Baby steps.

All private ownership of land is deeply morally suspect. Nobody made that valley, someone was violent enough to make a claim stick. Usually several people, over a long period.

I know this is a bit of an extreme example. Leaving an abusive spouse leads to suicides. You can’t blanket assign responsibility in all cases. It needs to be reasonable.

In cases of targeted harassment, sure. I think cases like that have gone to trial.

But if seeing someone walk into a book signing by a woman with regressive views on trans related stuff tips someone over the edge to suicide I don’t feel that’s reasonably assignable blame. Seeing J.K.Rowling succeed is such a minor thing compared to the child raping cannibal cults we have running things. It just does not even register.

Calls to violence are outright crimes where I live, whether any violence occurs or not. I think you might get a lighter sentence if nothing happens, not sure. Just like you don’t get off with no charges if you shoot at someone and miss.

Speech equivalent to murder? Well calls to violence, or criminal conspiracy are crimes. But that’s kind of a cop-out because they lead to eventual killing via non-speech means.

Actual murder via speech would be… stuff like shouting fire in a crowded movie theater. (This is also already a crime.)

Thanks, stranger. I hope you live and are happy even if we someday come to disagree on some things. You are more important to me than almost any disagreement.

I personally feel that it’s perfectly fine to boycott problematic figures. Speech has real effects and should be treated like it.

But once you accept the equivalence of speech/reading and violence you can start choosing to regulate speech/reading as violence, or free up violence as speech. I don’t think either is a great idea. Do you think that any of you have never said something hurtful to others? Should you be jailed for it?

I await all the civil and non-hurtful replies from peaceful and sympathetic people I am likely to garner for this stance.

There’s no perfect system. Patches are not perfect and can add security holes. The old code is imperfect too, and if you do not patch those holes will remain. One needs to weigh the risks against each other. It’s an optimization problem.

If and when security is a primary objective, limiting patches to what’s necessary is a good idea. Best of both worlds.

Well, it’s nuanced for one thing.

The USA has a violence issue, and legal civilian gun ownership is at most an exacerbating factor. The current regulatory climate towards guns likely causes the most harm in accidents and suicides. But it certainly causes some harm.

Criminals are using illegally sourced guns already, so bans will have no effect there.

Firearms safety courses before you get a license and access to mental health services would be far more effective than yet another weapons ban and more politically palatable to the population. But that doesn’t make for a good wedge issue to rally the faithful behind.

Or an actual social safety net and a living wage, because violence is far more strongly correlated with poverty and income inequality.

Do you care that people are dead, or that guns were used to kill them? Is it okay to do mass murder by bomb or truck?

If you care about deaths, then you make a chart about deaths. If you care about guns, you make a chart about guns.

This is a chart about guns.

Do you really think that dismissively talking down to people telling them they’re delusional is the best way or even a way to win hearts and minds?

I think it’s lying to try to get people to do a good thing.

Deception destroys credibility.

And it makes fun of people who disagree with it.

It alienates, not converts.

Comics like this are just preaching to the choir, and only the ones so fervent they’re blinded by their own self righteousness. It’s so obviously cherry picked and slanted if you’ve looked into the issues at play. It shows no respect for the reader at all, and likely only hardens the opinions of those it disagrees with.

You can’t convince anyone of anything with this kind of trollish virtue signal. It only exists to get the author pats on the back from people in their own camp.

This kind of shitty rhetoric harms the cause. You can’t win hearts and minds with blatant disrespect.

Legally, technically: no.

Philosophically, practically: if you believe it’s murder when you do it, you are a murderer mentally. You decided to kill a person, then followed through with it. And the first time is always the hardest.