Political violence, especially deadly violence is not ok. But comparing Charlie Kirk to MLK is also not ok.
I say this as an Australian. We have a far more restrictive system of gun control than the US and yet we still see tens of gun deaths a year, because some gun deaths are okay even if we set the number a lot lower than the US does.
In a broader sense, it is of course not okay to shoot someone, but that's taking the quote out of the context of gun control measures.
instead his opinion is more, "all gun deaths are ok"
he was never going to be worried about the count or a more nuanced comparison of how many gun deaths are acceptable
Kirk was not a benevolent truth seeker. He was a political provocateur and propagandist dressed as a debater. And Paul Pelosi was one of the victims of his smears.
He didn't deserve to die, but he wasn't advocating for a world of opportunity and hope. Just oppression and hate. Let's not act like he was some saint helping people.
Tradeoffs between rights and safety are always made. I interpret "some gun deaths are ok" as to mean that they are inherently dangerous, and that seeking 0 accidental deaths is too high of a standard for something to be allowed. And we don't hold other parts of daily life to this standard, like vehicles or medicine. If you want to get into degrees, that's fine, but a blanket shutdown on the sentence doesn't do that.
What if the birth will kill the mother? Is that not okay either?
It's not even political. You just follow the logic and you kind of have to support abortion. There isn't really a logical reason not to.
I actually believe the world is really messy and you have to have solutions that deal with the messiness. Being absolutist in any direction will never be right. Taking the extreme opposite position of mandated abortions is equally stupid and quite frankly as childish. It's surprising anybody on this site would defend something so illogical.
Also read this: https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/05/16/what-actually-happens-w...
If it were upto me, we wouldn’t have such a car dependent culture. It is absolutely possible to invest in public transportation/multimodal transport and reduce this number significantly.
But to middle class snobs who think they're morally above it all, such dirtiness is a reality they can wave away with a dismissive comment of superiority, safe from all that messiness, in their nice suburb homes.
So long as they intentionally ignore these lower class facts that some wrongdoers exist who can literally only be stopped by deadly force, they can continue to put their chins up and lament the inferior-to-them simpletons who think guns have to be a thing, in between taking long savouring sniffs of their excrement after every bathroom visit.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_shootings_of_Minnesota_le...
We totally should. I mean it isn't even controversial idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero . If we start with "all traffic related deaths are excessive" then trying to get rid of them in any way possible is only natural. Shame that 2nd amendment fans will be against any requirements for gun owners, event if they are similar to European commercial drivers tests.
Psychological test before buying a gun? What a heresy.
Spoken like a person who either doesn't know or doesn't care that current anti-abortion policies in several red states have women scared to get pregnant, despite wanting to do so voluntarily, because doctors are refusing life saving procedures on the mother if the state can possibly perceive it as abortion, leading to many scenarios of live births to dead mothers, including one case of a corpse being artificially kept alive for weeks for the sake of the baby.
The abortion laws of most blue states are already a rational compromise (still a very conservative leaning one) between the practical rights of women and the religious beliefs of far right totalitarians.
I disagree with him on guns, but that is the point.
He was helping students by supporting the most anti-intellectual party ever, that cancelled student debt relief and help programs.
He was helping the downtrodden by supporting the most billionaire-friendly administration ever, giving tax breaks to the rich and dismantling the last of our social safety nets.
Get real. I don't even buy that you believe all that shit.
It is a great analogy though, in both cases the issue comes down to ease of access to deadly weapons capable of killing a lot of people in a short time period. I remain ever surprised that we think the average person is qualified to handle such weapons, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Police worldwide, where guns are usually illegal, are usually armed.
I think a pro-lifer would say that intentionally terminating a human being would still be wrong. I have a very hard time disagreeing with them on that.
> What if the birth will kill the mother? To my knowledge the vast majority of abortions are not because of this and all pro-lifers I know would be in favor of saving the mother. Most are for "convenience" and that is what pro-lifers are against. Again, I have a hard time disagreeing with them on this topic as well.
Haha, sure. One, the tyrannical government is taking roots day by day and no one does shit. Two, even in this fantasy world where half the people wasn't on board with the destruction of our democracy, if the people as a whole were to take arms, they'd be going after a professional army whose budget is many orders of magnitude higher than this citizens militia's.
And I have the sensation that all the ones we drive a car nowadays are engaging in a similar type of risk acceptance, we know there's too many people dead every year in car accidents, but we still believe that overall having access to cars outweighs the risks, without meaning that car accidents are acceptable and trying to improve the safety of the cars and roads meanwhile.
Kirk thought in a similar way that gun control and possession were definitely good for the US population and that gun deaths were still a price to pay for it.
BTW, gun possession is also legal in all EU countries. It just not considered a right, but a privilege. And this is accepted by most parties in EU, both left and right.
Completely violating the principles of personal responsibility.
It is very easy to be generous and altruist with someone else's money and then even take the credit for it.
Let's just assume you are correct. The solution should be universities lower or eliminate tuition. Not exponentially increase it. Not pay presidents and coaches millions and millions of dollars. And not stick taxpayers with the bill - or devalue our currency with government spending.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vision_Zero
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
History shows that an underfunded militia can still tie down or even outlast the U.S. military in a guerrilla context - Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are all examples.