You're cherry-picking again, which makes your argument intellectually dishonest. My claim is "more guns, less crime." Your claim is "More guns, more murders."Blind groper wrote:
This simple conclusion is so obvious, it is hard to see how anyone could be so obtuse as to deny it. Seth thinks self defense with guns outweighs murders. But only 200 criminals per year are killed in self defense actions in the USA, while 8,000 murders with hand guns happens over the same time period. I would say that the murders outweigh the self defense cases very handily.
This intellectually dishonest because you deliberately discard every single instance in which a gun was used to prevent a crime by focusing only and exclusively on murder. You also make the intellectually dishonest argument that "only 200 criminals per year are killed in self defense actions in the USA, while 8,000 murders with hand guns happens over the same time period." This is dishonest because in the first place you are making the use of firearms in lethal self-defense the moral equivalent of the use of firearms to commit murder. They are not morally equivalent. Those 200 episodes represent 200 individual persons (or more) who were not victimized or murdered by their assailant because they had a gun. But it does not logically follow that the 8000 individuals who were murdered with handguns by criminals should have been denied their right to carry a gun for self-defense. Certainly it would be better if the assailants in those cases had been disarmed, but that's simply not possible. Even if it were possible to remove the criminal's handguns however, people are murdered with many other types of weapons other than handguns, and each and every one of those victims, or potential victims also has a right to be armed with the most efficient and effective tool of self defense ever invented: the handgun.
So, until you can find a way to remove from the criminal element every single possible type of lethal weapon that exists, has existed or will exist, their victims, and their potential victims (which is all of us law-abiding citizens) have every right to obtain, carry and use, at need, whatever personal arms are in our individual opinions most suitable for defending ourselves and our families and our neighbors and our communities and our nations against whomever might seek to harm them, regardless of what weapons they might choose to employ.
This is a flat-out lie.Seth will argue that it is not the 200 deaths that matter, but te times guns are used to threaten criminals. But in every other nation in the OECD, hand guns are not permitted, and there is absolutely no increase in citizens being harmed.
