The Second Amendment and the "Right" to Bear Arms

[Nessie]

Yeah, they'd be as scarce as the cocaine they sell.

What about the rest of what I said. Reduce criminal access to guns and deaths will drop.

 

[Xulld]

I do not think there is more likely to be violence. I think the gun means there is more likely to be a death from any violence.



That incident helps to evidence my claim. There was violence, there was no gun, that means a reduced chance of death, there were no deaths.

Death is not the worst thing that can happen.

In a society with no guns someone could chop off my hands and feet and no one can die from that incident.

IMHO shooting and killing the person trying to chop off my hands and feet is a good thing. The nexus of the gun control arguments focus on death as if that is the only calculus involved. It is not.

What about the rest of what I said. Reduce criminal access to guns and deaths will drop.

I think you should start with trying to understand how criminals get guns. Then explain how you can get between then and the guns without removing or hindering non-criminals from getting them.

 

[WildCat]

I'm not sure we can argue against laws on the basis that criminals don't respect them.

No, we're arguing that somehow taking guns away from law abiding people will keep gangbangers and other criminals from shooting each other.

 

[WildCat]

What about the rest of what I said. Reduce criminal access to guns and deaths will drop.

And you want to do that how?

 

[Nessie]

Death is not the worst thing that can happen.

In a society with no guns someone could chop off my hands and feet and no one can die from that incident.

IMHO shooting and killing the person trying to chop off my hands and feet is a good thing. The nexus of the gun control arguments focus on death as if that is the only calculus involved. It is not.

You right, on average injuries from gun shots are more severe and take longer to recover from than stab wounds or punches.

I think you should start with trying to understand how criminals get guns

Why are you assuming I do not know how they get guns?

Then explain how you can get between then and the guns without removing or hindering non-criminals from getting them.

Enforce existing laws better. More severe punishments for breaching existing laws. Such are the basics which have been discussed at length.

 

[Nessie]

And you want to do that how?

Enforce existing laws better. More stringent penalties for illegal possesion of a gun. The answer and means are already there but strangely tge will is not.

 

[Xulld]

You right, on average injuries from gun shots are more severe and take longer to recover from than stab wounds or punches.

Huh? You must be responding to someone else, I made no such statement.

Why are you assuming I do not know how they get guns?

I made no assumption, I just pointed out that you stated the obvious without stating how you could achieve what is obvious.

Enforce existing laws better. More severe punishments for breaching existing laws. Such are the basics which have been discussed at length.

Its obvious that enforcing current laws better would be better . . . .

However how exactly do you think making a punishment more strict for having a gun illegally is going to prevent people from getting guns and murdering others? First possession is distinct from a murder motive, so you are punishing someone for something not shown to be connected to the thing you are trying to curb, no less a constitutionally protected right . . .

Murder is one of the most strict penalties, certainly more strict of a penalty than possession of an illegal weapon . . . how exactly do you reason that stricter penalties for illegal gun possession would have any impact on murder rates?

You said our goal was reducing deaths . . . . how does that reduce deaths?

 

[Dcdrac]

maybe if the existing laws were actually more foreceably enforced things might be better, there is escaping from it, 30,000 plus deaths in which a firearm was invovled is a problem.

There is no wishing that away, that is a small town every year.

 

[NWO Sentryman]

maybe if the existing laws were actually more foreceably enforced things might be better, there is escaping from it, 30,000 plus deaths in which a firearm was invovled is a problem.

There is no wishing that away, that is a small town every year.

A lot of those deaths are due to suicide, which is separate from violent crime.

Now, not to get into a numbers game, but there are more deaths per capita from heart disease every year. Yet why does nobody talk about those problems?

 

[Nessie]

Huh? You must be responding to someone else, I made no such statement.

You said that the focus was too much about deaths, which made me think of injuries as well.

I made no assumption, I just pointed out that you stated the obvious without stating how you could achieve what is obvious.

So why ask me to think about where the criminals get their guns from?

Its obvious that enforcing current laws better would be better . . . .

However how exactly do you think making a punishment more strict for having a gun illegally is going to prevent people from getting guns and murdering others? First possession is distinct from a murder motive, so you are punishing someone for something not shown to be connected to the thing you are trying to curb, no less a constitutionally protected right . . .

Criminals posessing guns is not a right. Using a gun during the commision of a crime is not a right. There are laws which make such illegal so enforce them better with more severe penalties. That does nothing to curb law abiding gun owners rights.

Murder is one of the most strict penalties, certainly more strict of a penalty than possession of an illegal weapon . . . how exactly do you reason that stricter penalties for illegal gun possession would have any impact on murder rates?

You said our goal was reducing deaths . . . . how does that reduce deaths?

A criminal who carries a gun or uses a gun during commission of a crime who knows the police will target them and the courts will severely punish them is less likely to carry a gun.

 

[jeremyp]

Feel free to show your evidence that reducing the number of guns in the USA will reduce homicides.

It's not my assertion, it's the implication of the pro-gun people who point to the down side of the UK's gun homicide rate as being at the cost of more non fatal assaults.

What exactly is the formula for predicting homicides based on firearms per capita?

I don't know, but my ignorance of the exact formula does not mean there is no causal link. Given that firearms make killing people easy and the difference between the US homicide rate and those of more sensible developed countries, I think hypothesizing such a link is reasonable.

What data will falsify your conclusions?

I made no conclusions at the time I posted my previous comment. However, as I have now, I think relaxing gun controls in the UK to US levels and monitoring the results would be an adequate test.

How do you explain the US homicide rate falling by 50% over the last 20 years despite tens of millions of firearms added to the mix?

