By the way, if you want to see where widespread use of pornography by males lead, you should take a good look at the marriage and birth rates in Japan. I get a real kick out of people telling me that Japanese have a healthy attitude toward sex because they allow nudity on television and such but relations between the sexes are highly dysfunctional in Japan. Real women aren't the sex toys depicted in Japanese pornography and have no interested in being treated that way.
Perhaps... But their tragedy does not give them the privilege to take away my rights.
Sure it does. You'll notice that we arrest people for drunk driving because of the harm that drunk drivers often do, even if the drunk driver hasn't actually caused an accident or hurt anyone. Libertarians like to talk about the right of a person to swing their fist ending with another person's nose. It doesn't take a genius to realize that recklessly swung fists are a hit nose waiting to happen and that it makes a lot of sense to stop the swinging fists before someone gets a bloody nose (or a parent loses a child to a drunk driver).
Carolyn McCarthy has based her congressional career on opposition to the second amendment, due to her husband having been killed and son wounded by gunman on their train. Her tragedy does not make the 2nd Amendment go away.
What makes a gun different from alcohol, drugs, or sex is that unlike those activities, the gun does not directly affect the chemistry of the brain of the user. Shooting a gun doesn't cause an orgasm, a high, or mentail impariment the way alcohol, drugs, and sex do. It wasn't the gun that enabled those murders or encouraged them. Guns don't rob people of their ability to make sound and responsible judgements. Alcohol, drugs, and sometimes even sex can.
That's also why we ban child pornography and adult-child sex across the board rather than wondering whether a particular child is mature enough to make those choices for themselves (after all, Tracy Lords turned out OK, right?). We know that adults can't be trusted to no coerce children into sex and that sex can mess children up.
Correlation isn't causation. There's a long history of porn in Japan, that just doesn't seem to make it into mainstream museums for some reason...
There's a heck of a low birthrate in Russia, as well, and they went through years of porn being suppresed by the Soviets. I think the factor that causes low birthrates is despair for the future, more than porn.
Sure it does. You'll notice that we arrest people for drunk driving because of the harm that drunk drivers often do, even if the drunk driver hasn't actually caused an accident or hurt anyone.
Actually, we arrest people for drunk driving because they're driving in a threatening manner. A person who manages to drive well, while legally drunk, isn't going to get pulled over and arrested.
What makes a gun different from alcohol, drugs, or sex is that unlike those activities, the gun does not directly affect the chemistry of the brain of the user. Shooting a gun doesn't cause an orgasm, a high, or mentail impariment the way alcohol, drugs, and sex do. It wasn't the gun that enabled those murders or encouraged them. Guns don't rob people of their ability to make sound and responsible judgements. Alcohol, drugs, and sometimes even sex can.
Give some people a gun and they turn from mild-mannered guy to swaggering bully. While a gun hasn't done that to me, I have to say the occasions I've gone target shooting at a local range has given me a bit of a high. Incrased adreneiline or testosterone, perhaps.
That's also why we ban child pornography and adult-child sex across the board rather than wondering whether a particular child is mature enough to make those choices for themselves (after all, Tracy Lords turned out OK, right?). We know that adults can't be trusted to no coerce children into sex and that sex can mess children up.
Well, we ban sex under a certain age, because for the law to be enforcable it needs to have a specific age, rather than judgement calls on maturity.
Nonsense. Any normal male is going to have a certain amount of testosterone surge while firing a gun, even if it's just range practice. For some people, it goes to the point of turning them into testosterone-poisoned idiots who swagger and give responsible gun owners a bad name.
(I do not presume to speak for women, but I suspect that there's a corresponding effect for them.)