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 CptJake wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

A criminal's ability to make or get a gun is frankly irrelevant. A criminal with a bat, tire iron, knife, 50 pounds of muscle and 6 inches of reach, a sock full of quarters, what ever, can cause damage and kill, can threaten life and health and use that threat to steal or rape or commit other crimes. When you take guns away from a law law abiding citizens, you are indicating to that citizen that he must trust the gov't to protect him, his family, and his property, yet it can be established that the gov't is not capable of providing that protection (and is not bound to provide it).

A law abiding citizen's ability to make or get a gun is frankly irrelevant. A law abiding citizen with a bat, tire iron, inife, 50 pounds of muslce and 6 inches of reach, a sock full of quarters, whatever, can cause damage and kill, can threaten life and health and use that threat to protect himself and his loved ones.

Guns just make it easier for both sides.

And that is where you are wrong, it does NOT work both ways. My law abiding wife won't have 50 pounds and 6 inches of reach. She cannot carry a bat or tire iron around, and does not think a knife is a good defense (a bigger/stronger attacker has to be WAY too close for a knife to work). She is however very comfortable with her ability to use the 9mm.

It is interesting thing is that in the span of two posts you argue that it doesn't matter if you have a gun because if you want to use violence to threaten people you will find a way and then argue that without a gun it's not easy to threaten people.

Which of course is my point.

We seem to be treading the path that resulted in the earlier moderator warning. Perhaps we should try to get back to discussing the topic at hand again.

Possibly.

I just always think it's pretty dishonest to pretent that guns don't make it easier to kill people when that is one of the main arguments in favor of us having the right to bear arms. To defend ourselves, via being able to kill people if needed, from others. That's why I carry a gun, to make it easier for me to protect myself and mine.

If guns don't make it that much easier then we can stand up to a tyranical government with bats and crowbars and by making sure that we recruit people that have 50 pounds and 6 inches on the government oppressors.

Trivalizing the additional power gained, both by criminals and law abiding citizens, by being armed is just silly IMO. There are plenty of arguments that can be made by both sides, but guns = more threat is a fact that should be acknowledged by both.

Please, for the love of cute kittens and puppies, can we stop pretending that there's some inherent right to anything? Rights exist because we as a society have agreed they do, a country that has stricter gun laws than the US hasn't "taken away" anything, the right never existed there in the first place. As an example, if the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, why are convicted felons not allowed to carry weapons (I seem to remember this being the case, if it's not I'm wrong)? Don't they have the same "inalienable" right as everyone else?

Moving on, why is it that the Government can't be trusted, but average Joe can? Judging from the massive amount of stupid people in the world (100% of the population, depending on context), relying on random people to have firearm discipline without any sort of oversight is rather optimistical.

These two points aside, I still don't think the issue is with guns, but rather socio-economic factors and an individualism sometimes bordering on disrespect for democratic institutions. The whole deal with Intelligent Design seems to me to be another symptom of this; when authorities are to be distrusted, anti-intellectualism grows stronger.

 d-usa wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

A criminal's ability to make or get a gun is frankly irrelevant. A criminal with a bat, tire iron, knife, 50 pounds of muscle and 6 inches of reach, a sock full of quarters, what ever, can cause damage and kill, can threaten life and health and use that threat to steal or rape or commit other crimes. When you take guns away from a law law abiding citizens, you are indicating to that citizen that he must trust the gov't to protect him, his family, and his property, yet it can be established that the gov't is not capable of providing that protection (and is not bound to provide it).

A law abiding citizen's ability to make or get a gun is frankly irrelevant. A law abiding citizen with a bat, tire iron, inife, 50 pounds of muslce and 6 inches of reach, a sock full of quarters, whatever, can cause damage and kill, can threaten life and health and use that threat to protect himself and his loved ones.

Guns just make it easier for both sides.

And that is where you are wrong, it does NOT work both ways. My law abiding wife won't have 50 pounds and 6 inches of reach. She cannot carry a bat or tire iron around, and does not think a knife is a good defense (a bigger/stronger attacker has to be WAY too close for a knife to work). She is however very comfortable with her ability to use the 9mm.

It is interesting thing is that in the span of two posts you argue that it doesn't matter if you have a gun because if you want to use violence to threaten people you will find a way and then argue that without a gun it's not easy to threaten people.

Which of course is my point.

