Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Wednesday, July 06, 2016

Commonsense Gun Safety Regulations Should Include Proposals To Disarm Police.

And the suffusion of public space with private guns no doubt exacerbates the crisis of the ongoing militarization of the police.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmmm? A noble thought, but not the real world we live in. Men and women, will always kill each other for a myriad of reasons. Human history attests to it. Guns...they will be passae in the near future when hand held lasers or particle beam weaponry will exist and you will be able to assemble them off internet instructions in your garage. It's like trying to uninvent an atom bomb. Will the killer instinct ever change? So what is the essence of a man?

Dale Carrico said...

Humans are ignorant and prone to error and corruption and rationalization so I suppose you could regard those who believe in education and in science and in criminal laws or court systems also to be indulging in "noble thoughts" indifferent to "the real world we live in" by your argument. And yet for all the flaws and follies and failures of all of these efforts the best we manage depends on those who struggle through and for them against the "nature" to which you are presumably reconciled, no doubt fancying yourself quite the superior hard headed realist in so saying. Look, where guns are regulated gun fatalities are curtailed. You can pretend that isn't true but it is. There are also a myriad of perfectly effective police forces in the industrialized world where beat cops are not issued firearms and community policing is about conflict de-escalation and social support. You can pretend that isn't true but, again, it is. You will forgive me if I refuse to find anything realistic -- let alone noble -- in the privileged course in resignation you propose. As for the laser guns and 3d-nano printed particle beam weapons off the internet you mention, I will leave you now to masturbate in privacy.

Anonymous said...

I have read your blog for awhile and was amazed as to what a narcissist you are with your hubris toward other people that disagree with you on just about any topic.

Reading your blog of diatribes is classic for a insular, smug class of people like yourself with an elite-school degree and me-first values. You probably cream in your pants every time you mouth holier-than-thou platitudes, acquired like trophy kills at your two p.c. campuses, but every word of your blog rings hollow, because it is based on condescension, a patronizing projection that you are above the unwashed masses and anything you say is absolutely correct and final onto those outside your privileged circle.

Anonymous said...

I was a student in one of your rhetoric classes at USB many years ago and I have noticed how you have become more bitter with age. You don’t even practice the rhetoric that you teach. Rather than persuade others to your views you would demonize them. Obviously not a Aristotle persuasion. The ends justify the means for you – and always will. Motivated by personal hate – for opponents who won’t submit to your belief of moral and intellectual superiority. I would not be surprised if you wear your rhetoric Phd as a badge to impress your class students. I once liked your rhetoric prose. I do not anymore. I'm signing off from your blog and never to return.

Dale Carrico said...

We can only strive to emulate the generosity and argumentative substance you have modeled in your response here. For now, I will agree that it does indeed seem that not reading my work anymore may be the healthier move for you to make at this point. Best of luck to you.

Anonymous said...

I take back my mad hubris towards you. I just reacted to your last sentence where you slammed me to go masturbate. Your more a gentleman than I thought. My best to you.

Dale Carrico said...

I agree that was the least generous moment in what was otherwise actually an effort to respond to the substance of your comment. Apology accepted and my own offered. While it is not a defense, I will offer up as the context for my too precipitous dismissive reaction that the single most consistent, even relentless, thing I've been reacting against for well over a decade by now on this blog are futurological technofixations that inevitably end up being so painfully predictable and reactionary and self-indulgent that glib references to extrapolative pop-tech at this point trigger my wagon-circling involuntary reflex for fear that the gag reflex will be the next item on the menu. Be well, d