The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[sophie]

As I recall in that thread I posted a pretty damning set of stats that neither you or anyone else really challenged, where I posted the best times for biological male amateur athletes vs. biological females and pointed out how very many pages of the former you had to sift through before you got to the best time of the latter, so I don't really agree with you that I'm being inconsistent at all.

lmfao. Don’t want to derail this thread, but definitely don’t want to leave this sitting here. Bringing up those stats is simply a bad argument. It’s a) a division fallacy, and b) begging the question.

 

[JPetroski]

lmfao. Don’t want to derail this thread, but definitely don’t want to leave this sitting here. Bringing up those stats is simply a bad argument. It’s a) a division fallacy, and b) begging the question.

I mean in fairness I stay out of your and other threads regarding trans issues now because I've reached the conclusion that there isn't much point to me expressing any opinions on the topic given the only thing it could possibly do is hurt your feelings for no reason or gain, but hey, he brought up a thread from forever ago.

 

[Sommerswerd]

our straightforward logical response would be targeted disproportionately towards blacks.

You're in luck! You'll be pleased to know that this is already the case

 

[sophie]

I mean in fairness I stay out of your and other threads regarding trans issues now because I've reached the conclusion that there isn't much point to me expressing any opinions on the topic given the only thing it could possibly do is hurt your feelings for no reason or gain, but hey, he brought up a thread from forever ago.

whatever it takes to preserve your fragile male ego i guess

just don’t go around saying there is no substantive objection when what you’re doing is making a bad argument and plugging your ears when people tell you so

 

[JPetroski]

just don’t go around saying there is no substantive objection. you’re making a bad argument and plugging your ears when people tell you so

Just saying there wasn't at the time. Don't think you were in that thread.

 

[Lexicus]

whatever it takes to preserve your fragile male ego i guess

just don’t go around saying there is no substantive objection. you’re making a bad argument and plugging your ears when people tell you so

In keeping with pointing out his bad argument i would to draw attention to another weasel move I spotted:

There are substantially better odds of my daughter losing a competitive race if she has to compete against a biological male than her being shot while she attends school.

Your daughter's odds of entering competition in the first place with what you call a "biological male" would be the correct comparison here.

Anyway, even if we accept this spurious claim about likelihoods on its face, it really doesn't matter: being murdered and losing a competitive race aren't even close to being equally bad outcomes.

 

[JPetroski]

Your daughter's odds of entering competition in the first place with what you call a "biological male" would be the correct comparison here.

Anyway, even if we accept this spurious claim about likelihoods on its face, it really doesn't matter: being murdered and losing a competitive race aren't even close to being equally bad outcomes.

I don't agree with you that this is the correct comparison but in any event, @Sommerswerd brought it up to support his case that I'm just taking partisan positions instead of ideologically consistent ones so if the odds are really that low I guess I can stop worrying about it.

 

[Sommerswerd]

As I recall in that thread I posted a pretty damning set of stats that neither you or anyone else really challenged, where I posted the best times for biological male amateur athletes vs. biological females and pointed out how very many pages of the former you had to sift through before you got to the best time of the latter, so I don't really agree with you that I'm being inconsistent at all. There are substantially better odds of my daughter losing a competitive race if she has to compete against a biological male than her being shot while she attends school. It's not even close, honestly. It's a silly comparison. I'm comparing the chance of one of the nearly 50 million school children in the USA being killed in a mass shooting. You're bringing up what I think of the odds of 9 female runners beating one male in a race.

But the relevant factor to compare isn't just the odds that your daughter would lose a race if she happened to be racing against a trans woman. What matters in this context is the odds that your daughter would be racing against a trans woman at all in the first place AND/combined with the odds that your daughter would lose said race if she did. The odds that your daughter would be racing trans women in the first place is pretty low. Too low for you to be giving it more consideration than gun control vis-a-vis school shootings.

In this discussion about gun control, your query/position... again, was:

What are the odds that my kids are going to be killed in a mass shooting at school?

