Boston School Superintendent Tommy Chang announced today he would fight any effort to arm BPS teachers - not that he's likely to see any proposal from either City Hall or BPD, where officials have long called for more restrictions on guns, not fewer.
In a statement in reaction to the president's proposal to arm some teachers with guns, Chang said in a statement:
The mere thought that teachers should be armed in order to ward off violence is utterly illogical and will only result in making our students and teachers less safe.
The real issue at hand continues to be access to guns. In Boston, we have some of the strictest gun laws in the country. We have a Mayor and a Police Commissioner who are fighting federal proposals that threaten to move us backward, such as the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. Just last year, we hosted the New England Regional Gun Summit right here at the Bolling Building to work with our neighboring cities and states on preventing the illegal flow of firearms into our city.
When it comes to school safety, we know that our focus should be on violence prevention and creating a culture of inclusion in all of our schools. We are providing regular training that’s rooted in best practices to ensure the safety of our students if a situation were to occur, not wasting our time training educators how to carry and use a firearm. Our priority in Boston will always be the well-being of our school communities, and bringing guns into schools is simply not the answer.
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Comments
I was talking about
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 2:33am
hunting rifles. Was that not clear when I explicitly mentioned two kinds of rifles in my post?
I wasn't aware I was pretending anything. Rifles are dangerous, pistols are dangerous. Which one is more dangerous depends on the context. Stashed away in the gun safe, neither are dangerous. In the hands of a madman, both can be just as dangerous.
Maybe you can explain to me why a hunter
By MC Slim JB
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 3:01am
needs a rifle with the power of a soldier's weapon. My hypothetical Lamborghini can do 200mph: why can't I drive it at that speed on the highway?
No civilian needs that kind of horsepower for leisure purposes outside of a racing track, and there are good public safety reasons not to let them use it on open roads. The same logic should apply to firearms.
To jump in here If I may....
By Pete Nice
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 10:49am
Roman you have to agree that more damage is done with a semi-automatic rifle than with a hand gun. Accuracy and Magazine capacity are the #1 reasons
I have a Smith @ Wesson M@P .40 at home. I can do some serious damage if I wanted to shoot up an area where people are walking around. Magazine holds 15+1 in the chamber. I can probably carry 10 mags if I wanted, giving me a hundred bullets or so. My accuracy over 25 yards with moving targets is probably less than 20%, most of those wont be lethal shots either. If I go in a room with people hiding in the corner? Much more damage, but if those people wanted to charge me? The could probably take me out with 2-3 deaths.
Now lets ban the AR-15. Is that going to stop the shooters, especially seeing they all seem to love to use it? I'd say no. Your Smith and Wesson M&P 15 sport is pretty much the same weapon (cheaper actually). No if I go out with this rifile? I am killing more people, much easier. Each mag carries 30 rounds I believe, and I am accurate with this at about 50-100 yards with standing/hiding targets.
Overall I'm not so sure this last killer or the Sandy hook kid would use a handgun for their crimes. Like many of the people who commit suicide by gun, I don't think many of them would do it if guns weren't available.
I don't think I ever disagreed
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 11:56am
So other than a question of 15 round vs 40 round vs 10 round magazines (good to be a cop or old enough to own pre-94 stuff, eh?), what's the difference between an that (still Massachusetts-legal?) 15-22 and any other rifle chambered for .22LR or an AR15 chambered for something bigger and any other Massachusetts-legal rifle chambered for the same round?
AR 15 can be fun at the range
By SwirlyGrrl
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 12:50pm
I found such weapons boring after a short burst of wow, however.
Trained with similar weapons in the military, but was never as much fun as picking cans and bottles off a fence with my uncles and a .22 Never as good a shot as my mom was, though. She had that Zen.
AR-15s are really "hoverround" weapons in the hands of civilians - an easy crutch for people who can't shoot and don't intend to learn. My gunny told stories about how Viet Kong would make a noise or drop a stick, get US Soldiers to blow their whole clip, and then pick them off when reloading.
Moreover, these ridiculous bullet hoses are useless for hunting and that is why Canada and Australia banned them. Haven't been to Australia, but I drove clean through Canada from the Okanagan to Sherbrooke before turning for Boston and there are long stretches where the only place for a restroom break is a gun-and-souvenier-and-sandwich shop.
