Reply #26: apples and oranges [View All]

[iverglas]

As far as I can tell, you are not suggesting that the costs associated with firearms ownership are higher in ABSOLUTE terms for people of colour than they are for white people. Doesn't everyone pay the same number of dollars, regardless of race, colour, sex, income level ...?

You are saying that they are higher in RELATIVE terms -- they represent a higher PROPORTION of income.

So why would anyone need to demonstrate that PRICES for any commodities are HIGHER in neighbourhoods predominantly occupied by people of colour, in order to establish that your thesis applies to zillions of things besides firearms?

As long as the prices that people of colour pay for food, gas, milk, whatever, are THE SAME AS the prices that white people pay, there is the same ADVERSE IMPACT DISCRIMINATION.

Your argument would apply in exactly the same way to food, gas, milk, utilities, etc.

If the costs associated with firearms must be LOWER for poor people / people of colour, in order to avoid adverse impact discrimination (or if the prices should simply be minimal for everyone, to achieve a substantially similar effect), then the costs associated with eating, for example, must ALSO be LOWER for poor people / people of colour in order to avoid the same adverse impact discrimination.

Proving that the prices of other (essential) goods and services are THE SAME in both types of neighbourhoods would do nothing to bolster your position that the prices of the services associated with firearms ownership must be LOWER for poor people / people of colour in order for there to be equitable treatment.

And like I said -- if I'm going to be making an adverse impact discrimination argument about pricing structures, which I would do in a "free-market" economy only as an exercise in frustration, *I* would start with price subsidies for goods and services that

(a) the poor people / people of colour in question are more likely to be more concerned about, and
(b) a society that genuinely cares about the public and individuals' welfare is more likely to regard as productive uses of public money.

After all ... I thought that going after the root causes of violence, rather than "preventing people from defending themselves against violence", was the only real way to reduce that violence.

Seems to me that (further) subsidizing food, housing, childcare, schools, health care, and so on and on, is going to be a better investment of public funds than subsidizing firearms ownership ... if we really are concerned about individual welfare and the increase in public welfare that enhancing individual welfare in these respects can be expected to bring about.

And gosh, I'd expect a Democrat, who surely is supposed to both care about individuals' welfare and understand the connection between individual welfare and the public welfare, to be focusing his/her energies in those areas.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I completely fail to see how multiplying the number of firearms in private hands, regardless of whose, while doing nothing about hunger, homelessness, ill health and unemployability -- or even while doing "something" about those problems, until what is done is even marginally sufficient -- is going to promote the general welfare of the people of the United States.

YOU are defining firearms ownership as a "need", and your definition is, of course, highly debatable; I define it as a discretionary purchase, and you can of course debate my claim. But I don't think there could be much argument that food, housing, health care and employment are needs -- or that they are not being adequately met at present. My question is therefore about your priorities -- both in terms of what needs you think are so important that they merit the efforts of both yourself and others, and in terms of how likely those efforts are to achieve the overall goals that you and they presumably want to achieve, the premise being that it will be necessary to gain political power in order to achieve those goals.

Certainly, if an individual feels that s/he has suffered adverse impact discrimination under existing firearms ownership rules, s/he would be quite free to make that argument in the appropriate forum. I just can't imagine why an association of people dedicated to enhancing both individuals' welfare and the public welfare (the Democratic Party?) would want to make that issue a priority when deciding how to allocate the limited resources available to it for advancing that overall agenda, and how to most effectively generate the most possible public goodwill for itself and approval of its agenda.

.