All Things Second Amendment

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
And if Town were free to actually carry /bear his seven round lever action rifle, and saw what the killer was trying to do with his truck, he could have shot him and saved innocent lives.

Likely, unless he saw me first and shot me before I could identify his purpose.

But Town doesn't actually believe we have a right to bear arms, he just believes we have a right to own ("keep") them, but not bear them.
No idea why you'd believe that.

No kidding. This is the hill you want to die on, that he wasn't suicidal? My goodness.
What hill? I hadn't heard that. More than a few of these nuts flee the scene.

I wrote: I know he was an angry white kid with a supremacist mindset who seemed determined to kill a number of people and managed a bit of it. I think it's a good idea for people to know that. And after that, to forget he ever existed.

Why, exactly?
Why should we know anything more than some people died in California? Because knowledge is power that can be used to inform how we respond to something like this.

And I mentioned the 15 murders, attempted murder being legally equivalent to deliberate unlawful homicides.
I don't know why you believe that, but attempted murder isn't the same as murder and all you do by mixing the two is rob the incident of clarity that matters.

Show where I said that the dispute concerns the abolition of the Second Amendment?
Okay, my mistake then. Meanwhile, I've set out fairly clearly exactly what I'm speaking to, for, and why.

What's your position on actually bearing arms then?
I'm not opposed to lawfully carrying arms. I'm also not opposed to there being limitations on where you can do that. Around here, most people had rifles and shotguns in racks in their trucks, especially during hunting season, when I was a kid. Few do it these days because it would be an invitation to window repair and an insurance claim. I wouldn't want to see firearms in a bar.

So, I believe you have the right to do more than possess them in your home. I also believe that right isn't absolute. That is, you can't bear it in my home if I don't want it, or in my bar if it strikes me as a bad idea.

You won't answer this.
It helps if you ask a question and then wait on the answer first. I think it's a different angle on the same balancing/exercise question.

That's what I said.
If that's what you were trying to communicate, why put it among other weapons, in less clear language and, most importantly, why did you say it again? It wouldn't be a point in contention.

So that's a big, fat, 'No' to my question then.
Rather, it's a, "You're trying to distract by creating a litmus with no actual value," answer. Nothing in my note is actually disputed by you or it.

You don't have a citation.
I don't need one. It's in the function of the weapon, what distinguishes it from other rifles.

Yeah there's lots to be thankful for here. What an awful thing to say at this point, trying to make a political point.
There's nothing wrong about noting that if bump stocks had still been legal when this guy bought his gun the carnage could have been much greater. In fact, it underscores the potential impact of stronger gun laws.

There are too many kids being buried to worry after offending people who would have defended the very thing that could have raised that body count. Those who wouldn't understand why "a more appropriate time" has largely been the mantra of the status quo crowd.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
Meanwhile, as of 7/30/2019 there have been 286 mass shootings in the nation, claiming 304 lives and injuring another 1,078.

This is an increase in number of shootings by 27, and the death toll is slightly behind last year's 317 killed while over a hundred more were wounded than last year's 952 at the same time.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
I miss Ermy. Such a cool guy.


It's worth calling attention to the fact that, despite firing lots of bullets from these two extremely dangerous guns, and many of those at full auto, neither Ermy or either of his assistants murdered a single innocent child.

Maybe it's not the guns
 

Yorzhik

Well-known member
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Yorzhik; said:
You never did answer a question that would be good for you to answer: If our leaders decided to confiscate semi-autos instead of doing a buy-back, would you still support them?
I don't think that's a good question.
It's a hypothetical. Thanks for answering by not answering.

I think it's a paranoid fantasy I'm being asked to relate to. Now if you asked me how I'd address guns already in the hands of citizens, I'd say do what they did in Australia and create buy back programs. Beyond that, I'd simply make the continued possession illegal and the manufacturing or distribution illegal and let attrition take care of the guns.
Not only do you support confiscation by forced sale, but you support confiscation if people don't want to sell (but I repeat myself).

