Then you have to appeal to emotion. The problem is that you know that if you call it an “appeal to emotion”, you’ll be verbally castigated from one end of the internet to the next by people like me. So, you need to come up with a new term. The term you come up with is “values-centered discussion”.
Same game, different name.
Values-centered conversations will embrace a strong sense of citizenship and a concern for the common good; if we frame questions around those kinds of values first and then around the issues we need to resolve, we may begin to get somewhere.
You see, and there is where the whole “values-centered” line completely breaks down. The people on opposite sides of this issue have completely different definitions of “good citizenship” and “the common good”. The “common good” as defined by the anti-gun crowd is essentially “get rid of all the guns”; they appeal to your emotions by saying that everything would “better” and “safer” if there were no gun.
You can use all the different buzz-words that you want, but none of it changes the simple fact that gun control arguments are based on emotion, and not reason.
Robb at Sharp as a Marble has a more in depth look at the article.
The unfortunate thing is that the hoplophobe lobby is getting better and better at scaring, cowing, and generally disturbing the average American. When you get right down to it, more people are honestly swayed by attacks at their emotions (“What if it was YOUR child?!”) than basic statistics… A lot of that may have something to do with the near-mystical aura surrounding the realm of “statistics”, and a lot of it may just be playing to people’s fears.
Yes, I find myself squarely in the center and being hated by both sides.
1. I do not believe that there was a magic wand that created the Earth in 6 days.
2. I do not believe there is a magic wand that will remove all the guns from the planet.
And if one more fucker tells me that they’re protecting my kids I might just shoot them to prove that I’m perfectly capable of protecting my own kids.
Yup, I’m grumpy.
Don’t tell my wife, but I think I’m in love with Sue Doe-Nim