Over on the post Mayor Bloomberg = Mayor Blameberg? MikeB302000 and I are having it out. “How many times do I have to lay out the facts concerning background checks and preventing straw purchasing with registration for you to get it,” MikeB asked. “I say you’re willfully wrong. And with all your intellectual vigor, whatever the hell that is, you haven’t proven a thing to me.” To which I replied “In answer to your question ‘how many times do I have to lay out the facts . . . ?’ Try once. Give me one fact regarding background checks or straw purchasing that offers convincing evidence that the former lowers firearms-related crime or that the latter (registration) reduces straw purchasing. Fact. Not opinion. Or conjecture. Fact. One. For each preferably, but I’ll take what I can get. In fact, it doesn’t have to be convincing. Just factual.” And then something amazing happened . . .
It is a fact that if straw purchasers knew they’d have to produce the gun and paperwork at a later date or go to jail, they would stop doing what they do. That’s a fact based on human nature and the absolutely safe assumption that some of the straw purchasers are intelligent enough to put 2 and 2 together.
Do you deny that? If we’re arguing in good faith, you should not demand facts or proof for that which is self-evident.
Wow. Just wow. Skipping ahead . . .
I didn’t say if something is self-evident to me it’s beyond scrutiny. I said you’re playing hard to get when you say what’s self-evident to me is not to you. Much of what I say and think is not able to be proven with “facts,” it requires common sense and honesty. I don’t think you’re using those, in the name of arguing, all’s fair on love and war, and all that.
Our homicide rate compared to the UK is sky high. Our gun rate per capita compared to the UK is sky high. The fact is, if we had the gun control laws of the UK, our homicide rate would be lower.
Now, before you give me that old speech about correlation and causation, just try for a moment to be objective and tell me if that qualifies as a “fact.”
Anyone care to jump in here? And if you do, please remember that well-reasoned, fact-based logic is not your friend. Well, it’s your friend. Not Mike’s. Nor any other gun control advocate, as far as I can tell.