The debate, as it now stands, is quite strange, and tells us a great deal more about the state of the American mind than the advisability of gun control.This round of controversy over the regulation of gun ownership was of course provoked by Adam Lanza's murder of 20 school-children in Newtown, Connecticut.
But freedom is one thing, advisability quite another.
Sweden and Germany have publicly voiced doubts about the legality and advisability of immediate retaliatory tariffs.
The relatively high frequency and wide distribution of earthquakes likewise have generated controversies about the safety and advisability of several hydroelectric and irrigation projects.
There is even more disagreement over the advisability of describing vowels in terms of binary features.
Much of the discussion focused on the advisability of adding a category to the international chronostratigraphic chart (the official chart of geologic time maintained by the International Commission on Stratigraphy [ICS]).
The organization worked to educate the public about issues relevant to women's health, focusing on the health of menopausal women, for example, to shed greater light on the issue of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) when a 2004 study indicated that health providers and women were still confused about the advisability of using HRT, which had been linked to breast cancer.
All these ideas were a far cry from the Greek concept, deriving from Plato, that in order to think better it is necessary to know all, and from the Roman attitude of the advisability of acquiring all useful knowledge in order to carry out one's tasks in life competently.
Observers disagree on the advisability of such a policy.
"That doesn't sound very sensible," Ashton Carter, the next Secretary of Defense, said when Senator Kelly Ayotte asked him, at his confirmation hearings, about the advisability of transferring any of the prisoners now at Guantánamo Bay to Yemen, given the disorder in that country.
And, by questioning the advisability of jihad, the scolders permit the speaker to make its virtues clear.
