My position is that democracy is paramount in western, secular countries, but
a) it is not always feasible in countries which have only recently begun experimenting with it
b) I sometimes value secularism over democracy
c) I also think if I have to consider many factors, like debilitating corruption in the Philippines, I might prefer the crazy socialist guy over the established gentry and
d) I am also willing to defend nations like China in some ways, some of the time, because their government makes sense in a historical and cultural context, and also because I'm not really fond of cultural imperialism in general.
Yeah, I mean, none of this is particularly unreasonable.
I am actually probably less enamored of democracy than most, mostly because I think being super into democracy for its own sake makes you more likely to want to go to war to promote democracy, which straight up doesn't work. I would definitely make the argument that the reason we like democracy is primarily because it promotes human rights and freedoms and equality better than anything else we've found. If they came out with a bunch of studies saying that a benevolent supercomputer dictatorship would be better for human rights and freedoms and equality then I would probably advocate for Skynet, at least a little. Ultimately results matter in my view.
While I support gun control (in an absolute, disarmament sense), I think its popularity as a policy position is mostly attributable to the preponderance of media stories about gun violence, and I think the public sentiment is disproportionate to the national impact any gun control measures would ostensibly have. I think the current story about the Dallas and Baton Rouge shootings have predictably brought the discussion to head once again, as people (myself included) make the case to others that there is a fundamental problem when citizens can effectively arm themselves against law enforcement. But ultimately I think it is actually irresponsible for the media to talk about such minute events like this the way they have because the attention is more productive in other places. There is, after all, a mass shooting in the United States every day.
Also I think the biggest cause of our misunderstanding was a typo in my original post. Where I said "the only reason we ever talk about...", I had meant to say "the only reason we are currently talking about". Which maybe you'll find more agreeable as a statement, even if you find it specious (because gun control is historically a liberal position and national news is not changing that).
Yeah, I think this is all reasonable, although I would, as you say, argue that gun control has historically been a liberal position for a while just for the reason of death prevention. But as I said in my original post I actually think racist police interactions are more responsible for urban deaths than is immediately obvious, so that is still probably where I'd want to start.
I will admit I am more interested in preventing mass shootings than I was in gun deaths in general before they became epidemic, and that is somewhat of a self-centered position, I guess. I am more likely to be affected by a mass shooting than by general gun violence, although neither is particularly likely. However I also think that mass shootings are relatively new and recent and so it should be somewhat more possible to target and eliminate them.
We've actually talked about this before, but I don't think there's a good, data backed argument that reducing gun deaths would significantly impact homicides in general (more than other approaches would). I think the most important effect gun control could have is reducing the emotional toll on the public every time a mass shooting of repute occurs.
It depends on how much you think people plan and execute homicides versus how much you think they just happen. There's evidence that removing guns has a huge effect on reducing suicides, because people who commit suicide generally do so acutely -- meaning that if, at the critical moment, it is just somewhat harder to kill themselves, they actually won't do it at all. So are most homicides similarly acute? I think probably so, but I could be wrong.
538 has an interesting article in their gun control set about how bad our gun data is because, if you point a gun at somebody and kill them because you didn't think the gun was loaded, that's a homicide to the coroner even though you and I would probably call it an accident.
Also, I'm sorry for the aggressive tone in my last post. I felt aggrandized, but maybe that was not appropriate.
I was probably too aggressive in my post as well, so sorry about that. As you say, I think we were talking past each other a bit. I was mostly reacting to the suggestion that I was particularly motivated by the Dallas shootings, rather than mass shootings in general.
