Thank you. 
Which is why I’m surprised to hear little or no mention of scabbards as a compromise.
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- You might need to defend yourself unexpectedly, in a hurry, and there might not be time to get the gun out from under your jacket.
- The purpose of carrying a gun isn’t to shoot people; it’s so you don’t have to shoot people. You want the bad guy to know you have a gun and not mess with you, just as dangerous animals have warning colors and make threat displays before attacking.
Me too.
The real answer to “psycho nut shoots up workplace 15 times” should not be outlawing 15 round magazines, but to make it so the dude works out his problems before he gets to the point of wanting to shoot up the workplace regardless of magazine capacity.
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Fair enough but that can be adjusted for likelihood, depending on circumstance.
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That one OTOH I see as being an exaggerated perception of the threat level of the world, where individuals are either predators or prey and must signal it. As in (1) that may be so for specific times and places but in most communities just going about your everyday business it isn’t. And FWIW there’s always the putz who will want to be visibly armed so as to make it so nobody dare say anything to him* even if justified*.
First of all, if you don’t retain it, it is not a right at all, but something else. You have rights by being born a human, not through the benevolence of your overlords.
Second, nobody has the right to print currency. Currency by definition is a social phenomenon. If you just print it, that isn’t currency, it’s funny looking paper. Currency requires the agreement of the rest of society that it is indeed money. Having a right to print currency doesn’t even make any sense, unless you are really discussing the “right” to counterfeit.
Everyone has the right to self defense. Defending oneself is the very definition of survival. If you can’t do it, you die. The right to keep and bear arms is just an explicit restatement of the right to self defense. You can’t reliably defend yourself in the modern world without firearms. Prior to about 1600, you could have said the same about swords, spears and axes. In a thousand years, when we have cheap clothing that stops bullets painlessly, but telepathic brain melting rays are common, we will have to amend things to recognize that having access to brain melting rays is an essential component to self defense.
Because the fundamental right is to defend oneself, one’s family and one’s community. We just need to remind people that self defense necessarily entails the right to keep and bear the tools required for defense. It’s not really about the tools. But it needs to be explicit that access to the required tools is necessary to maintain the right to self defense.
It’s kind of like the right to a free press. It isn’t about the actual printing press, it’s about the right to free public discourse. But it needs to be made explicitly clear that the tools needed for that discourse can’t be banned, or the right is infringed, even if nobody actually made a law against speaking publicly.
I don’t get it. If the anti-gun fanatics don’t want to own a gun then they don’t have to get one, that’s fine, but why do they want to deprive others of their ability to buy them? It seems to me a little like what was said of the Puritans in England, that they banned bear-baiting not because it gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Some people can’t stand watching other people take enjoyment in things they disapprove of.
I’m not anti-gun, but there is a reason for limiting access to guns: guns can be and are used to commit crimes. Simply saying we have to trust each and every gun owner not to commit crimes stretches the social contract to the breaking point. Every right we have is contingent on the holder of that right being a responsible person. I have no problem with preventing people from exercising their rights if they do something to show they are a threat to the community.
I don’t think this is a remotely fair interpretation of those that support gun control.
Philando Castile’s gun got him killed. John Crawford was killed for holding a BB gun. Tamir Rice was killed for brandishing a toy gun, and the person who called the police thought it probably was a toy. The Black Panthers had not only rifles but organization, and the state worked to undermine and destroy them. Firearms didn’t save these people, they shortened their lives. Whatever we’re doing with firearms to save our lives, it isn’t working.
Consider that Mike Brown of Ferguson allegedly tried to take a gun from a police officer before being shot. Well, by your argument’s logic, wasn’t that just trying to gain the means of his own self-preservation? Shouldn’t the state be encouraging that, not calling him a threat and shooting him in the head?