And you are missing my point (probably because it was not well made). My point is yes, a gun makes it a ton easier, which is exactly why law abiding folks should be allowed to own them. The gun makes it easier for law abiding folks to defend against those who threaten them. Law abiding folks don't go around threatening people for gaks and giggles (or to score enough of someone else's property to get a fix). Taking away the (often) best option for self defense is wrong. Folks can and should decide if it is a good tool for their situation. I don't want someone else making that decision for me or my family. I should not have to worry about whether or not I am stronger or bigger than a guy who wants my wallet or wants to break into my house.

 CptJake wrote:
And you are missing my point (probably because it was not well made). My point is yes, a gun makes it a ton easier, which is exactly why law abiding folks should be allowed to own them. The gun makes it easier for law abiding folks to defend against those who threaten them. Law abiding folks don't go around threatening people for gaks and giggles (or to score enough of someone else's property to get a fix). Taking away the (often) best option for self defense is wrong. Folks can and should decide if it is a good tool for their situation. I don't want someone else making that decision for me or my family. I should not have to worry about whether or not I am stronger or bigger than a guy who wants my wallet or wants to break into my house.

We are on the same page there.

It's the whole "there will be no difference if criminals have guns or not, they will be just as violent and active" thing that I often hear thrown around that is one of my pet peeves because I feel that it trivalizes the impact that guns have and which can hurt our own argument in favor of gun ownership.

I think there is a bit of a fallacy though, in the "law abiding folks" part of the argument.

Every criminal was once a Law Abiding Citizen. And tragic accidents like this, though preventable yadda yadda, happen due to law abiding folks being stupid or irresponsible.

Criminals are not an entire separate species, you know what I mean? (Though I understand that the laws you guys have make it harder for criminals to own guns, and I can see the argument from that side, but there are so many guns in the US I can't imagine it's that difficult for a criminal to get a firearm if he really wants to)

This debate has been a bit better than some of the other gun debates I've seen in the past though- good job OT.

I think the law abiding citizen is not a fallacy. The typical criminal thug (one committing violent crimes) doesn't just snap once and commit one crime then return to law abiding. Between drugs like meth and gang activity we see repeat offenders way more than the One Time Criminal. The One Time Criminal is typically committing a crime of passion, no less a crime, often brutal and deadly, but not likely to be repeated.

And then there is the 'Criminal' most of us are referencing, who lives as a predator and sees the law abiding and weaker criminals as his prey. They often start quite young and at least our system seems very very poor at rehabilitation and the recidivism rates show this. They are not a separate species, and no one here has made that claim, but they are not covered by the Law Abiding label we are applying to others (who strangely enough are law abiding).

But don't those career criminals really only make up a tiny proportion of the population and a fairly small proportion of gun related deaths?

They may be a 'tiny' proportion of the population, but they account for a lot of the violent crime, and in some areas (urban centers of some cities for example) are a very major factor.

And I don't really care about gun relate deaths in this context, violent crime is violent crime, and good folks deserve the choice to defend against it.

 Da Boss wrote:
But don't those career criminals really only make up a tiny proportion of the population and a fairly small proportion of gun related deaths?

Doesn't mean they don't make up a significant portion of crimes that guns are used in defense for.

I want to make it clear again that I am not saying at all that I think people shouldn't be allowed to have guns in the US. My stance is, if you guys are happy with it, keep it. I know the context is pretty different over there.

There are plenty of advantages to having a gun for home defense, and in rural Ireland I know that plenty of vulnerable old people have guns for "hunting" that they really keep close to hand for defense against predatory thieves and the like. (We've a real problem with deserted areas in the West that have very few young people and a spread out, vulnerable elderly population. My parents know one old woman who keeps a shotgun in easy reach because she has been robbed more than once due to her isolated location).

My arguments are pretty much only around what I see as a sort of dismissive attitude to the problems that loose gun control brings, almost as if people are afraid to admit there could be any problems. Accidental gun deaths, a greater availability of guns to criminals, and a need for an armed police force are all real problems. It's absolutely cool that you guys consider the benefits worth the problems put forward, but I think saying the problems are irrelevant or don't exist is intellectually dishonest.

As shown, accidental gun deaths are a small subset of accidental deaths. It is difficult to treat them as more relevant than other accidental deaths.

I can't think of a single nation that does not have an armed police force. Some might not arm every LEO, but all have armed LEOs available.

 Hordini wrote:
We also have pretty close to a failed state on our southern border.

And on top of being stuck with Texas like you mention, Mexico is further below it!

Calling Texas a failed state, even in jest, is particularly hilarious as its arguably the most successfully governed state in the Union.

