Do we NEED guns? (evolution, America, pagan, Zen)

[robtex]

Bartdanr: Going point by point.

1) Assult rifles as I understand them, are semi auto to full auto rilfes that were designed specifically or mainly for human combat. Is that not your assessment?

2) The swiss do have an very low rate for firearm deaths and as you say men own guns and are all part of the swiss militia. If I was in switzerland I would be against banning assult rifles. However in America where we tend to gun one another down after drinking or in domestic disputes the idea does not carry the same merit.

Let me give you a parallel. In Germany they have a road called the autobahn. It has a higher speed limit than us freeways but fewer fatalities than US freeways. I would never be personally in favor or a us autobahn. The reason is that in America we drive and talk on our phone, drink our coffee toggle our radio station, sometimes watch tv in the car ect ect...in Germany when they drive. They are committed to the act of driving. The culture is different for driving in the two countries and what works well for Germany would not fare nearly as well in the USA.
footnote: http://home.att.net/~texhwyman/autobahn.htm

The same is true of firearms and Switzerland. Their attitudes and perceptions of guns is much safer and more responsible than ours. We in the USA drink and shoot and attach guns to being a "macho man". In this country based on our culture we need different laws that that of the Swiss.

3) The notion that so many of the posters are pro-revolutionary conflict to me is a stronger arguement for gun control than against it. The USA is a democratic republic. One can vote lobby and campaign here for ideas they want in our great goverment. Armed insurgents, which is what private many militias are, are a threat to the democratic republic of the USA not the other way around. There is a thread in the politics section on militas and I figure that is the better place to debate this but in relation to gun control the fact that we have private militias is another REASON for gun control.
4) I didn't understand when you said:

Originally Posted by bartdanr

Fourth, I am a member of the organized militia, organized and commanded by the Governor of my state. I don't have much use for rump militias that are not answerable to duly elected civilian authorities. I am also a gun owner. However, I don't think everyone has to be part of the organized militia in order to have he right to own guns. (Although we sure could use more help, if you want to volunteer...)

Am i understanding you are in a private militia that was set up by the govener or is it part of the us army? I am confused by that part.

5) There are stats on guns saving lives. And they do sometimes but the negative outcomes from handguns and assult rifles (as opposed to deer rifles and shotguns) outweight the positives when one weights the pros and cons. It is a numbers game and in it pros from handguns and assult rifles, which are primarly designed to kill humans, the cons outweight the pros. Quantifingly speaking the self-defense doesn't justify the homocides. The stats are peppered in through out this thread on both the good and bad. Gun control as a political debate issue is statiscally quantified much more than most issues. What I found from looking at the statistics, which is to say quantifing the issue is that the cons outweight the pros in the numbers game specifically in regards to assult rifles and handguns.

6) Ironically the man statiscally speaking is much more likly to have the gun than the frail woman. The NRA and other pro-gun lobbies seeing this long ago has made it a point to try to market guns to women. While calling guns "a great equalizer" is one way of putting it, yet another is saying guns are the one tool everybody can kill with. The same cannot be said for sharp or blunt objects. By this logic having guns in society that are specifically or primarly for killing humans, such as assult rifles and handguns, you increase the percentage of the population that would be capable of killing another adult human from x percentage to close to 100 %. X being the number killed with blunt and sharp instruments annually. I personally think that by and large, most of the population here due to
1) lack of mental fortitude and emotional committment, and
2) physical inablity
are incable of murder without a firearm. By contrast almost nybody and almost everybody can kill with a gun.

The question becomes with this percent what amount will kill for non-self defense, what percent will act responsibly, what percent will committ murder under the circumstances of a gun present ect ect. It is hard to qualify because there is no controlled and variable groups to measure but I am of the opinion that more harm than good comes from assult rifles and handguns in circulation based on the stats I have seen and the much much higher death rate americans have from guns in relation to other democratic countries.

[MdmSzdWhtGuy]

Robtex,

Work through this scenario with me please. You are leaving a Longhorn game, for some reason they are playing very late in the day. It is dark, you are in your car, leaving the stadium, only to have police direct you to a street you are not familiar with.

