Father Heathen
Veteran Member
So what makes it an "obsession"?
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Arm the civilians VS Disarm Civilians , which safer ?
- Thread starter Godobeyer
- Start date
So what makes it an "obsession"?
what possibility (cases) that you should used your gun to kill ?
Sees
Dragonslayer
Just to touch on the stereotypes - Guns, like any other tool used by good folks willing and able, are used to stop a threat - not to kill. Most shootings don't result in death.
If you need to defend your self, friends, family, other good folks, etc. from threat of death or serious bodily harm, then you are justified in using lethal force if necessary.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
The countries with the most guns with a single exception seem to have the most gun violence. Places without guns tend to have less gun violence. Seems like a pretty straightforward answer.
honestly , is most threats of death just because other guys had gun too ?
Really , I buy gun to protect my self from others had guns !!
for home safety in city , i prefer home security alert (alarm) .
for my opinion the gun required is isolated places , like farm or desert , when someone live almost alone .
most of shoots may break bones or make some handicape forever .
thanks for this input
this is very logical answser , that's my point that i try to explain
I'm having to think really carefully on this but I'm going to vote "it is safer to disarm civillians." This does to some extent go contary to my own political views but I feel it is necessary to face up to some illusions on this score. I recognise that there is indeed an exception to this, in which a civillan population needs access to guns to defend itself against tyrannical government. I believe that a people have a right to revolution and there are indeed things worth fighting for. my apologies for this wall of text, but I feel it is necessary to do justice to this problem.
However, Is the right of civillians to bear arms a necessary precondition to exercise the right to revolution and to defend the right of the people to self-determination?
The question here is over the legality of gun ownership. A state is only a state so long as it can cliam a monopoly of force as the soverign of a given territory. A state that denies this, will cease to be a state. Revolution, no matter in what country you are in or what system of government you are under, is always illegal. The legal right of a person to own a gun, and the natural right to use it to oppose tryanny and therefore always mutually opposed to one another. Gun control therefore makes sense as a means to secure the soverignty of the state over a given territory.
The second issue, is that the right to revolution is a collective right for the people to assert themselves as the source of soverignty of the state and that no state can govern without some degree of consent. The right to gun ownership is based on private property, and is therefore primarily an individual right. it is only a collective right based on a legally constituted voluntary assocation, but it cannot constitute an organised group that challanges the soverignty of the state without forsaking the legal protection of that state. An individual can assasinate a head of state, but they cannot topple a government as there is always someone in a line of succession, whether in a civillian or military role, to take over as head of a state.
To argue therefore, in either case, that gun ownership is a necessary right of an individual or of a legally constituted group to negate the legal basis for the protection of their own rights by employing violence against a government or its civillian population, is the right to terrorism rather than to revolution. terrorism, as an individual act to coerce a government or to use its power to deny rights to other people and force a change it's behaviour is always an admission of defeat and of futility. it means that those changes cannot come about by legal channels.To all intents and purposes, the feriousity of terrorism is proportional to it's futility. We can therefore see, that the legal right to own a gun, is not a necessary precondition to the natural right to self-determination, nor to the effective exercise of that right.
Revolutions are made by masses of people, not lone individuals, or small groups. A small group of well-armed and well-organised individuals, can stage a coup, but that is not representative of the collective right of the people to self-determination. What this boils down to, is that the right to own guns constitutes a legal basis for terrorism and coup de tats, rather than for revolutionary change. it is the right of a minority to arms themselves, and to dictate to the majority their behaviour through fear, and to deny them their rights. The right to own guns is the assertion of the right of an individual to be a dictator and to deny the soverignty of the people and their free and uncoerced expression of democratic right to self-determination.
we all like to think that when we have rights, that we will exercise them rationally. This is rarely true, as we are not perfect. that is typically not an argument against denying people's liberties because the very exercise of our freedoms entails accepting the responsibility that with our freedoms, we can make mistakes. a right to bear arms, is a right to kill. with that right comes the responsibility to protect against the possibility that we will kill someone we do not intend to kill, an innocent. The reality is, is that their is no training, no uniform, no ideology which can prevent accidents or fatalities. death is the ultimate mistake. you cannot take it back. There is nothing on this earth more valuable than a human life, because with one life dies the one thing we cannot replace; individuality. that uniqueness which breathed and walked among us, for good or ill, a member of our species.