Forced sale is the same as rape, but throwing money at the woman and calling it prostitution.

Of course an oversimplification can still hit on the major point of contention. Why would you think it precludes that?
Because you didn't answer the major point of contention. You called my nutshell assessment an oversimplification and turned up your nose.

Rather, it was more particularly setting out sorts of guns I oppose. I also oppose (and have noted it) large magazines, speed loaders, and bump stocks.
Not at all. It was you saying you wanted to remove what is, in your esteemed opinion, certain guns from the stream of commerce. This is what elites like Gruber would do, say "remove from the stream of commerce" when they meant "confiscate property from innocent citizens".

I've never cared or taken a position about the number of guns, though you really can't empirically establish your claim as a rule because, in part, we don't register our weapons. So you might have one guy, a collector or seller, with thousands of guns living in a remote area with little to no crime and say, "See? All these guns and look how safe it is?"
Nope. We can establish with some reasonable accuracy how many households have a gun in those same areas.

So own a hundred guns if you like. It's your right. I'm speaking to something else and where that something else exists the rates of gun violence and homicides are dramatically lower than they are here.
Violence rates are lower where gun regulations are less in the US. If you want to solve the problem of violence look where the violence is. Hint: it's where the gangs are.

And I'm going to cull the rest of the little people song and dance.
That's what the elites do. But since the elites are in power, and the little people are those being culled, I'm going to continue to point it out.

It is if you think your AR is what stands between you and tyranny.
Of course not. That would just be you looking down your nose at an innocent citizen that statistically means nothing. But for some reason, tyrants don't want guns in the hands of millions of individually insignificant citizens.

Your only hope on that count is at the ballot box and in your ability to convince people to value what you value.
That's what Saddam Hussein told the Shia's he lorded over.

Yorzhik said:
And after you've taken almost everyone's guns
See...you can't claim to understand my position and write that sentence, because it oversimplifies to the point of misstating my actual position. You mean, once the limited type of guns I actually object to, which are a small percentage of the guns owned and available, once they are no longer in use. And I'm not advocating and haven't advocated taking them to begin with, supra.
Not only are semi-autos estimated at %40-%60 percent of guns in the US, the rest of your bans and requirements ensure innocent people will unknowingly become criminals. Many more currently responsible people will be dissuaded from going through the process at all - similar to what the Nazi's accomplished with the Jews before they started there final solution.

I'm not suggesting we can stop every murder. But we can impact the ease of them, and the death toll from gun violence. True in Australia, and true everywhere those laws are on the books.
If you aren't stopping every murder, then you don't care at all about those being murdered.

We are asking you why would we change society for a statistically insignificant number of deaths. You claim we don't care about the lives of these few - an emotional appeal. But any death at all uses your same argument.

I haven't been vague about my position. I'm for the right to bear arms, so it ends with that right in tact, In fact, the weapons I'm in favor of are vastly superior instruments than the ones our Founding Fathers found sufficient for the right's exercise.
You haven't been vague about your arbitrary position. But you are too good discuss the natural conclusion to your proposal.

No, it doesn't. People, made aware of the law and refusing to follow it make criminals of themselves.
Bad laws are unfair to innocent people. Laws that make a spare magazine that was forgotten about a criminal offense is a bad law.

Yorzhik said:
You're being inconsistent in your arbitrary line.
That's a self-defeating statement.
No, it's just something from one of the little people below your station to consider. If you keep any guns in circulation that use a magazine, getting a high cap one is trivial. Only innocent law abiding citizens will "sell" them to the government while criminals will find them trivial to get, even making them. And then, any low capacity semi-auto like a revolver or SKS will shoot enough people quick enough to invoke the same argument you are using now to get rid of them as well.

Yorzhik said:
If you leave guns that can shoot more than once per reload you are just asking the crazies to keep doing what they are already doing.
You just seriously suggested that someone could pull off the Vegas shooting with a revolver. Can do as much damage as an AR spitting out hundreds of rounds in the time it takes to fire that revolver and reload it. That's not reasonable, to be charitable.

