Triumphrat

Originally Posted by Joemomma

So...infowars.com ISN'T a parody site???

Anyone else curious as to why these 2 teens ( or anyone for that matter ) would choose to break into an OCCUPIED home( assuming they did actually break in )? Aren't there enough people who post on Facebook saying things like " Leaving for camp for 2 weeks, love the summer!" to prey on?

Originally Posted by steve betts

And...another gun thread goes viral on ratnet.

I accept that Americans have an affinity for firearms and the vestiges of a frontier mentality that is not going away just because foreign liberals don't approve.

I also recognize this is not a misunderstanding, whereby if one side offers more information, the other side will come around. This is a true disagreement about how citizens in a civil society maximize safety in their own homes.

I do however want to challenge one argument often put forth by the NRA that simply does not stand up to the scientific evidence - the one that basically says "If they want to kill you, they'll do it with a knife, baseball bat etc." While this is literally true some of the time, it is specious reasoning and ignores what we know about the psychology of violence. In short, there is a qualitative difference between the 2 lbs of pressure it takes to pull a trigger, and the threshold that must be crossed to bash somebody's brains out with a baseball bat or plunge a knife into their guts. This phenomena has been well studied in the arena of modern warfare where you can now annihilate hundreds of people as dispasssionately as you might click a control on a video game.

Thomas Hobbes got it right: "...in the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel....The first maketh men invade for gain; the second for safety; and the third, for reputation."

I empathize with Americans because I realize the vast majority of American gun owners are decent people who just want to protect their right to be safe. But I still think you're caught in a Hobbesian trap.

Originally Posted by Joemomma

Aren't there enough people who post on Facebook saying things like " Leaving for camp for 2 weeks, love the summer!" to prey on?

Originally Posted by steve betts

And...another gun thread goes viral on ratnet.

I accept that Americans have an affinity for firearms and the vestiges of a frontier mentality that is not going away just because foreign liberals don't approve.

I also recognize this is not a misunderstanding, whereby if one side offers more information, the other side will come around. This is a true disagreement about how citizens in a civil society maximize safety in their own homes.

I do however want to challenge one argument often put forth by the NRA that simply does not stand up to the scientific evidence - the one that basically says "If they want to kill you, they'll do it with a knife, baseball bat etc." While this is literally true some of the time, it is specious reasoning and ignores what we know about the psychology of violence. In short, there is a qualitative difference between the 2 lbs of pressure it takes to pull a trigger, and the threshold that must be crossed to bash somebody's brains out with a baseball bat or plunge a knife into their guts. This phenomena has been well studied in the arena of modern warfare where you can now annihilate hundreds of people as dispasssionately as you might click a control on a video game.

Thomas Hobbes got it right: "...in the nature of man we find three principal causes of quarrel....The first maketh men invade for gain; the second for safety; and the third, for reputation."

I empathize with Americans because I realize the vast majority of American gun owners are decent people who just want to protect their right to be safe. But I still think you're caught in a Hobbesian trap.

Originally Posted by PopPop

We don't know, or ever will know, what they were thinking or even if they knew the house was occupied.