violence does not discriminate. violence is used against groups to which we assign a label of "enemy" and thereby deny individuality or the worthiness of others to possess it because we believe some great evil stirs in their hearts and minds which we cannot forgive. names become numbers and that is all we see. For that reason, there are no just wars even if we may convince ourselves they may be necessary. We turn others into a statistic, as they do us. violence creates anonymity, not individuality. it robs us of our humanity, that which we all share that makes us unique. as we deny it to others, so we deny it to ourselves and are denied it.
the right to revolution comes with a responsibility; that is raising arms against a government which we percieve to be illegitimate, that we become legitimate. might does not make right. replacing one tryanny with another betrays the right to self-determination. revolutions are necessary, but are not just. The necessary precondition to overthrowing tryanny is the belief that it is possible and that people can make the new world, rather than simply destroy the old one. a revolutionary is a doomed man because to fight tryanny you have to use the tools of the tyrant. a product of the old world, they defeat themselves and their past to make the future. it is only the sense that tyranny is inescapable that makes tyrants strong and that is independent of the ability of the people to chose their future. Niether Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot were defeated by their own people inspite of their capacity for evil to them. In order for people to become aware that this is an illusion something more fundamental is at work to unite people in a common objective and to recognise that change is possible. Yet, the most noble of human aspirations to be free is inescapably tainted by the injustice of the methods to which will be used. it is, like war, a form of madness. life is born out of death.
As a collective right, it is the right of one society to commit sucicide because it has become so inevitably tainted by its past, that only a "clensing" injustice will make it right and give another generation a future. they earn the right to revolution not because they learn to kill, but because they learn to die so that others may enjoy the freedoms they do not. Some die literally, whilsts others in their generation die psychologically as they are denied their individuality and their humanity. Whilst knowing the love of mankind to safeguard its future they will never live long enough to see the absolution of their sins in their descendants freedom. As prisoners of circumstances, they have already lost their individuality which can make them human. day to day survival is a futile objective. it stops being a question of if and becomes a question of when, it ceases to be a choice and becomes an inescapable necessity that they cannot see a status quo perpetuated any longer.
The state won't give them guns and yet they would revolt without them. tryanny is defeated because it has defeated itself by leaving people no other alternative whilst simultaneously making possible the seeds of a new world. they make revolution with whatever they have not because its right but because it is the only human thing left to do. A revolution is not murder. it is sucicide. it is the negation of individuals rights to further a collective rights. guns help that objective, but are therefore not a necesary precondition of it because they intend to change things whether they survive or not.
However, Is the right of civillians to bear arms a necessary precondition to exercise the right to revolution and to defend the right of the people to self-determination?
The question here is over the legality of gun ownership. A state is only a state so long as it can cliam a monopoly of force as the soverign of a given territory. A state that denies this, will cease to be a state. Revolution, no matter in what country you are in or what system of government you are under, is always illegal. The legal right of a person to own a gun, and the natural right to use it to oppose tryanny and therefore always mutually opposed to one another. Gun control therefore makes sense as a means to secure the soverignty of the state over a given territory.
The second issue, is that the right to revolution is a collective right for the people to assert themselves as the source of soverignty of the state and that no state can govern without some degree of consent. The right to gun ownership is based on private property, and is therefore primarily an individual right. it is only a collective right based on a legally constituted voluntary assocation, but it cannot constitute an organised group that challanges the soverignty of the state without forsaking the legal protection of that state. An individual can assasinate a head of state, but they cannot topple a government as there is always someone in a line of succession, whether in a civillian or military role, to take over as head of a state.
To argue therefore, in either case, that gun ownership is a necessary right of an individual or of a legally constituted group to negate the legal basis for the protection of their own rights by employing violence against a government or its civillian population, is the right to terrorism rather than to revolution. terrorism, as an individual act to coerce a government or to use its power to deny rights to other people and force a change it's behaviour is always an admission of defeat and of futility. it means that those changes cannot come about by legal channels.To all intents and purposes, the feriousity of terrorism is proportional to it's futility. We can therefore see, that the legal right to own a gun, is not a necessary precondition to the natural right to self-determination, nor to the effective exercise of that right.