I'm actually going to agree with you part-way
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 1:14pm
And I'll go further and say that people should be made to demonstrate some reasonable level of proficiency with any class of firearm before being licensed to own one.
But again...shot-for-shot, how's an AR-15 any worse than a hunting rifle firing the same bullet?
You can probably answer that if you reverse you thinking.....
By Pete Nice
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 1:51pm
If someone was coming to your house to hurt you and kill you, would you rather have an AR-15 or a Mossberg MVP Patrol rifle (standard mag)?
Sounds like you and I both know there are dozens of rifles just like the AR-15, but if you gave this Florida shooter the Mossberg MVP, he simply isn't going to do the carnage that he did.
If you have both guns and need to shoot 10 targets in 10 minutes, there is no difference, if you want to kill a bunch of people in a short period of time (or protect your family and house from an intruder which is the argument gun lovers should be making), you want the one over the other.
Right...and...
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 2:06pm
if you ban or restrict AR15s...you're also going to have to ban or restrict every single rifle with anywhere close to the same achievable firing rate.
In fact, you're going to need to define an acceptable sustained rate of fire. Forget the bump stocks for a second (assuming you can ban a shaped piece of plastic in any meaningful way), what would be an acceptable rate of fire?
With a bolt-action or lever-action rifle you can get off an aimed shot what...every 5 seconds or so? With your pistol, you can get off an aimed shot every second. Is that a meaningful restriction?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_...
This guy wasn't using anything special, and he killed a lot of people over a good long period of time.
I would say most people would find that reasonable...
By Pete Nice
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 2:46pm
banning semi-automatic rifles that have a high magazine capacity with .556 ammo.
The hunting angle should never be the issue (you don't need a semi-automatic firearm to hunt). Home defense is the issue. How are you going to tell me what I can have for a firearm if several armed intruders come into my house? I should have the right to defend my self with the most powerful weapons. There is some merit to those arguments logically, although I believe the opposing argument is that A. there needs to be a line drawn somewhere (you can't have a rocket launcher in your house) and B. stories of people dying from armed intruders because they didn't have the proper amount of firepower are so rare that you simply can't use that as an argument (the 2nd amendment helps gun owner's arguments as well)
Charles Whitman was doing sniper stuff, but obviously you can kill a lot of people with pretty much any gun in certain situations. (Whitman probably isn't killing as many people if he had my S&W .40. with unlimited ammo.)
There's another argument
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 3:05pm
About magazine capacity.
Say you take the California option and confiscate all magazines with greater than 10 (or is it 7?) Round capacity. All the lawful gun owners turn theirs in and no new ones are sold or imported into the country.
A magazine is a piece of metal (or plastic) with a spring at the bottom. They can be manufactured in your garage if you have a few thousand dollars worth of machine tools.
Same thing for bolt action or lever action rifles. That can be (illegally) modified for higher capacities, even if you accept the lower rate of fire. So now you get back to the same point we* gun nuts have been making the whole time: the ban would be an honor system and the bad guys would still be able to get their hands on weapons with high capacity magazines while law-abiding citizens who want a home-defense or personal defense weapon would not.
And by what mechanism would this have teeth? Would you be required to submit to random inspections? Would every factory and machine shop I. The country be subject to random inspections? Let's say I don't own any guns but have metalworking equipment or just an expensive 3D printer in my basement or garage. Will I be required to register it with the police and submit to random inspections?
My point is that we don't do any of that now and crimes committed with guns are going down over time and much of the violent gun crime remains a concentrated problem. Thus any bans and associated inspection regimes to give them teeth would be a misapplication of finite law enforcement resources while the alternative of an armed society (which is where we are now) with a more robust licensing and screening regime (whhich is not where we are now) and generally the same rates of ownership and availability of firearms would be a better application of finite law enforcement resources.
People would still accept it...
By Pete Nice
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 3:51pm
And that is simply what you are going to need to worry about Roman. Even though pro-gun arguments work logically, you are going to see a ban on semi-automatic rifles. You won't need inspections. Like any crime, if the police have probable cause that you are breaking the law (printing money, making illegal guns, making drugs, taking bets over the phone), they apply for a search warrant and go through the same processes.
Break down these past mass shootings by different factors (would they have gotten their guns with MA type restrictions and would they have killed as many people?)
