Guess what, liberals? We will NEVER know enough about guns to be "qualified" to write gun laws!

[rrneck]

186. Nobody has ever

Last edited Fri Jan 25, 2013, 03:27 PM - Edit history (1)

had to defend their life with booze outside of a Jackie Chan movie. And I'm not aware of any national debate on how to further parse the alcoholic content of booze. One can certainly transport alcohol as long as they don't drink and drive. Teaching people to not drink and drive is very like concealed carry laws that teach them how to carry a gun and use it responsibly. Both are attempts to integrate something that is almost as old as the species into the changing reality of modern culture. "Demon rum" is still readily available and those with a propensity to misuse such things have a much wider variety of life destroying substances to choose from today.

It's true that Europe is pretty much "over it" right now when it comes to war. And you're right that it took centuries of conflict for them to reach that point. The twentieth century was arguably the most barbaric hundred years in human history. In that context the mass shootings in the United States, while horrific, aren't even a blip in the cultural forces that would prompt Americans to abandon firearms. And remember, every European power that indulged in the orgy of destruction that was the second world war still has a standing army. And their current economic difficulties may yet see the dissolution of the EU. There is one reality that is as old as the human species - when people get hungry they fight.

But if we stay with the booze analogy (hey, it's beats cars I guess), how would we regulate the alcoholic content of booze so that its effects as a gentle social lubricant still be enjoyed while at the same time disallowing its abuse? Should the alcoholic content of beer be 3.2% or can we allow it to go as high as 7%? It's about time we figured this out since beer may be the worlds oldest fermented beverage. Does that make tequila the assault weapon of booze?

The examples I listed above (guns or abortion or booze or religion or Christmas or same sex marriage) are burning issues not because of their nature but how various groups of people feel about them. They are a few of the current battle lines in the culture wars and have less to do with biology, physics, or chemistry and everything to do with emotion. They are wedge issues that fracture political coalitions on both sides of the aisle to their mutual damage. We may or may not like or dislike one thing or another, but in the end whatever laws we enact to govern them have to make sense in the physical world or they just won't work. You can't tell people how they feel, nor can you legislate their feelings. It's certainly foolish to try to enact laws that are designed to assuage our own feelings. That never works, and history is replete with attempts to do so that resulted in horrible injustices.

This post reminds me of a song just for fun.

The lyrics of the George Thorogood version are especially appropriate.