Massive School Shooting at an Elementary School

[Azdgari]

[quote="DGFone"][quote="Woeler"]
I may stand with some of your points, but this ''disease'' is not like the flu. It's like cancer. Cure it or die.[/quote]

Exactly! You don't cure a disease by treating the symptoms. After all, ask a cancer survivor: what was more important? Killing off the cancer cells, or taking pain killers?

Same with crime. Take away the guns, the crime will remain, and guns will be replaced by something else. Don't want people to die from guns? Make it highly undesirable to commit a crime in the first place.[/quote]
Still bad logic, still don't agree. You should kill cancer cells, and you should take pain killers! In our sickness metaphor, you're a patient who refuses painkillers, antacids, etc and says "Don't touch me until you can instantly cure me!"

[DGFone]

[quote="Azdgari"][quote="DGFone"][quote="Woeler"]
I may stand with some of your points, but this ''disease'' is not like the flu. It's like cancer. Cure it or die.[/quote]

Exactly! You don't cure a disease by treating the symptoms. After all, ask a cancer survivor: what was more important? Killing off the cancer cells, or taking pain killers?

Same with crime. Take away the guns, the crime will remain, and guns will be replaced by something else. Don't want people to die from guns? Make it highly undesirable to commit a crime in the first place.[/quote]
Still bad logic, still don't agree. You should kill cancer cells, and you should take pain killers! In our sickness metaphor, you're a patient who refuses painkillers, antacids, etc and says "Don't touch me until you can instantly cure me!"

Did you even read the quote? It sums up exactly what I'm saying and I don't want to repeat it. Incidentally, you're not the only one with crappy medical luck, and I took all the painkillers and suppressants I could get, thanks. Correct me if I'm wrong, but chronic implies incurable, doesn't it? So you will never do anything about your disease ever because its incurable, right?[/quote]

No, what I meant is that if you can prevent all crimes, you won't need to ban guns -there's no crime anyways.

If you can prevent cancer, why need the painkillers?

[Azdgari]

You can't prevent cancer. That's the point. Great analogy, actually. Crime is a cancer, gun violence is a tumor. We can't cure cancer: at least not yet, and not in the foreseeable future. But we can work on this particular aspect, or tumor, and even though it is not a panacea, it's doable and will have a considerable impact.

[DGFone]

[quote="Azdgari"]You can't prevent cancer. That's the point. Great analogy, actually. Crime is a cancer, gun violence is a tumor. We can't cure cancer: at least not yet, and not in the foreseeable future. But we can work on this particular aspect, or tumor, and even though it is not a panacea, it's doable and will have a considerable impact.[/quote]

Sure you can. Millions and millions are poured into exactly that. At the very least, you can try to find the more realistic solution of defeating cancer the moment it's detected. Either way, no need for painkillers.

[Azdgari]

...?

Is that why we never excise tumors, perform chemotherapy, or offer painkillers or sedatives to cancer patients?

[DGFone]

We offer painkillers to patients because with our current medicine, the strategy to kill cancer is simple: Kill the cancer cells before you kill the human.

Now what will happen when we will devise a medicine that only attacks cancer, is therefore safe, and quite painless?

Painkiller companies won't be very happy. But people will be.

[Azdgari]

Right, so until we devise that cure [which does not exist and will not in the forseable future], we let every cancer patient die in hospice without chemo, tumor excision, right? Because to take measures to improve their condition without entirely curing it is, as you say, pointless.

Sorry if that sounds harsh. But really, your logic, not mine.

[DGFone]

[quote="Azdgari"]Right, so until we devise that cure [which does not exist and will not in the forseable future], we let every cancer patient die in hospice without chemo, tumor excision, right? Because to take measures to improve their condition without entirely curing it is, as you say, pointless.

Sorry if that sounds harsh. But really, your logic, not mine.[/quote]

You'll be surprised how rapidly cancer research is improving. Not in the foreseeable future? I think not.
From what I see, it's this kind of defeatist attitude that prevents people from doing great things. It's always easier to find a reason why not to go to Mars than why to go there.

Same here: It's always easier to say "let's ban guns" knowing fully well that it doesn't do anything to the underlying problem of crime at all. But as long as banning guns is easier then trying to prevent crime, it's better to ban guns, right?

Take a look at all the cities that banned guns because of crime. Gun crime might have fallen, but crime as a whole didn't. In places like in D.C., it grew.

[Woeler]

You guys have been exploiting the cancer analogy way to far.

[Azdgari]

Agreed. DG, want to comment on the measures I proposed a couple pages back?