- 40,750
By all means, please. You're trying to force the point that a determined terrorist attack won't be deterred by the presence of an armed populace, and using an example that potentially by law was prohibited from having an armed populace present to show why that point was true; then going so far as to backtrack and say that it will except in places where it can't. How is that a point against what gun lobbyists and second amendment supporters and the like claim when that is literally the exact argument they use for why their shouldn't be such areas in the first place? What is the proof that someone shooting up a government building full of possibly-by-law unarmed people means that if their were people there that were armed that they wouldn't accomplish anything for deterrence? Literally in the Guns thread just a few hours before the attack, someone posted this:
That seems like a fair enough sentiment to me, even if I think it is wrong to apply it to every situation that someone rolls up on a place and starts shooting like when it was brought up in the Paris thread; and you essentially supported that statement just now. So how does a case where it perhaps couldn't play out in the way you're mocking mean that if it wouldn't make any difference if it could? No duh there are always going to be places where an armed populace can't defend, but if you wanted to mock that's probably what you should have brought up in the first place. You're not being satirical by using an incident that appears to support the point of the people you're mocking just because you stated it in a sarcastic way.
Put another way:
Pick one.
Which was perfectly relevant because I posted after I had listened to over an hour of people talking about how their needed to be a bunch of armed people in that building when the three guys started attacking, and it was almost certainly going to come up in this thread as well anyway.
No it doesn't. To be frank, on a personal level I really don't care. I feel sympathy for the families affected by the tragedy that happened and I hope the inevitable investigation into the attack turns up something that we can learn from it, but I was never "sensitized" to begin with to mass shootings because as long as I've actually paid attention to them I've realized that as seemingly common as they are they still aren't something to constantly stress over so long as the response to them was measured and informed. Certainly not enough that it makes me feel like we should just not talk about something like this because of how recently it happened.
It happened in an area about as far away from where I live in the country as possible, in a type of community about as different from the one I live in as possible, in a type of place that I very rarely go into. For all intents and purposes, up until laws are changed in response this shooting that affect me it makes about as much difference to me as it does for the European members like MatskiMonk who have also been posting in this thread, at least insofar as it changes anything in my day to day life; because terrorists or disgruntled postal workers or any variety of crazy person with a gun aren't going to bust into my job (incidentally, a place that happens to sell guns) in bum-eff New York and start shooting people.
So why should I pretend differently?
And when isn't too soon? A week later, when the public consciousness has mostly forgotten about it like what happens most of the time with these things, but then we have another one big enough to make the news that we can't talk about because after that it is also too soon to talk about it?
Last edited:
