I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
> the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime
These are not even remotely the same thing.
> He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
Killing someone with a gunshot to the neck is absolutely not "bloodless".
I also agree that killing someone with a gunshot isn't "bloodless." But the statistics are, and that's the thing about the kind of rhetoric Kirk engaged in. It's easy to birds-eye-view the problem and say things like there is a reasonable weighing of right to own a firearm vs. the inevitable result of increased firearm homicide when it is not one's own neck catching the bullet. In that sense, the statistics (and rhetoric around them) are "bloodless."
Indeed, I suspect that one of the things that has made the discussion around firearm ownership in the United States increasingly charged year upon year is that as an increasing number of our friends, loved ones, and selves become the statistic of the day, the conversation cannot stay clinical and detached. Because for too many Americans, it's no longer some abstract someone somewhere who got shot that day; it's their neighbor. Or their mom. Or their kid.
No, that is an invalid rephrasing that misses the point. I have had this discussion numerous times already and am not interested in rehashing it. Check my comment history if you care.
FWIW, I actually am from Canada and generally disagree with the premise of the Second Amendment. However, I consider it a morally consistent position, and the way that the government goes after gun owners in Canada — and in the US, actually — is a travesty. The lawmakers have entirely too little understanding of the things they seek to ban.
I respect your lack of desire to engage on the topic and will not ask it of you, but FWIW: if you believe you are making the point that Charlie Kirk did not assert that the tradeoff of protecting the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was an acceptable tradeoff for the deaths of Americans in mass shootings (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)... You are not.
He did make that assertion.
> (which implies the ones lost are expendable, at least expendable enough that we won't change the society's norms to prevent those deaths)
It does not imply this.
In the US, our armed citizenry is part of our liberty. This year, Charlie Kirk had the extreme misfortune to be part of the price.
They are the same as the people who die in car crashes every year, or who are poisoned by household cleaners, etc.
Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
No. That's not how the concept works.
Almost everyone believes that it is just and right that American homeowners can own cars and household cleaners. You would never comment at someone's funeral that the deceased thought that children killed in car accidents or by accidental poisoning were "expendable".
If a city mayor opposed to public transit projects or bike lanes were to get run over by a hitman, I can't fathom that you would be making the same argument.
> Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
No. He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue. This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
> He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue.
Right, you get it.
> This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
... You were so close to getting it. Your argument is like asserting that every instance of a class is its own unique thing and has no relation to the class. When the whole point of object oriented programming is that we can make sweeping changes to the behavior of instances with relatively small modifications to the class.
The class is policy. The instances are deaths.
Kirk was not only satisfied with but advocated for the current structure of the "GunRights" class. Then someone operating under the rules of an instance of that class killed him.
It's not right that he's dead. It's not right that any of the victims of gun violence at the hands of strangers died. But in Kirk's case, one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused. It's just usually other people paying the price for his philosophy, not him.
(Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
No, it is not.
> one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused.
No, one must not observe that, because his death was neither predictable (unless you think the "hex" Jezebel placed on him was real and effective) nor a consequence. You are looking at a policy enabling an act (one which existed literally for centuries before Kirk's argument), and saying that this is the same as a political philosophy causing that act.
> (Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
Vehicular homicide can in fact be intentional.
Are you surprised? Is that why you keep pulling this thread? To understand why you were surprised when you shouldn't be?
I am surprised, because I don't understand what you think the words mean.
He drives one winter, slides right off the road, his car wraps around a tree, and he dies.
Did he cause his death? No. Conditions did. Conditions and some bad luck.
Is his death a predictable consequence of the conditions, the conditions he argued were necessary to preserve? Yes.
Do I feel sorry for him? It's hard for me, personally, to feel sorry for someone who got to drive on those icy roads he loved for so long before the dice rolled bad for him. But I've known too many, personally, who died on these roads, so my empathy on that specific topic is a bit burned out. It's reserved for those who advocate strongly that we could plow and salt these roads and then die anyway.
"Predictable" requires: "could a reasonable person have held a high prior probability of that man, specifically, dying in this manner?"
No.
The definition of "consequence" is conflated. The motte is "the conditions increased the probability of the event". The bailey is something like "the event follows from the conditions due to moral law". For example, when people speak of "consequences" for a crime, they refer to punishment.
If we reflect the analogy back onto the original case, we're talking about situation in which our anti-road-salt activist lived in a world where the roads were already not salted, and had no direct control over that policy and negligible impact on the minds of those who do. Further, his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road. Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
> Lived in a world where
Well, a country where. But sure; I catch your meaning.