Ireland's police force is not normally armed. We have armed response units (we used to have just the one, but they're putting in regional ones now because the one team in Dublin can't get out to the back arse of Donegal very quickly.I think there'll be about 6 teams when they're done?)

Detectives and the Special Crimes unit that normally would have to deal with the IRA and so on are also armed. This is again a very small number of officers.

But the standard police man on the street who deals with 90% + of all crimes is unarmed and would only be armed if it was considered likely that he would be exposed to an attack by paramilitaries (my dad was armed with a revolver while guarding explosives, for example).

Not in any way saying that this is how things should be done in the US, but in Ireland at least most people are dead against arming the police. Every time they shoot someone (which happens basically once per 5 years or so) there's a massive inquiry and usually protests too. Even if it is COMPLETELY justified!

Edit to Add: The Irish police force might be a poor example though as they were formed during a civil war and were unarmed so that they would not be a target for either side. They were (and still should be) "peace keepers" which is what the name Garda Síochána translates as. So we have a different attitude to our police I guess. Though that is changing with the times, too.

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
The gun makes it possible for the 130 pound lady to deter a 200 pound rapist.

My petite 5'4" mother was able to deter a male intruder much larger than herself with nothing but a leather belt and her fists.

Yep, I'm sure that would stop your average rapist.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 r_squared wrote:
Fortunately I live in one of those countries where we don't have a profusion of firearms, and do you know what? It makes no appreciable difference to our quality of life whatsoever.
Our 7 stone grannies are still able to get down the post office without the threat of murder from a 17 stone rapist with a sock full of pennies.

If you live in a society that makes you feel compelled to carry a firearm for a basic level of protection, and you're happy with that, fine, good on you, hope you never have to use it. But please do not sneer or look down on societies where we manage perfectly well without them.
In the UK we simply do not need firearms to make ourselves feel safe, and I imagine that we have favourably comparable incidences of violent assaults and rapes when compared with many other nations.

And I llive next to a country where 50,000 people have been executed by drug cartels. I don't give a gak how things are in your country.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Please, for the love of cute kittens and puppies, can we stop pretending that there's some inherent right to anything? Rights exist because we as a society have agreed they do, a country that has stricter gun laws than the US hasn't "taken away" anything, the right never existed there in the first place. As an example, if the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, why are convicted felons not allowed to carry weapons (I seem to remember this being the case, if it's not I'm wrong)? Don't they have the same "inalienable" right as everyone else?

Moving on, why is it that the Government can't be trusted, but average Joe can? Judging from the massive amount of stupid people in the world (100% of the population, depending on context), relying on random people to have firearm discipline without any sort of oversight is rather optimistical.

These two points aside, I still don't think the issue is with guns, but rather socio-economic factors and an individualism sometimes bordering on disrespect for democratic institutions. The whole deal with Intelligent Design seems to me to be another symptom of this; when authorities are to be distrusted, anti-intellectualism grows stronger.

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's not that school shootings don't matter, it's that you can't make policy decisions based on such rare events. When something happens so rarely you don't have enough information about what caused it and what you can do to prevent it, so any decisions you try to make as a result are blind guesses and/or emotional reactions. Gun control laws need to be based on common situations/events, not isolated tragedies that get the biggest headlines.

The point of my comment seems to have gone completely over your head Peregrine.

I previously stated in this thread how the gun debate had zero value to me. I didn’t mention school shootings as a way to further support for tighter gun control. I mentioned them for the sole reasons that it made me physically uncomfortable how some people here on Dakka sounded overly dismissive about these tragic events.

Someone brought up how deaths at school shootings were number wise trivial compared to smoking related deaths and because of that, school shootings were a minor subject hardly worth even thinking about. Such comments made me very unconfutable and I decided to post my misgivings about it. I did it mostly so I could hear from others if they felt the same way about it as I did.

 Redcruisair wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
It's not that school shootings don't matter, it's that you can't make policy decisions based on such rare events. When something happens so rarely you don't have enough information about what caused it and what you can do to prevent it, so any decisions you try to make as a result are blind guesses and/or emotional reactions. Gun control laws need to be based on common situations/events, not isolated tragedies that get the biggest headlines.

The point of my comment seems to have gone completely over your head Peregrine.

I previously stated in this thread how the gun debate had zero value to me. I didn’t mention school shootings as a way to further support for tighter gun control. I mentioned them for the sole reasons that it made me physically uncomfortable how some people here on Dakka sounded overly dismissive about these tragic events.

