The right to bear arms

[prendrelemick]

They're arming school janitors! Are they mad, don't they watch Scooby-doo?

[prendrelemick]

Can't pass gun laws. Won't reform the filibuster. Can't fix anything that needs fixing. What is the Senate actually for?

It seems to be a self serving entity existing within a bubble concerned only with it's own little dramas and interests. Real life cannot enter, and must look down from the public gallery in puzzlement and sorrow.

[prendrelemick]

I was going to wake up this thread (again) but it's all been said. Just Google Jon Stewart's take on Charleston. -"We'll still do Jack****"...... Yeah, that's us!"

[Sancho]

In the wake of the Charleston Church shooting, I see that Southern Republicans are lining in droves up to pull the Confederate Battle Flag down from the South Carolina State House grounds, but not a single spineless one of them has mentioned the elephant in the room - GUNS.

So again, (and I think posted this earlier), - guns are for cowards, and by extension for Republicans.

[Ecurb]

Guns are not necessarily 'for cowards'. That guy who shot it out with the police station in Texas was no coward -- to use just one example.

I agree, Sancho, that owning a personal protection firearm is (slightly) cowardly for most people (there are exceptions). That's because most statistics suggest that we are slightly safer (and our families are slightly safer) if we don't own a personal protection firearm. It's cowardly to irrationally pander to one's fears.

ON a literary website, however, we should use words accurately. I remember G.W. Bush calling the 9/11 terrorists "cowardly" when the only thing we knew about them is that they were courageous. It seems to me that there's a temptation to call macho behavior "cowardly" because it denies the transgressors a virtue they covet. However, in the case of the 9/11 terrorists, it was ridiculous. Owning guns can be cowardly (if it involves irrationally pandering to one's fears), but it is not necessarily cowardly. In general, terrorists (including Dylann Roof) are not cowardly. Cowardly bigots and whackos are afraid to act out their evil fantasies; Roof was not. Cowardice would, perhaps, have been one quality Roof would have benefited from (as would the rest of us).

[Sancho]

There are exceptions to every rule. In my original post on this thread I think I said, "'cepting the police and soldiers." But based on our recent history, I'm not even sure about the police anymore. Perhaps a woman with small children walking through a dangerous neighborhood late at night might need an equalizer, but of course that begs the question ... What's she doing there in the first place?

At any rate, I'll stick with my original assessment - guns are indeed for cowards. And Roof is a tremendous coward - he shot unarmed civilians. Had he wanted to act on his poorly thought-out theory of racial inequality in an uncowardly manner, he could have stripped to waist, walked into that church, put his dukes up, and said something like, 'I'm here to fight all you negroes.'

They'd've probably just shewed him away.

What about the man who shoots a Kodiak Bear? Brave? I say coward. The bear doesn't have a gun, therefore it's not a fair fight. Now a guy in a loin cloth hunting bears in the tall grass on Kodiak Island with nothing but a Bowie Knife - that dude has cajones, not much between the ears, but a big ole pair of swinging...oh never mind.

Yes, this is a literary web site, and words have meaning, and I meant what I said.

[Ecurb]

You have a strange notion of what constitutes cowardice, Sancho. Obviously, attacking a Kodiak bear with one's bare hands takes more courage than shooting it with a 30/06 from 100 yards. But how does shooting the bear indicate "cowardice"? Not all activities for which courage is unnecessary are "cowardly".

Shooting unarmed civilians is not "cowardly". True: it is not as courageous as trying to kill them all with your bare hands, but so what? Most things we do are not as courageous as other potential things we might do. That doesn't make them "cowardly". Clearly, Roof put himself at far greater risk by murdering nine people than he would have if he had simply stayed home and posted racist screeds on his website, or had gone shopping at Piggly Wiggly. Are all shoppers in every Piggly Wiggly store "cowardly" because they could be fighting Kodiak bears with bowie knives instead of buying loaves of bread?

Saying a man who shoots a Kodiak bear is "cowardly" because it takes MORE COURAGE to hunt the bear with a bowie knife is ridiculous. It's like saying the man who eats dinner with his wife and children is cowardly because he could be shouldering his way in amongst the hungry lions to feast upon raw zebra on the African veldt. It's a non sequitur.

You may have meant what you said, but what you said makes no sense.

[Sancho]

Here's another rule of thumb for ya, E' - conversations with pedants are always tedious.

