Monday, 11 May 2009

Paint Balls

A teenage gunman in Germany, so they are planning to ban paint balling. I kid you not. Banning Ritalin and the like, or enforcing the drugs laws, or dealing with violent video games? No. Paint balling.
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10 comments:

  1. Jet Set Willy11 May 2009 at 14:30

    Was the teenage gunman on Ritalin? Or involved in drugs? Or known to play violent video games?

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  2. David Lindsay11 May 2009 at 14:35

    These things are linked to violence. Paint balling (although, like bungie-jumping, we weren't allowed to do it in the Scouts back in the day) is not.

    Nor is gun ownership in society at large, of course.

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  3. Lamo11 May 2009 at 14:52

    You're right that the evidence that banning paintballing would have an effect on teenage violence seems shaky, or non existent (as far as I know, it consists entirely of: This teenage killer enjoyed paintballing; therefore paintballing causes teenagers to become killers). But I'm not aware of any evidence that banning Ritalin or violent video games would have an effect on teenage violence either. Are you?

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  4. David Lindsay11 May 2009 at 15:46

    Guns aren't new, and mass gun ownership in places like the US and Germany isn't new, either.

    But mass, socially more-or-less acceptable, legally unpunished use of drugs (especially cannabis) is.

    Drugging children up to their eyeballs with Ritalin and such like as "treatment" for various non-existent conditions which really amount to having been born boys, rather than the girls wanted and expected by their mothers, is.

    Use of pornography and violent video games as teenage boys' main entertainment, often for hours on end every day, is.

    And teenage shooting sprees and the like are.

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  5. Inonn11 May 2009 at 15:51

    So your argument is: Ritalin, drugs and violent video games are new; school shootings are new; therefore Ritalin, drugs and violent video games cause school shootings?

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  6. David Lindsay11 May 2009 at 15:55

    If you can ever find a case where the teenager in question didn't use at least one them, then I'd be utterly astonished.

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  7. Inonn11 May 2009 at 15:56

    I'd be even more astonished if you could find a case where a teenager has perpetrated a school shooting without using a gun. This, as you rightly say yourself, is not a knock-down argument for banning guns.

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  8. David Lindsay11 May 2009 at 16:03

    The guns are nothing new, and in the societies in question only a tiny percentage of gun owners ever do anything remotely like this.

    Whereas the drugs and the nasty videos are new, and actually rather a high number of those who use them do thoroughly antisocial things, with this only at the end of a very easily identifiable spectrum.

    Also new is the breakdown in family and community structures, not the case in Switzerland, with extremely low rates of violent crime and COMPULSORY domestic gun ownership.

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  9. Stint11 May 2009 at 16:05

    We should ban divorce, in that case.

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  10. David Lindsay11 May 2009 at 16:09

    Well, we are getting abit off-topic.

    But yes, it is high time:

    - to entitle each divorcing spouse to one per cent of the other's estate up to fifty per cent;
    - to disentitle the petitioning spouse unless fault be proved;
    - to entitle any marrying couple to register their marriage as bound by the law prior to 1969 as regards grounds and procedures for divorce;
    - to enable any religious organisation to specify that any marriage which it conducts shall be so bound, aand to counsel couples accordingly;
    - to legislate that the Church of England be such a body unless the General Synod specifically resolve the contrary by a two-thirds majority in all three Houses; and
    - to do something similar for the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, which also exist pursuant to Acts of Parliament.

    I would have to check the exact legislation relating to the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, but if something similar can be done, then it must be done.

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