Revolutions are made by masses of people, not lone individuals, or small groups. A small group of well-armed and well-organised individuals, can stage a coup, but that is not representative of the collective right of the people to self-determination. What this boils down to, is that the right to own guns constitutes a legal basis for terrorism and coup de tats, rather than for revolutionary change. it is the right of a minority to arms themselves, and to dictate to the majority their behaviour through fear, and to deny them their rights. The right to own guns is the assertion of the right of an individual to be a dictator and to deny the soverignty of the people and their free and uncoerced expression of democratic right to self-determination.
we all like to think that when we have rights, that we will exercise them rationally. This is rarely true, as we are not perfect. that is typically not an argument against denying people's liberties because the very exercise of our freedoms entails accepting the responsibility that with our freedoms, we can make mistakes. a right to bear arms, is a right to kill. with that right comes the responsibility to protect against the possibility that we will kill someone we do not intend to kill, an innocent. The reality is, is that their is no training, no uniform, no ideology which can prevent accidents or fatalities. death is the ultimate mistake. you cannot take it back. There is nothing on this earth more valuable than a human life, because with one life dies the one thing we cannot replace; individuality. that uniqueness which breathed and walked among us, for good or ill, a member of our species.
violence does not discriminate. violence is used against groups to which we assign a label of "enemy" and thereby deny individuality or the worthiness of others to possess it because we believe some great evil stirs in their hearts and minds which we cannot forgive. names become numbers and that is all we see. For that reason, there are no just wars even if we may convince ourselves they may be necessary. We turn others into a statistic, as they do us. violence creates anonymity, not individuality. it robs us of our humanity, that which we all share that makes us unique. as we deny it to others, so we deny it to ourselves and are denied it.
the right to revolution comes with a responsibility; that is raising arms against a government which we percieve to be illegitimate, that we become legitimate. might does not make right. replacing one tryanny with another betrays the right to self-determination. revolutions are necessary, but are not just. The necessary precondition to overthrowing tryanny is the belief that it is possible and that people can make the new world, rather than simply destroy the old one. a revolutionary is a doomed man because to fight tryanny you have to use the tools of the tyrant. a product of the old world, they defeat themselves and their past to make the future. it is only the sense that tyranny is inescapable that makes tyrants strong and that is independent of the ability of the people to chose their future. Niether Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot were defeated by their own people inspite of their capacity for evil to them. In order for people to become aware that this is an illusion something more fundamental is at work to unite people in a common objective and to recognise that change is possible. Yet, the most noble of human aspirations to be free is inescapably tainted by the injustice of the methods to which will be used. it is, like war, a form of madness. life is born out of death.
As a collective right, it is the right of one society to commit sucicide because it has become so inevitably tainted by its past, that only a "clensing" injustice will make it right and give another generation a future. they earn the right to revolution not because they learn to kill, but because they learn to die so that others may enjoy the freedoms they do not. Some die literally, whilsts others in their generation die psychologically as they are denied their individuality and their humanity. Whilst knowing the love of mankind to safeguard its future they will never live long enough to see the absolution of their sins in their descendants freedom. As prisoners of circumstances, they have already lost their individuality which can make them human. day to day survival is a futile objective. it stops being a question of if and becomes a question of when, it ceases to be a choice and becomes an inescapable necessity that they cannot see a status quo perpetuated any longer.
The state won't give them guns and yet they would revolt without them. tryanny is defeated because it has defeated itself by leaving people no other alternative whilst simultaneously making possible the seeds of a new world. they make revolution with whatever they have not because its right but because it is the only human thing left to do. A revolution is not murder. it is sucicide. it is the negation of individuals rights to further a collective rights. guns help that objective, but are therefore not a necesary precondition of it because they intend to change things whether they survive or not.
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
How does one determine, though, whether gun laws are creating a generally violent lifeway, or simply reflecting one? The fact that security is so often the reason cited for individuals and policy-makers suggests that the violence itself is a major reason why liberal policies on gun usage are desired. As a student of US history, I do not see our ongoing problems with violent altercations as an incidental result of gun availability. While I support stricter gun regulations, I harbor no illusion that this will stop the violence we experience, which has older and deeper roots than the gun market as it now exists. Indeed, I would be surprised if a general policy of disarmament even had much impact on gun use itself, at least if the implementation of gun control were handled anything like our uselessly oppressive and quantifiably unsuccessful War on Drugs. We wrote this story; the "gun culture" is just the punctuation.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
Violence in general perhaps not. However gun violence is directly tied to availability of guns. How many gun deaths are there in England? Japan? Sweden? Germany? Australia? Or any other country without easy access to guns? Can you name a country with easy access to guns with the exception of Switzerland that doesn't have a high gun death rate?
