It got off track but I reject the notion that an armed populace is a significant deterrent to an invader. That using, “OMG…we’ll get invaded if we DON’T let citizens have guns!” is a bogus argument. The US is a big place. Even if there was not a single gun in private hands an invasion of the US would be a massive undertaking. If a would-be invader mustered sufficient force to have a real go at the US then such a force is not likely to be deterred by a “small” military or an armed populace. Sure it would make life somewhat more difficult for them but not stop them.
Significantly more difficult, imo. But that’s not the point.
The point is that, that is only one of the potential benefits to having an armed population.
No, it doesn’t.
Your point is, “Militaries exist to protect people from foreign powers. An extension of that are laws which are meant to protect people.”
That is not a valid point, at all.
Apples and Oranges.
Firearms have a specific definition, Nukes do not meet that definition.
Because you are objectively wrong about gun control. It doesn’t lower crime, and therefore serves no purpose but to
Actually, it was you who did that.
See? You, not me.
We can have that restriction, however we can also have a restriction that anyone without a [symbol] on his arm is also not allowed to practice free speech.
That doesn’t mean we should have that restriction.
I was stating that your premise (as follows) is flawed.
Because the premise is flawed. Laws are not an extension of the military, I don’t care what Lumpy thinks about the issue (although I suspect he agrees with me).
There is something very wrong with your beliefs; they want to restrict my freedoms, limit what I can and cannot do without hurting anyone else, and without giving me a thing in return.
Your opinion, no matter how dearly you hold it, is wrong, because it seeks to impose your beliefs onto me.
Where we disagree is what those benefits are. We have done the arguments elsewhere before. I find these supposed benefits highly dubious and pretty much unproven on any level.
On the other hand I do find the ills that having guns easily available in our society causes as proven and far and away trumping any of these “benefits”.
I have no doubt the best we can hope for here is to agree to disagree.
Yes, governments have to have authority and the means to enforce it. Even the Constitution that replaced the older Articles of Confederation acknowledged the necessity of a strong government and a national Army and Navy. But the the whole Second Amendment debate stems from the premise that “the line” of legitimate authority WAS drawn at the Constitutional level, to say “any government that would ban the private possession of guns is a tyranny”. You can’t just say “the government by definition automatically has the authority to do whatever’s needful”. If a government can do anything whatsoever in the name of order and safety, then we’ve devolved to the philosophical position of Thomas Hobbes, who saw the iron fist of authoritarian government as the sole alternative to the savagery of anarchy. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the entire political philosophy of the Framers was a rejection of Hobbes.
Now it’s a perfectly legitimate stance to ask “given modern realities, shouldn’t the wisdom and necessity of the Second Amendment be reevaluated?” Absolutely. But only at the Constitutional level- NOT by trying to ignore a fundamental provision of the Constitution out of existence by (supposedly) common consent. The whole foundation of our philosophy of government is that the government should only have such authority as is explicity granted to it. And if some new or unexpected need arises, established procedures exist to amend what powers the government should have, in a way that ensures that such a grant of power is truly the abiding will of the majority.
No, that’s not my stance. I have said nothing about the military being exclusively foreign. My point is broader than you claim it to be, one that sees the existence of one law or military arm merely part of the overall system of governance. You want to stick with narrowly defined principles that favor your opinion, fine, but my premise is merely another version of the social contract that people allow government into their lives in exchange for certain collective benefits that they cannot achieve on their own
You know, just saying “apples and oranges” doesn’t make it so. You seem to have a semantic block in your argument that you refuse to acknowledge. I will happily and readily admit that there are a world of differences between a handgun and the Tsar Bomba, but I do not see that difference as anything more than severity. You are very eager to say that guns are “firearms” by definition, but less eager to admit that “arms” itself comprises of anything we deem it so. We’re not talking about the sun and the moon here, we can define firearms to be anything we want; from a gun, to a slingshot, to a pebble. You want to claim that’s wrong but humans made the definition and humans are able to change it. Nothing prevents any one of us from assigning nukes to be in the same category as arms. That’s where your reasoning is flawed: you want a certain kind of “arms” to be legal but not another kind of “arms”. It is a contraction in your argument, then, when you claim to be of freedom and civil rights when you clearly do not support it in one way. At least I’m consistent, I want to regulate them all
I’m pretty sure that if there are no guns, there would be at least a slight decrease in gun crimes
Thank you, finally you acknowledge that we at least can have that restriction. Do not make the mistake of saying that just because we can, we will. With the above, it seems like you’re arguing 2 different things with me. One, you just admitted we can have such restrictions, and the other you keep implying that it is inherently unable to be regulated because of some semantic difference. I think you just invalidated your whole top half of your post
This is something I’ve responded to again and again. People having guns violate my freedom to not be easily killed. Just as saying “My yelling fire in a crowded theater doesn’t violate YOUR rights if YOU are not in that theater”, you are claiming proximity as your defense. That is simply myopic. If the general availability of an object makes everyone less safe in general, then that object needs to be regulated. Its like libel, slander, FDA regulations on food and drugs, traffic laws, and every other regulation we have. Just because it restricts freedoms a little doesn’t make it bad inherently, and I think this inherent evil of gun control is what you cling to so feverishly. It is not inherently bad to restrict your freedoms for the betterment of society and it is most certainly not some master plan designed to limit freedoms to a facist degree. Its simply good regulation for a bad problem
Ah, now we’re getting to the heart of the issue. You think there’s a collective benefit to be had, when historically there has never been a benefit to society shown by restricting firearm access (in the USA, or other Western Countries AFAIK).
Now you’re arguing that we can/should change the definition of firearms to make your argument make sense, and conflating Firearms and Arms, all the while being extremely self contraDICTORY.
Banning guns does not prevent firearms from getting into the hands of criminals.
It only stops law abiding citizens from obtaining them. The UK, which has a complete ban on pistols (so much so that their Olympic team practices in a different country) has seen a rise in pistol related crimes since the ban.
I was being sarcastic.
We can also murder all the jews, blacks, arabs, hindu, pegan, etc and commit mass genocide.
No, I’m really not.
What Semantic difference?
I think you have no idea what you’re talking about.
You don’t have the right not to easily be killed. You have the right to not be killed, period. How difficult it is, is of absolutely no effect.
No, no one is arguing that. What we are arguing, however, is that the word Fire shouldn’t be banned because you can’t yell it in a theatre.
Lets assume, for the sake of argument, that one does give up freedom for safety.
Prove to me that restricting these firearms increases your safety. You cannot, because it does not. You freely admitted in the other thread that these guns are so rarely used in crimes it’s a non-factor, your entire justification for banning them was that they ‘can kill a rhino,’ which is an obvious fallacy and lie.