Sorry, I meant Dash_rendar

This is the quote of yours that led me to believe that you must disagree with Volokh, although you don't exactly explain why:

Yeah, uh... sorry, but you really aren't an attentive reader.

It's hard for me to be when you are so vague! What have I misunderstood now? Riddle me this: was I being "unattentive" when I read that you said that Dash-rendar was wrong (in the passage I just quoted above)? Or rather was I unattentive to conclude that we are not in agreement with Volokh? If that's the case, I don't really care to carry on because you would be contradicting yourself left and right, and I respect Volokh's legal opinion far than your opinion anyway.

Second Very late edit: NM, ignore the message below. I was okay the first time. Too many double negatives.

First Very late edit: I'm re-reading this thread to observe my logical oversights and confusions... the later discussion didn't depend on it, but when I said "not in agreement" I should have said "in agreement". Oops. :perry:

You either don't understand what I have written, or you don't understand what Dr. Volokh has written.

I understand the historical role of the antecedent in the text. However, this isn't a good argument for the text to be interpreted in the way that you, Dash_rendar, and Volokh interpret it; it's a good reason for the law to be rewritten.

Because his argument consisted of an ad hominem, affirming the consequent, another ad hominem, an appeal to authority, quibbling, and No True Scotsman.

Of course, I don't really think I jumped down his throat. Maybe I could have been nicer, but at least I didn't bark LOL POT KETTLE BLACK at him for turning someone's own rhetoric back on them.

I did, but I understand the material conditional and you seemingly don't.

Then would you please state in simple English how it should be interpreted, contrary to Volokh, in the event that it is not rewritten?

(Let me know and I'll read it when I come out of the shower. Thanks.)

Volokh argues that the justification clause is just garnish for the word salad: non-functional, inserted simply for historical, political, or rhetorical reasons[sup]1[/sup]. An understanding of the law (in the context of jurisprudence) therefore demands that the justification clause be ignored.

To contradict[sup]2[/sup] Volokh, the justification clause is simply a part of the text, and should be rightfully understood by following its logical structure: "A, therefore B". It's actually quite easy to show that A entails B: we cannot simultaneously accept that a citizen militia is vital and accept that congress should infringe upon the right to own weapons, because these two statements are inconsistent.

Because A implies B[sup]3[/sup], if A were true we would be forced to accept B. However, A is false, so we can't say anything about B. By a careful reading of the text, the law is revealed to be utterly meaningless as it is currently written.

[sub]1. Volokh offers another interesting reason: the justification clause was added to convince future generations that the law is valuable and should be followed. Since the justification for this law is so completely beyond irrelevant, Volokh seems to have given a good argument for its repeal.
2. Volokh agrees with me in the context of logic and language. That's the reason he needed to write his paper in the first place. This is a bad law and it should be rewritten. (I wouldn't argue against Volokh in the context of jurisprudence. That seems like something Sarn would do, and I try not to do those things.)
3. The logical structure of the text is called material or logical implication, or the material conditional. The properties of this logical structure explain why Jason Alexander's position is ultimately fallacious.[/sub]

My first short first response (if we ever upgrade Massassi, let's add a chat functionality to each thread):


[/COLOR]As you may know, I (to the best of my knowledge) am in agreement Volokh, and to a great extent I am also swayed by this argument for repeal you've extracted from his arguments.

Okay, to complete my two-part post:

I must say that I completely respect the quality of your conclusion, which in my opinion is a flawlessly justifiable one (even if it is one I would never draw), and I commend your dedication in helping a 'simpleton' like myself understand it.

Having said that, the implications of your conclusion, in my opinion, would be too detrimental to the basic concept of a fundamental American right, and it would be wrong to apply your principle of nullification anywhere to the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights is something that Americans have come to take for granted for over two centuries, and have been greatly extended (sometimes beyond logical comprehension) with the 14th Amendment. I now understand why your first response was merely to state that it needs to be re-written. If we really accept that your principle should be applied, and the law is meaningless, it should indeed either be repealed (fat chance), or replaced by some other fundamental right at least tangentially related to the time-honored Second Amendment.

Again, though, it won't be re-written, ever. At least, not as long as the National Redneck Association is running the show and over half the population is brainwashed by religion/ideology (anti-logic) and only votes Republican.

