So what does it mean to assign “moral responsibility” for something if you don’t think it should affect policy? I contend that you are trying to elevate your opinion into some objective fact, which is obnoxious and distasteful. What do you think you are trying to do?
Like Argent Towers, I was at the gym as well. And much as he reactivated his NRA membership to spite me, I made the gym change the one teevee showing Fox News to MSNBC. So, even steven!
Anyway, we made our prima facie case, right. We said: Yes, guns have some social benefits; you can use them to hunt animals to eat and make shoes out of, they make people happy (this, obvs, is a real-deal social benefit, I don’t deny that), very, very occasionally they are used in lawful self-defense (cf. Bernie Goetz). So, there are some benefits.
Alas, there are some detriments too. Easy access to guns allow them to fall into the hands of less savory types. A lot of people end up dead. My first post recounted the by-now-familiar litany of sad episodes of gun violence in this country in only the past couple of years.
Now it seems to me that the harms overwhelm the benefits. I asked, and the question recurs: explain to me, gun advocates, how the social benefits of private gun possession do not exceed its very real disadvantages.
Really? This is supposed to be a serious point? Imaginary time machines and conjectures about what long-dead men might think in a wacky, hypothetical scenario? But hey, you took the time to type it, so…
First of all, I think you’d have a hard time convincing them that our world is a darker, scarier place than theirs. You don’t think they had shooting accidents, murders, and outlaws vs. law enforcement shootouts in their day? Heck, they’d just finished up a huge shootout we know as the War of Independence, and they were the outlaws! It took us years of media sensationalism to get us as scared of the world as we are today - one short visit in your time machine isn’t going to get them there.
But just for the sake of argument, what if you did manage to convince them that our world was that much more dangerous than theirs. I have to believe in all likelihood they’d say “That’s all the more reason the common, law-abiding citizen needs access to the tools to defend themselves!” Remember, these weren’t guys for whom taking up arms to defend your life and your freedom was a historical concept - they lived it.
Link please? Not disputing, just want to see a link.
One weakness in this analysis is that some of those 30,000 fatalities were probably the bad guys (to use a technical term). Hard to say that a bad guy getting shot is a bad result of a firearm use.
Another weakness is you don’t count lives saved as a result of a firearm use in your analysis anywhere. Note that a “use” that saves a life would include shooting the bad guy but may also include all of the firearm uses in the training and practice of the person that shot the bad guy (or perhaps the class of people that shot the bad guy depending on circumstances, i.e., all police officers). Also, counting the number of lives saved would be difficult.
Therefore, your analysis doesn’t really arrive at a meaningful comparison of the lives lost in car uses v. firearm uses. (Also, the analysis should probably include lives saved by use of a car, which, again, would be hard to determine.)
Did I miss a reply to my post?
Firstly, I have no desire to argue morality with you, of all people.
But: I never said it SHOULDN’T effect policy; I said that, for the purpose of my question, disregard your legal entitlement and reflect on your moral obligation. And there is no doubt in my mind that if given a choice between these options:
- I choose to fight gun control laws because I want to have guns (no matter the reason), even though I understand that this makes it easier for potential criminals to obtain them.
and
- I choose to support gun control, knowing that they weaken or erode my own personal freedoms, under the assumption (or hope) that they (could) help keep guns out of the hands of potential criminals.
#2 is the MORALLY responsible choice. Morally responsible in that it puts the (even potential) good of the community above my own personal rights and freedoms.
And on preview, you state:
“One weakness in this analysis is that some of those 30,000 fatalities were probably the bad guys (to use a technical term). Hard to say that a bad guy getting shot is a bad result of a firearm use.”
This is exactly why no one should argue basic human morals with Rand Rover.
Well, if you figure that some of the motor vehicle fatalities are bad guys too - drunk drivers, fleeing felons, etc. - it’s probably a wash. But, yeah, arguing morality with Rand Rover is something like arguing evolution with Bishop Ussher.
Fine, but do we then get to count every time a fire truck, ambulance, and police car are driven twice?
I really don’t see a problem with Hentor’s breakdown. The comparison that Clothahump made was between car deaths and firearm deaths, not lives saved by cars vs guns.
I would still be willing to wager hard currency that vehicles saved lives more often then guns saved lives.
Beyond that, I would say that it doesn’t fucking matter, no one is talking about fucking cars.
Find a different nit to pick.
