Irrelevant, since the whole point of the thread is a discussion of situations (i.e. self-defense) where shooting people or threatening to do so is a perfectly proper and appropriate action.
How many issues of the NRA’s magazine (American Rifleman) have you read to base that statement on? 10? 15? 25? How many NRA-sponsored events have you been to? Or maybe you just don’t know shit about the NRA. I’m going with the latter.
Then we should hear no more arguments about swimming pool deaths. How many people do you know put a pool in the back yard on the off chance they’ll need to drown a burgler?
How comforting to know there are people out there who believe some rights don’t “actually matter.” :rolleyes:
I guess it would be unreasonable of me to ask for a better citation than an unattributed high school paper?
Well, not random women…
Alan Krug, “The Relationship between Firearms Ownership and Crime: A Statistical Analysis,” reprinted in Congressional Record, 99th Cong., 2d sess., January 30, 1968, p. 1496, n. 7;
Gary Kleck, “Policy Lessons from Recent Gun Control Research,” Journal of Law and Contemporary Problems 49 (Winter 1986): 35-47.
Do you ever get tired of being wrong? This is not an echo chamber. Provide some proof that the NRA made up the American historical attraction to guns.
I’m very interested to see how you spin the 2nd Amendment as being fabricated by the “gun industry”.
You asked me a question, I answered with an example, which I hoped would explain that clearly there is SOME line that needs to be drawn between recreational utility and public good. Then I went on to explain how that was relevant to the discussion. I never said your argument was equivalent to plutonium basketball. No straw here.
[QUOTE=Una Persson]
It depends. Does the benefit increase as well? Are the absolute deaths more important than the cost/benefit?
[/QUOTE]
Lets say that every other factor currently in place stays exactly the same, only we had 10x more firearm deaths per year. Would that change your stance on gun ownership? 100x? 1000x? I am not trying to be a dick, I am genuinely curious how many deaths it would take before you said to yourself “You know, I am all for individual freedom and self defense, but this is getting ridiculous.” For the sake of this hypothetical, you can assume the death percentages are spread exactly like they are now (ie the same % of deaths resulting from accident, self-defense, homicide, etc.)
I can’t speak for Una, but my stance on gun ownership rights is principled rather than driven solely by risk analysis (my personal choice to own a gun or not is driven mostly by risk analysis). Fundamentally, I see no way to restrict or ban firearms in a way that will reduce their availability to the criminal element in society faster than it reduces their availability to the law-abiding element in society.
You would have to increase accidental firearms deaths by something like 500x before they caught up to motor vehicle deaths (I only have the stats for children in front of me, and I don’t think exact numbers matter). If there were 500x homicides, that points to a cultural problem rather than an availability-of-guns problem, in my mind. Similarly with suicides. Similarly with self-defense, and additionally it would indicate that more people were being attacked and needed the protection.
Which is the crux of the matter, for me–I believe that humans have a fundamental right to effective self-defense when in danger. In modern society, that means firearms, period.
So no, I don’t think my stance on firearms ownership would change under any reasonable degree of inflation in the rate of firearms deaths, if the percentages stayed the same.
Something that you’re missing is a concept of substitutability, too. There are inert metals with similar properties to plutonium except for the attendant danger, which argues against allowing you to play plutonium basketball. The same cannot be said for firearms, which are the only implement available for several different uses (one of which for which it’s not true is “killing human beings”–perhaps “killing human beings at ranges beyond bowshot”, and that’s about it).
You know, I love out-there comparisons as much as the next guy. I recently used the phrase “fathers vs pedophiles where both have a love of children” to show why it’s stupid to say conservatives love corporations.
But this “plutonium basketball game” is fucking ridiculous and isn’t helping your case. At best it shows you know nothing about either guns or plutonium, as if to draw a comparison of relative dangers. At worst it shows you are trying to “draw a line in the sand” but that line is so far out in space that to quote Joey your line is a dot, as if to suggest we needed a line in the sand. Kudos for burning down that terrifying strawman, that I’m sure was about to fall over and kill us all at any moment.
Is it not enough that we’re comparing guns to cars and pools? We’ve already had one person point out that you can’t rob a bank with a pool.
And the worst part is that someone reading this is going to giggle and think you were clever then repeat it within the next three months.
There are already many lines drawn in the sand, you are more than welcome to address those instead of mythical radioactive ones out in space.
If you are going to try and screw people with a slippery slope, at least have the decency to lube up and tell them where you stand. How few deaths would it take to change your tune? Those that consider themselves pro-gun aren’t happy about accidental deaths any more than those who are pro-choice are happy about abortions.
You’ve got at least a half dozen gun owners here telling you how simple training can make guns considerably safer. Oddly enough, when using the right gear a properly trained individual could probably play plutonium basketball without harming anyone.
If you say so.
As long as we assume a net positive, to what degree do the absolute numbers matter? Yes it’s terrible if it’s your relative or friend, or anyone for that matter, who dies, and no I don’t know how many additional deaths are required before it becomes unpalatable. You’re trying to pin me down to the gnat’s ass detail on an exact figure on how many deaths are an acceptable trade-off for the RKBA, while on the opposite end of the spectrum playing hypothetical plutonium basketball in an impossible scenario.