The Vegas guy probably could have gotten a class A LTC in MA an using a now banned bump stock, would have done a lot of damage either way.
The other ones Columbine, Sandy Hook, Va Tech, Aurora and Florida probably would not have been able to get those guns if they lived in MA, especially the VA Tech, Aurora and Florida Shooters. The columbine and Sandy Hook shooters did not have licenses and the columbine and Va Tech shooters used small capacity weapons I believe (or would have used them and done as much damage).
I disagree
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 4:46pm
Certainly some people would accept a total ban, a smaller number would accept a ban with confiscation, but there would be court challenges, there would be electoral push-back, from voters and state/local governments.
Montana (or Wyoming?) has a clause in its constitution that conditions its membership in the union on the second amendment. High gun-ownership states like much of the rest of the Mountain West and the South wouldn't enact state bans, let alone confiscation, and would balk at any federal attempt to enforce one.
God-forbid there might be even worse.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/02/the-gun-con...
Honestly...it's not a bear worth poking, a hornet's nest worth tipping over, or a policy worth seriously considering.
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Sun, 02/25/2018 - 7:12am
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Not talking about a total ban Roman...
By Pete Nice
Sun, 02/25/2018 - 9:08am
I think first you might see states like Florida (not really the "south" if you ask a lot of southerners, especially Broward County) start with gun permit processes like MA or FL. If you did this, the gun lovers would pretty much still be able to get their guns, as most of the killers now (like my post above) wouldn't be able to have obtained guns and I don't think gun lovers would have a problem with that if they simply get to keep their guns.
If that doesn't work......, then limiting certain weapons would be the next step for voters to try.
Also, I tend to agree with you that most voters, even in Florida aren't going to be able to push any sort of legislatoin for bans at this point..
Home Defense?
By SwirlyGrrl
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 7:42pm
Seriously?
Well, lets ask this: how many armed home invasions? How many NOT involving enormous quantities of drugs or cash?
I don't deal drugs. I don't need a weapon of mass destruction.
Small numbers
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 7:55pm
And you know what...if we apply that filter in less well-heeled neighborhoods than yours it'll probably still be a small number. Mugging and car-jacking are where it's at.
Now: is it a small number for home invasions because lots of people have guns and burglars wanna burgle and not get themselves shot, is it a small number because most people aren't criminals to begin with, or does it not matter why because if there ain't no home invasions there's no need to get out the gun so it could be a shotgun, a revolver, or a nuclear artillery shell and it won't make any difference.
On a less hyperbolic note, we're talking about what happens at the extremes here. It's not mathematically valid to conflate what happens at the extremes with happens on average.
Not sure if you were talking to me Swirly....
By Pete Nice
Sun, 02/25/2018 - 8:49am
I wasn't saying an AR-15 is needed for home defense, but if you were to make a logical legal argument based on the 2nd amendment, a court might rule in favor of being allowed to have these weapons in the home.
Like I said in my above post, there are so few instances where someone can say they didn't have enough firepower to fight off armed killers invading their property, that argument doesn't hold up with me. Courts on the other hand don't always make decisions based on common sense.
We don't ban Lamborghinis
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 1:37pm
NASCAR cars are the same chassis as what you'd buy at the dealership with some minor engine tweaks, lightweighting in some places, extra restraints/safety equipment in others. The 'SC' stands for 'stock car.'
They aren't street legal because they take all the lights and mirrors out.
An F-1 racer could theoretically become street-legal with lights and mirrors added.
What's illegal? Racing them on city streets at 200mph, no matter what particular vehicle it is. And as we like to point out here, 30-40mph can be dangerous all by itself.
I know a few of those "responsible" gun owners
By Stevil
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 9:23am
All of them have a loaded gun in an unlocked area.
Now that's responsible. It's also how a lot of kids get hurt, killed and guns get stolen ending up on the streets
No that's not responsible
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 1:45pm
However it's also less common than other accidents.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_0...
~500 unintentilal firearm deaths per year vs thousands of accidental drownings alone.
No breakouts by age per cause of death in that document per my first cursory reading. I'll get to digging for the raw data at some point.
U r...
By Stevil
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 3:00pm
A one man theater of the absurd
Because
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 3:06pm
I partially agreed with you but put your personal experiences into a larger context? OK.
No
By Stevil
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 3:43pm
Because you compare a man made object designed for the sole purpose of taking life and you compare it to the most prevalent material on the surface of the planet and necessary to sustain life.
