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BLUEBLOCR

Social climber

joshua tree

Mar 21, 2015 - 11:02pm PT

if democrats can have guns why shouldn't dogs?

arff!

edit; that didn't come out quite right. what i meant was, i trust more dogs judgement than i do peoples

madbolter1

Big Wall climber

Denver, CO

Mar 22, 2015 - 01:06am PT

IT musta runn- oft honey!

One of my favorite lines from any movie. :-)

Reilly

Mountain climber

The Other Monrovia- CA

Mar 22, 2015 - 08:39am PT

I trust more dogs judgement than i do peoples

Fear not, Blueblocr, many of my favorite dogs have also been frustrated by the subtleties of
English to express themselves succinctly.

johnboy

Trad climber

Can't get here from there

Mar 22, 2015 - 10:28am PT

The club banned wire hairs right after that.

They should have banned the owner instead.

There's a lot of people that shouldn't own dogs.

Fritz

Trad climber

Choss Creek, ID

Mar 22, 2015 - 02:45pm PT

Chaz: Re your thoughts on my question.

Is Idaho infested with lunatics, or something? Why would you worry about something so far-fetched?

I will admit to having fun with the question, but I also find it normal in rural western America to believe that everyone is armed and dangerous.

This story, from about 30 years ago, illustrates the situation in rural Idaho & Nevada. It made Idaho headlines at the time as a "feel-good" story since all the shooters, but the felon were Idaho residents.

Mid 1980’s, just south of the Idaho-Nevada State line on Highway 93, there was a minor car accident.
A California driver scraped another car that was turning into a rest area at Salmon Falls Creek.
Both cars stopped, as several dozen people at the rest area: gawked at the “fender bender.”
Although the accident was 60 miles from the nearest Nevada town, an Elko County Deputy Sheriff, was nearby.
The Deputy drove up to the scene, and thinking it was a “fender bender” approached the scene in a “non-threatening” manner.
The California driver shot him in the head.
At that point, the California driver, noticed all the nearby witnesses.
He walked towards them shooting.
Numerous people grabbed weapons from their vehicles and returned fire.

The Californian was killed and no-one at the rest stop was injured.
It turned out that the Californian had “gone insane,” killed his wife and fled north from L.A.

Chaz

Trad climber

greater Boss Angeles area

Mar 22, 2015 - 03:09pm PT

I have no doubt everybody in Idaho is armed - but Idaho's nowhere near dangerous.

San Bernardino ( CA ) averages twice as many murders each year as does the whole state of Idaho, despite having only one-fifth of Idaho's population.

Simple math tells you the armed people of Idaho are at best only one-tenth as dangerous as the people here in San Bernardino.

Fritz

Trad climber

Choss Creek, ID

Mar 22, 2015 - 09:15pm PT

Chaz: Indeed! Simple math does tell you that parts of California are more dangerous than rural Idaho or Nevada. I agree!

Figures never lie, but ----------!

Fritz

Trad climber

Choss Creek, ID

Mar 22, 2015 - 09:38pm PT

Speaking of "teeth-clinching" "feel-good" "make you paranoid" movies!

I watched all of RED DAWN for the first time in about 15 years tonight.

What a great paranoia-inducing movie! It does make you want to buy guns and fight them commies, untill you get gloriously shot-down.

All kidding aside. It is a significant movie, and I'm sure it has been a major influence on American gun ownership.

OH! My rural Idaho high school mascot was a Wolverine.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Mar 22, 2015 - 10:48pm PT

So, the right to life is inalienable but not strictly absolute. It must not be infringed, and you can avoid infringing my right to life by doing nothing. It requires nothing of you to not kill me. Just leave me alone, and you have entirely satisfied my negative right to life. You don't owe me anything, and you are not actively responsible to ensure that I keep living. The "classical liberal" position on rights is: Leave me alone, and you have "done unto me" all that my rights require!

this is not so simple as it sounds...

first off you have to define what a "person" is, I don't think that's so easy.

there are many ways that a person's life may be taken from them, naturally. So in the "natural order" no such right is granted.

there are situations when people do take other person's lives, as in war, and in self-defense, perhaps these are special situations where rights are in conflict.

Finally, one person's actions may create a condition which results in the taking of another person's life. This can be indirect, with no intention, yet it would be an infringement of this right. For instance, many activities I engage in generate particulate air pollution, from which an estimated 7 million people die from annually (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ ). My activity (energy consumption) is denying someone's "right to life."

What recourse do those people have (those that are at risk, not those who have died)?

