I havn’t seen an attack on gun control that was as convincing as libertarian arguments for a free market in healthcare and other things. can anyone link me to a good defence of gun rights? I have seen a lot of conflicting statistics and it would be nice to support gun rights from a utilitarian point of view rather than just an ethical one.
The US with it’s uncontrolled gun nuts has about 20.000 gun deaths a year. That’s the high number which includes suicides. That sounds like a lot, but only adds up to about two million in a century. Now, how many people were killed in gun controlled countries in the last century? A few hundred times that? From a utilitarian point of view, a government monopoly on guns is probably the most deadly policy imaginable.
Firearms are a level of technology. Taking away firearms merely reduces the technological level of combat. For example, my cousin warned of the high level of stabbings when I was visiting in London. If the gun control nuts wanted a killer statistic, they could simply look at the trend line of homicide statistics around the time firearms were invented and find the anomaly. They haven’t done that because there is no such thing and the whole idea that altering the level of technology will alter behaviour is on the intellectual level of astrology.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=41196
Not really a strong argument for gun control, just kind of ironic to opposing arguments.
If you want less murders, you have to ask the question why people want to murder others and what stops them, as a general principle, from doing so.
If someone wants to kill you there are thousands and thousands of ways of doing it, and almost nothing you can do about it. So there must be something else stopping them from doing it (than making fire arms illegal).
Whenever anyone talks about gun legalization I’m reminded of an excerpt from a book by a guy called Terry Pratchett which was called “Nightwatch” which was about a city under a deranged tyrant. The main character at one point talked about how the weapon controls at the time had been one of the only laws to lower crime which actually had any type of logic behind them, he even agrees that a lot of weapons were turned in during the weeks following the law’s passage, but it overlooked one thing, that criminals weren’t very inclined to follow the law, so you had a society where honest citizens were disarmed and where criminals had the only weapons.
In the U.S today there are too many guns floating around to think that they’ll disappear if illegalized, and a similar even will take place.
Very simple. Criminals seem to have little or no problem obtating firearms even in countries with extremely tight laws like Japan or Great Britain. In countries with automatic firearm bans criminals can get their hands on AK47’s, UZI’s, Skorpion’s etc if not military weapons stolen from arsenals without too much effort. By contrast law-abiding citizens wishing to own a firearm for self-defense or even target shooting are vexed in every possible way. Ever heard of ammunition accountability? That means you have to keep strict records of every single bullet you use at the firing range or while hunting. If you shoot a couple extra rounds and forget to chalk them up you can end up in serious troubles. Or how about having to report to the local police station the exact route you’ll follow to get to the firing range while carrying your registered gun in your car? If a road’s blocked and you have to take a detour that’s a penal offense and you’d better hope you don’t get pulled over for a random check. This is while criminals are buying, selling and shooting weapons and laughing at those idiots bothering to get a permit and trying following the rules.
Also there’s the issue of self-defense. As much as they’d like otherwise, policemen cannot be everywhere at every time. If you live in a rural area a patrol may take fifteen or twenty minutes to arrive, provided the nearest patrol isn’t already busy. What are you going to do when some scum is trying to knock down your door to get in? Gently ask them to pause while the cavalry arrives? Hope and pray your doors and windows will hold long enough? Hide in the basement and hope they don’t find you and your family? Hope they are gentle thieves, just interested in money and jewels? I think one of the reasons criminals have become so brutal and people are so scared nowadays is because most of us have abdicated to the right of self-defense, mostly because getting a firearm permit is so difficult and you know you’ll be treated like the worst criminal for defending your family and your house if the worst happens.
You should check out Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Idiots. He goes into nice detail surrounding the issue of criticism of the 2nd Amendment. He did a ton of research and his citations in the back are great references for his statistics.
I would argue from an empirical perspective. What do we know about gun bans? Beck says, “Remember the English Declaration of Rights with its right to arms? Like the rest of that Declaration, it restrains only the queen–Parliament can do whatever they want and, being that they are idiots, they wanted to take guns away. So, in 1997, they did. Over a decade later, the results are in: the ban is a disaster. From 1998 through 2005, the number of deaths and injuries from handguns sky-rocketed 340 percent” (Arguing with Idiots, p. 53).
One other good point he mentions is, “Despite what you may think, you do not have a right to police protection. And, once you’re dead, nobody can sue the police for failing to protect you, no matter how incompetent they may have been” (Arguing with Idiots, p. 55). So what ought we to do with a criminal attempting to steal our private property?
I think the gun war works the same as the drug war. There’s no good argument for allowing everyone to run around with guns and drugs. There are only good arguments against prohibiting such behavior. If you take the guns and drugs away from responsible people, all you’re left with is a bunch of irresponsible nuts (addicts, criminals, and cooks) with drugs and guns.
@Epicurus
That’s an excellent way of putting it. I’m gonna remember that for the next time I’m talking to social democrat.
I don’t see how stealing property entitles someone to kill. It seems, to me at least, that killing someone for such an offense is a miscarriage of justice.
In Ohio, if a death was committed in self-defense that was found to be uneccessary (immediately went for the kill rather than the disable, or shooting someone more than 5x, or shooting htem in the back, etc) it’s a minimum 6months prison sentence.
In California if a thief breaks into your house at night, you are not allowed to shoot him if you can climb out a window and run away.
6 months! I remember a story in the press in the UK. A farmers house was being burgaled and so he shot one of them in the back; he was sentenced to life (the equivalent of around 14 years) I think. I thought at the time that the length, the 14 years, was a bit excessive, but I think we should put more value on life than 6 months.
California has some pretty crazy laws.
14 years is a little excessive, imo. 6 months may be a little short, but life sentence is just ridiculous.
If you shoot someone who borke into your house at night, you shouldn’t be punished at all.
I completely disagree. If you think that killing someone who is attempting to steal shouldn’t be punished - as is the case here - then you are putting private property above human life. Now that seems insane, especially since property is there to increase the quality of human life, so to kill over it, mad.
Private property over human life, pfffff. When you’re facing a burglar in the middle of the night it’s not about protecting property, but about the safety of your family. You’re in potential danger, it’s self-defense. He made the choice to break into your house, so there’s no way we can say he didn’t see it coming. Not to mention that laws that protect burglars incentivize burglary.
Chris, it’s not simply that someone trespassed on your property; it’s that they have the intent to do God-knows-what. I’d really have no problem in saying that justice was on my side if I shot a thief who broke into my house. Of course, it would really depend on the situation. Obviously shooting to kill is a decision that no one wants to make, and I would only make it as a last course of action, if at all possible.
Safety of my family > thief. It’s not just about private property–the thief could be armed and dangerous, etc. etc.
That is a fair point and it makes the situation completely relative. However, there is a difference between shooting someone in self-defense, that seems justifiable, and shooting someone in the back, which is not in self-defense and so not entirely justifiable - if at all; that’s where my issue with it all is.