In the debate over guns I hear backtracking on universal human rights
I don't like to say this, but I sense that to be as clear as possible I have to say it: I have never been a conservative, and I do not identify with or sympathize with what today is called liberal/progressive either. Furthermore, I have never been a gun enthusiast, never owned or used firearms, and never supported any pro-gun or anti-gun politics. The whole gun debate is a non-issue on steroids, from my perspective.
Nonetheless, it is a divisive issue that can't be ignored. I have to reckon with it whether I personally care much about it or not.
Isn't it funny how you hear something many times and it barely registers in your conscious mind and then it suddenly unexpectedly erupts and overwhelms you? Taking away a constitutional right?! As I have watched from the sidelines, have I really heard liberals/progressives calling for taking away a constitutional right?
You know, the same people who when conservatives called for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman said that if such an amendment were added to the federal Constitution it would be the first time that the U.S. took away a right or officially constitutionally denied people a right. U.S. history has been a story of rights being expanded, they said. Taking away rights is not the American way, they said.
Yet, not only do I hear those same people implying or directly stating that a right in the original Bill of Rights should be removed from the Constitution, I hear them saying that it is not even a human right and never was a right of any kind in the first place. They would not lose any sleep, they say, if private citizens were prohibited from owning firearms and only the police and military had the right to possess firearms.
Either people do not think about what they are saying, or it sounds like we are having second thoughts about this whole Enlightenment concept called rights.
The Supreme Court of the United States of America has ruled that corporations are persons with rights. Meanwhile, the people who are supposedly champions of the oppressed and vulnerable, liberals/progressives, seem to be saying with more intensity each day that the sooner individuals do not have the right to possess a gun for their own protection the better. Amazing.
Nonetheless, it is a divisive issue that can't be ignored. I have to reckon with it whether I personally care much about it or not.
Isn't it funny how you hear something many times and it barely registers in your conscious mind and then it suddenly unexpectedly erupts and overwhelms you? Taking away a constitutional right?! As I have watched from the sidelines, have I really heard liberals/progressives calling for taking away a constitutional right?
You know, the same people who when conservatives called for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman said that if such an amendment were added to the federal Constitution it would be the first time that the U.S. took away a right or officially constitutionally denied people a right. U.S. history has been a story of rights being expanded, they said. Taking away rights is not the American way, they said.
Yet, not only do I hear those same people implying or directly stating that a right in the original Bill of Rights should be removed from the Constitution, I hear them saying that it is not even a human right and never was a right of any kind in the first place. They would not lose any sleep, they say, if private citizens were prohibited from owning firearms and only the police and military had the right to possess firearms.
Either people do not think about what they are saying, or it sounds like we are having second thoughts about this whole Enlightenment concept called rights.
The Supreme Court of the United States of America has ruled that corporations are persons with rights. Meanwhile, the people who are supposedly champions of the oppressed and vulnerable, liberals/progressives, seem to be saying with more intensity each day that the sooner individuals do not have the right to possess a gun for their own protection the better. Amazing.
Comments (156)
People should be incarcerated for possessing a firearm? Or just fined?
Manufacturing firearms other than for the purpose of supplying the police and military: a prison sentence?
Will museums see any guns in their collections confiscated? Will such firearms be taken out of sight, or will the government display them in government-run museums?
That's because it's not. These are:
www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html
But since you've bought into that ideosyncratically American way of hierarchical document interpretation where the highest one is treated like it came from Mt. Sinai, consider Article 3: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." This clause actually forms a personal basis for gun ownership clearer than the 2nd Amendment, as it's not complicated by the strange language of state militias. That is, this is a general right to protect against intruders, not just against the government. If I present a compelling argument that I cannot be safe without a gun, am I not entitled to one? I don't see anything in this document suggesting that these rights be limited if society is overall harmed. This document speaks in terms of absolute rights without regard to a general societal weighing test.
And really, despite their dependence on the 2nd Amendment, isn't this what gun rights advocates are really arguing, not that they actually believe their handguns will resist a fully armored tank attack with air support? They want "security of person" from whoever might threaten it.
I didn't support gun rights prior to your showing me this document. Thank you for this.
The entailment here is not this clear cut at all: that one has a right to the security of persons can equally translate into a right not to be surrounded by a society in which people have easy access to instruments of death. I'm not saying that this is how it should be understood, only that there is alot more ambiguity here than what I think you're suggesting. Arguably, a large part of the gun debate turns upon just this contested notion of what 'security' ought to look like.
Yes, I have the right to security of person. So, thankfully my government doesn't allow dangerous weapons to be widely available. In other words, when your right to security impinges on mine there's a conflict. And in my view, having less weapons on the streets increases security rather than diminishes it. And no, the UN document isn't the last word on human rights but they are at least debatably human rights.
I agree with you, but my response to Baden is that slapping down this document as definitive proof that gun ownership is not a human right just doesn't work. It leaves us no better off than we were when we began, with both sides using a document to support their position, which, again, evokes another peculiar American institution, that of inherent legalistic ambiguity, where no argument is ever conceded because there is always suspected to be one tribunal somewhere that will endorse your argument and make it law. And, of course, that leads us to another American interpretational problem: who gets to decide? In America it's clear: only Americans, which is why international documents are never thought to have come from Mt. Sinai If you're American.
And wasn't that at least part of Baden's clandestine agenda, to trump (I do so enjoy that word) the Constitution, to tell Americans it's not the final word when such an idea is known to be sacrilege to Americans?
But this can't be so, because Article 12 says:
"No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks."
This makes direct reference to the law being the required protection against interferences with honor, reputation, and privacy, but Article 3 places no such limitation ("Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person."). That is, where the drafters wished to declare that a person be protected by the government (i.e. "the law"), they said so. But in the sweeping declaration of the right to security of person, the drafters left it wide open, allowing you to protect yourself with whatever you have to give.
And now that we've resorted to original intent (just to again make the point this document offers us no greater resolution of the matter), now let's look at historical context. It seems highly doubtful the framers wanted to suggest they wanted to gather up the citizens of the world's guns. That was not the sentiment in 1948 generally, and especially not of those who just suffered through the devastation of the world war. I'd suggest that if anyone were justified in clinging to their guns, it was those folks.
What you need more than a clear document and a clever argument is a receptive tribunal.
Groups of people that are being shot up with a fair amount of regularity should count as vulnerable peoples don't you think? As for the increasing intensity, every new shooting acts as an exclamation point to their original call for gun control. Even the slaughter of twenty elementary school children didn't move the needle. Indifference can be maddening.
There are probably a few delusional people out there who think we could just ban guns altogether next week, but I'd guess those people are in the minority. Most probably understand that it is incremental changes over time that will get them to their destination. That's why the NRA fights every little change because they know it too.
I think a lot on the left will let themselves drift into wishful talk from time to time, envisioning an America that looks more like Europe with regard to guns and a few other things. Or if asked if they would be okay with a gun free America they answer honestly. You can't blame them for that. Guns contributed to 33,000 deaths last year alone. Yes some of those would have still ended up being suicides, and some of that number that were mass-murderer related might have been perpetrated by a different means, but it's not far fetched to think that number would be significantly smaller.
The US could get along without guns. Other countries already do. Plus, this fervor for and fetishisation of guns by the right is fairly recent, despite what the NRA would have you think. This article goes into the history at length.
This right to arms is enshrined in our Constitution, but unintended consequences are a hallmark of the best made plans. I see no reason why we can't reevaluate the rules we made/make for ourselves if the consequences become too great. Do you think the great thinkers of the enlightenment would frown upon us reconsidering vague and archaic documents put in place by men of yore? The Bill of Rights is America's holy book, but it should not be seen as eternal and infallible.
Jesus. I wake up from a nice sleep and the second thing I see is someone accusing me of a clandestine agenda. How...Anyway, I'll probably go into more detail later but for now on the security thing. Suppose the framers of the UN article were referring to individual security in the way you suggest. Why then stop (or even start) at guns? A gun may not make you very secure if everyone else has one. Why not bazookas? But then if everyone else has one why not tanks? And so on. There's never any absolute individual security unless you want to lock yourself away in a nuclear bunker. And no one particular weapon from your fists to bombs holds any special decontextualized connection to the concept of "security". So, either the proposed right is incoherent or something more collective and government provided was meant.
It is the police who are shooting those people a lot of the time.