Is it ethical for me to consume energy that creates a condition that denies another their life?
Is it legal?

Chaz

Trad climber

greater Boss Angeles area

Mar 22, 2015 - 11:15pm PT

Dr Hartouni writes:

"My activity (energy consumption) is denying someone's "right to life." "

No it's not.

You can do a lot more damage with your gun than you can washing clothes or running your AC.

fear

Ice climber

hartford, ct

Mar 23, 2015 - 06:21am PT

Interesting point though....

I know I'll cause a lot more damage to other people over the course of my life driving vehicles, consuming resources, polluting the environment, than I ever will with any firearm I might own. Indirect and remote but harm and likely death nonetheless...

madbolter1

Big Wall climber

Denver, CO

Mar 23, 2015 - 07:05am PT

this is not so simple as it sounds...

No, but we overview the subject as best we can in the context of a forum thread.

first off you have to define what a "person" is, I don't think that's so easy.

Actually, no I don't for the purposes of my argument. There are, of course, fuzzy edges, like when a fetus becomes a baby becomes a person. But there is a huge set of unquestionable persons, and my argument concerns them. We don't have to know all the edges of what a "person" is in order to know that we having this discussion are persons. So, the argument applies to the ones engaging in it.

there are many ways that a person's life may be taken from them, naturally. So in the "natural order" no such right is granted.

The fact that a person's life is taken does not mean that they had no right to it. And we are not talking about the "losing" of one's life in the "natural order." We are talking about the negative right that persons DO have that other persons will not intentionally take it.

Are you trying to float the idea that because death happens, there is no right to life?

Really? You seriously gonna try to get that idea to experience lift-off?

there are situations when people do take other person's lives, as in war, and in self-defense, perhaps these are special situations where rights are in conflict.

This is a common confusion. There can be no conflict of negative rights. I explained the self-defense case above: No conflict of rights; the assailant takes his/her own rights into his/her own hands when running into my self-defense mechanisms. The same principle is extended in to groups and nations.

Finally, one person's actions may create a condition which results in the taking of another person's life. This can be indirect, with no intention, yet it would be an infringement of this right.

If the effect was unintentional, then it was not technically an "action." The notions of "agency" and moral responsibility are founded on the notion of intentionality.

If my pen accidentally falls out of my hand, do you ask: "Why did you drop the pen?" If you do ask, I respond, "I didn't 'drop it,' as though the falling of the pen was an 'action' on my part. It just fell out of my hand. I didn't mean for it to drop. I would have preferred that it not fall. So, there is no 'way' in the event. It just happened, so I have no possible answer to any 'why' question."

If I don't intend an event that happens to include me, then I did not ACT in that event.

Thus, I cannot "infringe" your rights by accident. Your life might be lost by accident, including an accident involving another person. But that does not indicate that the other person "violated" or "infringed" your right to life. Even our courts recognize this basic principle, and the primary things every criminal court tries to sort out are the perceptions and intentions of the person on trial. Unless negligence or a materially-related violation of some other law can be discovered, accidents are not criminally actionable. By contrast, "infringement" or "violation" is a function of intention, not a function of accidental events.

The mere fact that "nature" can end my life in countless ways, including via the inadvertent behaviors of other people, has no relevancy to the negative right to life, which inheres in moral relations, and, thus, inheres in intentional actions.

For instance, many activities I engage in generate particulate air pollution, from which an estimated 7 million people die from annually (http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ ). My activity (energy consumption) is denying someone's "right to life."

That's oblique indeed, and if you are convinced that YOUR activities are having a measurable and proximate effect in literally taking the lives of people, then YOU should certainly stop those activities. Most people recognize that such activities have at most an oblique and negligible effect on any particular person's life. It's not like there is a proximate relation between you starting your car and some distant person being "killed" by the air pollution of that act.

Keep in mind that we are not talking about dying. People just do that. We are talking about KILLING. Again, your pollution example does not take seriously the scope of intention. If you are causing particulate air pollution in my closed garage, after you have tied me up in there, with the intention of killing me with that air pollution, then, yes, you have established a proximate and intentional cause of my death and hence violated my right to life.

But your example is really something vague like, "Society, of which I am a part, engages in certain behaviors that harm people." No specific person is "doing" the harm. And no specific person is harmed. There's just a random sampling of harmers and a random sampling of the harmed. And if you honestly think that the harm is a violation of people's negative right to life, then you have helped me make my point, and YOU should stop doing whatever you think it is that is actually violating people's rights.

