All of the things you mentioned in this post have purposes other than killing. Guns are for killing only. Knives, pencils, cars, chainsaws, etc all have potential to be deadly, but that's not what they're primarily used for. Guns just harm, that's all.
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President Barack Obama preparing to issue Executive Order on gun control
- Thread starter RustyNails
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All of the things you mentioned in this post have purposes other than killing. Guns are for killing only. Knives, pencils, cars, chainsaws, etc all have potential to be deadly, but that's not what they're primarily used for. Guns just harm, that's all.
Fenderputty
Banned
Right ... I"m for stricter regulation and such. It would be nice to discuss these things in ernest without having to deal with appeals to emotion.
Accept a pencil wasn't design for the purpose of killing. Anyways there is no reason not to make gun laws more strict.
Those who own guns and die by them have essentially said, when they encourage proliferation and defeat controls, that "these deaths are an acceptable consequence of my right to own a gun".
Those who do not have said no such thing, although they are being forced into a situation by gun owners in which their lives are essentially forfeit.
Like I said in my first post.
evilromero
Member
I'm pretty sure no reasonable person in here is recommending a ban on firearms. That is not and should not be the discussion since it's clearly stated that the executive order would seek to strengthen gun control laws.
Do you consider "fundamental right, founding fathers" stuff to be appeals to emotion?
Fenderputty
Banned
I'm responding to the nonsensical notion that, "everyone is a responsible gun owner until they're not"
Shao Kahn on the Lawn
Member
There are situations and circumstances that legally allow one human being killing another. What is your point?
In which their lives are essentially forfeit? Exaggerated language doesn't make your argument any more convincing.
Again, this same argument can be made for anything. I am now against baseball bats because while they bring joy to baseball players and fans they can be used as a bludgeoning device in crimes and can kill. So what? Anyone who holds this belief is welcome to it and may attempt to pass legislation to ban baseball bats but let's get real, that ain't happening.
Yes, guns are much more dangerous and have a higher ratio of harm:benefit than most anything else, but that's just how it is. The American population has agreed that that ratio, while quite bad, is acceptable.
It is a false equivalency in part because you are acting like the risk/benefit ratio to the public health is such that a comparison like that between motorcycles and guns is interchangeable. It isnt.
The gun control argument is one built firmly on the risk/benefit analysis. A component of that is the fact that guns are not essential to everyday life. Making the argument for their benefits demonstrably lower then that of a motorcycle which serves as a means of transportation.
That's got to be one of the more macabre phrasings of the need for firearms I've ever seen.
Fenderputty
Banned
Sure, it can be. I believe in the personal freedom to own a gun. I do not believe this freedom means massive regulation isn't a part of that freedom. I don't believe what I just said is an appeal to emotion.
CraigerGamer
Member
Except the purpose of being a homeowner is to you, you know, provide shelter.
Except the purpose of medication is to, you know, feel better.
Except the purpose of a car stereo is to, you know, listen to music.
The very purpose of a gun is to kill something.
Okay this is where we disconnect. I consider the idea of "personal freedom to own a gun" to have zero logical value. I can't wrap my mind around the idea from a non-emotional point of view.
Shao Kahn on the Lawn
Member
Am I supposed to be upset by the fact that a woman, properly armed and trained, can kill her would-be rapist with an object designed to kill because it was designed to kill?
That same appeal to emotion has been made numerous times here.
depths20XX
Member
Why are people talking about motorcycles, baseball bats, and pencils? Outta here with that shit.
A gun is made specifically for killing people. It's actually really good at it.
A gun is made specifically for killing people. It's actually really good at it.
Especially since it's right there in the text!
Speaking of which, where's that militia I've heard so much about?
As you as you are aware that it is massively more likely that a would-be rapist would use a gun to force a woman to have sex with him.
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
he means the USA is a country in which our rights are NOT given by law but are secured by law. Basically we don't have guns because of the 2nd amendment, the amendment secures that the right will never be infringed.
Ryan242004
Member
That's not an accurate statement but that's bedsides the point.
Alcoremortis
Member
As someone who grew up in a house with a pool, there are actually pretty strict laws about having a personal pool. You're liable for any death that occurs in the pool and are required to have some sort of locked fence around the pool or backyard to prevent people from falling in the pool. If guns had even a fraction of the regulation on them that swimming pools have, I think a lot of people in this thread wouldn't be complaining.
when does this ever actually happen?