It is those police shootings--and police brutality without guns like in the case of Eric Garner ("I can't breathe!")--that the protests and media scrutiny have been about.
Yet, we have liberals/progressives saying that the police and military should have guns and that the rest of us have no right to possess guns.
Quoting ProbablyTrue
The rate of gun related deaths in the U.S. is down from 20 years ago.
And most of the mass shootings probably could have been prevented with interventions that have nothing to do with the manufacture and distribution of firearms. For example, if I recall correctly, in a recent school shooting the assailant targeted classmates who had bullied him. Stopping the bullying probably would have prevented that shooting. Local and national campaigns to end bullying are already underway.
Quoting ProbablyTrue
It is one thing to say that society should be free of guns and to work to make that a reality without compromising other people's rights.
It is another thing to say that possessing a gun for one's personal protection is not a right and that only the police and military should be allowed to have guns.
Quoting ProbablyTrue
The U.S. could get along without cheese.
But nobody is saying that the right to cheese does not exist and that only the government should be able to make, possess and consume cheese.
It is about individual rights and state power, not about pragmatic outcomes.
If pragmatic outcomes are really the issue, like I showed in another thread, a new study concluded that pollution is responsible for 15 times more early deaths than war and violent crimes. Do you hear liberals/progressives saying that polluting is not in any way a right and that at the same time only the government should be allowed to pollute?
Is having tunnel vision and spending all of one's resources fighting against guns--devices that are used for a variety of things besides killing people and most of which, as far as I know, are never used to kill people (how much pollution can you say does not kill anybody?)--really the pragmatic thing to do?
With all due respect, it looks to me like liberals/progressives are as obsessed with guns as their opponents in the gun debate.
Quoting ProbablyTrue
I agree with all of that.
But the people I am talking about do not think like you do. They say that no right of any kind to possess a gun for one's personal protection ever existed in the first place and that only the police and military should be allowed to possess guns. If social conditions have changed in a way that warrants reconsidering our personal and collective relationships with firearms, I doubt that many reasonable people would oppose such reconsideration. But to use language that implies not recognizing rights that most people recognize or calling for rights to be taken away is illiberal. And it is hypocritical when such language comes from people who condemn it in other matters such as the right to same-sex marriage.
I have the natural right to defend my life and property.
I have the right to own the proper means of defending my life and property.
Firearms are one proper means of defending my life and property.
Therefore, I have a right to own firearms.
This was the chief principled argument I gave, but apparently, it's easier to endlessly compose infantile, sarcastic quips than engage with such arguments, judging by the responses.
For somebody to advocate both positions A and B, which an uncharitable bystander deem to be inconsistent, is not hypocritical. At worst, it's lacking in logic - which is not hypocrisy - but usually it's not even that.
I was going to look up police shooting statistics over the last (insert number) years, but the data available is crap. Somehow despite all the protests of the last year or two, we still haven't managed to hold police departments more accountable to on-duty shootings/killings.
That being said, even if the numbers have increased, armed citizens are certainly not the answer. There are almost zero instances of an armed citizen defending himself with force against abusive law enforcement. At least none that I'm aware of. And if they did they're likely dead now. The way our justice system works is the police abuse you, and if you survive, you then try to pursue them in court for an early retirement.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Admittedly I didn't search forever, but I couldn't find info on the last 20 years. I did find info from 1999-2015 here. From what I can tell it has been pretty consistent.
I would like to clarify that I personally don't think the US is going to be rid of guns altogether anytime soon. I do think it would be nice to wave a magic wand and have it be so, but legislation that would do as much is just not practical. I am in support of some more restrictions on what guns are legal though. Bump stocks serve almost no purpose as a means of self defense. They diminish you're ability to fire at specific targets accurately. The only purposes they serve are for recreational fun and what we saw in LV. We decided long ago that fully automatic weapons should not be legal because of the hazard they pose to society, and I think now is a decent time to recognize that high-capacity semi-automatic rifles fall into the same category. Make people get a Federal Firearms License, or go through the same process as purchasing an NFA weapon.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
I would have to leave the US in this case.
Quoting Thorongil
I'm not fond of extreme examples, but using your same syllogism I could find justification for owning an M1 Abrams.
It would practical against a tyrannical government or an invading force. Obviously I'm not seriously in support of this, but the argument holds.
My point is that there should be limitations at the very least. I agree that a gun is a legitimate means of self defense and in the US is an established right, but it's not clear to me that it is necessary or is serving the intended purpose the majority of the time.
We all have the right to abstain from eating cheese, but it doesn't mean our lives would be better for it.
It would probably be the same burglar as the one the NRA thinks would wait for a responsible gun owner to retrieve the gun from their child-proof gun safe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OZIOE6aMBk
I actually think that a smaller guerrilla force with less powerful weaponry can hold its own and even defeat stronger militaries, for the outcome of a war has as much if not more to do with the morale on either side as it does with advanced firepower. The U.S. has learned this the hard way in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Quoting ProbablyTrue
Then you need to look up the statistics. There are conservatively tens of thousands more defensive gun uses each year than homicides due to guns. They clearly serve their intended purpose the majority of the time.
Quoting andrewk
Which would take more or less time than the calling the cops and waiting for them to show up with... guns to the scene?
And yet you attempted that very thing in your initial reply to me. You're a pot calling the kettle black.
Ukraine has shown us that privately owned tanks can make a hell of a difference in low-intensity conflicts.
Completely irrelevant.
You asked if the people being shot all of the time are not part of the oppressed and vulnerable. I pointed out that it is the police--the ones those aforementioned liberals/progressives are fine with possessing guns while they say that the rest of us have no business possessing guns--who are shooting those unarmed, vulnerable, oppressed people.
Quoting ProbablyTrue
"Yet the current rate of firearm violence is still far lower than in 1993, when the rate was 6.21 such deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 3.4 in 2016."
[quote=Gun lobbyists web-site]Jim, first makes fun of us for being prepared with a readily accessible gun. Then he makes fun of us for safely securing that firearm in a safe. I wonder if Jim realizes that there are quite a few options out there other than a vintage turning combination safe?[/quote]
Quite a few options - but none worth mentioning apparently.
No, I actually said, "Groups of people", referring to mass shootings. The government gets to have and do a lot of things your average citizen doesn't. Police and military having weapons while others do not is not frightening to me. The military has Tomahawk missiles, but I'm not bummed I can't have one. Also, police brutality is a separate topic.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Do we need to be at an all time high to call for changes to regulations? Just because things were once worse doesn't mean they couldn't be better than they are currently.
Whether it would be minimally useful or not doesn't matter. Using your syllogism I could justify having one. What I'm trying to figure out is where you draw the line. Do you think owning a functional tank is something citizens should be able to do? What about fully-automatic weapons? Grenades?
Quoting Thorongil
If you have any links on hand I'd be interested. However it makes me wonder how they gather this info, and even if every single one was reported accurately, how many of these situations could have been resolved without? How do people in the UK resolve their problems? How bout in Australia?
Your subjective feelings are irrelevant. The question is: is owning a gun for one's personal protection a right?
Quoting ProbablyTrue
This thread is about individuals' right to own a gun for their personal protection.
This thread is about taking away or denying rights.
If something is an inalienable right of individual's that means that the statistics about things like crime are irrelevant.
The point is that while liberals/progressives have increasingly conflated guns with homicide the overall rate of gun-related deaths in the U.S. has declined.
If this thread is only intended to discuss what is, then it's clear the answer is yes in some countries and no in others. The US courts have upheld that it is an individual right despite the possibility that the original intent was for that right to be contingent upon being part of a well-regulated militia.
I thought we had already established this and we were discussing whether it should be a right or how large the scope of "bear arms" really is or should be.
It's a legal right here in God's favorite country, nothing more, nothing less. Like other legal rights, it may be limited, modified and even repealed. Getting rid of it would mean amending the Constitution, which is particularly difficult, but may be done. We've amended it before, most foolishly to prohibit the production, sale and transport of intoxicating liquor through the 18th Amendment. We got rid of that amendment some 13 years after we were stupid enough to adopt it.
Your failure to provide a single detail makes that seem a very doubtful claim. But if you consider the argument 'There's a robust defence of my claim, that I can't produce but is somewhere out there on Google, so go and look for it' convincing then there's really nothing to discuss.
It's a poor argument because it says nothing of excessive force or risk of harm. You should not have a right to use excessive force or pose a risk to society.
