why do people buy expensive alcohol when the cheap stuff gets you drunk?

Firearms are not affordable. Eggs are affordable. Besides hipoint, guns are $300+, plus taxes and fees

I didn't say anything about kids in gangs.

I was commenting on your statements about Catholic school, atheism, and Afghanistan.

Merely by virtue of growing up in the U.S. you were exposed to a broader diversity of viewpoints about things like religion and a broader range of possibilities for your life than you would have been exposed to if you had grown up in rural Afghanistan.

For that reason, I don't think you can be certain of how your views would have developed if you had grown up in rural Afghanistan.

The gangs thing was more directed at previous posters.

Of course I can't be certain, but others seem awfully certain that I would be a true believer of Islam and have been happy to stay in rural Afghanistan. Sure, people in the US are exposed to more viewpoints, but I don't believe that is the main reason why I moved to a big city and became atheist.

Do you think no one raised in rural Afghanistan has moved to the city and questions his previous beliefs? Or do you just think that I personally wouldn't have been one of them, despite having gradually broken nearly every US cultural norm as I have aged?

My world view is that we’re all machines built by biology and environment. I think it’s very unlikely you’d give up religion in every environment with the same biology. I think environment plays a much larger role than biology for the average person’s outcomes. Rural Afghanistan may as well be on another planet compared to wherever you grew up Catholic in America. Your religious environment, unless you grew up in a cult completely cut off from society, is no where close in experience in terms of receiving a singular concept of reality. Do you think it’s chance that these areas are so heavily Muslim and not as irreligious as liberal Western cities? Are they just all dumber than you?

I never said it would be easy to rehabilitate children in gangs. There would obviously be a spectrum and some would be unreachable. That’s beside the point anyway. What’s at issue is your lack of sympathy for people who by no fault of their own have been born with biological traits that make them more susceptible to joining a gang and were doubly unlucky to be born into that environment they’re predisposed to fall victim to.

Again, this is not an all or none issue. The people who escape such environments are small exceptions. You might be one, who knows, but I think you should be much less certain that you would be. And even if you were, it would be because of biology you did not choose.

I believe basically the same thing about environment and biology, but I lean more to the biology side. I know that at least 90% of those raised in my environment stay in their home town practicing the religion they were born with, so I don't think it means nothing that I did not. In Afghanistan it is probably closer to 99%, but it is possible to get out in both societies. In Afghanistan I'm sure there are also a decent number of people who are non-believers but still practice because they don't want to rock the boat and possibly get killed. Of course it's not chance, but I wasn't born in an irreligious big liberal Western city. I guess you and most here must have been born to that, but it's still tough for me to believe you aren't personally acquainted with at least a few people who left the backwater places they were born and dropped the religion they were born into.

I generally don't feel that much sympathy for anyone about anything, but I don't think that is a problem; sympathy doesn't help anyone or fix anything anyway.
On a deeper level I don't really believe in free will anyway, so there is no reason to place blame on any sort of criminal, but there is also no reason why we should have to deal with them more than necessary, and it lightens the load on society any time one of them ceases to exist.

I mentioned liberal cities as a counterpart to rural Afghanistan and the trends in atheism in both and why that might be, nothing to do with you or me. It doesn’t mean nothing that you chose to be an atheist coming from your background but all it means is that you’re more biologically inclined, which you didn’t choose so I don’t assign any merits for that just as I don’t give moral demerits for negative traits. We don’t need to agree obviously but as someone who also doesn’t believe in free will I’ve come to the complete opposite conclusion that I should be much more sympathetic to literally everyone. And I do think sympathy, which is a form of understanding is useful in making decisions. That’s not to be confused with tolerating bad behavior but being sympathetic costs you nothing and I think leads to a better society.

Ok, so these whores are going to get like $100K a spin to sleep with a fugly wealthy guy and there will be all price ranges in between based on wealth and looks of the whores?

What about the cheap whores? They get schooling, guns, food, shelter, etc., why bang fugly broke guys, so they can afford a Playstation over an Xbox?

Yes. That's extremely affordable considering all the engineering etc., that goes into getting that gun into your hands.

Do you understand what affordable means?

This?

So no

Put it this way: the people you think can't afford $300 for a firearm are walking around with $1000 smartphones.

If the elites can't keep a $1000 phone out of someone's hands due to pricing, $300 certainly isn't going to price people out.

Right. You don’t understand what affordable means.

.
I posted this before and didn't get an answer from the gun lovers

I'll try one last time

on average 130 gun deaths per day in the U.S. - and the gun lovers are just fine with that

I want to know if in 20 years and it's 300 gun deaths per day will that be okay too___?

although I really don't need an answer - I'm all but sure they will have no problem with that number either

.

Fixed my own post.

In fairness to PW, he is making a more coherent argument than the "guns don't kill people, people kill people." PW appears to understand that the United States has a per capita gun ownership rate that is twice as high as any other country in the world, and at least 3 times higher than every country in the world except the Falkland Islands and Yemen.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/co...hip-by-country

And he presumably understands that it isn't a real head scratcher to figure out that high gun ownership rates are a contributing factor to gun deaths in the United States.

That's why a key point of his argument is that no one should care how many gun deaths there are in the United States.

Are cars affordable? They are far more costly than guns and over 90% of households have one.

How much are eggs? Is that the dollar cost of something that you've determined is affordable? I never hear people bitching about the cost of guns, but I do hear them bitching about the cost of eggs.

Cars are not affordable which is a huge reason people are poor.

Like with guns and smartphones, people don't need to buy them.

Compared to smartphones and cars, guns are cheap as hell.

But anyway, your entire point is elites don't want poor people to own guns so guns are expensive. Guns are sold for as cheap as possible.

Cheap also doesn’t mean affordable.

Instead of dancing around this for pages why don't you say what you think what price makes a gun affordable?

this is also not how affordable works

Affordable means reasonably priced. A gun for $300 is reasonably priced.

Whatever. Percentage of income or however you want to frame it.

This quibbling over the definition of "affordable" probably doesn't matter much. I assume that PW would be in favor of making access to guns free or close to free, much like access to education, housing, medical care, etc.