Another way to ask your question is along these lines: we currently accept the lack of arrest, lack of conviction, and release of potentially millions of criminals every year due to our other Constitutional protections. How many criminals need to run free killing and raping and looting before we decide we’ve had enough of the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments?
For what it’s worth, I suspect that my position is much nearer to Una Persson than HoboStew regarding gun rights, but I’m not at all sure I understand the antipathy toward his example. Yes, “plutonium basketball” is ridiculously hyperbolic, but that’s the point—it needs to be ridiculously hyperbolic. This was a response to the claim that we can’t overlook the value of recreation when discussing the cost/benefit of something. Try to see it from his point of view:
1a) Ice cream has only recreational use.
2a) Permitting the consumption of ice cream has some cost in terms of human health (obesity, etc).
3a) The costs to permitting ice cream are probably far outweighed by the benefits.
1b) Plutonium basketball has only recreational use.
2b) Permitting plutonium basketball has some cost in terms of human health.
3b) The benefits to permitting plutonium basketball are probably far outweighed by the costs.
The question HoboStew wishes to suggest is, if guns have only recreational use, where do they stand in the ice cream/plutonium basketball continuum? If plutonium basketball weren’t ridiculously hyperbolic, it wouldn’t be work for this kind of discussion. Now, someone might have valid reasons to reject this line of argument—maybe they think guns don’t have merely recreational use. But that’s not a problem with “plutonium basketball” per se. Nor is it apropos to discuss how plutonium basketball wouldn’t actually work like he’s discussing; it is a philosophical example; quibbling with its particulars is beside the point.
My antipathy towards the plutonium example is that it represents the most extreme of all possible scenarios. We all agree it’s on the other side of the line, so it’s of no use. Likewise, ice cream is so entirely harmless than putting these two items in a discussion about guns isn’t relevant.
If the purpose is to create and discuss a continuum, then assign values that are of use to what we’re discussing. In the case of guns we wonder where they fit on the continuum so we examine two things that are similar. We could start with toy guns on the left, and atomic weapons on the right. Then work inwards, now consider bb guns and anti-aircraft artillery. This is a bit closer. Hand guns place themselves within a band on the continuum below which we’re okay with and above which we are not. Ice cream and plutonium basketball don’t fit on the continuum and fail to provide any relevant incite into the issue.
If you really want to stir shit up, suggest peanut butter. For most people it is a delicious snack loaded with protein. For others it is near instant death. Your right to bring peanut butter into a public space may infringe of my right to breath through an open airway. It might be interesting to find out how many people die from peanut butter each year. And ask ourselves if it’s something we should ban, or just heavily regulate. Does peanut butter provide enough of a benefit to society that I should live in fear of eminent death? What if we each leave a window open and the smell wafts from your house into mine? Damn it people, I’m scared for my life every day! Won’t someone think of the children?!
I’d be inclined to agree that when the distance between ice cream and plutonium on your so-called “continuum” becomes so great as to be clearly immeasurable, the point itself no longer exists. Isn’t that where the hyperbole kinda cancels it out?
Quibbling with your argument (in support of the straw man) becomes, by definition, an exercise in circular reasoning. :rolleyes:
But … that’s the point. “Ice cream” and “plutonium basketball” are rhetorical devices to enable us to establish the fact that there are two sides to the line. Then we can consider: What is it about ice cream that makes it permissible? What is it about plutonium basketball that makes it societally worth it to ban it? These examples are for fixing ideas, after which we can narrow the continuum and try to work out where guns fit on it.
This discussion is kind of meta, I suppose …
By “quibbling with the particulars”, I meant only that it was irrelevant to point out that—say—plutonium basketball need not be all that dangerous. If it isn’t, we could just choose another example that would work. I’m afraid I don’t understand the rest of your comment.
On sober second thought, if we’re going to talk about “recreational use” of guns, and base the discussion on number of deaths that result, it’s not about ice cream or plutonium, we need to actually look at accidental deaths caused by other recreational activities.
For example:
In 1970 there were 29 deaths related to playing football.
During the 2008/09 season 39 fatalities occurred due to skiing/snowboarding.
In 1997, 225 children ages 14 and under died in bicycle-related crashes. Children under 14 represent approximately 24 percent of all bicycle-related deaths.
I think cycling is pretty dangerous, I feel safer on my motorcycle than I do on my road bike. And if two kids were left unattended, getting their hands on either of my bikes would most likely cause death. I think bowling is really stupid, so any number of deaths resulting from it is too many. How are we supposed to measure the “benefit” derived from a recreational activity.
You are right, which is why I normally enjoy that line of reasoning: Establish end points, and work your way in. So I pointed out that we can do that with same thing with better examples.
It was the word “rhetorical” that bothered. We don’t need rhetorical, frankly we have too much rhetoric. we need end points that are actually within sight.
The plutonium basketball was funny at first. I pictured scientists in radiation suits throwing around a glowing ball. When it got brought up over and over again it stopped being funny and was clearly intended as a gutcha. Failure to define why plutonium basketball was different than guns meant that guns goes on the same side of the line.
I’m curious where these numbers came from. Also, is there a listing for swimming pool deaths?