But even that absurdity is lost on you.
Rocks
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 4:58pm
Rocks are common as dirt, though not quite as common as water. They can be used to kill without much fashioning at all.
Most of the knives in my kitchen and yours are designed solely to cut flesh in the most efficient manner possible.
The gasoline in your car, or in the can you keep to fill up your lawnmower or snowblower is chemically refined solely for the purpose of releasing the maximum amount of energy in the shortest amount of time possible when mixed with air.
The electrical outlets in your house, the chemicals under your kitchen sink, and everything else all are either designed primarily to do something very nasty if put in contact with human flesh or have that as a direct and inseparable consequence of whatever it is they are designed to do.
Being a normal person, you don't think of them that way because it never occurs to you to cause harm to your fellow man in the first place. So sure, I understand why you think it's absurd but we've got here is a difference in perception and not in reality.
All of these things can be dangerous if misused and directed against another human being but we get along just fine because like you, just about every person in this country wouldn't dare dream about causing physical harm to their fellow man.
To drive the point further:
You don't hear anyone calling for the confiscation of laundry chemicals and car batteries after some nutter throws acid at another person. You don't hear calls for closing down all the filling stations after an arsonist is caught. You don't hear calls for confiscating kitchen knives and making everyone eat pre-made microwave meals with plastic spoons after one of our regularly scheduled hobo stabbings on the Common.
It's not absurd at all. I can understand why you'd think it is if you begin with the assumption that private citizens shouldn't have firearms and work backward from there, but it's not absurd if you don't presuppose that conclusion.
Keep digging
By Stevil
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 5:12pm
Saves the rest of us the trouble.
This is why you can't have a common sense argument with gun freaks.
Shovels too
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 5:29pm
Would you care to dig up a common-sense argument for why we allow private citizens to own all of the dangerous and easily-accessible stuff I listed or would you rather just assume I and a hundred million Americans of all walks of life are just incapable of rational thought?
Roman's argument here is exactly what I'm
By MC Slim JB
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 11:52am
talking about when I ascribe "profoundly crippled risk-assessment skills" to gun fetishists.
Every security decision in the world is about making trade-offs. The value of the automobile far outweighs its societal costs in death, dismemberment and destruction in ordinary use, never mind its tiny fractional use in terrorist attacks. Add to that list every one of the examples he cites: kitchen knives, electrical outlets, etc., etc. It's one of the favorite and most foolish arguments of gun-huggers, the most patent proof that they suck at a basic life skill.
Military-grade weapons in the hands of civilians? Their benefits are not remotely worth the cost to society, which is why most sane, civilized societies don't allow them. Except ours, because we're beholden to an amoral, profit-driven gun industry that is sophisticated enough about marketing to hold a few million gullible idiots in thrall with its childish boogeyman scare stories.
I used to agree with the observer who said after Sandy Hook, "The gun control debate is over: Americans are now fine with the mass murder of children." After Parkman, I'm no longer so sure, which is the most hopeful feeling I've had about the issue in many years.
Value
By capecoddah
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 12:20pm
The value of the freedom far outweighs its societal costs in death, dismemberment and destruction in ordinary practice.
Yeah, remember that
By MC Slim JB
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 2:02pm
horrible time in America when there weren't millions of assault rifles in the hands of askeered numbnut white guys and we were all so terribly oppressed?
How surprising that you can't tell a real threat from one invented to frighten your tiny self in the service of sociopathic industrial profiteering, CC.
So your ability
By erik g
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 2:16pm
to LARP a SWAT team member, so as to overshadow your massive inferiority complex and general fear of the world by carrying a gun and play-acting that it gives you any degree of control over the world and whatever chaos is in it, is worth the deaths of tens of thousands of people every year? And you're hanging your argument entirely on the inherent value of that "freedom," because you've decided that your definition of that abstract noun is the correct one, because 'Murica. Do I have that right?
I would usually step back here and let your own bald-faced idiocy stand for itself, but I'm worried that you don't actually notice when you get gang-tackled by the internet. I also feel like you really need to hear this said more often: you are not as smart a person as you think you are, and it would be in your own best interests to stop arguing in a public forum.
