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The article is slightly tongue-in-cheek (I'm pretty sure Henry Porter does not want the UN to intervene militarily in the US!). But it does express, quite forc

by room271 13y ago

The article is slightly tongue-in-cheek (I'm pretty sure Henry Porter does not want the UN to intervene militarily in the US!). But it does express, quite forcefully, the simple point that if the US is concerned about the safety of its citizens it might do better to focus on gun safety and ownership than on the so-called war on terrorism.

staunch 13y ago
No, it's just a laughably bad argument all around. Including suicides in gun deaths is always done like this because otherwise the numbers are not impressive enough, I guess. No mention is made of things that might add perspective, like the number of people who die from smoking, alcohol, drug overdoses, drunk driving, or swimming pools. That would soften the point too much. And the terrorism angle is just ridiculous. The reason it makes sense to worry about terrorism to the tune of billions of dollars is that a WMD attack on American soil would cost potentially trillions of dollars. Certainly 9/11's impact was massively expensive both financially and psychologically. For some reason these issues always bring out the most intellectually dishonest and transparent arguments. Really smart people disagree about this topic and have much better arguments than this author's.
- glenra 13y ago
  >The reason it makes sense to worry about terrorism to the tune of billions of dollars is that a WMD attack on American soil would cost potentially trillions of dollars. Nope. The truth is that it simply doesn't make sense to worry about terrorism to anywhere near the degree we do. We'd have done far better to chalk the whole thing up to "act of God" and move on. Regarding the risk of a "WMD attack", you're making the same mistake you just accused the other guy of doing. He conflated suicide with homicide; the term "WMD" is intentionally vague so as to conflate actual nuclear weapons, "dirty bombs", and every variety of chemical weapon. The bad guys don't HAVE nukes or chemical weapons and 9/11 did nothing to suggest that sort of attack had become more likely than before. The risk of damage from a "dirty bomb" would be largely self-inflicted - we'd harm ourselves due to our own paranoia. The risk of damage from chemical weapons is pretty small even if our enemies had them, which they don't. If you correctly separate the threats you'll see each individual one is really really small. > Certainly 9/11's impact was massively expensive both financially and psychologically. 9/ll's impact as massively expensive because we chose to LET it be massively expensive. If we had shrugged it off, it wouldn't have been.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - staunch 13y ago
    Yes, of course it would be mostly self-inflicted. That doesn't make it any less real.

by room271 13y ago

staunch 13y ago

No, it's just a laughably bad argument all around. Including suicides in gun deaths is always done like this because otherwise the numbers are not impressive enough, I guess. No mention is made of things that might add perspective, like the number of people who die from smoking, alcohol, drug overdoses, drunk driving, or swimming pools. That would soften the point too much. And the terrorism angle is just ridiculous. The reason it makes sense to worry about terrorism to the tune of billions of dollars is that a WMD attack on American soil would cost potentially trillions of dollars. Certainly 9/11's impact was massively expensive both financially and psychologically. For some reason these issues always bring out the most intellectually dishonest and transparent arguments. Really smart people disagree about this topic and have much better arguments than this author's.

glenra 13y ago
>The reason it makes sense to worry about terrorism to the tune of billions of dollars is that a WMD attack on American soil would cost potentially trillions of dollars. Nope. The truth is that it simply doesn't make sense to worry about terrorism to anywhere near the degree we do. We'd have done far better to chalk the whole thing up to "act of God" and move on. Regarding the risk of a "WMD attack", you're making the same mistake you just accused the other guy of doing. He conflated suicide with homicide; the term "WMD" is intentionally vague so as to conflate actual nuclear weapons, "dirty bombs", and every variety of chemical weapon. The bad guys don't HAVE nukes or chemical weapons and 9/11 did nothing to suggest that sort of attack had become more likely than before. The risk of damage from a "dirty bomb" would be largely self-inflicted - we'd harm ourselves due to our own paranoia. The risk of damage from chemical weapons is pretty small even if our enemies had them, which they don't. If you correctly separate the threats you'll see each individual one is really really small. > Certainly 9/11's impact was massively expensive both financially and psychologically. 9/ll's impact as massively expensive because we chose to LET it be massively expensive. If we had shrugged it off, it wouldn't have been.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- staunch 13y ago
  Yes, of course it would be mostly self-inflicted. That doesn't make it any less real.