It may be the legal thing to do, but it is more rarely the right thing to do. I could legally shoot someone if they come into my house and start walking out the door with my TV, but I don’t think that it is right to kill over property.
I don’t know that I can agree with that. A violent society isn’t really a good society. The threat of shooting someone dead is not always constrained within an ethical framework, nor legal one.
Some more loose than others, of course. Some only make it justifiable if you can prove that you were in danger of grave bodily injury or death, and others that you can kill someone merely for property crime. In the end, of course, only one story is told, and it is by the person claiming that the homicide was justified.
As we’ve seen since police body cams have become prevalent, such stories told by the one justifying the shooting are not always true.
How effective of a gun do you need to ward someone off from your home? People don’t like to be shot at, and will flee well before your 6th round. They aren’t going to be able to tell if it’s a .22 or a .50, other than how dead they are.
Marketing guns on how lethal they are to other humans is not something that I think that manufacturers should be allowed to do. They incite fantasies in the minds of some gun owners, make the world seem more dangerous, more in need of protection, and in the worst case, actually make someone want to fulfill their fantasy of being the “good guy with the gun.”
The difference is, is that we as a society have chosen to take steps to reduce the threat of those objects. We require car manufacturers to install safety devices, we require fences around pools. Only when it comes to guns are we told that we should just accept the cost to society, and not do anything to reduce it.
Yes, and there’s the positive news thread here as well. There are times when a gun is used to protect people from harm, that is not in dispute. The question is how to allow that, while keeping the guns out of the hands of criminals and children. I’ve never seen a pro-gun advocate have any solution to that, just chalk it up to the cost that society should have to bear.
Right, and keeping the wrong people from possessing them is the sort of thing that pro-gun advocates also fight against.
Okay. Let’s do that. Maybe this isn’t the thread for that, but we are in agreement. Do you want to have a thread about this, or is the only time that you are interested in talking about criminal justice reform and ending the drug war when other people are talking about guns?
I’ve read a whole lot of these stories in “stupid gun news”, and it is very rare that the parents or guardians get in any trouble over it. The only time that I see that they get in trouble is if they were prohibited from having guns in the first place.
So, if you leave a gun out, unsecured, and a child gets ahold of it, you would accept a criminal conviction for that? I am always told by gun advocates that once it is no longer in your possession, that it is no longer your liability, so it shouldn’t matter what the kid does with it, the fact that they got it should be what sends you to jail. Or do you think that it should matter if the gun is recovered without incident, or if the discharge doesn’t hit anyone, or if it only causes injury, or if it kills someone?
So, I’ll agree to that. If you leave a gun where a kid can get it, you go to jail, and may no longer own a firearm. You down with that?