Well, no, of course not. I would think you probably know that as well as I do. But then you say nonsense like this:
You don’t defend from brain melting rays by getting your own brain melting rays. You defend from brain melting rays with anti-brain-melting-ray protocols. You also defend from firearms with bullet-resistant clothing,
And so it is in the world of today. Gun control* is* self-defense and defense of others, from firearms. It’s our anti-getting-shot protocol.
To gun owners, gun control laws look a lot like prior restraint: forbidding people to do things because of their potential for harm. Formerly, in a free society the rule was to punish actual misdeeds; but our risk-averse society today seems unsatisfied with that. Do we really want to tell people that they’re not allowed to make themselves as strong and capable as they could be, because it makes them too dangerous?
I’m not anti-car, but there is a reason for limiting access to cars: cars can be and are used to commit crimes. Simply saying we have to trust each and every car owner not to commit crimes stretches the social contract to the breaking point. Every right we have is contingent on the holder of that right being a responsible person. I have no problem with preventing people from exercising their rights if they do something to show they are a threat to the community.
I’m not anti-computer, but there is a reason for limiting access to computers: computers can be and are used to commit crimes. Simply saying we have to trust each and every computer owner not to commit crimes stretches the social contract to the breaking point. Every right we have is contingent on the holder of that right being a responsible person. I have no problem with preventing people from exercising their rights if they do something to show they are a threat to the community.
etcetera, etcetera,etcetera…
And how many unarmed black men were killed even without a gun in their possession?
If Slan getting as strong and capable as he can be means being able to project brain-melting rays from his head antennae, then yeah, I think it’s understandable to want fewer Slans.
As I said,
There’s been some talk about using firearms to challenge the “monopoly of force” of the police.
OK, some questions. (This may have to become its own thread.)
Do you guys think that Philando Castile should have just shot a traffic cop instead of trying to cooperate?
Do you agree with the Dallas shooter who killed police just for being police?
Is the Black Lives Matter movement missing the boat by not staging an armed revolution?
Are these your actual policy suggestion?
Cars in fact are highly regulated. You’re required to get liability insurance for your car. You need a license to drive. That license requires two tests, regular renewals, and is revokable for various reasons. It can be for committing a major crime but it can also be for repeated traffic violations, failure to pay a fine, etc. My license was suspended when I went to the hospital for a seizure.
To say that guns should be regulated on a similar level as cars is generally considered a strong gun control position.
Computers are used to commit “crimes” such as prostitution and black market trade. Not violent crimes.
I can’t speak for all advocates of gun control, just myself. If you’re a hunter, knock yourself out. Hunting is a key component of responsible wildlife management. The deer you kill and eat is one less that might wreck my car. When you shoot animals for sport like giraffes and lions, you really lose me. But they do not represent the average hunter who by and large are responsible advocates for conservation. If you’re a rancher who needs to pack a pistol to ward off rattlesnakes and coyotes, no problem. If you really really think you need a pistol in the house to ward off intruders, fine by me as long as you keep the kids away. Where you lose me is when you regard any reasonable restrictions as the first step in taking all your guns away. Registration and reasonable limitations on firepower are things that the NRA used to be in favor of before they were taken over by the batshit crazy. You also lose me when you tell me that you need guns in case you need to overthrow the government. Maybe that was conceivable in colonial days, but nowadays with tanks and drones, any thought of overthrowing a rogue government is nonsense. The way to overthrow oppressive governments is by non-violent means as we saw in East Germany and other former Soviet satellites.
So in short, I’m not afraid of you enjoying your guns. I am afraid of a society where there is too much firepower in the hands of too many nuts. I wouldn’t be afraid of living in Switzerland where most people have guns, but I would be in Somalia where thugs roam freely with advanced weaponry. All things in moderation.
So, disarm the police also?
The fact that a few innocents were killed as it was thought they had a real gun, and instead they had a toy gun is meaningless, and many more who didnt even have the toy were also shot.
So, what are “reasonable”? Never was the NRA in favor of registration, and registration is useless expect as a tool for possible confiscation.
Does it work that way for cars too?