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Originally Posted by thesloppy
And again, just to put a fine point on it, I relayed that my dad shot & killed himself, my cousin was shot & killed by a co-worker, and my friend cleaned student brains off the wall of the Roseburg massacre, and your response is to go out of your way to repeatedly misunderstand me, question my intelligence, sincerity and understanding of the stakes, force me to fully qualify everything I say AND disbelieve me when I try to do so??
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1. You mentioned the tragedies in your personal circle, and I left that alone. My reason for doing so is that I don't think there's anything useful I can say in that direction. You knew and cared about those people. What is there that I, a stranger on the internet that you only interact with through my postings here who never knew them, could say or write that would ever minimize or ease the pain of the losses you describe, for you or others who knew them? Nothing I can think of. I honestly thought and still do that for me, an opposer of your viewpoint in this debate, to comment on those event in any way would be far more likely to be taken as trying to capitalize or manipulate the emotions of personal tragedy. The phrase 'breathtakingly presumptous' comes to mind when I consider such an attempt. I hope I never become so arrogant or callous as to try to do such thing, and shame on me if I ever do so. Right or wrong, that was my approach to it.
2. I've now re-read all my responses to you to try to see things from your point of view. I have never once attacked your intelligence or gone out of my way to misunderstand you, etc. Nothing I've posted was a personal attack. I
have aggressively criticized your arguments, but I've used language far more charitable than what you've used on those who disagree with you. The terms 'delusional', 'fucking loony', 'fever dream', making generalizations about all American gun owners(even though I'm not one), these things come from your posts, not from mine.
3. I operate under the assumption, which I don't apologize for, that everyone posting in here about these issues does so prepared for a rough-and-tumble dispassionate debate. Given the nature of this forum, that seems to me to be an essential basic.