I never denied that there are gun benefits. I said his argument was idiotic. As a lawyer, you should know that “argument” means “reasoning,” and that bad reasoning can (accidentally) lead to a correct conclusion from time to time. I’m disappointed in you, Bricker; I’ve come to expect weaseling and partisanship from you, but usually you are good about the clear formalities of logic.
Incidentally, there are two levels on which the argument is flawed.
On a purely logical level of lawyers and mathematicians, he’s omitting a flawed premise that undermines his argument.
Some gun homicides are justifiable
(missing premise)
Therefore, there is a benefit to gun ownership
The missing premise is either “All justifiable homicides are beneficial,” which is a false premise, or else “some justifiable homicides may be beneficial,” which means he is concluding a certainty from a possibility. Either way his reasoning is suspect.
On a more colloquial level of reasoning, of course you and I know that from time to time a justifiable homicide is the best possible outcome of a civilian incident. But by equating justifiable homicides directly with societal benefits, the implication is that all or most justifiable homicides provide a benefit. This vastly (and in my opinion dishonestly) overstates any possible upside to wide-scale societal gun use.
HIs argument is, indeed, suffering from an unstated premise. I’m not sure I agree that makes it idiotic, since the unstated premise is fairly clear inferentially.
I’d say the missing premise is, “In the history of justifiable homicides involving guns, at least one was beneficial.” This is a reasonable inference because he was addressing the “non-zero” claim which he quoted above: “…gun benefits > 0.”
Obviously this leaves great room for debate on how to weigh those benefits against the detriments, which are obviously also non-zero. But his argument itself is not idiotic for the mere failure to explicitly include a strongly-inferred premise. It just doesn’t go very far – everyone should agree that the benefits of gun use is not zero. It’s a trivial concession.
(my bold)
You’d only be justified if a reasonable person would consider this a threat of grave bodily injury or death. I’ll assume that’s true for the sake of your example because I think you are making that assumption when you state that you would be legally justified.
In that case, and for the sake of argument, there is clearly a benefit. Let’s see:
[ul]
[li]I have my wallet still. [/li][li]I don’t have to spend time calling the police (this is probably mitigated by having to spend time with the police after the shooting)[/li][li]I have provided a non-zero deterrent for future crime.[/li][li]Potentially an unfit mother is no longer responsible for the care of children.[/li][/ul]
Unless you say that I shouldn’t have my wallet, people shouldn’t be discouraged from armed robbery, and children should be raised by unfit mothers, then that is a benefit to me, to her children, and to society. Now you can claim that these are outweighed by the potential negatives of such a course of action, but it’s false to say there is no benefit.
Most gun homicides are committed by people who were not legally allowed to own their firearms. The reason I keep bringing that up is because these are people who are not going to be deterred from having a firearm because its against the law and these are the people who are committing the majority of murders.
Felony and mental illness are not the only disqualifying factors for gun ownership.
You cannot purchase a firearm unless you are at least 18.
You cannot purchase a firearm if you have a domestic violence MISDEMEANOR.
You cannot purchase a firearm if you are subject to a restraining order.
The list is not limited to felons and the menatlly ill.
I think this is the last time I am going to engage you on this topic in the pit.
Then the argument is circular because its conclusion (guns have non-zero benefit) is just a restatement of its premises (there was at least one benefit from a gun). The premise about justifiable homicides is a complete irrelevancy to the argument at hand.
There are two ways to read the argument. One is as a formal statement of logic that, depending on how you interpret its missing premise, is either flawed or tautological. The other is an an informally interpreted claim that implicitly and enormously overstates the benefits of private gun ownership.
I suspect might be read to mean “I guess” in this case (and probably many other cases).
OK, I don’t disagree with that. I was just saying that I think that the rate of gun ownership increased after Newtown.
I’m not denying that they exist.
One of the main proposals being presented in these threads is to simply ban guns entirely. When we do the cost benefit analyses of whether or not this is a good idea, we have to figure out what we want to compare. It doesn’t make sense to me to consider gun usage by people who are not legally allowed to own guns when determine whether we should allow people to own guns. So I want to narrow the universe of gun murders that we consider to those gun murders committed by people whoa re legally allowed to own guns. That is why I ask.
I thought the claim RTfirefly made was that benefit=0. I only need one example to show that benefit>0. I was providing one example.
Well, they haven’t objected to drop safeties, thumb safeties, grip safeties, the way they object to smart guns because noone is proposing that you ban all guns that don’t have that feature.
But I don’t think they have ever actively advocated for requiring some particular safety feature in every gun. My only point is that your example of the smart guns is not really an example of them standing in the way of safety but against a form of gun ban.
So not even one life saved by guns? Hunh. I don’t know what I can say to convince you at this point.
Thats what benefit=0 means doesn’t it?
I’m not saying jsutifiable homicide=beneficial homicide. I’m saying with all those justifiable homicides, you don’t think any of them were beneficial?
You weren’t the one I was responding to, I was responding to the person who said “benefit=0”
Ah, so we’ve advanced from “I suspect” through “I guess” to “I think.”
Well, then.
This was a response to “Well, there’s.” Well, o-kay.
If we roll tape, you were responding to where I said:
[QUOTE=RTFirefly]
Because as I said a few posts back, most of us are quite aware that we share the benefits of cars and vaccines. In sixty years on this planet, OTOH, I’ve got no reason to believe I’ve ever benefited from civilian ownership of guns, nor have I ever been in a situation where I’ve wished I or someone else had a gun.
[/QUOTE]
So, you were saying that your experience was different from mine. And I was saying your cited experience was from another era, where the risks were vastly different, and accordingly it might not be the sort of thing worth pulling out to convince anyone of anything about the here and now.
So they’ve gotten behind legislation requiring some of these things?
My point exactly. They are not working to make guns more safe.
They do encourage gun safety in other ways and they’re not standing in the way of innovations unless someone tries to use those innovations to ban guns.
So then you admit that I’m right, you just don’t agree how i get to the conclusion. Thats fine.
Mrs. J. and I left a Sonic the other day without ordering anything, because we didn’t feel safe.
Of course that was because the lone bathroom didn’t have running water, and speculation about how the staff might or might not be practicing hand hygiene was making us queasy.
Unless you’re arguing that it is even remotely possible that none of those justifiable homicides didn’t save a life, yes, thats what I’m saying. I don’t know why you want to die on this particular hill but its your hill to die on.
I am so fuckin’ tired of people getting blown away.
Just four more kids who will grow up without their fathers, two more women who have had their worlds blown apart, and will have to do all the work of raising their kids by themselves while somehow dealing with their own grief.
If only they’d called ahead and informed the police they’d be shooting cops at the CiCi’s at such and such a time. Armed psychos have NO CLASS anymore, I tell ya.
FTR, I’m taking my children to the range quite more often than on a monthly basis. They’ve known about guns and gun safety since primary school. The guys I meet at the range are generally people I’d trust to keep my wallet or my car keys (not to mention my gun) while I’m changing targets, except those n00bs who quite obviously haven’t been brought up in a home where guns are handled on a regular basis.
And I still consider carrying in public to be dickish. And scary. I trust (most of) the guys I meet at the range, I definitely don’t trust a random stranger on the street.
