Livestream of gun control debate.

Livestream of gun control debate.

http://ct-n.com/video_flash.asp?livestream=0

NUH UH
YUH HUH
NUH UH
YUH HUH
NUH UH
YUH HUH
NUH UH
YUH HUH

There, I saved you an hour.

The odds of successfully tackling the "Does this make me look fat?" trick question from an insecure woman are infinitely better than seeing any sort of meaningful outcome out of a gun control debate. They don't even manage to reach an "agree to disagree" outcome, most of the time.

thanks for posting this.

Maybe there should be a common sense kind of IQ test that you need to pass in order to be able to own a firearm....

Bucket said:

NUH UH
YUH HUH
NUH UH
YUH HUH
NUH UH
YUH HUH
NUH UH
YUH HUH

There, I saved you an hour.

You forgot the part where they invetiably likens and kind of gun control to Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Maes said:

The odds of successfully tackling the "Does this make me look fat?" trick question from an insecure woman are infinitely better than seeing any sort of meaningful outcome out of a gun control debate. They don't even manage to reach an "agree to disagree" outcome, most of the time.

your avatar makes your butt look fat.

One interesting thing about debates is that they are argued on points of logic but the reason people choose their side isn't from following a logical thread, it's from a personal feeling they have about it that are governed by personality traits more than anything else. That's why debates never go anywhere.

Hellbent said:

One interesting thing about debates is that they are argued on points of logic but the reason people choose their side isn't from following a logical thread, it's from a personal feeling they have about it that are governed by personality traits more than anything else. That's why debates never go anywhere.

I don't think Christopher Hitchens argued against religion because of personal reasons or personality traits.

Gun control: aim gun at politicians and bankers instead of kids and other innocent folks.

I like to picture two cartoon asses shitting all over each other when it comes to this particular debate.

Khorus said:

I don't think Christopher Hitchens argued against religion because of personal reasons or personality traits.

I miss watching people getting "Hitchslapped", but even the most eleoquent, educated, reasoned or fact-based argument boils down to a point of view. You have to care about something to stand for or against it, even if your motives are selfless and philanthropic. Had Hitchens been religious, or had different ideas about the existence of god than what he had, I doubt whether he would have defiantly stood on one side of the fence and criticised and discouraged religion.

Gun control is no different. You have to have a personal reason to state wherever you stand on their regulation. If someone didn't care about all the people that have been killed in mass shootings, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to argue that their regulation should be more stringent to help prevent further atrocities.

One thing I hate, in the gun control debate especially, is not only does everyone disagree, but everyone's convinced that if you disagree with their point of view, that makes you not only wrong, but actually evil. People can't even agree that the other side is only trying to do what they think is best. Things seem to be going more and more that way in this country. If we could just start from a position of, "Let's agree that despite our differences in opinion, we acknowledge that both of us are trying to do what we believe is best," maybe we could begin to have meaningful discussion.

It's like I'm fond of saying, emotion is the enemy of rational thought and discussion.

Hellbent said:
personality traits

Your choice of words reminds me of the way the mind of someone subjected to torture loses touch with reality, reduced to ideas voided of context, reduced to individual or fragmented technical explanations.

As DoomUK implied, it's ideology, which is based largely on social, political and class interests. Personality traits are categories used in psychological and psychiatric analysis, and I don't think that suffices to explain anything here.

geekmarine said:
Things seem to be going more and more that way in this country. If we could just start from a position of, "Let's agree that despite our differences in opinion, we acknowledge that both of us are trying to do what we believe is best," maybe we could begin to have meaningful discussion.

It's a side effect of the increasing breach in wealth and interests between citizens and factions. Saying "let's be reasonable here" without going for the causes of such tensions is as delusive as believing in fairies.

Caffeine Freak said:
It's like I'm fond of saying, emotion is the enemy of rational thought and discussion.

People averse to emotion are lost in this world.

myk said:

People averse to emotion are lost in this world.

And in what way? In social awareness? In morality? That's quite vague sentence, in my opinion.

Like I implied in my reply to geekmarine, as in navigation with a broken radar. Emotional instability and conflict are scary. If we lose to unstable emotional situations it's like going insane. Madness and stupidity are our modern devil. We find shortcuts to cut it out, pretending we escape it in the comforts of rationality, which often serve us in terms tied to social wealth or power. It's easy to be right when you're not knee deep in conflict, easy to be sane when your life isn't a mess. From plain fear of uncertainly to a disconnection based on self-interest, we stay within certain bounds of reason, where we pretend we're free because these appear relatively wide or potent compared to what we consider ignorant or insane. A faith in rationality lacks that critical edge acquired by the best of modern thought, an understanding of how partial we are and how deeply immersed in the problem.

In terms of the arms control debate, I wouldn't think of seeing the level of emotional tension in the debates go away in any degree without starting to solve material conditions of social disparity and colonial or imperial practices.

myk said:

People averse to emotion are lost in this world.

Being averse to emotion isn't the same thing as recognizing that it's often an enormous obstacle standing in the way of a logical, mature discussion.

Alcohol in and of itself isn't bad, but it sure as hell impairs your ability to drive.

It's not alcohol we're talking about but being drunk. Alcohol would be part of the conditions and conflicts that create disparities of intellectual wealth, not the drunkenness itself, or what we accuse as irrational or ignorant. When the reasonable pin issues down on the unreasoning, they stigmatize them and rub their hands off their part in the relations that give room to the insanity. As if we were a bartender that acts like he isn't selling all that booze making them all drunk, making money in the process, where just saying "no" to emotion is like the Prohibition.

Technician said:

I like to picture two cartoon asses shitting all over each other when it comes to this particular debate.

Two Guns and a Cup