An excellent post. It's just as well that I missed your earlier (also excellent) rant at the time, because I'd just have gotten into it with paft over the gun thing. I've watched a couple of TEA Party rallies, while waiting for the gun-rights rally I was there for, to start. I'd say that I agree with them, MAYBE, about 25-30%. Likewise, I'll agree with the far Left, about 25-30%.
I've found that there's some things that aren't debatable, with some people. Someone on the Guns board at Democratic Underground (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=118) coined the excellent phrase, "Factose intolerant".
For example -- most people whom I've met, that are anti-choice on abortion, hold that view due to religious feeling. My personal view is that "The Bible Says..." at the beginning of an argument about What Should Be Done About X, invalidates the argument.
Conversely, on gun control, [Insert disclaimer: Personal bias, and speaking from personal experience, here] pro-gun-rights people tend to argue from a left-brain perspective -- facts, figures, analysis, and anti-gun-rights people tend to argue from a right-brain view -- emotional and feeling-based arguments. Anti-gun types will sometimes use statistics in argument, but a lot of times those stats are based on "studies" that cherry-picked data to confirm the researcher's bias.
Continuing with guns as an example, because that's one of my issues: Most of the people who favor banning X are (a) those who've let a personal bad experience override logic -- I can sympathize, without agreeing with them; or (b) people who don't actually know much about the subject (can you say, "assault weapon", boys and girls? I knew you could.) and have been convinced by propaganda. Then there's the small, hard core of people who are deliberately lying about the issue, and know it, like Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center (http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm)*.
The point of getting into discussions with such people, is to convince the fence-sitters. In the case of guns, debating the hard-core antis, and watching them foam at the mouth, helps to convince the fence-sitters and group-b types.
By the way, it's a good thing paft lives on the Left Coast. She wouldn't want to be around Capitol Square in Richmond, on Monday. In among the several thousand activists coming to lobby the VA Legislature, will be several hundred gun-rights activists. A goodly percentage of us will be carrying, enough that we get our own entrance to bypass the metal detectors in the General Assembly Building. Texas recently adopted similar security procedures, and there was an immediate rush among lobbyists, even non-gun-owning ones, to get Concealed Handgun Permits. Come to the Capitol, show permit, skip the TSA-type crap.
(*) Sugarmann's best quote on the subject of "assault weapons", from the VPC's own website: The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weaponsï -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gunï -- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.
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Date: 15/1/11 14:47 (UTC)I've found that there's some things that aren't debatable, with some people. Someone on the Guns board at Democratic Underground (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=118) coined the excellent phrase, "Factose intolerant".
For example -- most people whom I've met, that are anti-choice on abortion, hold that view due to religious feeling. My personal view is that "The Bible Says..." at the beginning of an argument about What Should Be Done About X, invalidates the argument.
Conversely, on gun control, [Insert disclaimer: Personal bias, and speaking from personal experience, here] pro-gun-rights people tend to argue from a left-brain perspective -- facts, figures, analysis, and anti-gun-rights people tend to argue from a right-brain view -- emotional and feeling-based arguments. Anti-gun types will sometimes use statistics in argument, but a lot of times those stats are based on "studies" that cherry-picked data to confirm the researcher's bias.
Continuing with guns as an example, because that's one of my issues: Most of the people who favor banning X are (a) those who've let a personal bad experience override logic -- I can sympathize, without agreeing with them; or (b) people who don't actually know much about the subject (can you say, "assault weapon", boys and girls? I knew you could.) and have been convinced by propaganda. Then there's the small, hard core of people who are deliberately lying about the issue, and know it, like Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center (http://www.vpc.org/studies/awaconc.htm)*.
The point of getting into discussions with such people, is to convince the fence-sitters. In the case of guns, debating the hard-core antis, and watching them foam at the mouth, helps to convince the fence-sitters and group-b types.
By the way, it's a good thing
(*) Sugarmann's best quote on the subject of "assault weapons", from the VPC's own website: The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weaponsï -- anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gunï -- can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.