> and negligible impact on the minds of those who do
Agree to disagree. The President of the United States broke the news of his death; he had the ear of politically powerful people in the US.
> his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road
Agreed. No likelier than any other American. But, that's way too damn likely.
> Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
Ah. Here's the issue.
While every individual shooter has a motive (or not; my relative was shot by someone suffering a psychotic break), the system makes it more likely Americans will get shot than their neighbors in other countries. America, specifically, has a dangerous mix of too many guns and too much distress. That's not really disputable without just ignoring the statistics.
And Kirk was fine with that. Well, fine enough to think the current balance of gun ownership was correct. Perhaps he advocated for better mental healthv support or more financial equality, to address the distress? I may have missed it. Never heard it if he did.
It's not acceptable he was shot. But Kirk accepted that someone gets shot his whole public life. He argued, vociferously and frequently, that some people were just going to die and that was the price of freedom.
Was he right?
I wouldn't put 'high probability' money on a <2% probability event, but I would not be surprised by it.
No, no, and no. I already explained this very clearly.
Why are you choosing this semantic hill to fortify? What value does it bring?
No, I have not. There are plenty of situations in which something can be called a predictable consequence, and where doing so is useful.
> Why are you choosing this semantic hill to fortify? What value does it bring?
It brings the value of clear communication, and respect for the English language. I believe strongly that words should have a coherent meaning.
In English?
I think we've found the core philosophical disagreement that makes it unlikely we will see eye-to-eye.
You are quite clearly understanding everything that I'm saying[1], but I'll bite.
What sequence of characters would be 'the proper English' that I should use to describe the scenarios that I've presented in a parent post?
Be sure to be clear, unambiguous, and concise.
---
[1] s/saying/writing/g
I found it for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228530
If you still think this is an argument about people being "expendable", then it appears we simply disagree about what that word means.
"Kirk's moral calculus involves accepting that possibly some more people will die, beyond what would happen otherwise, in order to guarantee what he considers an essential right to everyone."
... And he was the "some more people" this week.
This phrasing is simply incoherent to me. Accepting that "possibly some more people" will die, agnostic to anyone's intent, is clearly not the same as accepting a probability of being personally targeted for murder.
I'm not. Because the violence is often not "random." Kirk was mid making that point when he was killed; he was about to debate gang-on-gang violence.
Most killings in the US are targeted. Killers (even the psychotic ones) generally have a personal motivation, some self-justification to pull the trigger. The guns make it far easier to succeed than it would be otherwise.
I'm giving Kirk the benefit of the doubt here. Because if what he really meant was "someone's life is the price of our freedom... But not me, I'm special, I'm doing everything right..." He wasn't misguided, he was stupid. And I don't think he was stupid. So I'm left with the wry observation that the manner of his own death was consistent with his philosophy on the necessity of gun ownership to protect essential liberties.
1. Driving, cleaning agents and all the other examples are effectively assumed to be rights but they are not guaranteed by the US constitution. The second amendment on the other hand is very explicit. So it only makes the case stronger for the second amendment (~10k non gang violence, non suicide related gun deaths vs ~40k deaths from car accidents per year, although even one death is too many imho)
2. I would recommend listening to the full comment from Charlie about “some gun deaths are inevitable”. He started with the premise that the US already has a lot of guns and in a country with so many guns, you can’t have ZERO gun related deaths. And then went on to say what he said about some gun deaths being rational/prudent etc. So the spirit of what he was saying wasn’t that some people were expendable but more so that from a practicality standpoint you can’t expect to not have any gun related deaths at all.
In another video he talks about gun confiscation/ forcing Americans to give up their guns (at gun point ;) ?) and how that won’t work either but that’s besides the point.
Once again thanks for such a thoughtful dialog. Really appreciate it!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_S...
I doubt he would have taken much comfort in knowing his death is a fascinating statistical anomaly.
This is the key part that people are the MOST upset about. From the right's perspective, they are getting called "nazis", "fascists" for things that are self-evident to them. But to the far-left, those beliefs are equivalent to Nazism. I don't think people on the right fully understand and internalize that their opponents believe that they are literal nazis. They think it's just a rhetorical device. So they think that the left is being grossly negligent by bandying these words around.
I think now, though, the right has finally realized that being called a "nazi" isn't cute or a rhetorical device, and the far-left really intends to kill people. Therefore, a little cancel culture is the very least you should expect from them.
He was a victim here. Far-left news outlets like Vanity Fair and The Nation twisted the facts and made-up others. I don't really expect a 77-year-old celebrity to have the media literacy to separate fact from fiction, especially when these outlets have tailored their reporting to appeal to exactly his demographic.
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Ah, never mind.