I left the following comment at the site of someone on the other side of the gun control debate:
Robb, thanks again for the "revisitation rights". I nearly exhausted myself trying to keep up with the dialog, and if anyone checks they will see I have addressed every point multiple times.
Comments by guys like "straightarrow" are a good reason why this debate sometimes gets ugly. The first rule in a debate or any conversation is to listen to the other person. I have listened, and I have responded. It is pointless for me to respond to the same unintelligent attacks over and over again. For the record, I have given my responses at 4 different websites, and yes, the reiteration is tiresome.
Too often the pro-gun side accuses me of statements I never made. Then they refute the "straw man". Too often they cite "facts" which are irrelevant to my position. (Many of the facts are relevant to the topic of gun control, but not relevant to the position I hold. That is a big difference.)
There are trillions of true "facts" on the issue of gun control, most of them unknown to us mere mortals. As I have said many times, the social sciences are not testable like the hard sciences, and there are no genuine "proofs" in them, as there are in mathematics, such as in geometry. Therefore, we must rely on our personal experiences, judgments and opinions to navigate this and other political issues, and avoid the intellectual arrogance too often demonstrated on both sides of every issue.
I think the time has come for me to return to the other issues which I actually care more about than "gun control".
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Therefore, we must rely on our personal experiences, judgments and opinions to navigate this and other political issues, and avoid the intellectual arrogance too often demonstrated on both sides of every issue."
A fair statement. But who deturmines what's "experiences, judgments and opinions", and what's "intellectual arrogance"?
This was just another way of saying that we cannot rely solely on isolated "facts", due to the complexity of political issues. As to the "who" in your question, that is all of us, as implied by the subject "we".
Each of us will base their decisions on their own experiences (which includes their own knowledge) and judgment.
As to intellectual arrogance, the key word in that clause was also the implied subject "we". We can never be perfect, but we ought to try to be civil.
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