rationalskepticism.org

Tortured_Genius wrote:

The_Piper wrote:...a conference to celebrate gun culture...

There's the problem right there.

Firearms are tools for:

1.) Killing animals. Anything other than trophy hunting I'd say most people wouldn't have a huge problem with so long as it's humane (unless they are vegetarians or vegans).

2.) Shooting non-living targets for sport. Again, I suspect most wouldn't have a problem with this.

3.) Killing people. Modern societies reserve this role for members of the military and law enforcement in a legally controlled manner.

For any other purpose they're, quite literally, being used as a fetish:

A fetish (derived from the French fétiche, which comes from the Portuguese feitiço, and this in turn from Latin facticius, "artificial" and facere, "to make") is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value, or powers, to an object.

I'd characterise the activities of the NRA and the promotion of "gun culture" as gun fetishism at a religious level - and with many of the same problems, especially when it comes to deprogramming adherents. Rational discourse with them, as with other religions, is practically impossible.

Listening to Cruz and his ilk I very much suspect their ideal method for securing children's safety at school is to have a black-clad Son of Gilead with tactical armour and assault rifle in every classroom (as an added bonus they can check that evil things like critical race theory and tolerance for others isn't being taught).

The most heinous thing the fetishists do is obfuscate where people want to get to in relation to gun ownership for sport vs. public safety by constantly blathering about "freedom" and "the constitution" whilst refusing to talk about public safety unless it means "MOAR GUNZ".

Unless there's a rational discussion on where people want to get to on public safety, and from that the formulation of a strategy to get there, then you're stuck with the status quo - which means that thousands of dead children annually are just the price of "liberty".