In addition, my opinion is, as an often casual but sometimes amateur follower of U.S. constitutional law, I really think that your level of rigor cannot consistently be applied to constitutional law (I suppose you did say yourself that you don't proclaim to be an expert in jurisprudence). I will also say that logic is about the last thing that seems to be applied in many supreme court cases, such that every time I feel to have grasped what appears to be a fundamental tenet of U.S. legal precedent, some other case contradicts, ignores, or perverts it. The U.S. is a basket case financially, and legally, despite the timeless achievements the original constitution.

wait a minute... Who is doing what in my throat???

P.S.: This came to mind as I read Jon`C's argument, which I think is an amusing piece of biographical history: http://morgenstern.jeffreykegler.com/

Sorry, I got the wrong guy. I saw that your name started with D and got all excited.

Another point about thread management: what would be neat would be a way to allow user voting to section off sections of the thread into a sort of sub-thread-continuum... so that tangentially related digressions all form a sort of cluster, and we can all go on simultaneously without any single debate dominating/derailing.

Anyway, not to preempt any sort of response from Jon`C, but in that spirit, to continue the original theme of the thread:

I read a bit about the numerous shooting sprees that occurred in North America this year, and I noticed that each shooter fell into one of two categories. In reverse chronological order the shootings were these:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_Eaton_Centre#2012_shooting
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Seattle_cafe_shooting_spree
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Tulsa_shooting
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oikos_University_shooting
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chardon_High_School_shooting

In [2] and [4], the perpetrators may have targeted their victims, which may have been an opposing gang/race. What remains in the rest are disgruntled individuals who become so down and out they feel they have nothing to lose. Unfortunately this includes doctoral students as well.

I know I may take some heat for saying this here, but I feel that the way these men expressed themselves has a lot to do with our basic male glorification of violence against each other. We fight each other from an early age, and are reinforced by westerns / star wars, etc.

I bring this up because we really don't have control over who among the down and out feels the need to 'snap', but we do have the ability to change our violent culture, or prevent these people from expressing themselves violently. In the U.S., I'm afraid it will be pretty much impossible to completely reverse the proliferation of weapons, and it will be even harder to restrict them without violating the rights/expectations of gun owners/voters. So I say that we should really look at our own violent culture. Look at the terrible things that men are committing every hour in South and Central Asia, to their wives and to each other. I really feel that if some of these psychopaths didn't live in such a bubble and instead had a chance to visit an uncivilized area of Pakistan for a week, he might think twice about how glorious it is to kill somebody.

Finally, to all those who think we have a shot at stopping somebody who really wants to do some damage, just look at the 'security' situation in Iraq even to this day. If somebody wanted to kill a large crowd, that person would just make a bomb. These idiots purchasing guns are often dedicated gun fanatics that stock up for months or years, but none of them are Ted Kaczynskis. They are buying guns, and the federal government should do everything in its power to track these people, as difficult as this may seem. Maybe one way to make this easier is to further cut down the manufacture and sale of arms... I don't know.

[LEFT]This thread sucks more dicks than sarn's autofellatio machine[/LEFT]

Massassi is what you make of it; hopefully the high(er) level of discourse didn't suck too much air out of the room, but if you want me to leave you all in peace so that Alan and Antony can better feed off each other in posting immature memes, be sure to let me know.

I don't remember posting too much immature garbage in this thread. Of course, you can continue to randomly insult others who have contributed to this community for over a decade, or you can attempt to add something to the proceedings that actually amounts to intelligent thought, instead of looking at Jon`C's posts and going "Nuh uh!" because you don't understand anything he is saying.

Why? It may be a big deal in the media, but statistically it's NOTHING. We could get much bigger gains by concentrating on suicides, or banning private pools. (Not that I'm saying that we should bad private pools.)

If we really want to stop shooting spree's we should stop pretending that they are a big deal. Right now we've basically promises every deluded psychopathy with an anonymous ego all of the attention he could want for a lazy, half-assed act of terrorism. This latest jackass used freaking .223 rounds, for example.

No, not in this thread, at all, of course! Your posts have been of extreme high qualit, not to mention that I have gained a lot from reading them, as I often do. I was instead referring to your other, non-serious self. Not that there's anything wrong inherently with that side of your character either, though my proposition to Alan still stands.