You make a couple of wrong turns trying to find your way back home, and lo and behold find yourself lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood. As you sit at a stop sign with your map of the city of Austin, trying to figure out how to get back home, a couple of big mean thugs walk up to your door and decide they want to take your car. Maybe they want to beat you senseless and rape your wife before taking the car.

Now I ask you. Would you rather have a pistol in the glove box, or would you rather have a shotgun at home?

B.

[robtex]

Originally Posted by Darkdale

A brief study of world history makes it pretty clear that the better armed you are, the more secure you are; simply trusting your government to protect is worse than naive in my opinion.

I understand we are you coming from; what I don't understand is how you'all don't understand where us pro-gun people are coming from.

DD that seems to be thrust of your arguement on gun control and one that I personally contest. May I ask why you think you are in danger from the gov of the usa?

I contest the notion that we are in danger of from our goverment because of the current structure of the system. We are a democratic republic. What that means is that most adult citizens (not ex felons in some cases or those declared mentally insane are two groups without partipation rights that come to mind), of the common citizens are given access to professoinal politicans that they believe will act on their behalf. Republic meaning officals acting on behalf of the people and democratic meaning wide range of partipation by the general citzenship.

Within each branch of goverment there are checks and balances at both the state and federal level. I personally wish the executive branch was made of of a panel of men rather than one guy but overall it is quite an intricate structure with much partipation by many people. But that might be the topic for another debate.

When you references to tyrannical goverments realize many of those are dictatorshipsauthoritarian goverments and other structures with little to no citizen partipation and few to one branches of goverment.

In the usa ,which is model I am basing my gun control arguements on, the transition to an oppressive goverment would be hampered by the current structure in place. This hampering would cause the shift, should one ever take place, from a democratic republic to an oppressive goverment to be both slow and cumbersome.

Because of this I do not see "protection from the goverment" as a valid arguement.

[robtex]

Originally Posted by MdmSzdWhtGuy

Robtex,
Work through this scenario with me please. You are leaving a Longhorn game, for some reason they are playing very late in the day. It is dark, you are in your car, leaving the stadium, only to have police direct you to a street you are not familiar with.
You make a couple of wrong turns trying to find your way back home, and lo and behold find yourself lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood. As you sit at a stop sign with your map of the city of Austin, trying to figure out how to get back home, a couple of big mean thugs walk up to your door and decide they want to take your car. Maybe they want to beat you senseless and rape your wife before taking the car.
Now I ask you. Would you rather have a pistol in the glove box, or would you rather have a shotgun at home?
B.

I think that situational thinking is one of the weaker arguementsfrom the pro-gun camp. We could put together senerio after senerio where having a gun would have been purposful just and morally justified by a large group of people. However, if you take the time to look at the statistics on firearm violence you will see that more bad than good comes from having assult rifles and handguns. I see it as a numbers game not a "senerio" game.

The NRA, and I use them because they are the strongest lobby against gun-control, has beaten the senerio issue to death but the truth of the matter is that incidents that you describe happen very very seldom in the usa whereas people shooting each other over domestic issues and in quarrells with strangers is much more common place.

The "roving band of thugs" senerio is a commonly used tatic by gun groups as an emotional justification against gun control that completely circumvents the factual numbers and stats that can be used to qualify the neccissity of various types of guns. The fact of the matter is assuming I cared about ball-oriented sports (which i don't), and I left a game at night like in the senerio you presented. The odds of me being accosted in Austin by a roaming band of thugs is astronomically low. However the odds of someone in austin killing their spouse with a handgun, roadrage involving a handgun an armed assult by a indivdual with an automatic rifle on another citzen or law enforcement official is higher.

