Tim, you might not consider the analogy poor if you could get away from making the analogy between cancer and guns, and instead make the analogy about how difficult it is to cure cancer vs how difficult it is to stop the proliferation of hand guns in this country.
If the analogy is between controling guns and cureing cancer then guns are the cancer in the analogy.
"it would be very hard to enforce a ban and the last people left with guns would be hardend criminals."
If that were true, it would be very easy to kill people in Sweden, Germany, Norway etc. since very few have guns. The criminals should be able to pick them off with ease. Yet, gun usage is low.
Swedwen and Germany ect. have different people with different laws and more powers for the police. The US has a higher murder rate with knives, I don't think thats caused by gun control. Also if you are going to have gun control its easier when you start off with few guns and no tradition of people having guns. The hundreds of millions of guns in the US wont disapear just because we make them illegal. A handgun is easy to smuggle, and only has to be smuggled once. If there is demand for it then a suppy will be found. For some reason in some European countries there is less demand for guns. If you want to look to Europe, one interesting fact is that violent crime in England went up sharply after they moved to an almost total ban on guns. Home invasion roberies are more common there then they are in the US. Gun crimes is up, and by some measures violent crime is now worse then it is in the US. During this same period crime has been falling in the US.
Gun advocates are sometimes considered kooky because they are a throwback to another era where people carried guns on a regular basis........its reactionary, and does not seem like an appropriate trapping for a modern, civilized society.
Many people still do carry guns on a regular basis, and in the areas where they do violent crime is less common. That seems more civilized to me then to have the criminals as the only people who are armed.
I am claiming that whites and Christians in this country do not experience proportionally the level of racial and religous hate crimes experienced by non white, non Christian minorities.
They probably don't but they do experience racially motivated crimes, or crimes motivated by religious hatred. Very few black or Jewish people experience hate crimes either. Most crimes that they do experience are just "garden variety" thefts, assaults, murders, and such.
What I originally said was "people of all races get murdered sometimes in horrible ways" You replied "Your comments re crimes against whites do not reflect my experiences at all and thus, are not worth my arguing" I ask again which part of my statement does not "reflect your expereince"?
Certainly these laws have cut down on the amount of outright discrimination but by no means have eliminated it,
They have increased it because they are an example of outright discrimination and they cause a greater identification with race and sometimes resentment of other races.
and certainly, don't address the subtle discriminatory behaviors that go on in our culture on a daily basis....nor should they.
I agree that they should not but that is what they are trying to do. Equal oportunity laws would be enough if there was no concern about more subtle or hidden racism.
Getting rid of prejudice would be nice but until then, we have to accept certain realities and can't pretend that things are different in order to support a particular view of the world.
Yes we have not gotten rid of predjudice but accepting reality doesn't mean we have to contribute to it.
Tim |