Do an exercise for me
By Roman
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 2:26pm
Play devil's advocate and come up with two reasons why someone might want to own a high-powered rifle, or for that matter a 9mm pistol with a >10 round magazine, that don't hinge on having a small penis or a low IQ.
You don't have to believe it. You don't have to pretend you think it outweighs your position. But if you can give that an honest try, you'll have better luck understanding why you think you're seeing an explosion of stupidity around this issue in spite of your hectoring and haranguing.
Fallacy of quantification
By Roman
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 2:07pm
You're completely right in that you can rigorously quantify the negative utility of cars, guns, lawn chemicals, kitchen knives, and various kinds of firearms very precisely in terms of individual deaths or injuries. You're on less firm ground about being able to quantify [i]as precisely or accurately[/i] the economic value of all of them. And you're off in the clouds if you think you can quantify the non-tangible worth of any of them beyond an opinion poll and semi-educated guesswork.
Deaths and injuries are rare events. They can be measured exactly and just about every one of them can have a specific immediate cause attached to them.
The economic value of cars? Of lawn fertilizer? Of laundry detergent? You can measure in dollars the benefit of owning one brand over another, of using cars over horse-drawn carriages, of washing your whites with bleach versus Tide versus hot water.
But you can't really quantify very accurately in dollars the value of washing your clothes weekly versus monthly versus yearly versus not at all. There's a cultural value in not smelling like shit or looking like shit, but different people will draw the line in different places. So for someone who's a stickler for cleaned and pressed shirts, a better washing machine is worth more than for someone who doesn't mind coming to work like he's slept in his clothes. You can't put a precise dollar amount on it because a precise number doesn't exist. A range exists.
Same thing for having a car in the city or dense suburb. You can put a cost on insurance and gas and parking and gasoline. But you can't put a dollar amount on what the car buys you because it buys you convenience in getting to work outside the city center, in getting around, in being able to go somewhere with less advance planning than if you had to take transit or a zipcar or a rental. And you can't put a dollar amount on the sense of ownership and freedom that many (but not all) people derive from owning their own vehicle. Because a single number doesn't exist. Some people like it, some people hate it and don't own cars, and some people are indifferent and will buy a car if they need it and won't if they don't because they don't like getting out of the city or will choose not to do so for reasons of whim and not economics.
Same thing for firearms of all types. Some people feel very strongly that they must be able to protect themselves...including with weapons that look big and scary and have a high rate of fire. In practice of course it's only anywhere near a practical defensive weapon out in the middle of nowhere where it's ten miles to the nearest neighbor and twenty miles to the nearest police. But the value is in the perceived safety it adds. And that's real.
That's a real societal benefit. You shouldn't dismiss it as zero because it isn't zero. It appears to you to be zero, and it's easy to fool yourself into thinking that your assessment of it, no matter how rigorous and mathematical, is [i]the[/i] objective assessment.
I'm not a post-modernist by any stretch of the imagination, but I've got to hand it to them: somewhere in their nonsense about mathematics and gravity being social constructs and tools of oppression is a kernel of truth: not everything has a single objective truth attached to it. Different people with different sets of values (not core moral values) can come to different conclusions presented with the same facts. And both can be valid.
Actually, it is possible to quantify the economic benefits of
By MC Slim JB
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 3:03pm
operating automobiles, various human vices like smoking and overeating, and other fixtures of modern life that carry some risks in their ordinary use. There's a whole industry devoted to those kind of risk calculations: maybe you've heard of it.
I'm pointing out the idiocy of the gun-slobberer's argument that "Hey, every human activity has *some* risk associated it: you could die sticking a fork in a socket, and nobody's talking about electricity control, amiright? Since everything carries *some* risk of death, and we can't ban *everything*, why ban anything? People are still going to get in lethal car accidents: why do we even bother with safety standards or road tests or vehicle inspections or eye tests: some bad shit is going to happen. Hey, we have laws, but criminals break laws anyway: I don't see why we even bother with laws!"
(And yes, you could kill 17 people with a kitchen knife, but if you can't tell the difference between knives and assault rifles as mass-murder weapons, you're even dumber than you sound.)
If gun-worshipers want to prove that the value of civilians owning weapons of war is worth more than the thousands of senseless deaths they have caused, they need to do more than wave a flag and holler "Freedom!"