What I'm after isn't going to cure mental illness or end the wrongful use of weapons. But what it will do is take an instrument designed to kill a lot of people in a crazy hurry out of their hands. And that's a good thing for everyone.
Your argument can be used equally as well with guns that can shoot more than once per reload.

You only talk about Braddock because he's an emotional appeal, not because smaller crazy mass murders are any less a tragedy.

Well, no. You keep presenting a false dichotomy, as if the choice is eventually or ultimately between the wild west or a gunless society. That's not rational. In fact, for generations every other Western Industrial Democracy has been doing some version of what I favor and with terrific results.
The Wild West had a gun violence rate, as far as we can tell, similar to rural America today or every other Western Industrial Democracy today. Also, as far as we can tell, every household had a gun in the Wild West. So, yeah, the choice is between the right to defend one's self or eventual tyranny. Remember, once you take away the right to defend one's self, you can't give it back.

Rather, gun registration is an easy process and you don't "get approved" for it. You get approval for other things, like concealed carry permits, but that's already in place. You appear to be conflating points.
If registration is required, a bureaucrat is allowed to reject it, at least eventually.

Don't think that will happen? Has it ever happened in history?
 
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Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
It's a right. What's a right?

Other liberal democratic constitutional republics made a law like the law Town proposes. Town says he supports the right to bear arms, and still proposes we make such a law.

Remember that in and following WWII, the standard issue rifle was the M1 Garand and the standard issue carbine was the M1 Carbine. Americans could own and carry M1 Garands and M1 Carbines most everywhere, freely, openly, and publicly. Most Americans didn't, but we could if we wanted to, and especially if there was something afoot and we had to.

They were both semiautomatic, the carbine fed by a detachable magazine (minimum 15-round capacity).

The M1 Garand rifle used a genuine clip, not a magazine. It's the only gun I know of fed by a literal clip. Something that Town likes to do is call all magazines clips.

The clips held eight rounds. But the rifle was designed to automatically eject the clip once the last round fired, and then the shooter could quickly press in a full clip and keep shooting.

The carbine could also feed from a 30-round magazine. Typically 30-round magazines become much more important to get the spring right because failures to feed can become significantly more likely, especially if you are under fire and need your gun to work to save your spouse's and children's lives, if it ever came to that. Which is only like a 0.09% chance that it will happen.

We reserved the right to bear arms for when we needed to exercise it.
Spoiler
For grammatical reasons we can for simplicity and clarity regard only the 'operative clause' of the Second Amendment for the following thought.

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

Will become, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."​

So is the right to bear arms a right?​

What is a right?
Is free speech a right? Is life? Religious liberty? Abortion? Fornication? Driving?

"The right of the people to speak freely shall not be infringed."

"The right of the people to live shall not be infringed."

"The right of the people to practice religious liberty shall not be infringed."

"The right of the people to get an abortion shall not be infringed."

"The right of the people to fornicate shall not be infringed."

"The right of the people to keep and drive cars shall not be infringed."

Town's idea for a law, sounds like how we treat cars and none of those other things. I don't know if we have a right to keep and drive cars, but if we do, this is what Town's law sounds like.

Town wants to ban Ferraris and Porsches and Corvettes and remove them from the stream of commerce. Real racecars are already heavily regulated under the car version of the NFA, and now Town wants to ban and confiscate the supercars too. The best car we the people will be left with after Town's done, and we get the same law that all the other liberal democratic constitutional republics have wrt guns, is a Kia Optima.​

Fine car. It's just not a Lambo and never will be. You will be fine with the Optima, except for 0.09% of the time, and in that case you really need to accelerate or corner or stop so severely, and if you don't you'll definitely die, and in an Optima, you will die. You only have a 0.09% chance of surviving with the Optima, this 0.09% chance that you'll need the Porsche 911 instead of an Optima.