But you're ignoring the root cause. People are primarily products of their environment. What the **** is so wrong with how these people are growing up that this is a choice they make? No one that goes on a shooting spree had a happy time as a kid. They probably had abusive parents and were complete social outcasts throughout their time at school, primarily because the other kids were all little ****s that had to make fun of them in an attempt to seek their own validation. Or some other **** happened. You can't just say "oh he 'snapped'" that's such a damn cop out.

Edit: I didn't mean you. I was using generic second person

Really good point about relative insignificance of these acts. Of course the news media will never, ever stop chasing ambulences, but the point is still interesting.

OTOH, these victims were all people who didn't expect to have to worry about being murdered by a gunman. In the case of suicides, it is pretty clear that, barring emotional instability, a suicide is usually committed by someone who's quality of life is somewhat lower, and in my opinion, therefore less valuable (sorry if this sound harsh, but if the person's life really is bad enough that death seems better than life, it follows that these people's lives will be, on average, less productive/meaningful. That doesn't mean we don't all have a duty to help the one's we can see through trouble spots, especially since depression might be temporary/able to be overcome). The same goes for people who live in violent, black ghettos. I really empathize with their losses that occur daily, but many of these people have such a bleak future to start with (due to culture and lack quality of education), and society is too racist or lacks the ability/resources/political will to make real change and eliminate the ghettos altogether.

These shootings of random people stand out from these other systemic problems. Of course, one random cause of death that surely, for more people is more tragic than these shootings, is car crashes. But I digress; some victims of these shootings had their whole lives ahead of them. They were from a suberb with very low crime, I'm sure. More affluence means that society places a greater value on their safety; the crux here is that even wealthy, white suburbans don't have watertight security, despite their attempts of the West in general to make those security problems the problem of the less fortunate (brown people). So in these kinds of events your going to get a disproportionate response from would-be victims who've been sheltered their whole lives from conflict. I don't think that's totally a bad thing, if they ever find solutions to the problem, or just reduce it by bringing about awareness.

Edit: duplicate post.

From what I read about the Ohio school shooting this year, this is especially true. It was reported that perpetrator's parents were involved in domestic conflict (with each other, I presume), and that the kid "went goth" right before he snapped.

I think you are underestimating the number of suicides we have. In 2007 there were 34,598 deaths due to suicide. Mass shootings account for, what, 30 people a year, at most? People commit suicides for a wide variety of reasons, and the people who do come from all walks of life and include some of our most valuable artists, scientists and thinkers.

Motor vehicle accidents accounted for 32,885 in 2010. You are more than a THOUSAND times likely to be killed driving to work than you are by a mass shooting. The trouble is people are inherently very bad a evaluating relative risk, and people who should know better end up just jumping on the bandwagon for their own personal ends. We should be enoucraging people to worry about meaningful risks, like drinking that 4th soda, than spending all their time and effort worrying about something that simply isn't an issue.



Well sure. Any solution that involves trying to regulate the expression of this sort of thing isn't going to be nearly as effective as a solution that fixes the root cause. However, I think eliminating the roots causes of such a rare event is going to be difficult.

I don't really have a rebuttal for you, Obi_Kwiet, so I'll have to basically concede your point. To a large extent we should be moving on and not dwelling on these shootings. Having said that, I believe the United States does a have a gun problem in general, with over 10 thousand gun homicides a year.

As far as your point that suicide impacts so many people, I still have mixed feelings. I don't know how many of those were committed in an altered state of mind, i.e., so that the individual might have a hope of being non-suicidal for the rest of life if s/he just overcomes the momentary urge. But for the chronically suicidal, I think the issue is somewhat different from an ethical standpoint vis. random deaths like shooting sprees and car crashes, since in the case of the latter, there are separate perpetrators and victims, and there is a clear mandate for law enforcement. On the other hand, how much money should we be devoting to suicide prevention? I don't know, but thank you for the statistic showing the high number of suicides; perhaps one day somebody can educate me on why so many productive people are led to suicide. Is it environmental? Can we take sweeping steps to mitigate it? Etc.

I don't believe there is enough data to say that the US specifically has a gun problem, but it does have a homicide and violent crime problem for many obvious cultural reasons.

