Stats

Comments Posted By abby4ever

Displaying 151 To 180 Of 416 Comments

Guns, Knives, Hammers and Bricks*

No it isn’t, Bernard. And if you would stop making assumptions about what I mean by what I say, and stop putting words in my article that aren’t there, we might get somewhere.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:57 am

As I said in a different post a little while ago, it may be too much for a morning topic, adding that I forget that we are 5-8 hours ahead of most of you guys over there.

You are a sweetie, boomer.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:53 am

boomer: my email server, yahoo, won’t save the email addy you gave me; for some reason, it just goes into lockdown. Have you got a different one? In the meantime I will try again.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:50 am

I am fully aware that the disagreement is with the issue and not the person. It’s just that over here, you’d say someone’s reasoning is faulty if you thought they were wrong in it but were not being disingenuous. If you thought they were being disingenuous, you’d use that word or one like ‘spurious’.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:48 am

“Firstly, you say you live in a country with good gun control, but a bad knife-crime problem. Do you therefore think that relaxing gun laws would be a positive development?

I don

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:35 am

Oh, boomer, I haven’t taken any input on my article in a personal way, not at all… except for one remark by one poster, never mind which remark or which poster.

I like the back and forth, I learn from it. I think most posters here feel the same way. I might be persuaded to change my mind…and then again, I might not. Ha!

Not to worry, then. And thanks for the email addy,I will send you mine too.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:25 am

I don’t agree that the qualitative difference is enough to…make a difference.

I can’t bring myself to agree with hardly anything you say, on this matter, anyway; and I can tell that the feeling is mutual.

This happens sometimes.

You say you are astounded by my argument. I want to say: I am astounded that you are astounded.

BTW, your earlier question about whether hyper-checking on background is enough to prevent a future gun crime, is of course rhetorical. Not unless God is doing the hyper-checking, could we be sure of preventing all future, intended gun crime.

As you know.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:09 am

LOL !!!!!!!!

No, just wondered if you were still up and about and how the reading is going and whether you’ve had breakfast and how long it would be before you cheered me up again with your words and avatar…

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 5:03 am

Yes, you got that right. A gun helps if you are wanting to go on a rampage and kill very many poeple. I admit that. But I gave a kind of counter-example to the notion that it is only guns that depersonalize killing. That with other objects you have to have contact with your victim. The counter-example to that is the one I gave about the 500 cartons of poisoned milk in the supermarket. The guy that did it…it is hypothetical…had no contact at all with any of his victims.

I wonder if this topic is not too much for morning blogging, I keep forgetting that we are 5 to 8 hours ahead of most of you guys.

What do you mean: to everyone’s relief, you have no articles planned any time soon? Abby is not relieved; abby is disappointed.

Get writing something, Javas.

:]

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 4:59 am

Where are you, boomer?

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 4:48 am

Hi Javas: thanks for your input.

I didn’t set out to do a proper argument. As I told Hopeington, my article is more a stating of my position on two opposing arguments than it is an argument in itself.

I did say gun-banning OR very stringent gun control laws (the latter said in parentheses). It’s an either/or: people either want guns banned or they don’t. If they do, I’ve said what I think the problems are with that; if they don’t, they won’t have to address these problems, supposing I am right about there being some.

Anyway, it is not meant to be a reductio ad absurdum argument. I.e. I did not set out to assume guns should be banned and then argue to absurdity to show that they should not be. If that is how what I said feels, it would have just fallen out that way.

I have had philosophy but as I said in the addendum, my article is not about logical inconsistencies, it’s about practical application, about saving lives…and what would or would not serve to do that.

I appreciate everyone’s input, this is a hard issue.

Will you be doing any articles today, Javas?

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 4:34 am

‘Morning, badger. Thanks for your good points.

About the long-distance killing, see my response to the poster whatsthsatsound, just below, on how guns aren

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 4:04 am

Hi boomer.

Looks as if it is already is smoking. Just in parts. That was not my intention, believe me; I was just stating what I believe about a topic I am passionate about. And hoping for some input. If it turns out that my position is untenable, I will, as I told Hopeington, give it up.

But not until then.

Don’t worry, some other article will come along soon and push this one down the page…and eventually out of sight altogether!

There is hope!

LOL.

abby

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 3:41 am

To Bernard:

Sorry you feel that way.

I live in a country with ‘good’ gun-control and yet we’ve had the most horrific kinife crimes and other kinds of attacks not involving guns.

As to your “Are bricks or knives being used to kill multiple people at a time as guns are?” please see my response to the poster whatsthsatsound, just below, on how guns aren’t the only example of depersonalized killing…killing that does not demand close personal contact. We have had some food scares over here, and, according to the gov’t, threats of them from terror groups, so my hypothetical example about the poisoned milk is not far-fetched. I would guess that you could kill alot more people in a depersonalized way, that way, than you could with a high-powered rifle aimed at a post office from a rooftop.

As for your calling my argument spurious, which means not genuine, or disingenuous, I deny that most emphatically. I assure you I am being as genuine as I can be. That doesn’t mean my argument is right but it does mean that my intentions are. I myself have on occasion called some posts disingenuous.

But they were posts done by trolls.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 3:33 am

Ok but first some breakfast, I am famished…famished and worn out from all your rigorous points!

LOL

You make some good ones.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 1:44 am

Hi Hopeington! Thanks very much for your comment.