A more important question is whether it should be.
It's excessive force to shoot someone that you could have disabled in a less dangerous way. There's practically no situation where a gun, rather than some other form of self-defence, would be necessary.
And even if you point out that a gun can be used as a deterrent without shooting anyone, it still poses a risk, which was my other point.
Could? How do you know that? Do you have experience warding off would-be murderers, thieves, and rapists by other means? What are those means? What if the intruder to your home is armed, for example? Are these means still the most effective in that case? If so, how do you know?
There's practically no situation where a gun, rather than some other form of self-defence, would be necessary.
If you need to ask me what those other means are, then "you must have a very poor imagination".
There are more important things than what's most effective. Perhaps planting mines around my house would be most effective, so let's all go ahead and do that, and see where that gets us. I have the inalienable right to plant mines, and it's the most effective method of keeping trespassers away. That matters more to me than people being blown up.
Yeah, but what if the Brits decide to invade? You clearly won't be able to defend yourself with anything short of heavy artillery. Therefore, it is an inalienable natural right to own heavy artillery.
The (obvious, might I add) solution is to move to a place where home invasions are so uncommon that they do not register as valid reasons to alter your behavior. And if you still fell unsafe, because you're a big soft softy, then you should get a dog.
I heard you the first time.
Quoting Sapientia
Oh I can imagine them, but that still doesn't make them as effective as a gun. You still haven't shown that. You've merely repeated the claim.
Quoting Sapientia
Perhaps? How so? I think you're just pulling these things out of your rear end.
Then "you composed a silly response".
Quoting Thorongil
Beside the point.
Quoting Thorongil
That they're as effective as a gun? Don't need to, don't intend to.
Quoting Thorongil
It didn't seem to sink in the first time.
Quoting Thorongil
Again, use your imagination. Would you risk getting yourself blown up to rob my house? It might not [i]actually be[/I] the most effective at keeping potential intruders at bay, but it doesn't need to be. It was an attempt to help you get your head around the fact that there are more important things than what's most effective.
No, you do not have a natural right to defend your property. Or at least, that natural right is not recognized in the vast majority of modern legislature, where killing someone attempting to rob you is going to land you very quickly in jail.
Quoting Thorongil
So is nerve gas, phosphore grenades and impaling the heads of your enemies on spikes in front of your driveway. In fact, one could argue that there is little better than a little terrorism in order to guarantee one's safety.
Since you have not provided any evidence of that unassailability, there is nothing to prove wrong. It's just an opinion, and one you're entitled to.
Yes, he's entitled to the wrong opinion, but I wouldn't recommend it.
I never said one needed to kill someone with a gun to prevent a robbery. It's irritating having to repeat myself so often, but as I have said several times, defensive gun uses often don't involve firing a shot.
Quoting Akanthinos
You have no proof of that. This is just an appeal to extremes.
Wrong. I gave an argument which you have consistently failed to engage.
You have to be willing to kill. Otherwise you just bought a gun that someone might steal and use against you. A gun is useless if it's not backed by the willingness to fire.
Quoting Thorongil
Proof of what? That fear is an effective tool of dissuasion? Bloddy hell, that's what your argument rests upon too!
That might be true if I based my position with respect to the right to bear arms on the jokes of a comedian.
Quoting Sapientia
Why not? Why are you even respond to me, then? Are you bored, trolling, something else?
Quoting Sapientia
Repeating the same claim doesn't make it so. You know that, so, again, I'm beginning to suspect you're just trying to get a rise out of me at this point.
Quoting Sapientia
You've still given me no reason for believing that means other than a gun are just as effective as a gun in all cases. If prevention of crime is in view, then this is the claim you need to defend, otherwise, there is no reason to oppose the use of firearms in self-defense.
Naturally.
Quoting Akanthinos
Your examples are ridiculous. None of them make any sense as effective means of self-defense.
It's impossibly woolly. What does 'proper means' mean? Does it exclude means that create a danger to the rest of the community, because they would be 'improper'? If so then 2 is acceptable but 3 is not. If not then 2 is unacceptable.
What is the significance of 'the' in 'the proper means'? Usually, use of 'the' implies there is only one means. Perhaps you mean 'any proper means', or perhaps you mean 'at least one proper means'. Who knows?
If 'the' in 2 means 'any proper means' then I see no reason for anybody to accept premise 2, as owning some of those means could create an unacceptable hazard for the rest of the community - which is the case with many guns.
If it doesn't mean 'any proper means' then 4 doesn't follow from the preceding lines.
So with any of the interpretations of the vague words that come readily to mind, the syllogism is either invalid, or it relies on unacceptable premises (is 'unsound').
It was true because your response contained questions that didn't need to be asked, because you could have gotten the answers from what I'd said previously or by applying a little imagination.
Quoting Thorongil
What are you talking about? You're the one that came up with that criterion of equal effectiveness, not me. It's down to you to defend it. I don't have to attempt to meet it, and I have no intention of trying. As I've said, I go by a different set of priorities, and I think that you need to get yours in order.
Quoting Thorongil
No, I'm just trying to get you to see sense.
Quoting Thorongil
Have you been listening to a word I've been saying? This feels like talking to a brick wall.
Quoting Thorongil
Prevention of crime [i]within reason[/I] is in [i]my[/I] view. That's the distinction between my position and yours.
That's what you think. I can assure you that a phosphorus grenade will be a shitload more effective in deterring anyone who knows what it can do than any form of firearm. You happen to have a chance of surviving getting shot. Not sure you'd even want to survive a heavy phosphorus burn.
Adequate and effective.
Quoting andrewk
Any proper means.
Quoting andrewk
This appears to be your key objection. I don't think it affects my argument, as there are plenty of things one owns that could create unacceptable hazards for the rest of the community (I assume you mean the public or society, otherwise your use of the definite article makes it somewhat unclear what you're referring to) that it would be ridiculous to prohibit the rightful use of.
Why is the prevention of crime with the private use of guns unreasonable? You still haven't explained why.
Right, so you admit you weren't being serious, given this tongue-in-cheek sentence.
Yes, he did the same thing with my example of mines. Anything so long as guns are the answer, it seems. Alternatives are to be dismissed, even if they actually tick more of the boxes on his own checklist. :-}
It affects it in that many people (most people, and certainly most lawmakers, at least outside the US) would not accept your premise 2, as it does not prevent you from owning things that create significant dangers to others.
You accept premise 2. That's your prerogative. But your argument will not be acceptable to most people because they would see premise 2 - with the interpretation you have now given it - as unreasonable.
I'll add that you don't help your case at all by linking defence of life with defence of property in premise 2. In almost all countries, the measures that are considered reasonable under law for defence of one's property are a tiny subset of the measures considered reasonable for defence of one's life.
Yes, I have, both here and elsewhere. Because guns carry a greater risk. You're more likely to die from a gunshot wound than a stab wound, for example. And, obviously, you're more likely to be shot by someone with a gun than by someone without one - so don't give me that rubbish about not firing it. Furthermore, shooting an intruder almost always constitutes excessive force because of that line I repeated twice already.
That's my point. You own things that can be used in significantly dangerous ways that you and no one else objects to the rightful ownership of.
Other than that, you've merely provided an undemonstrated appeal to the majority in countries outside the U.S., which is irrelevant to my argument.
No, this is entirely serious. Phosphorus burns are absolutely monstrous, and it's almost impossible to stop white phosphor from spreading, so you'll likely end up with debilitating burns everywhere on your body.
I'd rather die than be turned into useless bacon.
This does not work in your favour. Those things undermine the presumed usefulness of guns. And those ways in which you can use them are restricted by law, as they ought to be. Hence, if your reaction to an intruder is to bash his brains in by hitting him over the head repeatedly with a spade as hard as you can, even after he has been knocked out, then you'll likely be going to prison, because that would likely count as an excessive use of force.
Your response is that guns are [i]more[/I] effective, but even if so, there are [i]other[/I] ways which can be [i]effective enough[/I] without carrying the same level of risk that you get with a gun, with regards to the likelihood of being shot and the impact of gunshot wounds.
And guns are not a practically unavoidable staple of the household, like many of the objects you'd expect to see in the home which could be used as a weapon.
