George Zimmerman Explodes the NRA Fantasy of the Armed Citizen

[rrneck]

88. I didn't make the assertion.

The OP seems to assert that guns are the cause of our homicide rate. I was trying to get her to provide some evidence of that assertion. Of course, when we combine the "G" word with the "Z" word, people leap to all sorts and kinds of conclusions. Have you asked me once what I thought of the Zimmerman case? Have you researched my opinion on the matter? I expect not. You seem to have indulged in the same armchair psychology in your evaluation of me that you used on Zimmerman. It was unfair and insulting, and I didn't say anything to deserve to be spoken to in that fashion.

Now, regarding the Zimmerman thing. This is my position on the matter. He should never have gotten out of his car. He precipitated the confrontation and is responsible for it. He should go to jail for murder and he will barring a huge miscarriage of justice or jury nullification. Either way, it isn't an easy case to prove. If you trouble yourself to look, you will find I have expressed that same opinion repeatedly since the shooting.

Regarding a causal link between guns and violence. To prove that, you will have to actually get some empirical evidence that the presence of the gun caused somebody to act a certain way. That's just not doable. There is simply not a one to one correspondence between an object and any particular action. One's perception of the object can be a contributing factor, but the power of that contribution is impossible to measure or predict. Furthermore, nobody does anything for just one reason, and such attributions of a single cause were left behind in the nineteenth century. Each and every object in our lives has symbolic power, but it is impossible to accurately evaluate that power either for one individual or a population of same. You have projected your response to the symbolic power of a gun onto Zimmerman, and like most self deceptions it has a grain of truth buried in preconceived notions and self delusions.

I will be going to bed shortly, but if you would like to continue this conversation I'd appreciate it if you could think beyond your preconceived notions about me, guns, and causality. It's not as simple as you think.