In that 0.09% chance, when the Optima's not enough to avoid a wreck, either fatal or debilitating, and with a Bugatti you could live and even walk away scott free, if all the supercars are banned, you only have a 0.09% chance of not dying, because you've only got an Optima.

Again fine car. Nothing against that fine car and the fine people who make them and drive them and maintain them.​

Do we have the right to keep and drive cars?
Some people call it a "privilege." You need to be certified to drive, you need a physical permit, you need to drive a registered car, and it too must be licensed and tagged. There cannot be anything very wrong with the car even if it is all those things, or else an leo could order its impound.​

Is that a number of infringements of the right to drive a car? Or is that just a privilege?

What is a right?

No other liberal democratic constitutional republic recognizes, affirms, or even identifies any "right to bear arms" in their laws---none of them.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Meanwhile, as of 7/30/2019 there have been 286 mass shootings in the nation, claiming 304 lives and injuring another 1,078.

This is an increase in number of shootings by 27, and the death toll is slightly behind last year's 317 killed while over a hundred more were wounded than last year's 952 at the same time.
Now go through them case-by-case and tell us which ones used a gun you would ban and return a sensible number.

Then tell us how many lives were saved by guns.

Then put down the statistics and don't touch them again.
 

Town Heretic

Out of Order
Hall of Fame
It's a hypothetical. Thanks for answering by not answering.
If you read in an answer you're just illustrating that paranoid mindset I noted, the wellspring of fantasy.

Not only do you support confiscation by forced sale, but you support confiscation if people don't want to sell (but I repeat myself).
See what I mean? That's why I don't follow you down that fantasy path. And what's odd is that I've literally never spoken in support of door to door, but have more than once noted that all you need is the law. If you can't make and sell them you can't replace and repair them effectively. And if you can't use them on the range, or to actually defend yourself without becoming a criminal in the process, outside of collectors there's no real incentive for anyone to not turn them in, to forego compensation.

Forced sale is the same as rape, but throwing money at the woman and calling it prostitution
That's grotesque, unsupportable rationally, and a poor parallel...but it does underscore my point about paranoia and fantasy. Rather, paying people for the financial inconvenience is a good idea. If it wasn't advanced you'd just tack on "theft!" as well.

Because you didn't answer the major point of contention. You called my nutshell assessment an oversimplification and turned up your nose.
No, I never just declare a thing. I set out why and usually illustrate the error. Unless it's a repeated point I've done that to prior.

Not at all. It was you saying you wanted to remove what is, in your esteemed opinion, certain guns from the stream of commerce.
Like most Western Industrial Democracies, the ones with dramatically safer populations. Sure. It's my opinion that we should learn from nations doing a better job of it.

This is what elites like Gruber would do, say "remove from the stream of commerce" when they meant "confiscate property from innocent citizens".
It's what rational people do when they realize the guns you're fighting to protect actually make them less safe when they're in circulation.

Nope. We can establish with some reasonable accuracy how many households have a gun in those same areas.
I can establish with absolute certainty how many guns there are in my house, but without registration we're really just guessing who has how many nationally.

Violence rates are lower where gun regulations are less in the US.
The opposite is true and I've linked to sites in support with the data. It's even more dramatic comparing nation to nation.

Of course not. That would just be you looking down your nose at an innocent citizen that statistically means nothing. But for some reason, tyrants don't want guns in the hands of millions of individually insignificant citizens.
So Yor doesn't have a rational or factual leg to stand on, which is why he's beating the confiscation, elitist, and nose and tyrant bit. The fact is that I'm all for guns in the hands of US citizens. I own them myself. This isn't about owning guns, or the number of guns you own. It's about laws that will and have, everywhere they're found in likened nations, make you safer. It's about registration, mandatory safety courses, the end of large magazines, bump stocks, and speed loaders, along with a class of weapons that make us less safe by being in the stream of commerce.