Politesse
Amor Vincit Omnia
I am in no wise arguing with the correlation. What I am inquiring about is the issue of causation. I feel there is a false assumption being made with respect to the trajectories of our respective nations. The disarmament of Europe was a response to particular historical events and political relationships, and probably could not have occurred otherwise; our race wars and the ongoing consequences of the much more recent creation of our empire make the United States a different terrain in any number of ways that would effect this discussion.
Monk Of Reason
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
I don't think that there is any evidence what so ever to suggest that increase gun ownership is the result of gun violence. I think that the "cause" of the violence is there if we had the guns or not. However the guns actively provide a means in which to carry out that violence. Otherwise it would have stifled. At the very least we wouldn't see mass killings of children at schools. I can't take out 40 people with a pocket knife and my wiles. I could very easily do this as an untrained person in a dark and crowded theater had I a firearm.
If I traveled outside of the country, I would abide by the laws of the country I travel to.
I don't own a gun and don't want one, anyway, because I am suicidal at times. It's not a good thing for me to be around firearms.
Depends on local laws and the preferences of the business at hand.
Koldo
Outstanding Member
I will share the following article: http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/the-correlation-between-gun-ownership-and-homicide-rate-55467
My conclusion is that the homicide rate is not significantly tied to ( legal ) gun ownership even though there may be a slight connection in there. This is shown by how being developing country, rather than a developed country, has a MUCH bigger impact on the statistics.
Since the USA might have certain peculiarities, it would be imprudent for me to say that it would benefit from a ban on guns.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
Doesn't explain how those opinions could be described as an "obsession" as per the definition. I suppose we could just as easily describe the other side of the argument as "paranoia/hysteria".
But I think such descriptors betray emotional bias.
Father Heathen
Veteran Member
You oversimplify. Possession can serve as a deterrence without directly threatening someone. Also, people can aim at non-vital areas with the intention to incapacitate rather than to kill. Guns are also used for sports of marksmanship (such as 'skeet' shooting, biathlon, etc.). Also, while it's still killing, they're used by hunters and farmers for food and protecting livestock from predators.
Twilight Hue
Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Also a straight foreward answer would be an increased rate of knife and blunt instrument violence in gun restricted environments.
Absence of guns correlates with increased trust in govt. for everything. That is not a good idea for USA, especially right now when we are the most monitored people and have the most computerized govt. Our govt. has shown itself to be inept in protecting us while it is plenty good at getting us into trouble. It gets us easily into expensive wars and bad diplomatic situations, but then it spies on us and at the same time leaks its own information all over the place, including the personal details of the federal govt.'s own employees! Look also at how vulnerable the us populace is should the govt. decide to start turning off power grids, water supplies or food supplies. We are no longer a nation of farmers but of city-kept people, vulnerable to every menacing action. It is not the time to give up our gun rights. At voting time, how do we know that the elections aren't rigged? They are increasingly computerized. How do we fight against the pollsters who constantly tell our politicians which lies to speak to us? Who will keep these stupid senators in their 'Genie' bottle. They constantly fight against us, gerrymandering our voting precincts and lying to us. No, it is not the time to give up our right to bear arms.
McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
What happened in Oregon was no accident.because I don't take the habit to see someone "civilian" carry gun around me
for my personal opinion which based on my life (which empty of guns) : I find it not safe that people around me carry guns .
I like exchange opinions and views .
It was a calculated murder spree.
Interesting though, how you get so much distance out of this count the hits, ignore the misses.
McBell
mantra-chanting henotheistic snake handler
Careful, your ignorance is showing.
Guns are used for several things other than killing.
Marksmanship competitions, collectibles, decorations, heirlooms, etc.
Except when people are shot in the leg...
Interesting definition of "threaten" you must have.
I have already provided a list that shows you are just plain flat out wrong.
Good thing your ignorance is not the guiding light for the country.