If the people who will be the "some gun deaths every single year" aren't expendable, what are they? Because it sounds like they're the ones we spend to buy the freedoms guaranteed by the Second Amendment. As Kirk said in 2023, "Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty." If you're paying human lives for something, those lives are expendable by definition. Etymology of the word: Latin, expendere, "to pay out, weigh out."
In the US, our armed citizenry is part of our liberty. This year, Charlie Kirk had the extreme misfortune to be part of the price.
... Yes. That's the "expendable" ones: the people we're willing to sacrifice in exchange for enjoying the benefits of owning cars and household cleaners.
Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
Almost everyone believes that it is just and right that American homeowners can own cars and household cleaners. You would never comment at someone's funeral that the deceased thought that children killed in car accidents or by accidental poisoning were "expendable".
If a city mayor opposed to public transit projects or bike lanes were to get run over by a hitman, I can't fathom that you would be making the same argument.
> Kirk was sacrificed to the benefit of owning guns.
No. He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue. This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
For what it's worth, I am actually aware of a funeral where the priest digressed into the idea that the deceased died on a road where people are known to drive recklessly and this is the expected outcome of that behavior, and prayed that the city would take the necessary steps to make that road safer so that we had fewer funerals like this one. It did not go over well with the congregation. ;) Mourners usually want to focus on the individual, not how that individual fits into a larger societal structure.
> He was targeted and intentionally killed, for reasons that have no demonstrated connection to the issue.
Right, you get it.
> This is simply not comparable to an observation that some number of unspecified people might die as a result of a policy.
... You were so close to getting it. Your argument is like asserting that every instance of a class is its own unique thing and has no relation to the class. When the whole point of object oriented programming is that we can make sweeping changes to the behavior of instances with relatively small modifications to the class.
The class is policy. The instances are deaths.
Kirk was not only satisfied with but advocated for the current structure of the "GunRights" class. Then someone operating under the rules of an instance of that class killed him.
It's not right that he's dead. It's not right that any of the victims of gun violence at the hands of strangers died. But in Kirk's case, one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused. It's just usually other people paying the price for his philosophy, not him.
(Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
> Your argument is like asserting that every instance of a class is its own unique thing and has no relation to the class.
No, it is not.
> one must observe that he died as predictable consequence of the political philosophy he espoused.
No, one must not observe that, because his death was neither predictable (unless you think the "hex" Jezebel placed on him was real and effective) nor a consequence. You are looking at a policy enabling an act (one which existed literally for centuries before Kirk's argument), and saying that this is the same as a political philosophy causing that act.
> (Also, I'm fairly certain you know already that your mayor getting run over by a hitman metaphor breaks down because hitmen don't use cars. That's not the tool designed for killing people. There's another tool designed for killing people, one far more effective at it. Hitmen use that one.)
If you are not arguing cause, then you should not use the words "predictable consequence" in reference to a specific incident, because that is equivalent to arguing cause.
I am surprised, because I don't understand what you think the words mean.
A man argues that we don't need to salt roads in the winter. Argues it for years. Argues that nature takes care of roads and that actually it's important we leave them in their natural state. When people note that means people will die driving in icy road conditions, he declares that's the price you pay for natural roads and, anyway, it doesn't matter because most road fatalities are bad drivers anyway.
He drives one winter, slides right off the road, his car wraps around a tree, and he dies.
Did he cause his death? No. Conditions did. Conditions and some bad luck.
Is his death a predictable consequence of the conditions, the conditions he argued were necessary to preserve? Yes.
Do I feel sorry for him? It's hard for me, personally, to feel sorry for someone who got to drive on those icy roads he loved for so long before the dice rolled bad for him. But I've known too many, personally, who died on these roads, so my empathy on that specific topic is a bit burned out. It's reserved for those who advocate strongly that we could plow and salt these roads and then die anyway.
"Predictable" requires: "could a reasonable person have held a high prior probability of that man, specifically, dying in this manner?"
No.
The definition of "consequence" is conflated. The motte is "the conditions increased the probability of the event". The bailey is something like "the event follows from the conditions due to moral law". For example, when people speak of "consequences" for a crime, they refer to punishment.
If we reflect the analogy back onto the original case, we're talking about situation in which our anti-road-salt activist lived in a world where the roads were already not salted, and had no direct control over that policy and negligible impact on the minds of those who do. Further, his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road. Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
Relatively speaking, he's an American, so yes. His prior is way higher than people in other countries. Moral law doesn't enter into it. That's really all I'm saying.
> Lived in a world where
Well, a country where. But sure; I catch your meaning.
> and negligible impact on the minds of those who do
Agree to disagree. The President of the United States broke the news of his death; he had the ear of politically powerful people in the US.
> his words should have made him no more likely to die than anyone else driving on the same road
Agreed. No likelier than any other American. But, that's way too damn likely.
> Except for the fact that the road is supposed to be analogous to the shooter, who in reality had consciousness and a motive.
Ah. Here's the issue.
While every individual shooter has a motive (or not; my relative was shot by someone suffering a psychotic break), the system makes it more likely Americans will get shot than their neighbors in other countries. America, specifically, has a dangerous mix of too many guns and too much distress. That's not really disputable without just ignoring the statistics.
And Kirk was fine with that. Well, fine enough to think the current balance of gun ownership was correct. Perhaps he advocated for better mental healthv support or more financial equality, to address the distress? I may have missed it. Never heard it if he did.
It's not acceptable he was shot. But Kirk accepted that someone gets shot his whole public life. He argued, vociferously and frequently, that some people were just going to die and that was the price of freedom.
Is a vocal anti-vaxxer dying from a 2% mortality disease, where a vaccine reduces it to 0.05% mortality a predictable consequence? Is someone standing on a rooftop during a thunderstorm, and getting struck a predictable consequence? Is inciting your country into going to war, and then being one of the small % of the population dying in that war a predictable consequence?
I wouldn't put 'high probability' money on a <2% probability event, but I would not be surprised by it.
> Is a vocal anti-vaxxer dying from a 2% mortality disease, where a vaccine reduces it to 0.05% mortality a predictable consequence? Is someone standing on a rooftop during a thunderstorm, and getting struck a predictable consequence? Is inciting your country into going to war, and then being one of the small % of the population dying in that war a predictable consequence?
No, no, and no. I already explained this very clearly.
You've watered down the concept of predictable consequences to the point of uselessness. If wearing a seatbelt while driving, not climbing up on the roof during a thunderstorm, not plunging your country into a war, or getting vaccinated to protect yourself from a dangerous disease are not mitigating 'predictable consequences', the term is just empty air.
Why are you choosing this semantic hill to fortify? What value does it bring?
In the US, our armed citizenry is part of our liberty. This year, Charlie Kirk had the extreme misfortune to be part of the price.