silly. Economic markets largely free of government influence allowed for industrialization.

China and Russia — Agustino

I never said they had purely free markets. My point was that their expanding the free market since the 1980s has brought economic prosperity they were unable to achieve with a more robust state-controlled economy.

What exactly is your economic position? Distributism still? I'm down with that, but it's madness to deny the enormous positive impact of the free market. Consumerism is rather vulgar and shallow and globalism has aided in the destruction of native cultures. I grant all that, but in my mind these are more abuses of the free market than inevitable outcomes of it. Just read someone like Adam Smith, and you will realize that much of what you decry is decried by the very founder of the system you're trying to blame. That goes back to my point about strawmen. Supposedly, neoliberalism is the reintroduction of economic liberalism. But when I read your definition and the definition of people who use the term neoliberalism, it has very little to do with economic liberalism. In many ways, it's the antithesis of economic liberalism, which is just another reason why the term is basically meaningless.

No the market just puts an ad on TV showing how great having sex with that contraceptive is, how free you can be, etc. etc. It's like me telling you a lie. — Agustino

Right, but a person duped is not a person forced.

I didn't talk about live, I talked about the fact that economically it did make those countries catch up a lot. China is still communist, and it's been growing a lot faster than the US. — Agustino

China is ruled by a communist party, a party that for several decades has increasingly allowed for a free market, which in turn has brought a large portion of the country out of abject poverty. That's a big difference from massive famines brought about by Mao, when the government controlled the economy and there was no free market.

If I see someone rape a woman and don't intervene to stop it in any way, presuming that I can safely do it, then I am immoral. — Agustino

This assumes that everything the market allows is on a par with rape. That is patently absurd. Okay, so the market sells contraceptives. That leads to sexual promiscuity. But the market isn't putting a gun to the head of some would-be condom buyer and forcing him to buy the product and engage in immoral sexual relations.

Right, hurrah for communism for turning the Soviet Union and China from completely destroyed, bankrupt nations into world superpowers — Agustino

I don't get your point. Are you trying to say that the Soviet Union and China were great places to live before the economic reforms in the 1980s?

So if something rewards both the moral and the immoral is that something moral? — Agustino

My point was that the market is amoral. It doesn't have to reward the immoral. That's entirely up to the people who interact in the market, buyers and sellers.

That said, it can be supported by appealing to its ability to lift literally billions of people out of poverty around the world, as it has done in the last century or so.

The logic of free markets rewards the satisfaction of ANY desires, it does not care about morality and immorality. If hookers sell, then hookers are what will be sold. — Agustino

That's exactly the point I just made. :-|

free market, consumerism, and globalism — Thorongil

These things are neutral, though. There's no internal logic to them that "makes" them support PC, ID politics, and sexual promiscuity. It depends on the values and interests of the people who partake and contribute to them. If these people are rotten, then the market will pump out rottenness.

From this forum? — Agustino

No, that's not helpful at all. I had in mind thinkers, journalists, politicians, philosophers, etc past and present.

Yes, they are being contradictory. — Agustino

How?

Hmm okay, that's like liking one effect, but hating the other effects and the cause too. — Agustino

Think of the SJWs and their ilk. That's who I had in mind.