Guns used for lawful self-defense Pt. 5

[orpheus]

The rights of the individual are not to be infringed based on a statistical analysis of anything. Just because 8000 people misuse handguns in no way impeaches the right of the other 300 million or so to have and use their handguns lawfully.

Damn right they should be, others screw up and your life gets restricted thats how civilization works. We make rules bases on how the most incompetent act not how the most skilled do

I guess Seth didnt get many class detections at school, one kid misbehaves and the entire class is punished by having stay behind. It's an important lessons that he obviously didnt pick up

Also, to use his analogy, you can't legally drive a car until you can prove that you can do so safely.

[MrJonno]

Also, to use his analogy, you can't legally drive a car until you can prove that you can do so safely.

Call it assumed incompetence. Society does not trust/permit you to do anything that involves significant danger to others and to yourself until you prove you are competent. This includes driving but also brain surgery, flying an aircraft and running a restaurant (food poisoning)

[orpheus]

Also, to use his analogy, you can't legally drive a car until you can prove that you can do so safely.

Call it assumed incompetence. Society does not trust/permit you to do anything that involves significant danger to others and to yourself until you prove you are competent. This includes driving but also brain surgery, flying an aircraft and running a restaurant (food poisoning)

Yes, that's a good way to put it.

[Blind groper]

If a handgun saves even ONE life, it completely justifies every handgun in law-abiding hands.




So justify your reasoning. Why should we not ban cars if we should ban handguns?

First : what is happening is that for every life saved by a hand gun, there are many lost. Remember that great thinker, Mr. Spock?
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Or to put it another way, if the price of saving one life is to lose several, the price is too high. In the USA, 8, 000 lives each year are lost to hand gun murder, and another 12, 000 to hand gun suicide each and every year. And FBI figures show that in 11 years, only 2500 felons were shot by citizens with hand guns.

The NEJM shows that hand gun owners increase their risk of being killed by 2 to 4 fold (not suicide, which is an even greater risk) simply by owning a hand gun.

So the answer is a resounding NO!
A hand gun saving one life does not justify all the other lives lost due to hand guns.

Why should we not ban cars?
1. We cannot do without them, which is definitely not the case with hand guns. If we suddenly lost all cars, the subsequent recession would kill more people in a year than currently die on our roads in a century.

2. Cars, unlike hand guns, are already subject to massive limits and regulations, unlike hand guns. You need a licence to drive one and the way you drive it is subject to many legal limits. The loss of life from cars has already been reduced dramatically due to sane and sensible laws, which is definitely not the case with hand guns.

3. Cars have a major and vital purpose unrelated to killing. Ie, transport. Hand guns have one function, which is to kill humans. Even target shooting is really only a method of getting good with a hand gun so that it can be even better at its basic function, killing people.

[Jason]

Fat man and the trolley.

[Seth]

The rights of the individual are not to be infringed based on a statistical analysis of anything. Just because 8000 people misuse handguns in no way impeaches the right of the other 300 million or so to have and use their handguns lawfully.

Damn right they should be, others screw up and your life gets restricted thats how civilization works. We make rules bases on how the most incompetent act not how the most skilled do

I guess Seth didnt get many class detections at school, one kid misbehaves and the entire class is punished by having stay behind. It's an important lessons that he obviously didnt pick up

That's a Marxist technique used by groups such as the Khymer Rouge in Cambodia. Punishing everyone for the bad acts of the individual is a heinous collectivist policy that's intended to turn people against each other and make them into agents of the state in enforcing proper Marxist behavior.

It has no place in any civilized society, and it's unconstitutional in the United States.

[Seth]

The rights of the individual are not to be infringed based on a statistical analysis of anything. Just because 8000 people misuse handguns in no way impeaches the right of the other 300 million or so to have and use their handguns lawfully.

Damn right they should be, others screw up and your life gets restricted thats how civilization works. We make rules bases on how the most incompetent act not how the most skilled do

I guess Seth didnt get many class detections at school, one kid misbehaves and the entire class is punished by having stay behind. It's an important lessons that he obviously didnt pick up

Also, to use his analogy, you can't legally drive a car until you can prove that you can do so safely.

But driving a car on a public highway is not a fundamental constitutional right. The power to license is the power to destroy, and thus we do not require licenses or permits for exercises of free speech, free religious exercise, or gun ownership.

That being said, there is nothing wrong, and much right with making firearms training mandatory in our schools, starting in the first grade and extending through high school graduation in a graduated and age-appropriate manner, culminating in the issuance of a government-owned pistol and rifle and a CCW permit to each successful graduate at their graduation ceremony.

Believe it or not there is an overwhelming amount of evidence in the historical record, and in the words of the Constitution, that Congress has the power to do that, among other things that would REQUIRE people to keep and bear arms.