I get your point about what objects are used, or designed, for. Guns are for killing, hammers are not. But I don’t know if that will ‘make the argument fall flat’ as you put it.

(Actually my article states a position ABOUT an argument, two really, though I suppose you could call it an argument about some gun arguments. So we’d maybe have to say that your objection, if strong enough, might make my position on this matter untenable.)

When you are talking about saving lives, trying to say that hammers are ok because they weren’t designed to kill, isn’t, in my view, going to be enough. Because you could end up failing to save many lives, on a technicality: that hammers are for pounding nails and not heads.

I have to think about this some more. If my position is truly untenable I will give it up, but I can’t see that we are there yet.

I am sorry about your friend’s son. My second cousin was killed by a gun about 4 years ago.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 1:19 am

I am sorry for that, KQ, but it was one of your own posts on another thread that got me off on the gun thing again, something I am passioante about.

I believe in strict, even hyper-strict, background checks. Largely because of what you and what’s have been talking about. Depersonalized killing. That I do believe in that creates problem for my own position.

See the reply I just left what’sthatsound about my counter-exception to his exception: random killing from a distance. I mean see it later after you get some sleep, if you want to see it.

I forgot to thank you for fixing the image for me, thank you very much.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 1:08 am

to what’sthatsound: you will have to wait for a counter-argument to your objection until I decide whether or not I need one. Here is what I mean by that; we have to decide whether the exception, that of a random shooter killing lots of people in front of a post office or something, this from a rooftop far away, and where this could not be done with a brick or a hatpin, is enough of an exception to blow my argument, or position, up. Don’t you agree?

So far I don’t think it is.

What about something like food murder? Some guy who knows another guy who works at some big supermarket, manages, with his friends’ help, to poison 500 cartons of milk. The result is the deaths of 100 babies. These two guys never got any nearer to the babies,not even as near, actually, than the guy on the rooftop got near his victims below, at the post office. Depersonalized killing can happen apart from guns.

Now what? What gets banned now, milk cartons? Milk itself? They banned peanutbutter over here in one school because one child was allergic to it and got sick.

Call the above a counter-exception. I don’t know if it is right but it seems right.

abby

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 12:58 am

That’s true. That last part.

Btw, what’s: I put an addendum at the end of my article, don’t know if you have seen it. Something you said made me want to clarify…

:]

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 12:34 am

I was just thinking about bows and arrows! But I couldn’t decide about them, so I said nothing.

(Something tells me I am going to wish I’d never posted this article…)

LOL

» Posted By abby4ever On January 3, 2010 @ 12:32 am

KQ and what’s: what about rat poison in a cup of tea?

I am not trying to be cute here, I just make the point that there are more depersonalized…or quasi-depersonalized in the case of getting that rat poison into that teacup… ways of killing people than using a gun from a distance.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 2, 2010 @ 11:47 pm

Apologies, what’s: my reply to your reply ended up in the wrong spot. It should be below yours, not above it..obviously.

:[

» Posted By abby4ever On January 2, 2010 @ 11:42 pm

If you think my article is only philosophical in nature, either you misread it or I miswrote it. It is not meant to be philosophical…at all. My remark about the philosophical difficulty of an assertion like “Guns don’t kill; people kill’ was an aside, it wasn’t meant to mark the article as philosophical in nature, hence the parentheses I used to say it.

With regard to this of yours:”It is guns, and not knives or bricks, that puts the power in their hands to make their sick fantasies come true.” I’ve seen too many imaqes of people battered nearly to death or to death with knives bricks, baseball bats, etc., to believe this that you are saying.

As for a six year old coming at you with scissors, your example, that is a straw man. I am not talking about six year olds, about people who are incapable of overpowering someone. Hopefully, nothing in my article suggests that I am. I am talking about people who ARE capabable of that. That I am is what makes your six-year-old-with-a-pair-of-scissors objection, a straw man one. At least in my view.

I appreciate your comments very much, though I don’t agree with all of them.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 2, 2010 @ 11:33 pm

Vote Now for PlanetPOV’s Top Posts of 2009!

boomer you have a wee bit more mail

abs

» Posted By abby4ever On January 7, 2010 @ 7:45 am

Oh, I like that, boomer. Truly.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 6, 2010 @ 2:57 pm

I call it the Scrubbington Post.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 6, 2010 @ 2:20 pm

Here’s my contribution. On some of the T shirts, front or back, should be the words ‘IN A HUFF? JOIN THE POV’ or something like that. Those would be the target-specific t-shirts, of course.

Ha!

» Posted By abby4ever On January 6, 2010 @ 2:15 pm

Well maybe if the word ‘POV’ was in big letters somewhere on it they’d know it’s a site for blogging and not a greenie thing.

Do you think Ari at hp will hire industrial spies to check all this stuff out?

» Posted By abby4ever On January 6, 2010 @ 12:18 am

Hello!

That peacekitten and her ‘craptured’ moments, I will have to take her to task.

I take the Rapture very seriously…note how quiet the thread goes as I say this…and this making fun of it has got to stop!

LOL !!!

» Posted By abby4ever On January 5, 2010 @ 11:58 pm

It’s your idea, tell Adlib about it. The avatar could be the one of the earth used here… sewn onto the back (or front too) of the t-shirt, with the url, as you say, underneath. Or even running ’round the earth avatar. And with JOIN THE PLANET all in caps. To me it is just perfect. Tell him now and see what he says.

» Posted By abby4ever On January 5, 2010 @ 11:53 pm