Someone brought up how deaths at school shootings were number wise trivial compared to smoking related deaths and because of that, school shootings were a minor subject hardly worth even thinking about. Such comments made me very unconfutable and I decided to post my misgivings about it. I did it mostly so I could hear from others if they felt the same way about it as I did.

We are talking in the context of the gun debate.

Thus school shootings are irrelevant and not worth discussing, except to counter them inevitably being used as an emotional appeal, exactly because very few deaths are caused by school shootings. And numbers are what is important in this sort of debate.

We are not saying school shootings are not tragic events, we are not dismissing them as being important. They're just not important in this discussion, in the same way that the latest Football match isn't important in this discussion.

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

Oh no, is this thread still going on?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

Well, in the US there is not an inalienable right to life. Death Penalty, Abortion, etc...

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

Maybe I shouldn't spend more time on this thread, but if someone did something to 'earn' the death penalty, they don't deserve to live.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

If you do something horrible enough, you lose the right to life.

 CptJake wrote:
A criminal with a bat, tire iron, knife, 50 pounds of muscle and 6 inches of reach, a sock full of quarters, what ever, can cause damage and kill, can threaten life and health and use that threat to steal or rape or commit other crimes... The gun makes it possible for the 130 pound lady to deter a 200 pound rapist. The gun makes it so the 70 year old man can protect his property and life when the knife armed meth head breaks in.

But it works both ways. I feel I'd have a chance of fighting off an assailant with a bat or a roll of pennies, and, more importantly, I could run away. There is nothing you can do against an assailant with a gun, you can't even flee. It made me so angry reading about the two British tourists that were murdered in America a while ago. What were they supposed to do? Rent a gun, or an armed chaperone for their holiday? What does the the 70 year old man who can't move/draw quickly because of arthritis do? What does a blind woman do? Or someone with Parkinson that can't point a gun? There will always be vulnerable people who must depend on the government to protect them. The proliferation of deadly weapons just makes that job harder.

 Grey Templar wrote:
We are talking in the context of the gun debate.

Thus school shootings are irrelevant and not worth discussing, except to counter them inevitably being used as an emotional appeal, exactly because very few deaths are caused by school shootings. And numbers are what is important in this sort of debate.

We are not saying school shootings are not tragic events, we are not dismissing them as being important. They're just not important in this discussion, in the same way that the latest Football match isn't important in this discussion.

You didn't read anything I just wrote, did you?

 Grey Templar wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

If you do something horrible enough, you lose the right to life.

So it's not inalienable then?

 Frazzled wrote:

 ScootyPuffJunior wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
The gun makes it possible for the 130 pound lady to deter a 200 pound rapist.

My petite 5'4" mother was able to deter a male intruder much larger than herself with nothing but a leather belt and her fists.

Yep, I'm sure that would stop your average rapist.

This assumes that the incident in question was not an attempted rape. And why does rape crop up in these discussions so often? There's definitely some sort of machismo subtext here, without question. Like it's less manly to oppose gun ownership because you'd be allowing 'your women' to be raped or something. Such thinking is juvenile nonsense, mostly because last time I checked, the US had higher rape stats than many western democracies with tighter gun control that I could name.


Basically, a handgun is not a magical anti-rape wand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

If you do something horrible enough, you lose the right to life.

So it's not inalienable then?

By that logic, if society did something horrible enough, could the right of the people to bear arms then be infringed?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 djones520 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

Well, in the US there is not an inalienable right to life. Death Penalty, Abortion, etc...

But... But... The Constitution!

 Albatross wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

If you do something horrible enough, you lose the right to life.

So it's not inalienable then?

By that logic, if society did something horrible enough, could the right of the people to bear arms then be infringed?

If a change was made to the Second Amendment in a matter consistent with the process for changing the constitution, the "inherent" right to bear arms would no longer exist, because the only reason it exists in the first place is because it's been decided it does.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Albatross wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

So in your world you have no right to life? Interesting.

I do, but only because we as a society has agreed that such is the case. If everyone has an inalienable right to life, how is the death penalty still a thing?

If you do something horrible enough, you lose the right to life.

So it's not inalienable then?

By that logic, if society did something horrible enough, could the right of the people to bear arms then be infringed?

If a change was made to the Second Amendment in a matter consistent with the process for changing the constitution, the "inherent" right to bear arms would no longer exist, because the only reason it exists in the first place is because it's been decided it does.

No, that's incorrect, because the Constitution and more specifically the Bill of Rights doesn't grant rights, it protects them.

I have a question though: Why do you hate freedom so much?