To further complicate the situation realize that "mean roving thugs" would be even less common than they already are if there wasn't as many guns in circulation as there currently is. The reason people attack in groups is largely based on personal cowardness and feeling safety in numbers. The reason many people kill with guns is the cowardness of not being able to kill with a blunt or sharp instruement. Another way of phraseing the emotional commmittment arguement I keep bringing up in this thread is to state it in a less polite form. Cowardness. What I am saying is that the mob menality and the gun homicide mentality have a strong overlap and our current firearm circulation level likly makes "mean roving thugs" more plentyful than they currenlty are. As of right now they are not so plentyful.

[MdmSzdWhtGuy]

Rob,

I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. Personally if I had to get into a fight, I would prefer unarmed combat, or either blunt or edged weapons to gunplay. I am quite skilled in all those areas and have a much higher advantage over the average person in the first 3 areas than in the last.

However, just hoping that I can get the other fellow to agree to a knife fight, or a bare fisted fight is kind of putting my head in the sand, and I am not willing to do that. If the street tough, the home invader etc. . . has access to a gun, I want to be quite certain I have the same.

Re: your assertion that using firearms amounts to cowardice, if they are used to prey on others, I must agree with you. If they are used to defend against these predators, I must say that does not amount to cowardice in my mind.

And we don't live our individual lives by statistics sir. Statistically speaking, you are much much more likely to be killed in a car wreck than you will ever be killed by a gun. Cigarrettes kill many more people in this country every day than guns do. With your logic we should ban assault weapons and pistols cause there only real purpose is to harm humans. With that logic, would you advocate banning any activity or device that is more dangerous statistically than guns? I.E. no cars, no fatty foods etc. . . ?

The gun control argument must be poised in terms of scenarios, and no statistics, by the very nature of the subject matter. I acknowlege that the odds of any particular individual getting car jacked are slim. But if you or I happen to be that rare victim, I would much rather be prepared in that unlikely event to defend myself and my family rather than watch my car being driven away by someone else while I am bleeding on the ground and comforting myself with the idea that statistically this should never have happened to me.

B.

[robtex]

Originally Posted by MdmSzdWhtGuy

Rob,
And we don't live our individual lives by statistics sir. Statistically speaking, you are much much more likely to be killed in a car wreck than you will ever be killed by a gun. Cigarrettes kill many more people in this country every day than guns do. With your logic we should ban assault weapons and pistols cause there only real purpose is to harm humans. With that logic, would you advocate banning any activity or device that is more dangerous statistically than guns? I.E. no cars, no fatty foods etc. . . ?
B.

In reply,

We do live our lives by stats. They are used to quantify into laws things like speed limits, legal medical procedures and meathods, which sporting events come to be or not to be (if too dangerous), legal aspects in certain professions and the entire health and life insurance industries relation to the community is based on statistical data.

Car wrecks when they are accidents ( ie not drunk driver or intentional) and cigs are victimless crimes. Most gun deaths are victim crimes. Apples and oranges. The primary purpose of an auto is travel , I have no idea what the purpose of smoking is suppose to be, the primary use for handguns and assult rifles is murder. If I were advocating a ban on shotguns and deer rifles the parallel would make more sense because the primary use of those insturments is hunting.

[robtex]

Originally Posted by MdmSzdWhtGuy

However, just hoping that I can get the other fellow to agree to a knife fight, or a bare fisted fight is kind of putting my head in the sand, and I am not willing to do that. If the street tough, the home invader etc. . . has access to a gun, I want to be quite certain I have the same.
B.

What about pepper spray or a taser? Why go to the lethal aternative first? If you run into a home invader and he is armed unless you it was dark and you had a blunt or edged weapon you are outta luck. By the time you get your gun you will have bullet holes in you. However, if you find a home invader in the dark and reach for you gun and are able to fire first you probably just killed your spouse or kid statistically speaking:
1) http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/f...ets/?page=home

2) http://www.jointogether.org/gv/help/parents/what/whatF/

[MdmSzdWhtGuy]

Sir, it is obvious that you and I are not going to come to any sort of agreement on this subject. It has been fun debating with you, I wish you all the best, and certainly hope I don't ever have to rely on someone with a similar outlook to come to the aid of those I love.

B.