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(cont)

The mayor also seems to be completely oblivious to recent Supreme Court rulings regarding similar Chicago and D.C. laws, and is advocating a law that is indefensible in its constitutionality (both Oregon and US), creating the likelihood that the city will have an expensive legal battle which it can only lose... while simultaneously bemoaning budget shortfalls.

This too would seem to be repeating the same behavior, but expecting a different outcome.

In our household growing up, guns weren't locked up.  We knew the revolver was on the top shelf of my dad's closet, and that it was always loaded.  We knew we weren't to "mess with it", but it was there if we needed it to defend ourselves, and had all been trained in how to handle a gun by the time we were 10.

None of us grew up to be gangbangers, and indeed I carry regularly and am licensed to carry in 17 states.

The mayor highlights fringe episodical "evidence" as justifying his reasoning, while ignoring the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  He is being disingenuous in the extreme.

It's my sincere belief that the mayor knows that the proposed measures won't succeed, but desperately wants to be able to point to a (failed and misguided) attempt to do something that was defeated by "reactionary forces" less enlightened and progressive than himself.

The mayor's true defeat will be woolly-minded irrational proposals that are meant to appeal to "feel good populism" without actually being effective.

Since the mayor seems to be fixated on correlation (at the cost of considering causation), perhaps he should copy city laws that have actually been successful--such as Project Exile, which increased the penalties for existing crimes--rather than trying to redefine more behaviors as illegal (such as having guns not locked up).

posted 2 years, 8 months ago
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The mayor painfully demonstrates why state legislators had the foresight to fully occupy the space of firearms regulation and had preempted local government from doing so.

He's either cynically grandstanding, or worse incapable of rational thinking.  Either way, he's showing he's unfit to be mayor.

One learns in clinical statistics that "correlation is not causation".  Somehow the mayor has yet to learn this basic truth.

With more privately owned guns than people in this country, most of us manage to not break the law.  Obviously the guns themselves are not the cause.

If "juveniles who've been adjudicated of a gun crime" are still exhibiting unlawful, recidivist behavior, then quite obviously the rehabilitative process is failing and needs to be reformed.

Why isn't this front and center in the mayor's sights?

If people are not dissuaded from breaking the law, adding more laws is not going to be effective: one definition of insanity is "repeating the same actions, while expecting differing outcomes".

The mayor's disbelief in basic determinism (and causality) rises to this definition of insanity.

posted 2 years, 8 months ago
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