Gun Control

[Seraiah]

You have made this far more complicated than this needs to be, and you’ve done it because you are attempting to get facts to fit your pre-concieved conclusion: That an ordinary man should not be able to get a nuke.
A person is not entitled to not “feel threatened”. A person may act to defend himself if two conditions are met:
1.) A person has expressed a desire to do you harm and…
2.) You know he has the means to do so.

@Murray Rothbard

If someone owns a knife, is it aggression, if so why ?

No, he has not met the first condition.

@Murray Rothbard

If someone holds a knife in your presence, is it aggression, if so why?

Possibly, if he has met the first condition.

@Murray Rothbard

If someone points a knife at you is it agression, if so why?

Yes, he has now met the first and second condition.

@Murray Rothbard

If someone moves a knife in your direction from 6 feet is it aggression, if so why ?

Yes.

@Murray Rothbard

If someone moves a knife in your direction from 1 inch away is it aggression, if so why ?

Yes.

@Murray Rothbard

If someone pushes the knife into your body, is it aggression, if so why ?

Yes, but long before then.

@Murray Rothbard

If you need clear and present danger then if a known assassin tells you today that on the third of June he will shoot you with a long range snipers rifle, you have no right to defend yourself until the third of June at which point you will be unable to do so.

That’s life. Fact is, anyone could shoot anyone else at any given time with a long range sniper rifle. No one has the right to hunt someone down based on a phone call.

@Murray Rothbard

Or consider if your neighbour has a nuke on his house with a timer set to detonate in 273 days, how long do you have to wait before the danger becomes clear and present enough defend yourself.

The moment he set the timer he has met both conditions. Assuming that his property isn’t large enough to contain the blast.

@Murray Rothbard

I think introducing the concept of threat solves a lot of tricky problems without weakening anything that we would actually want to keep. An act is aggressive when it constitutes a threat to your property and the probability of that damage is high enough for a reasonable man to consider it a threat.

Sounds about right.

@Murray Rothbard

You can disarm the dangerous child, detain the assassin and defuse your neighbours nuke, all of these things constitute a genuine threat.

You may not detain an “assassin” solely on the basis of a threat.
I think the case can be made that if a person is going to buy a nuke he must have enough property, or else the right containment, to set it off without damaging the property of another person, otherwise having a nuke on his property is very much the same as pointing a knife at another person.

[scatt]

This implies I have some sort of responsibility to people that live near me. My land is mine, and I am not beholden to those around me for owning weapons. They can of course refuse to interact with me, but if they really were scared they would move.

[DD5]

So I look at the current forum topics and I see “Gun Control by Murray Rothbard”. I think it’s about something he probably wrote regarding Gun Control, and then I realize it’s not.

I realize this is probably out of admiration to Rothbard and not to confuse or deceive anyone, but how about for the sake of eliminating all sorts of misunderstandings, you change your user name. People often quote the real Rothbard. So now do we have to put extra effort in order to see who they’re actually quoting??

[Murray_Rothbard]

@seraiah

A person may act to defend himself if two conditions are met:
1.) A person has expressed a desire to do you harm and…
2.) You know he has the means to do so.

Your criteria don’t cover it.

There can be genuine threat and a right to self defence without any desire, expressed to do you harm.

By your logic, I have no right to defend myself if a young child points a loaded gun at me. They have expressed no desire to do me harm and probably are unaware of the fact that they could kill me by pulling the trigger.

There can also bea right to self defence even if I don’t “know” he has the means.

By your logic if someone steps out of a dark street and says “die, die” and points an object under his coat that could be a gun, I have no right of self defence.

I don’t “know” the object is a gun, it could be an umbrella, are you suggesting I have to wait until he fires it and I am dead before acting ?

I don’t think there is a better formulation that the threat definition I used earlier.

[Seraiah]

1.) You have been made aware that a person has put himself in a position to do you harm and…
(I agree that “desires” shouldn’t factor into the the equation. Just struggling to find the right word…)
2.) To the best of your knowledge he has the means to do so.
(Of course people are rarely certain of what’s going on, heck someone might be pointing a hologram of a gun at you. You still have the right to defend yourself as if it were a gun.)

Better?

Also, your example of a person with something under his coat doesn’t seem entirely justified, if you’re talking about shooting. “Sir, do you have a gun in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?” Though I doubt any court in a free country would punish you for shooting someone after they did something so reckless and stupid.