Friends in Las Vegas, please check in.

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Originally Posted by Ts RedVeX

It is your reasoning that is illogical as you oppose to treating deaths caused by regulating or banning alcohol otherwise than deaths caused by regulating or banning guns. Both are caused by misuse and should be treated the same.

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It's not illogical to say that similar things should be treated the same. It is only illogical to say that if your opponent has not applied a principle consistently the principle is wrong.

For instance, let's say the principle is that "things that are dangerous and kill people should be regulated." Now let's say your opponent believes guns should be regulated but alcohol should not be. Does this prove that dangerous things should not be regulated? No, it proves your opponent has not applied the principle consistently.

In reality, this type of argument is usually used to say that your opponent does not have a sincere interest in banning dangerous things but a special animus with respect to the thing in question. This type of argument is valid in implying bias or inconsistency, but not in discussing the merits of the issue. It's even more suspect when it uses strawmen so that the general principle under examination is not even accurately stated.

For the hypocrites ....

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De Pere man charged in crash that killed mother and daughter

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http://www.wbay.com/content/news/Two...440967713.html

One more for the "sane" folks that think guns should be banned and not alcohol even though alcohol kills MORE people than guns....

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Jennifer Neville-Lake lost ALL of her children to a drunk driver,

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https://foreverymom.com/mom-gold/you...drunk-driving/

A drunk walking home tends not to wipe out families.

Not quite, broncofan: if similar things should be treated the same, then if one doesn't do so they are a hypocrite.

The principle may be applied consistently or not. It does not say anything about the principle.

The principle in question - freedom to drink and use guns - has been clear throughout the last few pages of this discussion. Fanti called hypocrites those who say that one lethal thing should be regulated while another doesn't, and he was right to do so.

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Originally Posted by Ts RedVeX

Fanti called hypocrites those who say that one lethal thing should be regulated while another doesn't, and he was right to do so.

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Now we're on the same page. But here's the problem. It's a null set. There are exactly zero people who have done that. He is talking about nobody. Nada. Zilch.

There are some people who have argued that alcohol is different dimensionally than guns, but nobody has said it should not be regulated. Also, nobody has said guns should be banned. May I suggest it was just a red herring, a distraction. He tried to post an article about marijuana deaths, then read the article which said it's nearly impossible to overdose. Just a diversion.

I actually have nothing against you two despite disagreeing strongly. I consider myself a liberal, whereas you I think are a libertarian bordering on anarchist. Nothing in our Constitution says the government cannot regulate public risks. This includes the safety of any number of things. We had a farmer on here who insisted the government was encroaching by requiring him to pasteurize milk from his cow. But if they don't, then we might have ecoli in our food supply. The government can take reasonable actions to safeguard health and safety without us turning into a communist totalitarian state.

Mr Fanti (and Redvex although sensible discourse seems to be pointless with her),
I call bullshit in your hypocrisy claims.

As has been pointed out far more eloquently than I can ( yet you have chosen to ignore) no one has made their beliefs on the regulations of alcohol or drugs known here so you don’t get to assume you know what they are before laying a claim of hypocrisy.

Besides, there is no correlation between the regulation of an item intended only for the purpose of killing and the regulation of item that causes harm only when abused.

And as for your claims of hypocrisy Redvex, as you enjoy the very many freedoms granted to us all by living in a democracy and decriing everything and everyone around as Comunist, if it weren’t such a sad indictment of own hypocrisy it would be laughable.

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Originally Posted by Ts RedVeX

My post is confusing for you because you think that the state must have monopoly for using violence. Never have I stated that.
- The state needs to protect its citizens - yes - but on top of that, citizens should be free to protect themselves.

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When I say the State should have a monopoly on the use for violence within the State, I am referring to most theories of what the modern state is, whether it is in Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan or Max Weber's Theory of the Modern State, or two contrasting studies such as John Rawls' A Theory of Justice and Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia, as well as most contemporary jurists. In a modern liberal democracy, such as the USA, the UK and Poland, the State cannot tolerate the existence of an alternative source of armed power, which is why, when there is such a lack of the monopoly of force, it is in a 'failed state'.