It's about working proof in every other Western Democracy going. Don't let him distract you with his kill the messenger/distort the message routine.

This is too important. The other day a teenager in California killed three people and wounded 12 more. One of those dead was six years old. He deserved better and it's time we gave him and all the kids growing up in this nation a better chance of surviving to adulthood.

Not only are semi-autos estimated at %40-%60 percent of guns in the US, the rest of your bans and requirements ensure innocent people will unknowingly become criminals.
You will not cite to any authority on that percentage and no one would become an unknowing criminal. That's part of what you do with a buy back period, make sure that people understand the change in the law.

Many more currently responsible people will be dissuaded from going through the process at all - similar to what the Nazi's accomplished with the Jews before they started there final solution.
Whenever someone compares the efforts of other Americans to make you safer by culling weapons that didn't exist for most of our national life, to the work of Nazis, or rapists, they're only demonstrating a thin hold on reality.

If you aren't stopping every murder, then you don't care at all about those being murdered.
If you can't stop every disease why try to cure any?

We are asking you why would we change society for a statistically insignificant number of deaths.
I wouldn't and I'm not. It's no social upheaval. It's losing a thing we barely had, historically, to save lives and taking measures to promote responsible gun ownership in general.

You claim we don't care about the lives of these few - an emotional appeal. But any death at all uses your same argument.
I'm saying you care more about your fantasy than you do lives, more about your fear than you do lives. And no, any death doesn't use the same argument. We can get into that if you'd like.

You haven't been vague about your arbitrary position.
There's nothing arbitrary about it. We have the Constitutional right to bear arms. We also have a responsibility to make the exercise of that right as safe as possible.

But you are too good to...
No, I'm just too bored by nonsense to entertain much of it.

Bad laws are unfair to innocent people.
Thankfully, I'm not supporting those.

Laws that make a spare magazine that was forgotten about a criminal offense is a bad law.
What a complete load that is.

No, it's just something from one of the little people below your station to consider.
The whole elitist shtick is a puppet show Yor has been putting on for a while now...emphasis on the "putting on."

Your argument can be used equally as well with guns that can shoot more than once per reload.
Not if you understand my argument, no.

You only talk about Braddock because he's an emotional appeal, not because smaller crazy mass murders are any less a tragedy.
No, I talk about him because one of the first and most immediate things we can impact is mass shootings on a larger scale, by preventing the easy commercial access that allowed him to have the weapon. As I said to Idol, thank God even this president acted on bump stocks. Who knows what the body count might have been with one of those in play.

the choice is between the right to defend one's self or eventual tyranny.
No, the choice is between the rational or the tyranny of irrationality. We can preserve the right and significantly impact how many people die needlessly in this nation.

We should do that.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
If you read in an answer you're just illustrating that paranoid mindset I noted, the wellspring of fantasy.


See what I mean? That's why I don't follow you down that fantasy path. And what's odd is that I've literally never spoken in support of door to door, but have more than once noted that all you need is the law. If you can't make and sell them you can't replace and repair them effectively. And if you can't use them on the range, or to actually defend yourself without becoming a criminal in the process, outside of collectors there's no real incentive for anyone to not turn them in, to forego compensation.


That's grotesque, unsupportable rationally, and a poor parallel...but it does underscore my point about paranoia and fantasy. Rather, paying people for the financial inconvenience is a good idea. If it wasn't advanced you'd just tack on "theft!" as well.


No, I never just declare a thing. I set out why and usually illustrate the error. Unless it's a repeated point I've done that to prior.


Like most Western Industrial Democracies, the ones with dramatically safer populations. Sure. It's my opinion that we should learn from nations doing a better job of it.


It's what rational people do when they realize the guns you're fighting to protect actually make them less safe when they're in circulation.


I can establish with absolute certainty how many guns there are in my house, but without registration we're really just guessing who has how many nationally.


The opposite is true and I've linked to sites in support with the data. It's even more dramatic comparing nation to nation.


