Reply #121: If I knew what you were talking about [View All]

I'd respond to it. But heck, I'll take a shot.

That's not what I said, and you know it.

What YOU SAID was: Your fear is irrational.

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

You labelled someone else's policy position a position based on fear.

In fact, what THAT PERSON SAID was:

There Is Still The Potential for Mayhem the more guns you have in circulation.

YOU are the one who labelled that "fear". If I said that when we go swimming, there is the potential for drowning, and the more people who go swimming the more potential there is for drowning, would you label that "fear", or agree that it is a statement of fairly obvious fact?

As for the "irrational" bit, I just can't figure out what's "irrational" about a statement of fact, or even an allegation of fact that really, really obviously is not based on a hallucination.

The more "X" there is, the more potential there is for the events associated with "X" occurring. Duh.

I did not label all decisions I disagree with as being irrational.

Well, your demonstrated propensity for applying the label

- labelling people's choice not to fly "irrational" when you actually know nothing about the basis for any individual's choice, and when their choice may stem from a perfectly rational assessment of the situation that simply involves criteria and weighting of criteria that are different from your own

- labelling CO Liberal's quite reasonable assertion of a fact an "irrational fear"

certainly suggests a rather indiscriminate approach to the use of it.

You may not label *all* decisions you disagree with "irrational", but I don't have any way of knowing which you will label "irrational", since the process by which you assign the label seems to be quite ... irrational ... so my best course of action is to assume that you'll label a decision irrational and take the appropriate defensive posture, eh?

I was talking about a particular decision by one individual who claimed the "potential" for trouble as the primary justification. I made that judgement based on the fact that the "potential" result has never manifested itself even though the requisite conditions have been in place for quite some time.

What can you possibly be saying here??

The "potential" for trouble materializes all the bloody time. Every year in the US: thousands of deaths by firearm, hundreds of thousands of injuries by firearm, dog knows how many crimes committed using firearms. I'm seeing some pretty material things there. Really big proportions of all of which simply and obviously could/would not have been committed without firearms.

If you have to resort to demonizing your opponents in the debate then you should reevaluate you position because it obviously isn't very strong.

My dear boy, s/he who responds to statements of fact and opinion with allegations of irrationality and fearfulness is the one who oughta be looking in that mirror.