Invited to write for an anti-gun blog

ATLDave · Feb 20, 2020

DeepSouth, that’s just the bias in our education towards recent events. As a percentage of world population, WWII was only the 9th deadliest event in world history.

Events like the Mongol conquest, Timurlane’s campaigns, the fall of Rome, etc., all took substantially larger percentages of the world’s population.

No doubt some bad stuff went down in the 20th century, but only ignorance as to deeper history leads us to think it was some new level of violence.

DeepSouth · Feb 20, 2020

ATLDave said:
DeepSouth, that’s just the bias in our education towards recent events. As a percentage of world population, WWII was only the 9th deadliest event in world history.

Events like the Mongol conquest, Timurlane’s campaigns, the fall of Rome, etc., all took substantially larger percentages of the world’s population.

No doubt some bad stuff went down in the 20th century, but only ignorance as to deeper history leads us to think it was some new level of violence.

That makes real sense, I hadn’t really thought of in terms of percentage of population. Which would be much more of a realistic view. And I’ll also say my knowledge of world history is admittedly very lacking.

jmorris · Feb 20, 2020

I don’t really buy the population growth argument. I believe it had more to do with Mao, Stalin, and Hitler.

None of those guys were even alive when the homicide rates were at their highest, per the bottom chart in #28.

boom boom · Feb 20, 2020

40-82 said:
Yet, often we can go to the very beginning of someone's study, see how they frame the question, and we already have a pretty good idea what their conclusion is going to be. If the study purports to examine gun violence we can expect one sort of conclusion. If it attempts to examine criminality, another conclusion is likely.

The scientific principles are ideally a thing of purity. Social science rather reaches that level of objective purity, if for no other reason than most people who study the issues start with some pretty good ideas of what they intend to prove.

You are absolutely correct. A lot of 'research' is researcher conclusions in search of facts to support it.

boom boom · Feb 20, 2020

ATLDave said:
DeepSouth, that’s just the bias in our education towards recent events. As a percentage of world population, WWII was only the 9th deadliest event in world history.

Events like the Mongol conquest, Timurlane’s campaigns, the fall of Rome, etc., all took substantially larger percentages of the world’s population.

No doubt some bad stuff went down in the 20th century, but only ignorance as to deeper history leads us to think it was some new level of violence.

The ignorance is getting worse by the moment. Most colleges no longer require much in the way of history and increasingly k-12 history is more about how average people lived rather than big events. I am pretty well versed in history but have big gaps regarding SW and SE Asia and Chinese history beyond a cursory glance.

ATLDave · Feb 20, 2020

Oh, I’m continuously amazed at how many BIG areas of history I know nothing about. One example: By some calculations, the single deadliest conflict episode in history in terms of percentage population dying was the An Lushan Revolt, in 8th century China.

Ever heard of it? Yeah, me either until I ran across it in the tabulations of conflict deaths. Perhaps the most catastrophic war in history and we’ve literally never heard a word about it!?! Amazing.

History is a big place.

40-82 · Feb 20, 2020

ATLDave said:
Oh, I’m continuously amazed at how many BIG areas of history I know nothing about. One example: By some calculations, the single deadliest conflict episode in history in terms of percentage population dying was the An Lushan Revolt, in 8th century China.

History is a big place.

And of which professional historians often know so little. Take Hannibal. We only know him from the accounts of his enemies: Polybius and Livy. And Livy never traveled more than thirty miles from his home, and he was kind of a windbag at that. Of Polybius, many of us are less than awed with his insights when we have the opportunity to crosscheck him with other sources, and too often that's impossible because he stands alone.

Even today, of recent history, we often refuse to teach what we can know because it may have political implications we don't like. The great historical truism is that history belongs to the victors.

So much is lost, and more never recorded in the first place.

ATLDave · Feb 20, 2020

We aren’t even exactly sure where the battle of Cannae took place. We kinda know, but not exactly.

boom boom · Feb 20, 2020

Recently for a project, I have been having to track down some legal history which has been problematic due to changes in definitions and legal terminology. In the term well regulated militia, there is considerable debate to this day about what well regulated meant and the evidence is fragmentary but tends to support the idea of well trained and supplied rather than state regulations per se.

old lady new shooter · Feb 21, 2020

DeepSouth said:
historians generally agree that more people were murdered in the 20th century than in every other century combined.

That's because by the 20th century tyrannical governments had advanced technologically to the point where they could kill millions of their own citizens.

theotherwaldo · Feb 21, 2020

-As the Chinese emperors' advisers said repeatedly over the last thousand years, "The rebels move among the people like fish move through the water. Remove the water and you can destroy the fish."
So they did.
Repeatedly.
By the millions.
It's likely that the Chinese had killed more of their own people before 1900 than any other nation or ethnic group has killed of their own people in all of history.

Many current politicians and candidates admire the Chinese and wish to emulate them... .

FlSwampRat · Feb 21, 2020

40-82 said:
This is what I sent:

To some degree I understand the anti-gun view. Part of it amounts to an idealized trust in government. Of course you're not foolish enough not to see the flaws in any government, but you would look to an ideal that it may be possible to achieve.

When I have discussions with people who seem to trust the government enough to hand over their means of protection and who actually advocate that I do the same I like to point out the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. This ended less than 50 years ago. I say "This is the government you want to trust with your life, liberty and your ability to pursue happiness?"

If you're not familiar, I suggest googling it or hit up Wikipedia. It's a shocker.[

Invited to write for an anti-gun blog

ATLDave

Member

DeepSouth

Random Guy

jmorris

Member

boom boom

Member

boom boom

Member

ATLDave

Member

40-82

Member

ATLDave

Member

boom boom

Member

old lady new shooter

Member

theotherwaldo

Member

FlSwampRat

Member

Similar threads