So Yor doesn't have a rational or factual leg to stand on, which is why he's beating the confiscation, elitist, and nose and tyrant bit. The fact is that I'm all for guns in the hands of US citizens. I own them myself. This isn't about owning guns, or the number of guns you own. It's about laws that will and have, everywhere they're found in likened nations, make you safer. It's about registration, mandatory safety courses, the end of large magazines, bump stocks, and speed loaders, along with a class of weapons that make us less safe by being in the stream of commerce.

It's about working proof in every other Western Democracy going. Don't let him distract you with his kill the messenger/distort the message routine.

This is too important. The other day a teenager in California killed three people and wounded 12 more. One of those dead was six years old. He deserved better and it's time we gave him and all the kids growing up in this nation a better chance of surviving to adulthood.


You will not cite to any authority on that percentage and no one would become an unknowing criminal. That's part of what you do with a buy back period, make sure that people understand the change in the law.


Whenever someone compares the efforts of other Americans to make you safer by culling weapons that didn't exist for most of our national life, to the work of Nazis, or rapists, they're only demonstrating a thin hold on reality.


If you can't stop every disease why try to cure any?


I wouldn't and I'm not. It's no social upheaval. It's losing a thing we barely had, historically, to save lives and taking measures to promote responsible gun ownership in general.


I'm saying you care more about your fantasy than you do lives, more about your fear than you do lives. And no, any death doesn't use the same argument. We can get into that if you'd like.


There's nothing arbitrary about it. We have the Constitutional right to bear arms. We also have a responsibility to make the exercise of that right as safe as possible.


No, I'm just too bored by nonsense to entertain much of it.


Thankfully, I'm not supporting those.


What a complete load that is.


The whole elitist shtick is a puppet show Yor has been putting on for a while now...emphasis on the "putting on."


Not if you understand my argument, no.


No, I talk about him because one of the first and most immediate things we can impact is mass shootings on a larger scale, by preventing the easy commercial access that allowed him to have the weapon. As I said to Idol, thank God even this president acted on bump stocks. Who knows what the body count might have been with one of those in play.


No, the choice is between the rational or the tyranny of irrationality. We can preserve the right and significantly impact how many people die needlessly in this nation.

We should do that.
So we conclude from all this:
You want certain weapons banned, but you would not be willing to enforce such rules.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
. . . how many lives were saved by guns.
Big point.

There are two clusters here, the lives saved by leos' guns, and those saved by civilian guns.

(This excludes the lives saved by the guns of the armed forces, which throughout history certainly numbers in the hundreds of millions of lives saved, if not a billion or more. "Good guys with guns," writ large.)​

Wikipedia is good enough for the following.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use

The range of estimates is as low as 50000 "DGUs" ('defensive gun use' by civilians) per year in the US, to as high as millions on the high side.

We'll just use the low figure to avoid any argument about which number is right. So 50000 times per year in the US, civilians use their guns for protection /defense. There are recently on the order of 15000 murders committed in the US each year. The worst possible case is that, without their guns, there would instead be 65000 murders per year instead of 'only' 15000, but that's impossibly improbable (;)), so instead maybe the murder rate would increase by 10% (a wild but possibly reasonable guess) to 16500 per year.

So is it worth banning guns, just to save these 1500 innocent people each year? I think we all agree not.

But nobody's arguing to ban guns itt so far, so why mention it? Just to establish some boundaries to your thoughts.

In your case where your right to bear arms is so infringed that it's not in any practical way a reality for you in Taiwan, how many murders occur each year? And how many lives would be saved if instead Taiwan recognized, affirmed, protected, and defended your right to self defense? And how many more murders would there be if suddenly civilians in Taiwan started keeping and bearing guns?
Spoiler
We already know the answer to that last question, statistically. We know that the murder rate in Taiwan would not increase. That's the message that all the global statistics on the matter tell us, if and when we understand statistics.