Coward is a word generally used as a pejorative, with is how I meant it and which you pointed that out as well. But here's the greater issue and the point of my earlier post today: conservative politicians would rather talk about removing the confederate battle flag from the South Carolina State House grounds than do the hard work of gun-control legislation.

You see, they're deflecting the focus from something hard to something easy, which is act of cowardice, in my opinion. Kind of like deflecting this argument from a discussion about Republican political maneuvering into some weird, pedantic, Bill-Maher-ish rant about what constitutes cowardice. And I'm guessing a reflexive response by you whenever you hear the word used in the way I used it.

[Ecurb]

Here's another rule of thumb for ya, E' - conversations with pedants are always tedious.

Coward is a word generally used as a pejorative, with is how I meant it and which you pointed that out as well. But here's the greater issue and the point of my earlier post today: conservative politicians would rather talk about removing the confederate battle flag from the South Carolina State House grounds than do the hard work of gun-control legislation.

You see, they're deflecting the focus from something hard to something easy, which is act of cowardice, in my opinion. Kind of like deflecting this argument from a discussion about Republican political maneuvering into some weird, pedantic, Bill-Maher-ish rant about what constitutes cowardice. And I'm guessing a reflexive response by you whenever you hear the word used in the way I used it.

Well, yes, when I read people (including you) use words incorrectly my "reflexive response" is one of disapproval. Once again, you present a false dichotomy. Is everyone who supports removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol "cowardly" deflecting the focus from gun control? Personally, I support both removing the Confederate flag and passing strict gun control legislation, and I don't think that either position is "cowardly" (they're not courageous, either). Dozens of politicians support removing the Confederate flag, and many of them ALSO support gun control. Are only the Republicans who support removing the flag "cowardly", or are all of the Democrats who support removing the flag cowardly as well?

I suppose that politicians refusing to address controversial issues because addressing them risks losing votes constitutes a (minor) form of moral cowardice. Still, based on your Kodiak bear example, that's not exactly what you were saying in your previous posts.

[Clopin]

Incidentally people seem a bit confused about what gun control can and can not do. In Canada there was a recent shooting carried out with firearms which were illegally purchased and held, but this didn't stop everyone on Facebook from clamouring for stricter gun regulation.

The guns were already illegal and yet they were used to kill someone, oops, what do we do now?

[Clopin]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_...in_Switzerland

I've also never been convinced that 'more guns means more gun crime' (though it seems reasonable to me that firearms be a little harder to obtain than they are in the U.S at the moment). I mean virtually every household could reasonably be expected to contain kitchen knives which could be turned into quite dangerous weapons at any moment (actually even stock glasses for drinking out of can be deadly or extremely dangerous when turned into a weapon), but crimes which make use of these implements are relatively rare.

[Ecurb]

I agree,Clopin. There are clearly no magic bullets to prevent mass murder (to use a trite, but appropriate, metaphor). Nonetheless, I bet limiting the sales of assault weapons would help. I saw an article that showed that Switzerland is the one European country that is armed to the teeth, and although they don't approach the U.S. in gun violence rates, they're still high by European standards. The real question, though, is not the "gun violence" rate, but the overall violence rate, and the extent to which easy access to guns might make violent crimes more deadly. More guns (I'm certain) means more gun crimes; does it mean more deadly crimes? (I bet it does, but I'm not sure.)

However, not everyone who opposes gun control is a heartless bastard who is glad that black preachers have been murdered and flies the Confederate flag from his pickup. We probably shouldn't allow horrific public tragedies to influence our decisions on gun control one way or the other.

[Clopin]

In Switzerland .21 of a person dies by gun related homicide per 100'000 of the population, in America the ratio is 3.55/100'000. So Usanians, while being about one and a half times more armed than the Swiss, see about twenty times the gun violence resulting in deaths (accidental deaths in every country seem to be pretty small compared to homicides).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List...ted_death_rate

Countries like Japan, Norway and Hong Kong have basically no gun violence to speak of which is interesting. I buy some correlation between fewer guns and fewer gun crimes but it's definitely not a one to one ratio and it can't be extrapolated that way.

[Sancho]

Ecurb, you ignorant slut.

Your poor understanding of the concept of cowardice and bravery is only eclipsed in stupidity by your poor reading comprehension, and perhaps your basic misunderstanding of how human language works.