That power is found in Article 1, Section 8of the Constitution.

Indeed, there are reams of evidence that the government, even at the state level, has pretty much plenary power to require citizens to be armed and trained against the need to call them to duty in the Militia or the standing army. There is zero evidence that the Constitution authorizes the government, at any level, to ban arms or infringe on the right to keep and bear arms.

[Seth]

Also, to use his analogy, you can't legally drive a car until you can prove that you can do so safely.

Call it assumed incompetence. Society does not trust/permit you to do anything that involves significant danger to others and to yourself until you prove you are competent. This includes driving but also brain surgery, flying an aircraft and running a restaurant (food poisoning)

Yes, that's a good way to put it.

No, it's not, because none of the above are fundamental enumerated Constitutional rights which interference with is specifically and explicitly prohibited by the Constitution.

[Jason]

That being said, there is nothing wrong, and much right with making firearms training mandatory in our schools, starting in the first grade and extending through high school graduation in a graduated and age-appropriate manner, culminating in the issuance of a government-owned pistol and rifle and a CCW permit to each successful graduate at their graduation ceremony.

I believe that's how the Hitler Youth was run. Well, I guess by late-war they were just issuing government-owned pistols and rifles to anyone old enough to carry them.

[Seth]

If a handgun saves even ONE life, it completely justifies every handgun in law-abiding hands.




So justify your reasoning. Why should we not ban cars if we should ban handguns?

First : what is happening is that for every life saved by a hand gun, there are many lost. Remember that great thinker, Mr. Spock?
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." Or to put it another way, if the price of saving one life is to lose several, the price is too high. In the USA, 8, 000 lives each year are lost to hand gun murder, and another 12, 000 to hand gun suicide each and every year. And FBI figures show that in 11 years, only 2500 felons were shot by citizens with hand guns.

That's 2500 INDIVIDUALS who exercised their constitutional and natural human right to armed self-defense against felons. You are still trying to use the statistical argument to bolster your case, but it doesn't wash. As I said, those 2500 people who shot felons each have 100 percent of their 2nd Amendment right not to have their choice of arms interfered with by the government. They are not allocated some percentage of that right based on how many other people misuse their RKBA. That's not how rights work, you see, not here anyway.

It wouldn't matter if the number murdered with handguns every year was 800,000, each and every other individual among the 292 million remaining citizens has a complete and absolute right to keep and bear arms...and USE them in a lawful manner, that is not disparaged or impeached by the malfeasance of the few.

The NEJM shows that hand gun owners increase their risk of being killed by 2 to 4 fold (not suicide, which is an even greater risk) simply by owning a hand gun.

Even if true, which it's not, that's a risk factor that each and every individual gets to assess and either accept or reject for themselves. Such information may be probative in making an individual risk analysis, but it's not an appropriate factor upon which to base public policy that infringes on a fundamental Constitutional right.

So the answer is a resounding NO!
A hand gun saving one life does not justify all the other lives lost due to hand guns.

Yes, it does. I'm not responsible in any way for someone killing someone else or themselves, and therefore my right to keep and bear arms cannot be disparaged or infringed on the basis that because others act wrongly I must be denied my rights.

Why should we not ban cars?
1. We cannot do without them, which is definitely not the case with hand guns. If we suddenly lost all cars, the subsequent recession would kill more people in a year than currently die on our roads in a century.

Utilitarian argument. The rebuttal is simple, we cannot do without handguns either. If we suddenly lost all handguns, the subsequent explosion in violent crime would kill more people than are murdered each year.

2. Cars, unlike hand guns, are already subject to massive limits and regulations, unlike hand guns. You need a licence to drive one and the way you drive it is subject to many legal limits. The loss of life from cars has already been reduced dramatically due to sane and sensible laws, which is definitely not the case with hand guns.

Fallacy based in gross ignorance of gun laws. There are more than 50,000 laws that control how, when and where one may lawfully employ a firearm for it's intended purpose. Moreover, manufacture of firearms is strictly regulated by the federal government and each and every firearm must be serialized and records kept of where each firearm goes for first interstate sale. The law also requires purchases from licensed gun dealers to be likewise reported on the Form 4473 each time a firearm is bought or sold.

The loss of life due to firearms has dropped to record lows in the last century, so much so that firearms deaths don't even make the top 15 causes of death according to the CDC. That reduction is largely due to the educational efforts of the NRA in gun safety.

3. Cars have a major and vital purpose unrelated to killing. Ie, transport. Hand guns have one function, which is to kill humans. Even target shooting is really only a method of getting good with a hand gun so that it can be even better at its basic function, killing people.

Observer bias fallacy.