Here's a blurb from the link above: "A 2013 National Research Council report found that studies looking at the effectiveness of different self-protective strategies had consistently found that victims who used guns defensively had lower injury rates than did victims who used other strategies." I've heard of this study before reading it in Wikipedia and have no reason to doubt the conclusion, but I'm obviously open to examining any statistical study if anybody wants to examine the figures.

I'm just putting forth facts here, each of which is a factor in this discussion and debate, which is philosophical in nature, I don't mean to imply by "philosophy" anything less than the gravest of disputes, since, for example, all the millions of innocent people murdered in Marxist regimes, ultimately have philosophy to thank for their untimely and unjust deaths. Marx took Hegel's philosophy with a minor tweak to create his own.​
Spoiler
Another blurb: "Individuals who use guns defensively tend not to have extremely punitive attitudes toward criminals, but people with punitive attitudes may be somewhat more likely to own guns, and, thus, to use them defensively." The first part of that sentence is written as a fact, while the second part is written as more of a guess. An opinion.

Is it right and just to deny people who will otherwise wind up as murder victims the freedom to carry guns, if it were the case that more civilian owned guns resulted in more murders?

I would say that there is no social or collective justification to deny innocent (of capital crimes) people from carrying superlative weaponry for lawful purposes, because the right to bear arms is inalienable. That's what not only makes it an inalienable right, but it's also what makes me a more or less classical liberal, because classical liberalism holds our inalienable and civil rights as the most important things to consider as we make our laws.

But that's immaterial, since the global statistics on the matter prove that more civilian owned guns do not increase the murder rate. So while I still rest upon classical liberalism for my position, I don't have to. All I have to do is use statistical reasoning to arrive at the position that there is no net social harm from civilians owning up to as many as 120 per 100 people.
 

Stripe

Teenage Adaptive Ninja Turtle
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
In your case where your right to bear arms is so infringed that it's not in any practical way a reality for you in Taiwan, how many murders occur each year? And how many lives would be saved if instead Taiwan recognized, affirmed, protected, and defended your right to self defense? And how many more murders would there be if suddenly civilians in Taiwan started keeping and bearing guns?

It's a nuanced hypothetical. If the Council of Grand Justices were to snap it's fingers and invent homo marriage allow the God-given right to self defense, there would likely not be a huge uptake of weapons among ordinary folk, while the criminal type would become highly dangerous.

So the sudden onset of liberty would probably create a lot of problems.

This is probably true of any attempt to install a good justice system: People are so used to the government doing things for them that if it were to refrain, a lot of things would founder. Examples:
If the death penalty were properly implemented.
If prisons were eliminated.
If IP rules were thrown out.

A lot of good ideas would have horrendous consequences if implemented unwisely (fully formed all at once) in societies as mollycoddled as today's.

This makes it easy for "status quo" people to fall into the trap of the fallacy of appeal to consequence. Which they do with great eagerness.

That said, arming the general population and fostering gun control (ie, trained people bearing arms being the general rule for the everyday man) would be a fantastic deterrent to invasion (by China).

We already know the answer to that last question, statistically. We know that the murder rate in Taiwan would not increase. That's the message that all the global statistics on the matter tell us, if and when we understand statistics.

I don't agree. I think the statistics we have would be inapplicable in such a scenario. There would likely be a great spike in murders and other gun-related deaths until society could adjust.

And in a democracy, they wouldn't get a chance.

So the best way forward is a gradual introduction of what liberty, justice and rights are.

But in a democracy, that would never get a chance.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Before the 30's, you could buy guns of any sort, unregulated, military grade, whatever, easier than today. You could buy a machine gun through the mail. You could buy dynamite from the Sears catalog. And no mass shootings.

So what's changed?

Availability of dynamite and machine guns has been reduced drastically. Mass shootings have spiked.

It would seem foolish to argue that a further drastic reduction in availability of guns is the answer.

So what's changed?

Maybe it's not the guns.
 
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