cwp3420 wrote:
So basically you want to put all of this on responsible gun owners and nothing on criminals and gang bangers. While we’re at it, let’s ban all video games, because many of them glorify violence. Let’s ban knives. People get stabbed. Likewise, liquor, as people die from it. Boating? Of course. People drown. Aviation? Banned. People die in aircraft accidents. This could go on and on. After all, think of the children you could save by banning everything.
I answered one of your posts and ended this way: “The better you understand the reality around you, the more you understand that everything has its good points matched by its bad points, and that the value of anything is measured by its good points counted against its bad points, and final judgement of value is almost always a compromise.”
So, banning video games as you suggest is a good idea in my book. They teach an irresponsible violence and have no constructive value as far as I’m concerned.
Water sports, boating but also swimming, are dangerous, but have practical as well as recreational value, so we try to control them, but banning them is probably impossible. Same situation with aviation, except its practical issues are more important than the water sports—airlines and national defense for example.
We can’t ban knives for the same reason we can’t ban weed or liquor—you can always make or find your own, But knives have good points and bad points (no intended pun) so we try to control them as much as we can.
We’ll never ban guns—there are (I think) 300 million of them in existence in this country, and they have a long life. They also have practical uses that we need—national defense again and law enforcement, for example. Now they have Supreme Court protection, so we’ll continue to use them, and try to control or lessen the bad points.
Now you see, or begin to I hope, life is complex, judgements have to be made, and accommodations made where necessary.
Cars and trucks have both good points and bad points, as do libraries; ditto religion. The same is true of antibiotics and glass, fire and forrests, rivers and lakes, highways and sidewalks, sugar and salt. Beefsteaks and garlic.
We tried to eliminate smallpox because it had no redeeming qualities and was very dangerous. But there is always the fear and probably the fact that countries maintain samples that might be useful in germ warfare. In other words, there might be good in some people’s eyes even in smallpox.
See how complex life can be?
[And Thom already knew that, didn’t he?]