Coffee Dog
Banned
Except the vast majority of the time it's the rapist using the gun not the victim. Also most people with guns are not properly trained, since you don't need any training to get a gun.
Shao Kahn on the Lawn
Member
A 200+lb male could subdue a person with or without a weapon or, in lieu of firearms, easily use a knife.
It's happened. Women are not powerless even in the face of an attacker with a firearm: there have been some to wrestle the firearm away from their attacker and kill them, as was the case here.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=125846
The argument that seems to be evolving now is the question of whether or not that guy would have tried to rape her if he hadn't had access to a firearm. I somehow doubt that lack of access to firearms will stop rapists from attacking people but a woman possessing a firearm provides her with at least some equal measure in the situation.
So preventable deaths should continue to occur simply because of social inertia?
Also, do you have any issue with extrapolating "majority decides if minority dies" to other social problems? It seems an inhuman way to run a society, so I'm not sure why it gets a pass in this case.
And what's that point again? I'm still not clear on how advocacy for gun control and the use of a regulated service of professionally trained and accountable agents who use firearms are meant to be mutually exclusive or hypocritical. Not just anyone can become a secret service agent, you know.
Have you not seen Thelma and Louise?!
CharminUltra
Member
I dunno, I stabbed my finger with a pencil once and it hurt like hell. I had to put on a bandaid and all.
Which is a tautological argument.
Carrying the gun would mean she was 5 times more likely to be shot if assaulted:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
An NRA-sponsored ban on the NIH conducting gun research swiftly followed.
That's a strawman argument. Very few men are that powerfully built, and it is still far more effective to commit a crime with a gun than merely a knife or with your hands.
My point was that it is very unlikely but the reverse is not.
Fenderputty
Banned
Firstly, I don't agree that the purpose of a gun is to kill something. IT can be, but plenty of owners never intend to do anything but shoot targets. Secondly, I'm not arguing the merit of each. If you want to argue the merit of owning a home with a pool compared to owning a gun, do so. I'm illustrating why it's illogical to say "everyone is a responsible gun owner until they're not". That statement itself can be applied to just about everything and isn't constructive to this conversation. It's an appeal to emotion.
I believe in the personal freedom to do whatever drug you want as well. I have an entire family structure built around hunting. I grew up with doing trips with all the Italian men in our family including my father, brother, cousins, uncles and grandfather. I plan on taking my child so they can experience the same with their grandfather and cousins and uncles. Yes I think personal freedom is important here. It has merit.
This disconnect shouldn't matter though. We both agree that this personal freedom shouldn't mean it goes unchecked and unregulated. There are way to reduce ownership without it trampling on millions upon million of responsible gun owner's freedoms.
I'm for regulation. Please see above to understand my argument here.
Yes, because if you use your brain,, you'd understand that there's nothing "fundamental" about the right to own a gun. The right to privacy in your own home, the freedom to express yourself and pursue spiritual growth and communicate, the right to defend yourself. These are fundamental rights. Things that people would generally acknowledge as rights regardless of whether or not they're explicitly stated in law. Owning a gun is considered a right because of a modern individualistic interpretation of the 2nd amendment after militias fell out of favor (militias both the original intended format of our federal armed forces, and the entire reason for the 2nd amendment). But you would be hard pressed to find anyone, in any society, who thinks owning a gun is a fundamental right, in the absence of policy stating as such.
In other words, it's not really a right, so much as a privilege that we happen to have really low barriers to entry and loose oversight. This is exemplified by the fact that we forbid certain individuals from owning a firearm. If it were such a fundamental, inalienable right, that wouldn't be the case.
Cow Mengde
Banned
Tell me, when was the last time someone walked into a theater and started a massacre with a swimming pool, meds, or car stereo?
Ryan242004
Member
The point is guns are being used to protect them for the rest of their lives and yet the average citizen is demonized for wanting to protect themselves. Now if we all had secret service agents protecting everyone then maybe the world would be a different place. However... After the numerous scandals that have rocked the secret service in the last few years the entry bar might be lower than you think.
There's a huge disconnect here with that argument. You're shooting targets with enough force to kill a human being or large animal. If you were purely about shooting targets, you wouldn't need anything beyond a BB gun. It's pretty obvious that owning a firearm is about far more that merely shooting targets, even if that is all you do.