Meanwhile, the non-insane world has exercised economic risk assessment and common sense and said, "The entertainment or sporting or personal-defense value or however else gun-tuggers justify the stroking of their military-grade weapons does not exceed their terrible costs to society, which is why we've banned them."
Economists get it wrong all the time
By Roman
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 3:15pm
Insurers aren't perfect either. They all tend to do better when they're dealing with common or recurring phenomena and not with rare events. They do worse when they conflate the quantifiable with the subjective. Like you did in your last paragraph.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/...
And speaking of rare but terrifying events
By Roman
Sat, 02/24/2018 - 11:42pm
that make well-meaning people feel like they should be armed:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/02/24/two-pe...
How to live. I mean really live.
By capecoddah
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 1:06pm
Running to your car every day in fear.
Not a nice way to live.
Again, the reasoning skills of a frightened and really
By MC Slim JB
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 3:15pm
dim two-year-old:
"Let's see: my risk of getting murdered is maybe 1 in 500,000, and my risk of getting murdered by a psychopath with a knife is, what, a tiny fraction of that?
I know how to respond to this like a sane adult with a grasp of probability and solid risk-assessment skills: give everyone firearms! It's so clear how that makes us all so much safer!"
There's useless, there's dogshit-dumb, and then waaay below that, there's capecoddah.
My risk of getting hurt in a car accident is low
By Roman
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 3:34pm
In fact, it's damn low. It's higher than getting shot, but it's still low.
And yet in just about every state, there are required minimum coverages for injury to self in car insurance policies. My risk of getting sick and requiring hospitalization is also low. And is low for everyone from age zero to about fifty or so. Yet Obamacare and Romneycare before it mandates minimum coverages for people who, making a rational risk assessment, are better off not paying for it.
I'm also required to purchase insurance coverage for breast cancer. As a male, my chance of contracting breast cancer is as close to zero as you can get without leaving the realm of reality for fantasy. My rational behavior would be to not purchase coverage for it.
Why do we allow, or in these cases, require these things? Because considerations other than the raw numbers you choose to focus on are at play.
And there you go again calling someone stupid because your values are different from his values. That's not a good look, dude.
Non sequitur: your facts are uncoordinated.
By MC Slim JB
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 5:15pm
I won't even bother with the gibberish capecoddah posted below.
You seem to want to keep running away from your argument that risk assessments cannot be made in economic terms. I don't blame you: it is patently specious, and anyone in a risk assessment profession can tell you. That includes institutional investors, insurance rate-setters, actuarial scientists, physical and IT security professionals, on and on and on.
The reason that the individual mandate exists is that insurance pools don't work if only the sick pay into them. Are you really ignorant of that oh-so-basic information on the healthcare debate? And congrats on finding an irrelevant marginal case like your having to pay for breast cancer coverage, as though that blows up gigantic industries that revolve around making economic risk assessments.
What's really not a good look for me is wasting time in any online discussion with you. As ever, I can't tell if you really are as obtuse as you seem, or if you just enjoy arguing in bad faith.
I'm running away?
By Roman
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 5:31pm
I'm obtuse?
I'm telling you the bleeding obvious: you can't quantify subjective things that vary for different people like perceived safety and perceived freedom with a single number for everyone.
And you keep telling me I'm an idiot for not accepting that your quantification is the only one. Like there's no such thing as subjective perception and there's no such thing as placing a value on that subjective perception that outweighs another dollar amount.
Bloody hell, we all do it all the time. It's called civilization. Why do we not consume horsemeat in this country? Why do we have animal welfare laws? Why is it illegal for a physician to prescribe a suicide cocktail? Why do we have an age of consent? Why do we allow the sale of violent pornography? Why do we allow the sale of cigarettes? Why do we allow the sale of hard liquor (if ever there was a good analog to guns)?
Why the hell do we not pick one objective performance metric and impose it on everyone...cradle to grave...in the schools, in the laws, in public shaming...everywhere so that there would be no disagreements about assumptions and a single set of actuarial tables will govern all of our behaviors?
What you are suggesting
By capecoddah
Tue, 02/27/2018 - 4:02pm
Arm all the strawmen (in some sort of socialist orgy of redistribution)?
What will you do when you need unarmed strawmen?
The woman who was terrified every morning was not killed. She simply led a life of being terrified every day.
It is unfair that she would need to be murdered with a knife before being considered worthy of being included in an argument about living in a land not worth living in.
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