So to analogize/compare, the relevant odds here, are not the odds that your kids would end up being killed, if they were shot, in a mass school shooting, which is pretty damn high, relatively speaking. The odds you are arguing is whether they would be in a mass shooting in the first place, let alone shot, right? And only then, the additional odds on, whether they would actually be shot and killed, which as you say, in combination, are pretty low. So your response to me is what I will assume is an inadvertent comparison of apples to oranges, making it irrelevant/inapplicable. What matters is that there is very low odds of being involved in a school shooting, just like there is very low odds of facing a trans woman in competition. So the notion that your lack of concern over one is based on the "low odds" of it happening, is inconsistent, because you are nevertheless more concerned about the other, despite it similarly having low odds of happening.

If I had to pick one Republican position that I'd die on a hill over, it'd be this one. You can sway me on others (someone once did on abortion, after all). You're not changing my mind on this one.

Indeed. Thanks for your candor. What you say here was pretty much my point.

 

[JPetroski]

So to analogize/compare, the relevant odds here, are not the odds that your kids would end up being killed, if they were shot, in a mass school shooting, which is pretty damn high, relatively speaking. The odds you are arguing is whether they would be in a mass shooting in the first place, right? And only then, the additional odds on, whether they would actually be shot and killed, which as you say, in combination, are pretty low. So your response to me is what I will assume is an inadvertent comparison of apples to oranges, making it irrelevant/inapplicable. What matters is that there is very low odds of being involved in a school shooting, just like there is very low odds of facing a transwoman in competition. So the notion that your lack of concern over one is based on the "low odds" of it happening, is inconsistent, because you are more nevertheless concerned about the other, despite it similarly having low odds of happening

Yeah but you know what I can do that you aren't going to find many others doing here? Show me those odds are actually low, and *poof* I'll agree with you and stop worrying (see my post above yours). If I'm taking an inconsistent position and being a netty over trans sports races when it's a non issue, thanks for pointing it out. Again, I once had a very flawed position on abortion and some folks pointed it out and I changed my mind. It's all I can do. I try to be consistent but I'm not omnipotent and at least I can admit when I'm wrong.

However having argued gun control for decades I'm just letting you know, I'm pretty firmly entrenched in that one. I just tend to get involved in these arguments after mass shootings because I'm annoyed how some use these sad but very rare events to get people who wouldn't normally go along with their agenda to buy into it for emotional sake.

 

[sophie]

transwoman

transwoman

transwomen

transwoman

it’s trans woman. trans [space] woman. I am a woman who is trans, not some separate creature

 

[Gorbles]

I'm annoyed how some use these sad but very rare events to get people who wouldn't normally go along with their agenda to buy into it for emotional sake.

The irony is palpable.

You have a political opinion on this. You are expressing it. There are people like you who express it pre-emptively. And given that you don't get irate at that, I can only assume your problem isn't the politicising. It's that it's not your politics.

 

[Sommerswerd]

it’s trans woman. trans [space] woman. I am a woman who is trans, not some separate creature

Thanks. I will try to remember. If I forget, please don't be shy to remind me.

 

[JPetroski]

The irony is palpable.

You have a political opinion on this. You are expressing it. There are people like you who express it pre-emptively. And given that you don't get irate at that, I can only assume your problem isn't the politicising. It's that it's not your politics.

I think you're misunderstanding me. Of the tens of thousands of gun deaths in the U.S. each year, the average citizen is only really going to get worked up by about less than 40 a year. Without those 40 or so, gun control's even more of a political loser than it currently is. It's a jaded viewpoint but I do think it's accurate.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Yeah but you know what I can do that you aren't going to find many others doing here? Show me those odds are actually low, and *poof* I'll agree with you and stop worrying (see my post above yours). If I'm taking an inconsistent position and being a netty over trans sports races when it's a non issue, thanks for pointing it out. Again, I once had a very flawed position on abortion and some folks pointed it out and I changed my mind. It's all I can do. I try to be consistent but I'm not omnipotent and at least I can admit when I'm wrong.

OK... So, admitting up front that I am straying off the topic of gun control, the US population is about 331 million.