Why does this nonsense have to be in a thread like this? You are much much more likely to be killed by a citizen compared to a police officer. 12,000 people killed by shooting by citizen. 1,000 people killed by police (not just firearm related, and doesn't include justified shootings) sorry couldn't find a more specific source. You won't reply though because it was just a drive by post.
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org
http://killedbypolice.net
CraigerGamer
Member
Great! Lets get rid of the guns and replace them with pellets! Or get rid of all bullets and replace them with blanks. I'm sure you and every other gun defender would totally agree to this.
See how ridiculous that sounds? Its because the purpose of a gun is not target practice. its to incapacitate a living being by piercing internal organs with a high speed piece of material.
If historically 9% of your field has been assassinated, I think it warrants an armed security team.
The assassination rate/attempted assassination rate of presidents and former presidents kind of warrants the protection.
And you realize the odds of this actually happening, compared to the statistics that far more favor the narrative that you're more likely to use that gun in an accidental shooting or a suicide, are beyond unfavorable?
Even well-trained police officers screw up and screw up often. The narrative that a woman can suddenly become a calm and collected sure-fire shot female Rambo in her time of need, while not impossible, is so vastly inferior to the amount of times the gun would just be used incorrectly or that an assault would happen while a victim doesn't see it coming or has no access to the weapon. And that assumes the assailant isn't armed either...
... And there's a reason non-lethal alternatives like stunguns and pepper spray exist.
And even then, most law officials say it's better to flee from conflict and assault than to engage it or stand your ground.
Everything you are talking about comes back to a central core tenant that we as a society have used to determine regulatory standards, what is legal and not legal and the way certain aspects of a society can be administered: cost/benefit analysis.
So pointing out that a guns primary purpose and function is to kill is not a red herring, it is a vital component of nailing down what the actual cost/benefit of firearms themselves is.
The fact is we have a class of objects thats wide proliferation and ease of access has been demonstrably shown to correlate to higher rates of gun violence. As shown above, gun carrying doesnt so much protect you as it actually increases your risk for assault. Which is similar to other studies that have shown defensive gun use as a deterrent to self and familial harm to be a myth. On the other side of that equation we have the benefits. Which are what exactly? joy to hobbyists? target shooting and recreational hunting?
To me the overwhelming evidence shows that the current situation with firearms is creating way too high of a risk compared to the benefits. Now to be fair any solution is subject to the same analysis and from point of view an outright ban would both be unnecessary and likely incur too many costs compared to alternatives.
Fenderputty
Banned
I own a BB gun. It's used as a training wheels. They're just not as fun to shoot targets with. Nor are they going to shoot a moving clay out of the sky. If you like to ride motorcycles as a hobby you probably started on something with reduced power and upped the power as you became more comfortable.
This doesn't mean that people don't buy weapons with the intent to use as a killing machine. People buy for protection. I believe this is a silly reason to own though. Statistic show that owning a gun makes one more likely to be involved in an accidental death than actual defensive use. That's part of the discussion though. Part of the give and take.
It sounds ridiculous. But not for the reason you think.
As stated above I agree with this. I think owning for defensive purposes is rather paranoid myself. That's why I think this discussion is important though. I didn't always feel that way. Debates have lead me to refine my beliefs. That's why the discussion is important and why the demonizing needs to stop. We might actually get somewhere. There's education that can be achieved on both sides of the isle.
appaws
Banned
Fabricated? Someone earlier in this thread called Obama's silly, illegal order a good "first step."
You just have to look at these threads to see that I am not "creating" anything. I see tons of outright ban arguments all the time, including in this very thread. I am not "creating" that...and if it is even one iota representative of the attitude of individuals and groups who oppose individual liberty, then you can't say that I am "creating" the inference. It seems to be everywhere this is discussed.
DonasaurusRex
Online Ho Champ
how so?
Mammoth Jones
Member
Yes, they absolutely can be fucked with. Go ahead and get a majority of the American population to agree with altering the Second Amendment.
Good Luck.
Correct. I own a gun to defend my home if need be. Regardless of how people that have never known me or my situation claim I'd never need it ever.
Saying there exists people that want something and then inferring that their desire will translate to actual policy is another.
There are people in support of climate change legislation that would be more then happy to ban all emissions and force society back into hunter and gathers. But it is preposterous to infer that because those people support a cap and trade bill that ultimately passing such legislation will eventually lead to what the radicals of that group want.
He's not interested in statistics, he wasn't concerned about the actual incidence of mental illness in regards to gun violence either.
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