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sc94597 on 25 May 2022
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JWeinCom said:
sc94597 said:

Given that the other party started with one-sentence flippant responses that weren't relevant to the text quoted, who exactly is attempting "to shut down the dialogue?" Anyway, the questions aren't rhetorical. They are legitimate. Some of them are sub-questions meant to expand on a more general question. But ultimately the general question is, "how do we equitably enforce new gun laws in the United States, given that the institutions of law-enforcement are highly racially-biased and given that past and current gun laws are disproportionately harmful to BIPOC persons?" 

I did not say the questions were not legitimate, but there were about 20 of them fired off rapidly. I do not think you reasonably expected a thoughtful, measured, and researched response to all of them. Regardless of what anyone else was doing, this was clearly not an attempt at a dialogue. 

It's like going on a date and asking, "Hi how are you, how many brothers and sisters do you have, do you want to have kids someday, how many, if we had a boy would you want to circumcise, do you want to raise them in any particular religion, what if they didn't accept that religion, and what if they wanted to raise their children in a different one, would you intervene, and what if the children's gender identity is different from what is assigned at birth, and would you support a trans child, ..." Each question may be legitimate on its own, but if you spew them out like that, pretty sure that the other person would bail real quick.

So let's consider that the context isn't a real-time conversation or a date. 

1. I brought up the point to Svennoj that legal-issues aside enforcement is a real problem logistically, and there are also concerns because enforcement of new criminal laws almost always leads to more racial inequality in the U.S and we are currently in a period where we desperately need wide-scale decriminalization. 

2. Chrkeller uncharitably quoted my response with a quib about hunting deer with semi-automatic weapons, as if the concerns I brought up were as trivially inconsiderate as an NRA talking point.  

3. After a few back and forth quibs, Chrkeller brought up policy proposals that they thought were "common-sense" or "logical" without addressing the concerns about enforcement I previously brought up. 

4. At this point, given that I already brought up a few problems with enforcement, the whole point of my contribution in this particular discussion was enforcement, and there was no good faith effort or understanding that this is the problem I have, do I just ask a few of these questions waiting for more quibs or to emphasize that enforcement isn't some trivial matter but something quite complicated with various different implications to people of different backgrounds and relations with law-enforcement do I form a barrage of questions? Of course, given the history of there being no good faith within the discussion I am going to choose the latter. It wasn't to overwhelm, but to instigate in a way that emphasizes that there are dozens of questions that need to be answered when constructing legislation that will strongly affect people's lives. Partly I was interested in Chrkeller's responses, as I am with anybody who supports criminalization of certain forms of otherwise non-violent activity, but I didn't have high hopes and given that I never did receive answers to even the general question implied in the barrage -- how can we enforce any strong gun control laws equitably?, and for which I asked elsewhere I wasn't wrong in my assumption.