Homicide rates have been falling throughout the Western World generally. There are clearly other factors involved.

As I've always maintained, the USA doesn't have a gun problem, it has a problem in very specific subcultures that glorifies violence and murder.

So it would be a good idea to keep offensive weapons out of the hands of these people in this subculture, don't you think? The trouble is that we can't necessarily tell who they are.

 

[WildCat]

Enforce existing laws better. More stringent penalties for illegal possesion of a gun. The answer and means are already there but strangely tge will is not.

I can't disagree with that.

I think around here the will is lacking because such crackdowns are seen to fall more heavily on minorities. And in the recent past because of Illinois and Chicago law otherwise law abiding people (not gangbangers and other criminals) could easily run afoul of the law. For example, an Indiana resident who gets caught in Chicago with a gun while on his way to Wisconsin. Or the guy who works in dangerous neighborhoods who carries a gun illegally because there's no legal way to carry. But with the law now changed perhaps they can start cracking down on the criminals with guns, the ones who are actually doing all the shooting and killing.

 

[Belz...]

No, we're arguing that somehow taking guns away from law abiding people will keep gangbangers and other criminals from shooting each other.

How is that different from every other goods or services that we restrict ?

 

[WildCat]

How is that different from every other goods or services that we restrict ?

Like what? The raging successes of the War on Drugs, or ending gambling and prostitution?

 

[angrysoba]

Now, not to get into a numbers game, but there are more deaths per capita from heart disease every year. Yet why does nobody talk about those problems?

Causes of heart disease such as obesity and smoking get talked about a lot. It is far from correct to say "nobody" talks about those problems.

 

[Dorian Gray]

Personally, I'm of the opinion that there shouldn't be a right to bear arms.

Why is arming oneself with a potentially deadly weapon considered something that all Americans have a right to do? I don't see it as anything like the right to freedom of speech or assembly, or religion, or anything outlined in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Why in America - as far as I know alone in the developed world - is gun ownership considered a right?

Why, in Australia, does the legal system still involve wearing wigs?

 

[arthwollipot]

I would bring up the Second Amendment not to argue that the use it had back then makes it valid now, but to point out that I do believe that the fact that it got codified in the Constitution has effects now. It turned it from a philosophical proposition to an example of the concept of "rights that government must protect", which made it "something which it would be evil to violate".

This is a very good point. I don't think that it would be evil to violate this particular proposition. I think it is borderline evil (or at best, Lawful Neutral) to support it. I think that supporting the Second Amendment contributes indirectly to the number of firearm-related homicides in America (which as I believe we have seen exceeds the number of homicides by any method in even the most violent of other countries by a considerable amount).

Growing up with this right grouped together in the same place with all of the others in the Constitution makes it also occupy the same place with all other rights in people's minds. It's not that there's a general concept of "fundamental rights" as a category and the question is whether to include this one; it's that this is one of the original things that that concept of fundamental rights grew around and was shaped by. Trying to get someone to agree to a concept of fundamental rights that excludes one of the things that have always defined fundamental rights to him/her would be like trying to get someone to simply decide to have a concept of human relationships that is not based on his/her early childhood relationships, or trying to get an ivy plant to unwrap itself from its lattice.

Personally, I don't consider the idea of relationships to be based on early childhood relationships, and I don't think owning guns shapes or defines fundamental rights. The ivy plant is a non-sequitur in my view.

Again, this is explaining why it is, not why it should be.

Also, just the fact that it's part of the Constitution has not only the above cultural conceptual effects but also a technical one: repealing it would be repealing something that the law/government itself calls a fundamental right. And what kind of government does that? One that doesn't really consider fundamental rights to be fundamental rights and considers itself entitled to take them away from people who have done nothing to forfeit them. That's true of any termination of a listed right, whether or not one thinks the practical effects in any specific case would be good. No matter how benevolent a case could be made for it, it's still the government first saying the citizens are entitled to a certain right and then taking it away anyway.

Quite true, and irrelevant.

The highlighted bit brings me to what I think is an even bigger issue than the rest I just said. I think most modern Occidental people other than Americans look at social issues from a population-wide perspective, and Americans insert themselves into the scenario as an example and look at it from the perspective of how it affects themselves. So a gun rights debate isn't just a vague distant hypothetical thing about the numbers of other people owning guns or how many times they get used somewhere out there per year; it's people telling me that I shouldn't be allowed to have one. So, for example, arguments about how badly other people might misuse them don't matter because I'm not one of those people and wouldn't do that (and for that matter such an argument is an accusation that I am and would), and arguments about the rarity of occasions where they might be truly needed don't matter because they don't consider what I'm supposed to do if such a rare occasion does happen to me.

Again, there is nothing here that I can disagree with. I think it's one of the major blocks to proper public safety in America. If gun owners could get over the idea that it's all about them, individually and personally, then perhaps they could see the huge problem that gun ownership in general contributes to in America.

 

[arthwollipot]

Move to Detroit and see how you feel.

If no-one in Detroit could get hold of a gun, because there just weren't that many guns to go around, I'd feel pretty safe there too.

I mean, since we're talking in hypotheticals and all.

 

[arthwollipot]

In a world where everybody else is armed, would you want to be armed too?

Seriously, it seems so ridiculously easy to obtain a firearm in some places in the US that I can see a real argument that, if everyone else is armed, I'd want to be too.

Of course, that way lies a handgun arms race. Which is where the US is now, it seems.

Of course that is an obvious conclusion. I want a world where everybody else isn't armed.

Still talking in hypotheticals, of course.

 

[arthwollipot]

Why, in Australia, does the legal system still involve wearing wigs?

That's a very good question, and one that I'm not sure I have a good answer for.