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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tweetr" data-source="post: 2112249" data-attributes="member: 5183">Ah.  I understand your intent now.  I expect you will see 100% disagree.The poll, and Kristof's argument as you quote him, still are begging the question (asking us to accept an implicit, unsupported premise on the way to a fallacious conclusion.)  The implicit premise is that the availability of weapons without government regulation causes civil war.  In Yemen, of all places!  Sheesh!  He doesn't think some other factor might possibly be responsible for both the civil war and the uncivil society?  Hmm?  Like, oh, say, off the top of my head, militant Islam and utter hopelessness?Edit: Against my better judgement I squandered the time to read Kristof's article.  His reasoning is even worse than I feared (and about par for the course at that grey rag, the New York Times!)"To protect the public, we regulate cars and toys, medicines and mutual funds. So, simply as a public health matter, shouldnt we take steps to reduce the toll from our domestic arms industry?"Yikes!  There is so much wrong with his second sentence it is hard to know where to begin!  I reject absolutely the contention that regulating cars, toys, medicines, and mutual funds is (a) good, or (b) done to protect the public.  It is done solely to entrench the power of the one doing the regulating.  Public safety is only the excuse.  Regardless whether one may think regulation of such things is good for public safety, I defy anyone to show where Congress has the Constitutional authority to do so.  And even if one can find such authority lurking in some corner of the Constitution, such authority still cannot be stretched into areas, e.g. keeping and bearing arms, that are explicitly forbidden by the Bill of Rights!The title of the article itself is specious: "Why Not Regulate Guns as Seriously as Toys?"  "Guns" (in itself an illiterate word to describe handheld firearms that belies the author's claimed Oregon farmboy background) are in fact regulated much more seriously (and unConstitutionally) than toys!  Toy "guns", too, are regulated more severely than other toys.Kristof claims the appeal of guns is that they are fun.  Fun they certainly are, but the fun is not their primary appeal, as any Oregon farmboy should understand.Kristof cites, but neither quotes nor supports, a "careful article forthcoming" by a Harvard professor seeking to reframe firearms as a public health question.  As the article is only forthcoming it is conveniently unavailable for Kristof's readers to assess!  Not to mention that any Harvard professor is presumptively disqualified to discourse on any subject remotely related to firearms.  Kristof merely presents the eminent professor's work as authoritative on the grounds that he earlier wrote a similarly unquoted and unsupported "brilliant" book -- rendering the entirety of the dependent rhetoric a fallacious argumentum ad verecundiam.How about this scholarly quote?  "But the evidence is overwhelming that firearms actually endanger those who own them. One scholar, John Lott Jr., published a book suggesting that more guns lead to less crime, but many studies have now debunked that finding . . ."Does Kristof cite the claimed "overwhelming evidence" or the claimed "many" studies debunking Lott's thesis?  Um, er, no.  This is bush-league writing.  Also par for the course at NY Times.I want my ten minutes back!</blockquote>

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