The fact that countries that control guns have a lot less gun deaths and crime seems to make that another gun lovers lie.
That reminds me of the time a poster claimed that pistols were not used in the late 1700’s. Another lie I suppose.
What about Switzerland - highest per capita gun ownership rate on earth, and one of the lowest for crime. What’s your response to that?
“Oh, well, they don’t have the same problems with poverty and unemployment and stuff that we do.”
That’s right. So let’s fix THAT shit, instead of making it the guns’ fault. There are already shitloads of guns here, and millions more in Mexico that are just itching to be smuggled across the border. Banning them will NOT make them go away! It will just mean that only criminals will have them, as trite as that sounds.
Without agreeing with you, the only case you’ve made is that gun ownership (in the wrong hands) has disadvantages – I dispute the weight of disadvantage to advantage, in ratio, however I don’t think I’ll convince you – you still haven’t proven that banning guns would fix this problem.
As to the argument ‘countries with tighter gun laws have less gun violence,’ I’d make the case that you’re intentionally ignoring Switzerland, and the fact that the countries with lower gun crime also have lower knife, fist, and ballbat crime than the United States.
I seriously doubt these countries have a lower ownership of hands, fists and knives than the United States (although they probably do own less baseball bats… that’s an oddly American sport, wonder why it’s not caught on elsewhere?).
If the problem is removed from that of Gun themselves, then I’d say we should fix the issues causing the violence, rather than attempting to ban the items used in the violence. The evidence simply does not show that 1) banning firearms lowers firearm violence, 2) banning firearms lowers overall violence (2 being what it would have to achieve for it to be even considerable legislation).
Centers for Disease Control WISQARS fatalities website: WISQARS (Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System) | Injury Center | CDC.
I wouldn’t call this an analysis. It’s just descriptive statistics. By the way, there were 300 “legal intervention” related fatalities among those data.
It’s not an analysis. I’m not considering anything at all about explanatory factors. It’s simply a descriptive comparison of the “dangerousness” of two things in order to illustrate how fucking stupid the cars thing is each and every time it’s brought up.
You have to be pretty thick headed to not understand this concept. Then again, some on the right were convinced that it was more dangerous to be living in California than to be a soldier in Iraq.
I see you have just as much trouble following board rules as you do society’s rules, shitbag. No surprise there.
Okay, gun grabbers, one more time: Why do you believe the government can control illegal firearms when it can’t control illegal drugs or illegal immigration? If I decide I want a handgun, and I don’t give a damn about your laws, how do you intend to stop me?
We have already been force fed statistical and morality lessons from same. Get ready for the magic lesson now…
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You prefer one opinion over another. That doesn’t mean that the opinion you prefer is “morally responsible” while the one you don’t prefer isn’t.
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You are making the mistake of altruism–ie, the position that something is good just because it benefits others.
Okay, so tell me: How do you intend to stop me from getting a firearm if I decide I want one? Please explain why you believe your ban on firearms won’t end up as yet another set of unenforceable laws. I didn’t have much trouble buying grass, acid, psilocybin and mescalin when I was younger, why would I have trouble finding someone to sell me an Uzi or a Glock? Given the government’s incompetence and corruption in dealing with other contraband, why would it be more efficent and honest when it comes to contraband firearms?
I understand, but to get a full picture of the “dangerousness” of guns v cars, I think you need to look at the issues I raised. A fun stopping harm from occurring should weigh in guns’ favor in the analysis.
To illustrate what I’m saying–we could posit a world where everty gun death was a good guy kiling a bad guy where the bad guy definitely would have killed 100 people if he weren’t stopped. In this world, not having a gun around would be a very dangerous activity (and the pro gun position may well be that everyone should be required to carry a gun while the anti-gun position could be that everyone should be able to choose whether to own a gun (ie, the current pro-gun position)).
Again, take this only 61-1, which is that the dangerousness of guns v cars can be illustrated only by also considering good uses of guns.
Richard parker, I didn’t respond because I would have just repeated myself. We have both laid out our positions and we disagree, so I didn’t think there was more for me to say. I’ll look back at your post later tonight when I can navigate better.
Well, the problem is that you can’t just compare raw deaths from cars v guns because some gun deaths are not bad things.
In addition to my argument above that a gun death can be a good thing (by saving other lives), it also seems to me that some gun deaths are neutral things (ie, suicides where the person would have killed themselves in any event and chose a gun to do so).