The vast, vast majority of handguns are never used to kill anything, but rather to put holes in paper and tin cans. And the "basic function" of a handgun is to expel a projectile from the muzzle in the direction it is pointed using the gaseous pressure of burning gunpowder. It has only that one function in fact. It is the person holding the gun who determines whether or not the projectile causes death or injury to a human being or other creature, not the gun. In fact, the gun doesn't do any damage at all, unless someone hits you with it, it's merely an inanimate mechanical device that propels a projectile at high velocity in the desired direction. It's the projectile that actually does the damage, which may or may not be justifiable under law.

So, you lose again.

[orpheus]

The rights of the individual are not to be infringed based on a statistical analysis of anything. Just because 8000 people misuse handguns in no way impeaches the right of the other 300 million or so to have and use their handguns lawfully.

Damn right they should be, others screw up and your life gets restricted thats how civilization works. We make rules bases on how the most incompetent act not how the most skilled do

I guess Seth didnt get many class detections at school, one kid misbehaves and the entire class is punished by having stay behind. It's an important lessons that he obviously didnt pick up

Also, to use his analogy, you can't legally drive a car until you can prove that you can do so safely.

But driving a car on a public highway is not a fundamental constitutional right. The power to license is the power to destroy, and thus we do not require licenses or permits for exercises of free speech, free religious exercise, or gun ownership.

Aaaand we're back to that amazing finger-pointing trick I mentioned up above.

Seth, it was you who suggested cars as an analogy.

[Blind groper]

Seth keeps falling back on the second amendment and saying that because of the second amendment it is right to own hand guns.

Seth

It is the second amendment that is wrong! You are taking one very, very wrong piece of legislation and using it as an excuse for a whole raft of other wrong things.

No other nation has anything similar, and no other developed, OECD country has the problems that arise from it. No primarily English speaking, or western European nation has a per capita murder rate anywhere near as high as the USA. The highest is Finland, which apparently has a high rate of alcohol fuelled crime (like its neighbour, Russia). My own country has a murder rate one fifth that of the USA.

The second amendment is a uniquely American piece of total weirdness. It is dramatically harmful and at the center of your massive murder rate. If you had politicians with guts, it would have been rescinded decades back. It has no practical value, and fuels the sickest attitude towards guns in the western world.

You think getting rid of guns would lead to high crime? That has not happened anywhere else, and there is Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, Italy, NZ, Australia, Canada, and many others to show that reducing gun ownership reduces gun murders. Only the USA among developed nations has a pathological rate of gun crime, and that is because only the USA has a second amendment and the resulting ridiculous level of ownership of tools designed specifically for killing people.

[Collector1337]

Damn right they should be, others screw up and your life gets restricted thats how civilization works.

What the fuck? Are you insane? Do you smoke crack? That's absolutely asinine. The fact someone who thinks like you even exists, sickens me. That IS NOT how "civilization works." There's nothing "civilized" about such behavior whatsoever.

We make rules bases on how the most incompetent act not how the most skilled do

If that was the case, then cars and alcohol would be banned. You are despicable individual. You disgust me.

I guess Seth didnt get many class detections at school, one kid misbehaves and the entire class is punished by having stay behind. It's an important lessons that he obviously didnt pick up

More absolute insane idiocy.

One kid does something wrong, the whole class does not get punished. That is completely asinine. That never happened even once to me when I was in school.

I am not responsible, nor can I control any of the other students. How is it other students' fault when 1 misbehaves? What absurd rationale are you using to punish the whole class? To punish the entire class is just insane. YOU ARE INSANE.

[Jason]

Politicians and old buildings.

[Collector1337]

Seth keeps falling back on the second amendment and saying that because of the second amendment it is right to own hand guns.

Seth

It is the second amendment that is wrong! You are taking one very, very wrong piece of legislation and using it as an excuse for a whole raft of other wrong things.

No other nation has anything similar, and no other developed, OECD country has the problems that arise from it. No primarily English speaking, or western European nation has a per capita murder rate anywhere near as high as the USA. The highest is Finland, which apparently has a high rate of alcohol fuelled crime (like its neighbour, Russia). My own country has a murder rate one fifth that of the USA.

The second amendment is a uniquely American piece of total weirdness. It is dramatically harmful and at the center of your massive murder rate. If you had politicians with guts, it would have been rescinded decades back. It has no practical value, and fuels the sickest attitude towards guns in the western world.

You think getting rid of guns would lead to high crime? That has not happened anywhere else, and there is Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal, Italy, NZ, Australia, Canada, and many others to show that reducing gun ownership reduces gun murders. Only the USA among developed nations has a pathological rate of gun crime, and that is because only the USA has a second amendment and the resulting ridiculous level of ownership of tools designed specifically for killing people.

Full of ethnocentrism and bigotry. There's nothing "weird" about wanting to defend life and liberty.

Please stay out of the US and never come here for any reason.

I'll enjoy my rights and liberty. You can enjoy your tyranny and oppression. Fair enough?