There are 1.4 million adults who identify as transgender in the U.S., which is less than 1% of the population in each state, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA's law school.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transgender-athlete-bans-facts/

So by my calculations (feel free to correct me if I miscalculated) ... the adult population of trans folks is less than half of one percent of the total population. That already seems way to small for you to be concerned about it, at least if you were trying to be consistent, based on your prior expressed position.

Male NCAA student-athletes now number 278,614 nationwide, or 56 percent of the student-athlete population, while women total 216,378, or 44 percent. Meanwhile, women's NCAA teams now make up 54 percent of NCAA teams, compared with 46 percent for the men.

https://www.ncaa.org/news/2018/10/1...r,teams, compared with 46 percent for the men.

At the collegiate level, there are at least 50 trans women competing on female sports teams in the United States, according to Joanna Harper, an author and researcher at Britain's Loughborough University.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transgender-athlete-bans-facts/

So again, the percentage of women competing in collegiate sports who are trans women is less than one tenth of one percent... again way too small of a population for you to be more concerned about that than school shootings, based on a claim of "low odds" in the case of school shootings.

However having argued gun control for decades I'm just letting you know, I'm pretty firmly entrenched in that one.

I know. That was part of the point I was inviting you to admit. You did. I give you credit where credit is due. Lots (most/the majority) of people can't bring themselves to do that.

 

[JPetroski]

So again, the percentage of women competing in collegiate sports who are trans women is less than one tenth of one percent... again way too small of a population for you to be more concerned about that than school shootings, based on a claim of "low odds" in the case of school shootings.

Ok, well, then, thanks for correcting me and I won't worry about it

Edit - just as an aside - I wonder how many issues we could break down this way and realize that aside from having fun on an off topic forum, they really are much smaller issues than the media conflates them to be.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

And I'm also not a particularly partisan Republican on a whole host of issues (gay rights and abortion being prominent examples) but I will completely admit that I think when it comes to gun control Democrats and liberals have lost their minds

Unlike you fellers, who react to the suggestion of gun control as if gun control is a complete ban on guns. The term itself has become a dog whistle where you dig a trench and state "from my cold dead hands".

But sure, it's the libruls who lost their minds.

 

[Gorbles]

I think you're misunderstanding me. Of the tens of thousands of gun deaths in the U.S. each year, the average citizen is only really going to get worked up by about less than 40 a year. Without those 40 or so, gun control's even more of a political loser than it currently is. It's a jaded viewpoint but I do think it's accurate.

I was talking about agendas and emotions, not your appeal to statistics.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

Love how the "serious solution" is to further oppress poc's lmao, just absolute clownshoes logic

and you would be correct

1. the stats show gun deaths caused by black American males exceed those of other races
2. gun control, as this topic's posters consider it, would be to limit if not ban personal possession of firearms (edit: I'm assuming that when people decree such-and-such should not have guns, that the police will seize the guns)
3. said black Americans would be disproportionately affected by such limits
4. this would not be a good thing if we're concerned about equality
5. if we're not, then this is an irrelevant point

 

[Lexicus]

I think you're misunderstanding me. Of the tens of thousands of gun deaths in the U.S. each year, the average citizen is only really going to get worked up by about less than 40 a year. Without those 40 or so, gun control's even more of a political loser than it currently is. It's a jaded viewpoint but I do think it's accurate.

I tried to start a talk with you about all gun violence, not just the school shootings, but i'm pretty sure you never replied to that post.

I'm happy to talk about the totality of gun violence, rather than just the school shootings. I assure you that I get pretty much equally worked up by all gun violence, unlike @Farm Boy who seems to think gun suicides shouldn't be part of the conversation.

As a last note, I do think it's sort of funny that you've basically admitted you're less concerned about school shootings than about people pointing to school shootings to support gun control. This is the position that a normal, non-sociopathic human would take. 11/10, mind not warped whatsoever by decades of gun marketing propaganda.

Edit: it sort of reminds me of the Mayor Pete fans who acted like the main problem with the police shooting in South Bend was that it created a political liability for Pete.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't agree with you that this is the correct comparison

Tell me more. I have postgraduate training in research methods, which includes how to make apples-to-apples (valid) statistical comparisons. By all means, tell me what I've missed.