Elementary deduction

The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review ^ | January 17, 2005 | Masthead Editorial

[neverdem]

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Elementary deduction

Monday, January 17, 2005

Sherlock Holmes could teach deductive reasoning to the National Academy of Sciences.

Holmes, the quintessential detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, knew that by eliminating all other factors, the remaining one must be the truth.

An NAS panel created during the Clinton administration -- and infested with gun-grabbers -- issued a 328-page report on gun control. It studied hundreds of articles, books, government publications, gun-control laws and its own empirical work.

But its exhaustive study -- analyzing the former ban on so-called assault weapons, the Brady Act, one-gun-a-month buying restrictions and gun locks -- could not identify any benefits of gun control.

Crime was not reduced. Accidents were not lessened.

But after studying each specific issue, the panel's inductive reasoning only concluded that more study was needed.

Citizens in more than 30 states may carry concealed weapons legally. If they were injuring others or themselves, it surely would have produced front-page, above-the-fold stories with screaming, large-type headlines.

Mr. Holmes also knew what silence could say. Because the guard dog did not bark in "Silver Blaze," Holmes easily deduced the truth about a horse thief.

[Ancesthntr]

Didn't some famous psychologist state that one of the definitions of insanity was when a person continued trying to accomplish a goal in exactly the same way, time after time, despite the fact that it never worked before? I'd say that this statement applies to this situation, in spades.

[neverdem]

They are in denial of an addiction to utopian mythology. They say more study is needed. They should study machetes in Rwanda.

[Designer]

".. trying to accomplish a goal.."

While the posted article gives us some amusing reading, and possibly a better position from which to reject gun controlers' arguments, let us not make the mistake of presuming that their main goal is to reduce crime, or even to reduce "vi-lence".

The real goal, we should always remember, is to disarm the law-abiding middle class. Of course, just asking one of the average supporters of the movement will get you the above-presumed reason they are supporters, but they are simply dupes, and have no clue as to the machinations of the movement's leaders. Do not fall for the BS hype you hear from the MSM and others.

[Ancesthntr]

The real goal, we should always remember, is to disarm the law-abiding middle class. Of course, just asking one of the average supporters of the movement will get you the above-presumed reason they are supporters, but they are simply dupes, and have no clue as to the machinations of the movement's leaders. Do not fall for the BS hype you hear from the MSM and others.

IMHO, some 99% of anti-gunners are in 1 or more of the following catagories: hoplophobic, sincere believers that less (or no) legal weapons will reduce violence, or crime victims (or their relatives) who think that less (or no) legal weapons will reduce violence. They are, of course, either mentally unbalanced (in the case of the hoplophobes) or hopelessly naive (and I include the uninformed among these) and wrong. The other 1% are the leaders, the ones that want the populace disarmed so that they can lead the rest of society by the nose with no effective opposition. Some of them are foreign agents, but most are simply would-be dictators or their high-level servants, i.e. those who would benefit to the greatest degree if we were disarmed.