If you've nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear

'Some might say "I don't care if they violate my privacy; I've got nothing to hide." Help them understand that they are misunderstanding the fundamental nature of human rights. Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. But even if they could, help them think for a moment about what they're saying. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say. A free press benefits more than just those who read the paper.'

- Snowden

How about you decide what's best for yourself and I'll decide what's best for me.

Are you a 5' 5" woman who was handed a gun to protect herself against someone likely to over power them?

Or are you someone who was personally offended by the generalization that they might be in the group of people, considered Normal Humans, who don't handle life-threatening situations like a person in the special forces?

>Sociological privilege often refers to constant and immutable characteristics that cannot be taken away, and moreover makes the value judgment that the group with privilege is bad, and that said privilege must be abolished.

Privilege is no more or less than a source of cognitive bias in political opinions.

"I support drone assassinations because they make the world a safer place" is an understandable thing to say as a white guy in Iowa, but comes from a place of privilege: said white guy in Iowa probably does not understand or even consider the realities of living in constant fear of summary execution from the sky with no warning, has never seen a friend lose his children because they were within the blast radius of someone on the kill list.

No one is suggesting that we sic the drones on white guys in Iowa too out of some ridiculous idea of fairness. What we are suggesting is that his opinion is wrong, and should be excluded from American foreign policy, because when you remove the lens of privilege, drone assassinations stop looking like a good thing.

"I oppose welfare because if those poor people weren't lazy, they would have jobs" is a reasonable thing to say when the only world you know is one where your parents' friends offer you jobs and internships at dinner parties. This comes from a position of privilege: unemployment predominantly affects people of color in poor inner-city communities where people do not have such social networks, have in been deliberately excluded from those social networks, in a world where having a Black-sounding name on your resume makes you many times less likely to get the interview. (It is entirely possible to rationally oppose welfare on other grounds: poor incentive structures, support for alternatives like public works projects instead, ideological commitment to the free market, etc. But specifically the claim that poverty is a personal failure of character, unambiguously comes from privilege and is therefore not correct.)

When someone makes this argument and we call them privileged, we aren't asking for them to get laid off, we're arguing that their idea of social policy is immoral and people who believe it ought not to be voted into positions of control over government budgets.

tl;dr: privilege isn't why you're evil, but it is why your opinion is wrong

This comment made me get off my ass and remember my YC login. Your post parses correctly, but what you're saying doesn't really correspond with reality.

> Guns can even fire accidentally, with an accidental discharge on dropping the firearm being a possibility on any gun without a firing pin block (which is practically any long gun, the kind you can buy at Walmart in some states, with no waiting period in some states).

Poppy cock. Modern firearms don't just go off [0]. It is true that many long rifles and shotguns don't have a firing pin block. They have hammer blocks instead (the difference being a firing pin block is activated when the shooter grasps the grip, while a hammer block prevents the hammer of pin from making contact with the cartridge until the trigger is actually pulled). Most firearms incorporate multiple safety systems.

Furthermore, every firearm made in America in the last century has been certified as drop safe. The test is that the gun is dropped from a certain height (I think it's 39 inches) onto a concrete floor, with the hammer back and a round in the chamber - ie the worst case 'I was about to shoot something but butterfingered and now my live firearm is falling to the ground." That was instituted by firearms manufacturers after a spate of bad press when a factory defect meant a batch of Colt 1911's could fire if dropped with a round in the chamber (for those interested, the problem was with the strength of the firing pin spring; after several thousand rounds were fired through the weapon, the tension on the spring would be low enough that it could be over come by inertia). The 1968 Gun Control Act made drop testing mandatory.

> A poorly handled gun may shoot in a totally unpredictable trajectory, and a first time user would be unlikely to consider collateral damage. (Nursery behind the attacker?)

Yes, and an orphanage across the street in case you miss popping your own kid.

Here's the thing - everything you're saying is based on some pretty big assumptions that just aren't true. A study conducted back in 2007 by the Force Science Center where people who had never fired a hand gun before were put through simulated gun fights found that "naive shooters ... are amazingly accurate in making head shots at close range." [1] Point and shoot is something we humans tend to do really really well.

The biggest issue you aren't considering is that the biggest advantage of a gun is that you just have to have it. Power isn't shooting someone accurately - it's bringing a gun to a knife fight. Having a knife means you have to close to the target to engage - having a gun means I can stand back and project power.

[0]There are cases where guns will fire accidentally. These are extraordinarily rare, and are generally due to trying to use an unmaintained firearm in a way it isn't supposed to be.

[1] http://www.forcescience.org/fsnews/66.html

EDIT: formatting edit