How A Rational Debate On Guns Actually Goes:
"Do guns exist?"
"No!"
"I'm sorry you have chosen not to live in the real world. Next."
"Do guns exist?"
"Yes."
"What can you do about it?"
"We could ban them."
"I'm sorry, there are hundreds of millions of them, and the Constitution and Supreme Court say they're a right."
"I don't like that. It shouldn't be true."
"I'm sorry you have chosen not ( Read more... )
In case you don't have time, Moloch was an ancient diety that looked like a half-human half-cow. Parents used to sacrifice their own children to Moloch by throwing them (still alive) into a furnace. They did this in order to expiate whatever particular guilt they had been brainwashed to feel in those days.
Things haven't changed much, parents are willing to let their own children be killed, rather than actually do anything actually effective to protect them (like having people guard them with guns) in order to expiate the particular guilt they've been brainwashed with nowadays, regarding guns. Either that, or they don't want to be unpopular and politically incorrect in front of other parents, so even if they think guarding children with guns would be effective, they haven't got enough balls to propose it.
I'm sure parents in ancient Carthage didn't want to appear unpopular in front of other parents in those days, either, by suggesting either that they didn't actually have any of whatever guilt they had been brainwashed to feel in those days, or that throwing their own children into a furnace wasn't the best way to deal with said guilt.
Irrationality has bad consequences. It is only useful coincidentally and temporarily. It is incompatable over the long term with human rights, actually protecting one's children, and (unless you believe in a religious apocalypse rather than the heat death of the sun) the long term survival of the human race.
No, the example of a parent who irrationally disregards their own safety and runs into a burning house to save their children is NOT proof that irrationality is a good means of protecting your child. Over the long term, the rational parent who previously has done things like check their house for short circuits, greasy rags, and other fire hazards, has a much better chance of saving their child from a fire. Even though it might be emotionally uncomfortable for that parent to contemplate the future possibility of a house fire. If you are forced to a life-threatening irrational action, it means you fucked up in the past by choosing popular and comfortable irrational actions over unpopular and uncomfortable rational ones.
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