The flag issue is a red herring meant to deflect attention from the real issue, the hard issue, the issue that will cost a Republican Senator his seat if he supports it - gun control. And it will take a Republican to do it, a Republican with spine, someone who knows it'll cost him a steep price but he does it anyway, because it's the right thing to do. That would be bravery, the opposite of cowardice. Gun control is part of the Democrat's platform, which of course requires no special bravery to support. You seem to sort of get it in your last paragraph, but the false dichotomy you attributed to me was purely your invention, a result of your poor reading comprehension.

So someone facing danger or adversity and knowing the consequences and doing it anyway is brave, but someone facing the exact same situation but being blissfully unaware of any personal danger is not brave. A trembling soldier who is about to go over the top and has lost control of his sphincter, but goes over the top anyway, is brave. A soldier who has no clue what awaits him as he charges over the top of the trench but does it with his chest puffed out and his chin set firmly is not brave.

I don't think it's too much of a leap to say that if brave man faces danger and knows the consequences, a coward also knows the consequences but puts others (even bears) in danger instead of himself.

A man who shoots an unsuspecting Kodiak Bear (probably one he baited) from a safe distance (and probably from up in a tree) is a coward. He's not less courageous than the Bowie-Knife guy; he's just not courageous at all. Worse yet, he's a phony-brave man.

A grown man who beats a child is a coward.

A man who shoots a bunch of unarmed church-goers is a coward.

And I hate to agree with Dubya, but he was right - the 9-11 attackers were cowards too. Yes they knew they would die in the attacks, but they were also convinced that their deaths would take them to paradise. Good for them. The people they murdered just went to their deaths in a pile of rubble.

Let's get around to language. When I call a pseudo-tough guy a coward, it's an insult. That's how I mean it, and that's how it's typically received. (And that's when I usually prepare to duck a punch) but it's not using the word incorrectly. It's possibly using the word creatively. When Rush Limbaugh calls Barrack Obama a Socialist, it's an insult. It has very little to do with the philosophy of Socialism. To only use words in a narrowly-defined, academic manner is a dull use of the language and not the way human language works anyway. And possibly it's silly.

And "silly" is a good example of a word whose meaning has changed dramatically over the years. It used to mean something akin to "pious". Then it morphed into something like "touched by God". Then it morphed into something like "touched in the head". And finally it worked its way around to meaning, well, "silly".

Words change over time and so do symbols. I've watched the meaning of the Confederate Battle Flag change in my life time. I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. I watched the flag go up on top of the State House dome, and then I watched it come down, only to be placed in a more prominent place in front of State House. I've watched it go from the sort of thing old women put on the graves of their long-dead ancestors who died in the war, to a bumper sticker on a pickup truck that dragged a black man to his death in Jasper, Texas, which is why it takes no extraordinary bravery for a Southern Republican to call for its removal. For once, they'll be agreeing with the president, it belongs in a museum.

At any rate, E', ( if you're still reading) I was just yanking your chain with the ignorant-slut comment. Also I know your reading comprehension is just fine, maybe a little formal for an informal forum, but just fine nonetheless.

By the way, me and the old lady are about to leave the South for good in the next couple of months. We're moving to the Pacific Northwest - your neck of the woods. Wanna grab a coffee sometime?

[Ecurb]

It is doubtless true, Sancho, that Dubya was simply trying to insult the 9/11 terrorists, but its strange that he insulted them with the one epithet that we know is false. Calling people about whom we know nothing except that they are extremely brave "cowards" is, if nothing else, interesting.

If the Kodiak bear hunter brags about how courageous he is, a few insults might do him some good. And beating children takes some courage, these days: look at what happened to Adrian Peterson when he did it.

Most important, we should remember the lessons we learned from Custard, the Cowardly Dragon. Belinda, Ink, Blink and Mustard got all the credit for bravery -- but who gobbled up the pirate? Still, since Custard had a "Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,/ And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes...." he was heavily armed. Are you suggesting that (like Dylann Roof and Adrian Peterson) Custard was actually a coward, because he possessed such armaments? If so, I call "Heresy!" (For those who were abused as children in that your mommies never read you "The Tale of Custard the Dragon", here's a link: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~keith/poems/Custard.html )

Here in the Pacific Northwest we don't have a problem with racism because everyone is white (except a few Native Americans and East Asians). We do have lots of guns, though, and a hefty smattering of gun-nut survivalists. Where are you moving? The Northwest is a big place, but I go to Portland fairly often. Coffee, of course, is our regional passion (along with microbrewed beer and pot, which is now legal in Oregon and Washington). Forget Starbucks, though. Here in Oregon, we hate everything from Washington, because our lives are so idyllic that we have nothing better to do.