First, ellipses: they indicate that some extraneous words have been left out. If you use them, instead, to reverse the order of phrases and make the person being quoted seem to say something he didn’t - as you did - I think most people would call it “bizarre editing”.
Second, you said “There’s nothing unseemly about saving lives”. Looking back, I cannot see anything I said that could have prompted that; you seem to have pulled that from your own nether regions. Accordingly, I responded - after quoting the actual phrase I was responding to. And you call me shrill. How should I take it, then? With a smile?
My only initial issue with your post is that you errantly lumped all drugs together and I corrected you.
No. I did not lump them all together. Here is my original sentence:
I disagree absolutely with the War On Drugs, but I don’t think that anyone is helped - not even the memory of PSH - by tiptoeing around the fact that This. Shit. Will. Kill. You.
If I had it all to do again, I would have said “I disagree absolutely with the clumsy scare tactics of the War On Drugs”, but I stand by the point I was making: that heroin will kill you, and that mentioning it when it’s the cause of death is a Good Thing, not a bad thing. Scaring potential users away from ever trying heroin in the first place would be one good outcome (however unlikely); alerting friends and family of current users is an even better one.
You’re responsible for me posting that graphic.
Are you being serious right now? I’m hoping that’s just hyperbole.
Finally, I’m going to try to clarify, one last time, what I was trying to say in my initial response to you:
I support the right to keep and bear arms. I’m not an absolutist; I think we’re over-armed to an insane extent, but in general I believe in the Second Amendment. (I’m a much bigger fan of the First, but that’s not germane at the moment.)
HOWEVER: whenever there’s a school shooting or similar tragedy, and the NRA’s first response is to bang the pulpit about the Second Amendment, it makes me throw up a little in my mouth. It riles up their hard-core supporters, but makes the rest of us - even those of us who are more or less sympathetic - question the cause. And people who were already opposed are rightly outraged. That’s what I mean when I call it “unseemly”.
Similarly, I’m in favor of drug legalization, along the lines of Portugal or (maybe) the Netherlands. I’m on board! But whenever a high-profile death due to overdose occurs, it’s inevitable that within the first few posts there will be some sort of knee-jerk response about how pot doesn’t kill. It’s true - but it makes me throw up a little in my mouth. It’s not evil, but if the aim is to win hearts and minds to the cause I think it’s counter-productive. It’s unseemly.
So since you’re offended that I identified you with a lobby… maybe don’t act like one?