This is way too simplistic. Do you assert it as a statistical claim? If so, what does it count as stab wounds? Stepping on a tack, cutting your finger with a kitchen knife, hemophiliacs accidentally wounding themselves? Those would affect the fairness of the comparison. What, moreover, are the circumstances of the wound's infliction? If I stabbed you in a major artery, then you are more likely to die than from a gunshot wound to a non-major artery. The caliber of bullet also factors into the damage dealt. If I stabbed you, incapacitating you, and you were left to bleed out without receiving any medical assistance, you are more likely to die than from receiving a gunshot wound and being immediately rushed to the hospital or being treated by a doctor on the scene. The fact is that your assertion isn't true without qualification.
Second, even if in some sense your claim is true, it ignores the statistical reality that I have consistently cited, which is that there are more defensive gun uses than gun deaths each year, meaning that a greater number of crimes are prevented by guns than committed by them. There is, therefore, a risk one takes in not owning a gun, just as there is in owning one. No one on my side ever said that gun ownership doesn't come with responsibility.
Quoting Sapientia
This is a tautology and irrelevant to whether one has the right to own firearms. Just as you can't be shot without the perpetrator owning a gun with which to shoot you, so you can't be run over without the perpetrator owning a car or truck with which to run you over. Neither fact shows that one doesn't have the right to own the item in question.
Quoting Sapientia
You have consistently failed to prove any of these adverbs you keep using. Almost always? Well, once again, that depends on the circumstances of the shooting.
No, I don't own anything that has anything like the lethal potential of a gun. If that's the point of the argument, then it doesn't work.
No. I've pointed out that most people would not accept your premise 2, so your argument, while you may find it personally convincing, is not unassailable.
In fact, it's simply a matter of opinion, as to how one feels about premise 2. Fortunately for me, opinion is generally against that premise.
I said earlier that you still haven't proven that there are other means as effective as a gun for every given scenario. That remains true. Please don't make me ask for it again.
Except that's a provable claim. Hostpital admittance for stab wounds show that you are about 60-80% likely to survive a stab wound, depending where you are stabbed, while the offshot is about 40% survival chances for bullet wounds.
I bet if I looked in your kitchen cabinets, I could find ingredients to make a bomb. If you own a vehicle, then as you should well know, it can be used to exact a rather hideous death toll. There are lots of other items I could probably find that you own that could be used to commit murder. Even if you own none of these things and live a sparse, ascetic lifestyle like me, most people own items and materials that if used inappropriately can be lethal, things which you do not object to the rightful ownership of.
Quoting andrewk
You said most people in unspecified countries that are not the U.S. reject it (without proof, I might add), not most people per se. Regardless, this is just an argumentum ad populum.
Quoting andrewk
It must be nice determining the truth of a claim by referring to what the majority thinks. Nevertheless, I value logic.
Yes, I was looking up similar statistics when composing my reply to Sapientia. My point still stands that the claim he made, without qualification, isn't obviously true. I have no problem granting such statistics either, as I said, for they don't refute my argument.
If the premise is derived from a further argument, it is no longer a premise, but a deduction, or theorem. At this stage your line 2 is just a premise, and I don't accept it because it seems unreasonable to me. That's all that's needed for me to logically reject the argument.
If you want to turn line 2 from a premise to a derived statement, you need to provide a proof of it, based on other premises that are more likely to be accepted by others.
That's how logic works.
I don't own a car, and one of the reasons for that is that I agree with you that they are lethal, generally unnecessary, objects.
For a lawmaker to decide whether to legally allow ownership of item X, they will weight up the usefulness of it against its risk. I doubt most people have enough of anything that could make a respectable bomb. Farmers may own large amounts of fertiliser, which could. But society weighs that up against the benefit of being able to grow lots of food, and decides that on balance it should allow that.
These arguments cannot be made for guns. For most people they are not required in order to make a living, and for those that do need it for that, exceptions are made. I would not object at all to a law that required registration of all purchases of fertiliser, with the sale of more than a certain amount to a person in a month being blocked if they could not demonstrate a need for it related to their livelihood.
I provided the statistics and further details elsewhere in another discussion on gun control that we both participated in. Neither you nor anyone else in that discussion showed any interest in them whatsoever.
Some of those questions are pretty silly. From what I recall, as one would reasonably expect, they were based on major, life threatening injuries, on averages, on typical cases, and were of more of a like-for-like nature, thus ruling out minor injuries like stepping on a tack and special cases like those involving a haemophiliac.
Quoting Thorongil
There should be no doubt about the truth of my claim, and it has already been suitably qualified. It is both in sync with common sense expectations and verified by statistics.
I have yet to see your statistics. If you've linked to them here or elsewhere, I'll have to check them out. But, assuming that they're from a credible source and as you say, it is still not a very good argument, as I can just cite statistics on gun crime here in the U.K. - where it is very rare to own or carry a gun, let alone use one - where the numbers are significantly lower than those in the U.S.
No one said that gun ownership doesn't come with responsibility, but lots of us have explained why it's irresponsible to own a gun in the first place.
Quoting Thorongil
It's an important and obvious truth, as well as a good reason to work towards making it increasingly difficult for citizens to obtain a gun, which is more important than any notion or sense of entitlement relating to the so-called right to bear arms.
Quoting Thorongil
It's about whether one should have the right, not whether one does. You're right that, in isolation, that wouldn't be enough to show that one should not have right to own the item in question, but you're wrong to think that that's a refutation, as clearly that's just part of a wider context which forms an argument against the so-called right to bear arms, and should not therefore be considered solely in isolation or removed from its context without good reason.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes, almost always. You yourself made the point about the typical objects that can be used as weapons in and around the home. Failing all else, there's always physical combat. I challenge you to come up with a scenario where a gun would be necessary, meaning there could be no other means available for self-defence.
No it doesn't. My argument is proven to be unsound if one or all of my premises are false. Your objection to premise two is fallacious, so my argument stands.
Quoting andrewk
Why does one need to demonstrate a need for something to be related to one's livelihood in order to own it? That's a bizarre claim.
Granting this, however, the ownership of a gun would be demonstrated to be related to one's livelihood. For one's livelihood, or means of acquiring the necessities of life, itself depends on one's life being adequately protected. A gun is an adequate and in many cases the most effective means of protecting one's life, which then enables one to pursue one's livelihood.
It's your argument, and you're making the positive claim - that a person has a right to own any object that can be used to protect themself. The onus is on you to prove that claim.
I am not making any positive claim, so I have nothing to prove. I'm just saying that I don't believe your claim.
Sure is. Lucky I didn't make it then isn't it?
Go back and look at the first part of that sentence, of which you quoted only the second part.
Except that they do. I don't get how you don't get this. Replace all guns in the States by blades, leaving everything else the same, and there will be less deaths as a result. That is the only conclusion that these stats can compel you to reach.
Still less effective than drones, land mines, railguns, nerve gas, lazersharks, honeytraps, etc...
Please don't, because I have already explained why that's a stupid request. What part did you not understand? I'm running out of ways to explain to you that I am under no such burden of proof.
That there are other means of self-defence which are effective enough as a means of self-defence is not at all to suggest that they're as effective as a gun would be in every given scenario. The latter is not necessary and is your own unreasonable criterion. It is not mine, so please stop acting as though it is.
I can only take your word for it. But it remains the case that your statement was not obviously true unless qualified, which you have now done. Good job.
Quoting Sapientia
They're principally from the CDC. I don't have a link on hand, but I do welcome you to check them out.
Quoting Sapientia
Sure, but then I would like you to explain to me why the U.S. has seen a massive decline in gun violence over the last several decades, despite the number of guns sold increasing. Do note that the people buying these guns aren't committing the gun violence, as the vast majority of gun violence is committed with illegally acquired weapons. Britain, moreover, has always had low amounts of gun violence compared to the U.S., even before it implemented its effective ban, so your statistics don't actually prove the claim you need them to, namely, that a reduction in or outright ban on firearms leads to a reduction in gun violence.
The U.S. also has a different social history than Britain. Most of the gun violence in the U.S. occurs in highly concentrated geographical areas of certain urban centers and among a very specific demographic: young males from minority backgrounds. Such violence is heavily linked to gang related activity and the drug trade. The lawful gun owning NRA member in small town middle America is not the one committing this crime, and yet he, with his pro-second amendment stance, is the one blamed for it, as if he forced some gangbanger in South Chicago to do a drive-by shooting on his rivals by means of an illegally acquired firearm. Gun violence can and has been reduced by tougher penalties, greater policing, and clamping down on straw buyers. To simply ban guns would be to punish the innocent for the crimes of the guilty.