What recourse do those people have (those that are at risk, not those who have died)?

Risk is not a violation of rights. You don't have any right to comfort, a lack of fear, a particular standard of living, society giving you food, shelter, health care, or any other positive thing to "ensure" that you live for some particular period of time at a particular level of comfort. ALL you have in the negative right to life is the right to not have your life intentionally taken by another person.

Again, if you can really get off the ground that air pollution is a proximate threat to particular people from particular other people, then you would have a case that the harmed can recover damages from those who harmed them. Of course, such a case would have to start with the "harmed" demonstrating that they were not engaging in the same harmful practices themselves.

Is it ethical for me to consume energy that creates a condition that denies another their life? Is it legal?

Well, it's legal, but that is quite irrelevant. Legality and morality often come apart.

You haven't yet demonstrated that YOUR energy consumption intentionally and proximately kills another person. But, even if you had, all you would have produced is something like an "island scenario," which conflates negative and positive rights.

Two people are stranded on an island, and there are not enough resources to go around, to keep both alive for a "typical" lifespan. Both are motivated to fish, gather coconuts, harvest the minimal grasses on the island, etc. But the life of one is going to be "cut short" by lack of resources.

Both have the right to seek the preservation of their own life by gathering resources. On your way of thinking, it appears that each is thereby attempting to violate the other's right to life. But that is incorrect.

One's negative right to life is not violated by the other's mere gathering of resources. And the one is not in any way attempting to constrain the freedom of the other. There is just a competition for resources, and one or the other will prove to be more active, motivated, intelligent, and, in short, resourceful in the gathering of resources. The one has no duty to "split everything evenly" or anything like that. And the one is not "killing" the other by the mere act of gathering resources. If the other does die, that is an unintended side-effect, and the typical person would prefer that the other not die. This is not a "killing," as it is not in the scope of intention.

What one may not do is steal the gathered resources of the other, attempt to constrain the freedom of the other to gather resources, or outright kill the other to "end the competition." All such actions would be violations of negative rights, which simply demand to be "left alone" in one's own "pursuit of happiness."

Negative rights do not guarantee the "desired outcome" or even that life will last a "typical" length. All that my negative right to life specifies is that others may not legitimately kill me.

Really, it is impossible in a forum thread to recreate a university course on rights and ethics.

ontheedgeandscaredtodeath

Social climber

SLO, Ca

Mar 23, 2015 - 07:53am PT

So yesterday my kid's baseball team played against a team sponsored by a motorcycle gang. And not a weekend gang consisting of guys that are software engineers during the week. Anyway, about 30 of them rode up to the game sporting side arms, glared at my kid's team and high fived their team. It was tense enough that our coaches brought the team away from the armed guys.

Totally reconfirmed the fact that people who carry guns around in the general community are absolute f*#king d#@&%ebags.

fear

Ice climber

hartford, ct

Mar 23, 2015 - 08:06am PT

Wrong again...

Adult men that threaten children at a baseball game are ##$#Wbags.....

Reilly

Mountain climber

The Other Monrovia- CA

Mar 23, 2015 - 08:10am PT

Wrong still - cops and prosecutors who allow such vermin to proliferate are more contemptible
for having squandered the people's trust. We rail against the threat of Ebola yet tacitly allow
a disease like that to flourish?

ontheedgeandscaredtodeath

Social climber

SLO, Ca

Mar 23, 2015 - 08:22am PT

To be fair, they didn't do anything illegal. Just exercising their rights on a Sunday afternoon.

Craig Fry

Trad climber

So Cal.

Mar 23, 2015 - 10:25am PT

What would the Gun nuts do if all Black and Latinos started going around with open carry weapons?

serious question.

I say we give every legal Black man a Gun, just to see what happens.
I know exactly what would happen, the Gun Nuts would go CrazY!!

Only the white man and their women are allowed to have guns according to the 2nd amendment, right?
It must say that somewhere.

Craig Fry

Trad climber

So Cal.

Mar 23, 2015 - 10:29am PT

And Fox News is still lying about how the New Black Panthers were scaring poor white voters somewhere, even though it was debunked as Pure BS.

fear

Ice climber

hartford, ct

Mar 23, 2015 - 11:23am PT

More nonsense... even in KT here there are plenty "people of color" that carry open legally and are even members of a few more popular grassroots rights movements. Women too! Imagine the horror!

In Ferguson there were also legally armed "people of color" protecting their own property, openly.

It's not a black/white thing. Never was although the media will spin it that way.