[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]Jewbacca wrote:
Laws only stop decent people.[/quote]
I’m going to assume that you consider a decent person to be a person who would not commit a violent crime.
With that assumption in mind, your oft-repeated “laws only stop decent people” line carries a logically necessary implication: that the sudden and utter abolition of all American law would correspond with exactly no rise in violent crime.
And every single person on this board knows that that is not true.[/quote]
A therefor B. Not A therefor not B. This is poor logic.[/quote]
Congratulations, you are exactly wrong–as in, you’ve come away with the precise opposite of the truth. My argument is a contrapositive–the only valid inference from a conditional:
[i]If A, then B.
~B
Therefore, ~A[/i]
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If law only deters people who do not break the law, then the breakdown of law will have no effect on the total rate or ratio of crime.
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The breakdown of law has a substantial effect on the rate and ratio of crime.
Therefore, ~1
[/quote]
I think I understand you better. The problem is that you are confusing legality, the altering of behavior, and crime. If there is no law, there is no crime, at least by the same definition. You have to have rules to have rule breakers. Your contention is that good people would do bad things without laws, and I’m not sure you have a basis for that (sense you have offered no measuring stick. You have to many laws that define criminal acts that aren’t bad and vice versa.
I don’t believe the contention is that all laws don’t change people anyway. It’s my inference that the type of feel good legislation in question doesn’t do anything to prevent the things that it is a reaction to. IE banning guns in schools doesn’t prevent crazies from going in and shooting kids.
Good people certainly are altered by tax law, I file my taxes before April 15th. BUT if there were no tax law, I wouldn’t be committing a crime by not filing.[/quote]
Obviously, which is why in my previous post I added the “would have before the dissolution” bit. And the point stands perfectly.
If you want to add the “feel good legislation” line, that’s fine. And I agree, to an extent. But that’s not the claim I took aim at.
The claim I took aim at was, “laws only deter decent people.”
And that’s horseshit.
So we’ve gone in a tiny little circle and here we are again.