Quoting Sapientia
Then you fail to understand the first premise. Positive or legal rights can be added and subtracted, this is true. But natural rights don't ever go away, even if one passes laws that remove their positive legal status.
Quoting Sapientia
You can't be serious. Just for starters, what is it do you think cops bring with them most of the time when responding to reports of violent crime?
No you haven't. You've tried passing the baton back to me to prove that there aren't other means as effective as guns in every scenario. Sorry, Sappy, that will not do. You made the claim. It's up to you to defend it.
You're not even characterizing my argument correctly, seeing as you've left out the part where I said that one has the right to proper, i.e. adequate and effective, means of self-defense, which excludes the absurd examples you and Akanthinos have been wracking your brains coming up with. My argument is valid and sound, unless and until you have show one of the premises is false, which you haven't done. The second premise really isn't that difficult to understand. If I lose my life or property defending them by one means of self-defense but protect them by another means, then I require the latter to maintain my natural right to life and property.
You don't have to take my word for it, actually. You can bring up my comment with the quoted statistical data and linked sources by simply entering "gunshot" on the search feature. It's the very first comment in the search results.
Yes I have, and no I didn't. I challenge you to show me where I have made that claim, as you have worded it. Once you realise that I have made no such claim, please do the right thing and concede that it's a straw man of your own design.
Goodnight.
If you really don't understand that the onus of proof is on the one making the claim - which in the case of both the premises is you - then a constructive discussion is not possible.
Ah, so this is the point at which we enter into a semantics battle. I'm not interested in that. If 1) you are concerned with preventing crime and 2) there are means besides guns that are as effective as guns in all cases in preventing crime, then you need to show me what those means are and how, statistically, they are just as effective.
If we go to the claim you've repeated ad nauseam, one finds that you've provided yourself an escape from having to show this by means of a certain word, but at the cost of still failing to prove your thesis:
Quoting Sapientia
The use of the word "practically" here suggests that you do admit that there are situations in which only a gun can prevent a crime. I suspect there are more such situations than you would be willing to admit, but let's assume for the sake of argument that they're very rare. The question thus becomes: why should that mean abolishing the right to own firearms? Why assume that most defensive gun uses whereby the assailant is shot or killed are not the kinds of situations that require a gun? Most gun owners, believe it or not, believe that using and firing a gun should only be the last resort undertaken under the gravest of circumstances. So you still haven't successfully challenged my argument.
Because the corollary to allowing guns to spread in the manner they have in the USA is the epidemic of gun rampages that plagues you, and might I add, only you.
You have to let this sink in. The corollary to you claiming that the current state-of-affairs in the States is acceptable because it is founded in an inalienable right is that you find it acceptable that kids get shot every other week because that is also founded in that same inalienable right.
I get that sometimes people don't feel safe in certain streets. That happens to me too sometimes. That's what a karambit, a dog, a mace or a black belt is for. It's not a reason to start carrying a gun to the grocery store.
Your defence is not a proof, it's pure rhetoric. Here it is:
There is no logical argument there to be engaged. The statement doesn't even make sense. How can you both lose your life and protect it? Is this some sort of hypothetical counterfactual? The 'then' is an unsubstantiated claim, and the rhetoric leaves me cold.
"The usual internet explanation of Canadian knife laws leaves out the fact that in 2011, the judicial understanding of the offense carrying a concealed weapon changed in a very important way.
There are three basic ways that the existence of a weapon is established for the offense, and the one most likely to catch a good-natured but unaware person involves the following consideration: are you carrying [a knife] designed to be used to cause death or injury or for the purpose of threatening or intimidating anyone. It is the application of this part of the offense that changed.
The case can be found here. Anyone contemplating carrying a knife in public in the way described above should read it.
For those who want a quick summary: In determining whether something fits into the above-noted definition of a weapon, the Court must now only undertake an objective analysis by asking itself:
Is the object's design such that it could be readily usable to cause death or injury to any person or to threaten or intimidate any person?
In all of the circumstances, would the carrying of the concealed object cause the reasonable person to fear for his own safety or for the public safety, if he were aware of the presence of the object?
In the case I linked to, the knife was described as follows:
The steel knife is approximately twelve inches in length; its blade is approximately seven inches long. On the blade are the words "U.S.A. SABER." The lower part of the blade is sharply honed. Part of the top part of the knife is serrated and other part has five ridges. This is clearly a combat knife and not a simple hunting knife.
The accused was convicted.
Consider what a karambit is, what it looks like, how it's marketed, and what conclusions a fifty or sixty year old Judge would come to when considering the above two questions.
In considering the above, the court made the following comment which may be helpful:
It is recognized that the second half of this bipartite test [question 2] is contextual and that, in deciding this question, the court is called upon to conduct a holistic analysis. That may be difficult, but it seems to me that it is what is required in order to give effect to Parliament's intention. In conducting this analysis, the court must be ever mindful of Parliament's purpose in enacting this section, that is, firstly, minimizing the furtive carrying of objects that pose a real threat to public safety, and secondly, that would cause justifiable alarm in members of the public contributing to general paranoia.
Such an analysis will take place against the backdrop of the object being both carried and concealed, as both of these factors are elements of the offence. It will require the court to look at the characteristics of the object itself. It seems to me that the reasonable person would consider the carrying of a jackknife in a pocket (the typical way of transporting a jackknife) to be innocuous. Similarly, a butter knife would be viewed as non-threatening. A large skinning knife would be more worrisome. In my view, the definition would capture virtually all prohibited weapons. Other factors will also be relevant, including the locale where the object is being carried. The reasonable person would surely be more concerned where the object is imported into a public venue such as a bar than if the object is carried by a person engaged in a solitary activity.*" "
Lifted from https://www.reddit.com/r/knives/comments/3kskpk/karambit_knife_illegal_or_legal_in_canada/
Those are rare, and it hasn't prevented mass killings in countries that have stricter gun control, unless you believe death by a gun is somehow worse than death by other means.
Quoting Akanthinos
I never said this. I think there are many policies that can be implemented and/or changed to help reduce gun violence. I've mentioned several of them in this thread already, if you've been paying attention. But apparently not, since you have the gall to compose such strawmen of my views.
Quoting Akanthinos
A complete non-sequitur, in addition to a rather uncharitable strawman. First, I don't find it acceptable that people get shot. Second, as I have already pointed out, the gun violence is not perpetrated by those who are lawfully making use of their right to bear firearms, so in no way does it follow that the mere right to legally purchase them means greater gun homicides. In the same way, to support the right to purchase and consume alcohol doesn't mean that one supports the alcohol related homicide rate or that said right leads to greater homicides. The data is inconclusive on whether prohibition greatly affected the number of alcohol related deaths one way or another. Regardless, there are more deaths due to alcohol than guns every year, so one might expect you to be a staunch prohibitionist, in addition to an anti-gun lobbyist, but I doubt that you are thus consistent, since neither you nor Sapientia have been able to prove that less guns equals less gun violence. To the contrary, gun violence has steadily decreased as more firearms have gone into circulation.
Quoting Akanthinos
These are once again poor examples. Some situations can only be resolved with a gun, not a knife. A dog cannot be taken everywhere. Not everyone has the time to become an expert martial artist.
This tells me you don't understand my point. As for your feeling cold, I don't care. Perhaps you should put on a coat before debating me. The idea is that:
I desire to protect my life and property.
I possess the natural right to protect my life and property.
My life and property can be successfully protected or not depending on the means I employ to do so.
Successful protection of my life and property depends upon adequate and effective means.
Therefore, I have the right to adequate and effective means by which to protect my life and property.
"Got a Glock in the bedside table
Machine Gun leaning by the bedroom door
Kevlar vest in the closet
Well I wear it when I go to the store
Shadows on the window
Rustling in the hedge
Faces at the peephole
Footsteps on the ledge
If you come calling
He'll be mauling with intent to maim
Don't knock on my door
If you don't know my Rottweiler's name."
It was entirely avoidable, but you just had to make stuff up, instead of actually quoting what I said, didn't you? You just had to stubbornly persist instead of rectifying your error.
In future, please do not put words into my mouth, then refuse to acknowledge that that's what you're doing. There was no subtle difference between what I actually claimed and what you falsely accused me of claiming: the difference is clear, and the difference matters.