As far as suicide goes, it seems to be getting worse is developed countries: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2809%2960372-X/fulltext

I can't speak statistically, but as a person who has been struggled with depression, I would hazard as a wild guess that our level of technology has changed human society a bit faster than we can psychologically adapt to. People are very isolated and don't have great access to strong community groups. Our school system heavily segregates social interaction by age, and a lot of people seem like they have a hard time finding a place to fit in after high school.

That's probably the best way to put it; agreed.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/gavon/christian-bale-meets-with-survivors-of-aurora-shoo

Much better way to do it. Bat suit would have been dumb

Article:
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/entertainment/post/2012/07/christian-bale-visits-colorado-theater-shooting-victims/1#.UA9faqPYHDs

This is BS. People can and do choose to make decisions that others don't understand. It doesn't require them to be abuse victims. I can't tell you how many times I've seen examples of siblings who seem like they came from different families but didn't.

You missed that he said that people are primarily products of their environment. Just because there seems to be a causal relation that is also backed up by statistics on people who snap doesn't mean there is a perfect correlation....

Each individual perceives their environment in a different way (as in how they process and react to it). Environment plays a huge factor in the development of a person, as well as whether or not emotional needs are met at their developmental stage. People don't just become ****ed up because they're ****ed up, they become that way through a process. Siblings are different from one another because they have different experiences, even when they're in the same home all their life. For an oversimplified example, one may, at a young age, be bitten by a large spider and develop a fear of spiders. The other siblings may or may not see this fear as irrational, based upon past experiences.

In short, people don't "just snap" for no reason at all.

He may or may not have been abused at a young age. If not, there were probably some sort of gaps in early development. Early developmental stages, if you will allow me to make the analogy, serve as a creation for a foundation for the person to build upon as they develop later in life. Failures to reach developmental needs at these stages can result in gaps. Too many gaps, or large gaps, can result in an unstable foundation. A building can survive without a good foundation, but it can be prone to issues and problems. For example, children that are sexual abuse victims can live normal happy lives if they deal with the initial trauma in a positive manner. However, later on down the road, the abuse can manifest itself in the form of sexual dysfunction, sexual fears, sexual addiction, or even promiscuity of varying degrees.

Any abuse or gaps in development may not be the cause (or justification) for his actions, but they could have created instabilities or a general lack of ability to positively deal with some things. Something else (be it singular, or plural), later on in his life, may very well have contributed to the fall.

there seems to be a lot of ignoring of chemical imbalances going on. Not saying this is the case in the Dark Knight Rises shooting, but chemical imbalances and mental conditions can and do play a HUGE role in development as well as the environment they were brought up in. see Antisocial Personality Disorder.

I know of the disorder, and I do know that chemical imbalances do play a role. However, the environmental factor is an aspect that many ignore or simply refuse to believe in. Instead, blaming it purely on chemical imbalance, and throwing medications at it. I wasn't meaning to ignore that aspect, or give the appearance of doing so; I just wanted to clarify that it could have played a role. But yes, you are correct that chemical balances/imbalances do play a major role in not only development, but perception and issue resolution.

ah, well. alright then

These incidents are always so tragic because of their utter senselessness. At least “proper” terror attacks (which, of course, are nevertheless horrible) have things as motivations behind them that could be alleviated/removed in theory so that one day there might be none of these anymore. Massacres such as this one, however, would even be possible in a perfect society (even one without weapons) because they are not fueled by any particular motivation that could be eliminated.

I can't really agree with this. It's possibly true in the small subset of cases where suicides are triggered by bullying, presumably most common in teenage years. But there are a lot of cases of people committing suicide when all external appearances point to them being very successful. Whilst the jury's still out on whether it'll have any long-term impact, one of the creators of Diaspora killed himself, even if that project fails it's certain he would have been able to go on to other things and been successful. Startup (as in making a new business) depression is worryingly common due to the very high pressures involved. You also hear a lot about depression in people who's parents pushed them to ridiculously high standards, even when they surpass all expectations they can still feel that they're falling short of their potential. You have writers like David Foster Wallace who achieve great critical acclaim, but he still hanged himself.

Now that I read what I wrote, I was definitely too narrow in my conception of the causes. Your point about suicide among the generally successful but stressed is also pretty disturbing.