The key trade off between State and Citizen lies exactly in the relationship to violence: the citizen gives up a degree of individual liberty so that the State guarantees the liberty of all, through both the rule of law, and the application of the law through law enforcement agencies and the justice system. And it works, because even in the USA, the majority of citizens abide by the law and are, in return, protected by the agencies of the State. It is not wrong for a person under threat to call 911, that is how the system works, but it is wrong for a citizen to decline to call 911 and take on the intruder or the mugger on his own.

The murder of Trayvon Martin is an example of what happens when an armed citizen decides to reject the advice of law enforcement, to enforce his own version of the law, which resulted in a death that could have been avoided, but is the scenario of confrontation and resolution that you imply is the 'survival of the fittest' embedded in some warped version of 'natural law'.

You want the state to regulate as little as possible so that freedom can become a reality for individuals, but you also want the state to protect you from external attack. George Washington was reluctant to transform the Continental Army into the standing army of the USA because he did not want to levy taxes on citizens to fund it, which is one reason why the 2nd Amendment refers to the right of a 'militia' to bear arms, at a time when the threat of an invasion by the British was very real, as indeed happened later in 1812. Firearms were utterly different in 1812 from what they are today, and it is simply beyond dispute that no individual citizen in the USA needs to own a semi-automatic or any military grade weapon, because responsible agencies of the State can provide protection for citizens using such weapons. The terrorist who murdered innocent people in Las Vegas could not have achieved his aim without military grade weapons, had he been denied the right to own such weapons, the massacre would not have happened. The best way to prevent such massacres happening again is to ban the sale and ownership of the terrorist's weapons of choice.

It is not an historical accident that the first major gun control legislation followed a panic in the South following the civil war when White people believed armed Black people who had been slaves would rob and plunder their way through plantation land in revenge for slavery (it never happened). Nor is it coincidental that when California enacted some of the strictest gun control laws in the USA, with the blessing of the NRA, it followed what at the time was the legal display of arms by members of the Black Panther Party in Alameda Country in 1968 and that it was Governor Ronald Reagan who gleefully signed away the rights of Americas to own and carry certain types of arms. The hypocrisy of gun control in the USA stinks so bad we can smell it from here, and I am far away.
These days the NRA event thinks people on a terrorist watch list should not be denied the right to buy guns, so all this prattle about liberty and the state rings hollow when it is the NRA and its supporters that constitute a bigger threat to the enduring democracy of the USA than was ever posed by the Black Panthers.

Lastly, the Nazi project was grounded in a theory of race for the benefit of the (Aryan) nation; socialism is grounded in a theory of class for the benefit of all.

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Originally Posted by MrFanti

One more for the "sane" folks that think guns should be banned and not alcohol even though alcohol kills MORE people than guns....

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The number 1 cause of death in the US is heart disease https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lea...s-of-death.htm According to your logic, you must be a total hypocrite unless you also support close regulation of people's eating and exercise.

The problem with this logic is that the same argument could be used against addressing any problem, so you end up in the logical dead end that nothing should be done to fix any one problem unless every other problem can be solved simultaneously.

There is actually a very well-established principle governing whether any activity should be regulated. If the harm caused by the activity exceeds the benefits then regulate - if not then don't. Everything else is irrelevant.

"Talk to an arse-hole (especially a communist one) and it will shit on you." - RedVex

"Give people democracy and they will start building socialism for you" - Karl Marx

Obviously, you two commies think that the state should have all the power over its citizens while in fact it should be the other way around. It is the citizens who work their asses off to pay tax for the police and military to protect their values from those of other other civilisations' and cultures'. The state should be at its citizens' service.

After reading your comment on Solidarnosc etc. in Poland I already know you have read the wrong history books, so I assume you can save us you lectures. Citizens need to retain their weapons in case bandits like you push it too far...

And really, it doesn't matter who you make your scapegoat - blondes with blue eyes, workers from a shipyard, miners, prostitues, blacks, whites, muslims, jews, women, or members of sexual minorities - intelligent people will always be able to recognise your plans sooner or later.