Quoting Thorongil
I have already clarified my position multiple times in response to your similarly worded comments. So why are you going back over this? My position hasn't changed since the last time. I am still concerned with preventing crime, within reason, and I am still [i]not[/I] required to satisfy your criterion. The argument above is a non sequitur. Imposing that burden on me is unreasonable, and the sooner that you realise that, the better. Repeating yourself ad nauseam will not achieve anything productive.
What I am required to defend is my own criterion, which is that there are means of self-defence other than guns which are effective enough (though not necessarily as effective as guns) as a means of self-defence.
That's the last time that I'm explaining that to you.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes, I gave myself some leeway, just in case there are exceptions, but technically, I doubt there are any at all. If you think that you can come up with one, then please share it, and then we can assess whether or not it really counts. I can only think of situations where, practically speaking, a gun might be the most convenient thing at hand, but that's not the same thing.
[I]Why assume that most defensive gun uses whereby the assailant is shot or killed are not the kinds of situations that require a gun?[/I] Well, isn't the answer obvious, considering the alternatives? Don't tell me that you're going to pretend that these alternatives do not exist. You must be interpreting "require" in a peculiar way. One doesn't require a gun if a different method of self-defence can be utilised. Most people, at the very least, have arms and legs which can be used in self-defence.
What you say about most gun owners is beside the point. It's more important to consider those who have had their lives destroyed, or are at risk, as a result of gun ownership. So you still haven't got your priorities straight.
It would be like punishing little kids for playing with sharp knives. Some might well be more responsible than others. Some might not end up hurting themselves or others. But still, little kids shouldn't be allowed to play with sharp knives.
Quoting Thorongil
It's not a failure of understanding. I don't believe that nonsense. There's no such thing as a natural right.
Quoting Thorongil
I can be, and I am. You're the one who is being absurd. You don't seem to understand what necessity is. The cops over here would bring with them handcuffs, radios, and other things, but a gun would not, in most cases, be one of them. Even the fact that cops across the pond tend to bring a gun with them does not mean that that's necessary. It just means that that's considered good practice over there.
Then you are blind and cannot be made to see. The proliferation of weapons in the States is the only variable that explains why you suffer so many more gun rampages than any other country in the world.
And no, Quoting Thorongil
These are not rare by any fucking definition of the word. They happen every other fucking week. And if you check, the States are miles ahead of any other country in terms of mass shootings per capita.
You've changed your argument. OK, let's consider the new one.
On review, I find that if the last statement means you have the right to some adequate and effective means, it's not necessarily problematic. But it doesn't do anything to justify owning a gun, since, for a start, other adequate means are available, like (as Jefferies points out) security doors and window bars.
It also justifies everybody being provided with a personal, ex-SAS bodyguard, as that is an enormously more effective life protection against these apparently ubiquitous murderers that you fear so much than owning a gun. So I guess we need to all start paying lots more tax so that the government can provide that natural human right to everybody that can't afford to pay for it themselves.
Oh look, another rare incident.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-norcal-elementary-school-shooting-20171114-story.html
Quoting Sapientia
You have repeated this for the umpteenth time, yet still manage to fail in demonstrating it. Fine. You don't want to, and I can't force you. The only example thus far extracted from you of means "effective enough" in stopping precisely all the same crimes guns can and do stop are "arms and feet." If that's what you believe, that's what you believe.
Quoting Sapientia
By gun ownership, I assume you mean lawful gun owners, in which case I would refer you back to the statistic I gave earlier, which you ignored: most gun violence is perpetrated by individuals who own guns illegally. The people who lawfully own guns are not the ones responsible for gun violence.
Quoting Sapientia
This is a complete disanalogy, for it would mean cops, whom you do allow to carry firearms, are somehow super adults, enabling them to carry such weapons which the rest of us immature pseudo-adults couldn't possibly handle responsibly. This is not born out by the facts, however (see above).
Quoting Sapientia
You say this now, but it would have been much more helpful to have said it earlier and provided an argument in favor of it.
Quoting Sapientia
This gets you closer to being consistent, but you still allow the police to carry firearms for certain situations. You haven't shown why private citizens can't do the same.
Quoting andrewk
It's a new argument demonstrating premise two, which is the conclusion of it, as you'll notice.
Quoting andrewk
Correct, that's because that's a different premise in the original argument! You asked for me to demonstrate premise two, and I did. Again, no one listens in this thread.
Quoting andrewk
More extreme examples. I've already shown that if you really thought them relevant, you would be in favor of banning the right to own cars and household materials that go into making bombs. Literally anything that could be used as a murder weapon would have to banned if one accepts the premises on which you think banning guns are justified. Ergo, I can safely dismiss these and other examples as insincere appeals to extremes.
Quoting Akanthinos
It is a statistical fact that gun violence has decreased at the same time as the number of guns in circulation has increased. You can make like an ostrich all you like and ignore this fact, but it doesn't cease to be a fact, which makes your accusation of "blindness" on my part all the more ironic.
Quoting Akanthinos
Yes, we all know that adding curse words to your sentences enhances the truth of them. I see you've gotten pretty angry when presented with facts that don't conform to the gun narrative you're drunk on, but that's not my problem. Anyway, you're wrong: https://crimeresearch.org/2015/06/comparing-death-rates-from-mass-public-shootings-in-the-us-and-europe/ A few more f-bombs ought to refute that, though, I reckon.
There is one principle of politics that apply to every debates and arguments : Whoever leaves the negociation table first is always wrong.
Anyways, what you claim directly conflicts what Wayfarer has posted in the previous thread on the subject. I'll repost it here.
" The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns. ...Americans make up about 4.4 percent of the global population but own 42 percent of the world’s guns. ...Adjusted for population, only Yemen has a higher rate of mass shootings among countries with more than 10 million people. ... Yemen has the world’s second-highest rate of gun ownership after the United States."
"If mental health made the difference, then data would show that Americans have more mental health problems than do people in other countries with fewer mass shootings. But the mental health care spending rate in the United States, the number of mental health professionals per capita and the rate of severe mental disorders are all in line with those of other wealthy countries."
"A 2015 study estimated that only 4 percent of American gun deaths could be attributed to mental health issues. ...countries with high suicide rates tended to have low rates of mass shootings — the opposite of what you would expect if mental health problems correlated with mass shootings."
" America’s gun homicide rate was 33 per million people in 2009, far exceeding the average among developed countries. In Canada and Britain, it was 5 per million and 0.7 per million, respectively, which also corresponds with differences in gun ownership."
"...American crime is simply more lethal. A New Yorker is just as likely to be robbed as a Londoner, for instance, but the New Yorker is 54 times more likely to be killed in the process."
You didn't show that, you claimed it. There's a big difference.
But I think you're right that no resolution is going to be obtained between you and those that don't believe your argument. If it was going to happen, I think one side or the other would have acknowledged the other's point.
Perhaps a more productive strategy would be to submit your argument to a philosophy journal as a paper for publication. If they agree with you that it is an unassailable argument I expect they will be eager to publish it, since it will finally settle a controversial aspect of one of the most hotly debated topics - albeit only in one country,
>:O Wowzers!
You've just qualified the acknowledgement of Thorongil's argument as being contingent upon your own believing it to be true. Lordy, no wonder a proper debate isn't going to happen between you guys when you can't even agree to walk through the door together.
Way to miss the mark, Andrew!
Quoting andrewk
Yeah, it's certainly true that every argument must be published in some journal so that it can be read by nobody, (Y)
Well, when someone denies natural rights, thus denying the inherent right to one's own life, I think people are justified in being bothered by that kind of post modernist malarkey.
You linked to an article here that is worth repeating:
It's much harder for someone to possess a gun illegally if it's much harder for someone to possess a gun. You can't steal from someone who doesn't have a gun. You can't have someone buy a gun for you if they can't buy a gun.
That article also shows that 18% of gun crimes are committed by lawful owners (with 3% unknown), which isn't insignificant (in terms of raw numbers), and so it is false to claim that "the people who lawfully own guns are not the ones responsible for gun violence".
Quoting Thorongil
Quoting Thorongil
What happened?
But, instead of requesting a demonstration, you decided to repeatedly challenge what I said with your non sequitur and your demands that I support a claim that I never made. Thus, in response, I restated my position and explained why your challenge is wrongheaded.
You could have simply requested a demonstration, but you didn't. You persisted.
To back up my claim, I need only point to all of the cases, or potential cases, in which self-defence has been carried out successfully by any means which did not involve a gun. That consists in a huge number of cases, and a huge variety of methods. If you want a list, then tough, you're not getting one, because I believe that you are quite capable of coming up with one yourself. I've set you on your way by mentioning one or two already. As for the rest, you can stand on your own two feet, I presume.
Quoting Thorongil
I didn't ignore it, actually. As indicated in my earlier reply, "most" isn't good enough.
Quoting Thorongil
No, it's not. And no, I would not allow cops to carry guns, I would allow only a special armed response unit to carry guns, and only under the right conditions.
Cops can be just as bad, as evidenced by all of the police shootings, which, as is hardly surprising, occur most frequently in the U.S.
Quoting Thorongil
I've said it elsewhere, likely in reply to you. And you're the one who made claims under the assumption that there are natural rights, so the burden lies predominantly with you.
Quoting Thorongil
Obviously, because private citizens, on average, are not like the police in important respects.
It's not malarkey, and it's not postmodernist malarkey. You need to brush up on your history of philosophy. Hume rejected the doctrine of natural rights, and Hume was not a postmodernist. Postmodernism didn't develop until around two hundred years after his death.
Anyway, the semantics of my point wasn't my point.
I don't care. I'm not guilty by association. I see right through what you're doing.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
What was your point? Your contributions seem to consist of petty smears from the sidelines.
Pardon me but I must go, gotta go publish an article about this fascinating topic, (Y)
I'm glad you found those quotes, as I think and hope it speaks positively of my character. I'm not an ideologue unwilling to change his opinion when confronted with alternative evidence and arguments. I seek the latter out regularly on a range of issues and am often torn by what I should believe, not to mention irritated about not having the proper time and means to research problems to my satisfaction.
What happened is that I dipped into reading about and listening to some of the arguments on the other side, found out about some of the history behind the second amendment, and read the opinions of Scalia and others about the Heller case and the purpose of the Supreme Court. I also came more firmly to realize that there are such things as natural rights, contrary to what Bentham and others think, which is that they're just made up. Finally, I have come to appreciate the fact that there are only trade-offs in life, not perfect solutions. Solving or at least alleviating one problem inevitably involves exacerbating or creating another, perhaps unforeseen, problem or problems. Different values come into conflict in real life, and it's hard trying to adjudicate which of them ought to be emphasized.
So, again, it really comes down to the fact that I have bothered to acquaint myself with the arguments of those hitherto on the other side of the debate, found that they were more cogent and convincing than anticipated, and saw that they fit with other philosophical positions and axioms I accept.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
It only shows the complete ignorance of my interlocutors. My argument is not new. Maybe my particular wording of it is, and perhaps it could be better worded, for which I take full responsibility (I wouldn't want a good argument presented or defended badly, which is also partly why I've bowed out of the fray here), but versions of it and arguments that form the basis of it have been made by people like Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Blackstone, Locke, Beccaria, Montesquieu, the American founders, and yes, even Schopenhauer. One can also find journal articles defending versions of my argument from self-defense if that's really so important.
Denying someone a gun is not denying them a right to life. Denying people access to all guns is not necessarily my position anyway, but neither Thorongil nor PO-MO were interested in discussing self-defense or bearing arms in a nuanced sense.
Quoting tim wood
I mean it has been established by the courts that it is a right. I do not think it is unalienable.
Why would I want to elaborate? Thorongil's been elaborating and providing substantive exposition on the topic of this thread for 6 pages now, such that it still hasn't made a lick of difference. Why? Because it would seem that you concur with Andrew and think that the only substantive argument to be had is the argument that runs congruent with yours.
Now, please give me your stock response to any and all disagreements and tell me that I need to read your posts again, that what I've said is uncharitable and wrong, I should go read philosophy, that I'm insane, yada yada.
In the meantime, I'll be waiting for further explanation from Andrew, as it was he whom I had originally responded to, not you.
That's not quite what I said. My point was that denying the existence of inherent rights in nature - which entails yourself - means denying an inherent right in one to defend themselves; in other words, their natural right to life.
As I think Thorongil attempted to bring up, if someone does not possess a natural right to owning a gun (I would argue that one does not), then the next step is whether one possesses the natural right to self defense. That's where I would say, YES, we do. Yet, Sapientia, for example, wouldn't say that, as he doesn't believe in natural rights, meaning that rights, such as a right to life, is not natural (inherent to one's being), but relative to the laws passed stating that they apply.
I laughed at this, and Sapientia, because relative rights entails relative ethics, which are flawed piles of illogical crap. That's all perhaps fit for another thread, though.
Edit: Just to make it crystal clear, a right to life without natural rights is one dependent upon laws. Were there no laws, then Sapientia would presumably be without any reasoned defense if someone wanted to end his life.
Ah yes, Bentham. That other notorious postmodernist. Full of malarkey.
[Quote="Buxtebuddha;124478"] Why would I want to elaborate?[/quote]
Yes, why would you want to elaborate in a discussion of all places? What is this? Some kind of forum?
Quoting Banno
Stop acting and argue.
Straw man alert! You could have just asked me to elaborate - although I accept that in your world that sort of thing might be considered outlandish - but instead you decided to dive in head first with a whole load of assumptions.
Rights are relative. That much you got right. But they're not necessarily relative to laws. It depends on the context. In the context of U.S. law, it's a right to bear arms, but it's not a right in my book. Rights are not natural: they do not reside in nature, waiting to be discovered. That's just a story. Rights are artificial: they're what we come up with. They're as artificial as the stories about natural rights and the concept itself. But that says nothing of the importance of any given right. I might, for example, accept that there's a right to self-defence, and I might feel just as strongly about that right as you seem to.
I find these proclamations that such-and-such is a natural right to be shallow. It's akin to the naivety of the ethical realist who proclaims that those ethical beliefs which he just happens to feel most strongly about simply must count as objective truths.
You can get as excited as you like. You can exclaim "YES!" as loudly as you like. But sometimes you just need to step back, calm yourself down, and face up to the fact that you can't make the thing what it's not, no matter how secure it might make you feel to convince yourself otherwise.
You clipped the rest of what I said, which answered your question. But good job showing me how little you actually care about the substance of others' words.
As for your other post, I'm not going to take your bait and go down the shit-hole like Thorongil did only to be brow-beaten by you because you're so easily affronted by disagreement. Anyway, if you want to discuss natural rights, maybe start another thread where more posters can share their thoughts. At present, this thread is a gangbang.
Anyhoo, I'm off to sip some hot tea and snuggle with my pup - toodles never-sappy, Sappy!
That would be a great topic IMO.
I don't have a definite position on the matter, but I'm reading Harry Jaffa's A New Birth of Freedom right now and I think he makes a very strong case for natural rights. Much better than I'd anticipated, at least.
Highly recommended read for anyone interested in the topic, as it's framed within the context of the debates over slavery leading up to the Civil War between Abraham Lincoln on the one hand - a firm believer in natural rights - and his many intellectual adversaries on the other, especially Stephen Douglas. Douglas championed the cause of popular sovereignty disconnected from any 'higher' rights or values - and is thus cast as the Thrasymachus to Lincoln's Socrates.
It does seem important to move away from abstract discussion on the particular issue and place it in actual, concrete circumstances. Douglas apparently could not condemn the extension of slavery in the territories on moral grounds, since he felt that values were completely relative to the will of the majority, and was therefore content to leave it up to the people to decide whether they wanted it or not. Relativism seems inescapable, but also completely heinous when its possible consequences are presented through these types of historical examples.
Anyhow apologies for the digression, but yeah, somebody start that thread!
Well said.
So Douglas is portrayed, at least to my understanding, as prioritizing economics over natural rights. Jaffa obviously rejects this stance and claims that Lincoln did too. Lincoln abhorred the idea that if the citizens of a new territory (or anywhere for that matter) found it in their economic (or other) self-interest to legalize slavery, or to engage in other forms of what he felt to be violations of individual natural rights, then so be it.
Douglas was however extremely principled when it came to the notion of popular sovereignty. He rejected the Lecompton Constitution, for instance, which followed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and sought to permit slavery in the new state of Kansas. He did this - despite the fact that it would cost him the support of Southern Democrats - because he felt that it was unfairly rushed through by pro-slavery advocates who quickly flooded the state after the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and who tried to impose their (minority) will on all.
This cynical attempt to legalize slavery quickly before incoming anti-slavers had a chance to have their voices heard in the creation of a state constitution, meant that it didn't genuinely represent the will of the people and was therefore illegitimate.
So Douglas apparently remained neutral on moral issues like slavery while also maintaining that in order for the laws to be considered legitimate, at least in a democracy where power is vested in the will of the majority, they must be grounded in the the will of the people (the majority), and this regardless of what that will decided upon.
I purchased a copy of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates recently and I'll see for myself if Jaffa oversimplified or otherwise misrepresented Douglas's position(s) in the book.
Sorry about that. I won't make that same mistake twice.
No, it really wasn't, and that comment only serves to reflect your poor judgement. The first sentence is false, and the second sentence contains a false presumption about me.
Unless you're counting being a law unto myself as law, which I would not expect, as it is only a metaphor, then the argument is unsound.
I don't think you need to use a notion of natural rights to argue that killing is wrong.
And, of course, you can reason with a would-be killer without bringing up morality at all. So it's not entirely clear what you're trying to say.
You don't. To think otherwise exemplifies a failure in understanding.
Quoting Michael
I can tell you what he's trying to [I]do[/I]. He's attacking a weaker position than my own, based on a weakness inherent in that position, and then attempting to draw a link between that position and my own. It's a rhetorical ploy and a fallacy.
Once again you show that you don't care. I'm done interacting with you.
Quoting Michael
I'm not denying that someone can attempt to argue a relativist ethics with regard to what constitutes moral quality.
Quoting Michael
What, then, would your argument be? Wrongness is a quality of morality, so you'd have a difficult time, as I see it, arguing with someone who wouldn't be compelled not to do what he desires.
That's fine with me. You laugh from the sidelines, yet you can't take a joke, and your attempt at substance got picked apart quicker than you can say "Heister Eggcart was a better name".
A consequentialist, virtue ethicist, or divine command theorist, for example, can argue for universal/objective moral principles without arguing for natural rights.
Perhaps even a deontologist can argue the same. Does the duty not to kill require a right not to be killed? I see no prima facie reason to believe that. The first formulation of the categorial imperative could be an example of this.
Quoting Buxtebuddha
It's possible to convince someone not to do something without persuading him that it's wrong. Perhaps there will be consequences to him killing you that he'd rather not face (or consequences to him not killing you that are more appealing than satisfying his desire to kill).
Besides, I wonder how many people who desire to kill refrain only because they believe it to be wrong? I'm sure such people are more constrained by practical considerations. I don't know how compelling a moral argument would even be to a would-be killer. Do killers even believe that what they're doing is right? Or do they just not care?
But at the end of the day, Sap can always lie and pretend to believe in natural rights just to convince his would-be killer (assuming that such an argument would even help). So yours was a rather pointless comment to make.
A right, whether thought to be natural or not, contains moral quality, so I can't see how a right, thus, is without any moral consideration. It'd be difficult to argue that how one ought to act is not dependent upon themselves or others.
Quoting Michael
Appealing how? Instead of wrong you'd have to somehow falsify their intention to kill you? How would you do that? Again, natural rights would go both ways, in that one's own right ought not be broken with regards to another's same right.
I'm not saying that there can be rights without morality. I'm saying that there can be morality without rights.
I didn't say that it wouldn't be dependent upon themselves or others. I said that it wouldn't be dependent upon people having rights. It can be wrong to kill even if nobody has a right to live, e.g. with consequentialism, divine command theory, virtue ethics, or the first formulation of the categorial imperative.
My friends might look for revenge; I might be the only doctor in the community, and he might be very sick; I could pay him off; etc.
There are plenty of reasons not to kill someone that don't depend on believing that people have a right to live.
I think that the way this thread has unfolded greatly supports the thesis that inspired its conception: Enlightenment progress is being reversed, and it is liberals/progressives who are responsible.
The usual narrative says that liberals/progressives fight for liberty, equality, and the rights of the individual; fight against oppression and the abuse of power; etc. while conservatives resist the expansion of liberty and individual rights; maintain the status quo; and seek to undo progress.
Guns are dangerous. Guns are a major threat to public safety and public health. Guns are involved in many avoidable, preventable early deaths. We get that.
What is the liberal/progressive response to that public health crisis? Better educate the public about the risks of guns to individual and public health and safety? Better educate the public about more effective alternatives--such as Neighborhood Watch--for protecting one's self, loved ones, property, neighborhood and community? Empower individuals and better inform them to make their own decisions about the relationships between firearms, themselves and their communities? No.
The liberal/progressive response has, as far as I can tell, been to increasingly call for taking away what most people recognize as a right: the possession of a gun for one's personal protection. Some go even farther and say that it never was a right of any kind in the first place.
Some of the same people who lecture us--when the issue at hand is same-sex marriage, abortion, etc.--about how taking away rights is not the American way make no effort to employ tact or be diplomatic with respect to guns: even though the status of gun rights is not clear (just look at the disagreement over that question in this thread alone) they are not going to err on the side of caution or give any benefit of the doubt like they do with other rights; denying or taking away a right is their intention, and they have no hesitation and no qualms in saying so. Some of the same people who lecture us about how American history in particular, and Enlightenment progress in general, has been about expanding rights make no secret about their wish to do some subtraction in the rights column with respect to firearms.
This is not about what kinds of guns existed when the U.S. Constitution was drafted and what kinds exist now. It is not about unfettered freedom from any kind of regulations any more than freedom of the press, freedom of religion, etc. are about unfettered freedom--all rights have limits. It is not about the U.S. versus "other industrialized countries" (which gets very tiresome). It is about the rights of individuals and the role of those rights in a just society, in moral progress, etc.
I am not sold on "It is not hypocrisy". But even if these liberals/progressives who can't wait to see governments deny or take away gun rights are not being hypocrites, I think that their language and their lack of tact/diplomacy betrays either internal inconsistencies in the idea of liberal democracy or, on their own part, a denial of or backtracking on Enlightenment progress, universal human rights, etc. The fact that when they say that individuals do not or should not have gun rights they add that the government--and only the government--should have guns is the most telling thing about their viewpoint and the worst indictment of their position on liberty, democracy, etc. What's next? Words cause a lot of harm, so only the government should have freedom of speech, maybe?
If guns, which, unlike tanks, submarines, nuclear missiles, etc. have historically been owned and used by individuals, are the dangerous, horrible menaces that liberals/progressives say that they are then the liberal/progressive thing to do is to call for complete eradication of them and to trust free, informed, responsible individual citizens to make the right choices in realizing that goal.
Quoting Michael
I can grant this, but I'd be curious to know how you'd define a right, natural or no.
Quoting Michael
Again, what's a right to you?
Quoting Michael
You'd still need to answer why? questions in those examples.
Michael documented some of the changes in my thinking on guns, but in general my thoughts on politics haven't changed so much as they have been reclassified as conservative according to the political Overton window shifting dramatically to the left in the last decade.
Your post is all over the place, but if this is your beef, then I've never denied that certain restrictions on gun ownership are prudent, lawful, and necessary.
For instance, I don't have any objection to people owning guns for sport -- hunting, shooting a clay disks... that sort of thing. I don't have any objection to individuals owning guns to protect their home. A hunting gun or a pistol is more than adequate for that purpose.
I am not in favor of open carry or concealed carrying. I am not in favor of people being allowed to buy, sell, trade, or possess guns not suitable for sport or hunting (like the animals one can legally hunt in North America). No assault rifles, no sawed off shotguns, no bump stocks, no automatic (and very limited semi-automatic) guns.
Some liberals are prone to over-react and desire to eliminate all guns altogether, for any purpose. That's too extreme. There are too many of what I would call appropriate guns and gun owners to ban them. 100 million? 150 million? Way too many to collect.
We have laws which up the gravity of property crimes committed with guns. There are laws which clearly label murder as illegal. Criminals ignore laws such as these. So, the police need to do a better job of catching criminals.
Say rather, they need to do a better job of catching dangerous criminals. Since the US has the highest proportion of its population in jail, it's almost a tautology that its police are the world's best at catching criminals. It's just that most of them are no danger to anybody's body or property, because all they did was take or own some drugs.
Perhaps if the US police spent less time arresting weed smokers and throwing them in jail they'd get better at catching dangerous criminals.