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The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

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Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#21

Post by Turing_Machine »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #19

HN is a pretty cold, logical place, so while the topic's raised, I'd like to ask a question: A year or so ago I watched a 60 minutes segment on so-called "sovereign citizens." The segment made them out to be relatively deranged, on my own cursory research supports this. One part DID stick in my mind, though: in an interview with someone with weak ties to the movement (I believe a radio host?), the interviewee said so…

"This is a fairly out-there idea"

It's not an out-there idea at all. The Second Amendment doesn't say anything about hunting.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#22

Post by jQueryIsAwesome »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7

I normally might flag something like this, but there's an important point in here that has to do with our relationship to technology. Guns fill a role in society that allows any person, no matter how weak, to execute deadly force against another. For many, this is the height of idiocy. Why would we allow individuals to have such power? But technology is doing the same thing that guns do -- it's giving every person un…

The sea of possibilities that internet gives is clearly being used mostly for good or neutral/trivial activities. But with a gun only two things can be done: kill or intimidate; for every shooted man you need to start the discussion of who was the "good" and who was the "bad"; there is no need for those discussions with most of the internet activities.

You are also talking like a paranoid; incidences with internet used to release deathly viruses are so far only videogames stories and DDOS attacks have more similarities with an electricity outage than to killing someone. And not a single bank got broke because some DDOS attack.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#23

Post by ISL »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #19

HN is a pretty cold, logical place, so while the topic's raised, I'd like to ask a question: A year or so ago I watched a 60 minutes segment on so-called "sovereign citizens." The segment made them out to be relatively deranged, on my own cursory research supports this. One part DID stick in my mind, though: in an interview with someone with weak ties to the movement (I believe a radio host?), the interviewee said so…

That's the point. It's not an out-there idea.

The Constitution was written by people who had taken arms against a government. It's reasonable to infer that they thought doing so was important and might be necessary in the future.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#24

Post by randallsquared »

potatolicious wrote: post #9
tjic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would we allow individuals to have such power? Who is this "we" that has either the power, right, or wisdom to overrule people on such things? > So the issue of gun ownership is the same issue as freedom in technology Wonderfully said. Power is a zero-sum game. Either I have the right to { own a gun | duplicate a file | mix acid and water in a test tube | print a part on a 3-d printer } or someone else takes th…

> "Who is this "we" that has either the power, right, or wisdom to overrule people on such things?" The same "we" that has existed since the beginning of our species, when groups of humans decided to live together. "We" is an expression of all people - not biased by East or West, Black or White. In all societies the price of living in a group, and enjoying the benefits thereof, are concessions to personal freedom, an…

In the absence of a government, "we" will manifest itself in other formats, most frequently tyrannical.

Tyranny implies government. In the absence of government, therefore, there can be no tyranny. It's not clear to most people whether society without government is possible, of course (or, rather, most would assert that it isn't).

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#25

Post by jQueryIsAwesome »

ISL wrote: post #23
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #19

HN is a pretty cold, logical place, so while the topic's raised, I'd like to ask a question: A year or so ago I watched a 60 minutes segment on so-called "sovereign citizens." The segment made them out to be relatively deranged, on my own cursory research supports this. One part DID stick in my mind, though: in an interview with someone with weak ties to the movement (I believe a radio host?), the interviewee said so…

That's the point. It's not an out-there idea. The Constitution was written by people who had taken arms against a government. It's reasonable to infer that they thought doing so was important and might be necessary in the future.

This is another time; and not even half America would be able to take out the government even if they really wanted to... back then not even tanks existed.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#26

Post by glomph »

tjic wrote: post #8
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #7

I normally might flag something like this, but there's an important point in here that has to do with our relationship to technology. Guns fill a role in society that allows any person, no matter how weak, to execute deadly force against another. For many, this is the height of idiocy. Why would we allow individuals to have such power? But technology is doing the same thing that guns do -- it's giving every person un…

> Why would we allow individuals to have such power? Who is this "we" that has either the power, right, or wisdom to overrule people on such things? > So the issue of gun ownership is the same issue as freedom in technology Wonderfully said. Power is a zero-sum game. Either I have the right to { own a gun | duplicate a file | mix acid and water in a test tube | print a part on a 3-d printer } or someone else takes th…

Power is not a zero-sum game. Some restrictions of power/rights enable more power/freedom than they take away. This is obvious. The restriction (or convention, but I think the point still stands) to drive on a particular side of the road allows us to do so much more than if we did not have the restriction, our net 'power' has increased. Similarly in many other cases.

I think that many of your examples are good ones and that arbitrary restrictions of freedom are wrong, but restrictions on the possession of weapons by the general public is not arbitrary and if you want to make a utilitarian case you are going to need to talk about the pros and cons of gun control itself not more generally about freedom and rights.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#27

Post by klrr »

ef4 wrote: post #15
klrr wrote: post #2

Feels like a cheap solution, there is countries where guns are very hard to get, and in those countries guns are way less used in crimes compared to USA for example. This will result in even more guns and probably a even bigger problem in the future.

On the contrary, the cheap solution is "assume there's a way to make guns hard to get in America. See, isn't that better?" Yes, maybe it would be better, but you assumed away the hard part. There are already 300 million guns in America, and a deeply entrenched culture in favor of keeping them. That is the initial condition we have to work with. Saying "just be more like country X" isn't a solution at all.

Totally true, one solution though could be to pay people to turn in guns, this won't work in practice probably though.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#28

Post by jtc331 »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #19

HN is a pretty cold, logical place, so while the topic's raised, I'd like to ask a question: A year or so ago I watched a 60 minutes segment on so-called "sovereign citizens." The segment made them out to be relatively deranged, on my own cursory research supports this. One part DID stick in my mind, though: in an interview with someone with weak ties to the movement (I believe a radio host?), the interviewee said so…

That's exactly the point of the 2nd Amendment.

In fact, it goes further. The point of the preamble (the part of about the necessity of a militia) isn't there to say that the right to keep and bear arms is necessary so that the state can have an army. Rather, it's positive law saying that citizens should own guns to be able to form a militia in order to fight back against a tyrannical government.

And the start of the Revolutionary War provides more supporting context for this: the British march that begin the war wasn't intended to start a war. The objective was to disarm the citizens. The authors/signers of the Constitution wanted to ensure that the state could never do that to the citizens again.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#29

Post by jtc331 »

potatolicious wrote: post #9
tjic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would we allow individuals to have such power? Who is this "we" that has either the power, right, or wisdom to overrule people on such things? > So the issue of gun ownership is the same issue as freedom in technology Wonderfully said. Power is a zero-sum game. Either I have the right to { own a gun | duplicate a file | mix acid and water in a test tube | print a part on a 3-d printer } or someone else takes th…

> "Who is this "we" that has either the power, right, or wisdom to overrule people on such things?" The same "we" that has existed since the beginning of our species, when groups of humans decided to live together. "We" is an expression of all people - not biased by East or West, Black or White. In all societies the price of living in a group, and enjoying the benefits thereof, are concessions to personal freedom, an…

The libertarian philosophical response would be that people only have the two basic rights to life and property. And one person cannot take away those rights from another. The government then exists solely to limit behavior strictly only in cases in which one of those two rights are being taken away by another individual.

The point of that argument is that no individual has the right to do with the government what he would not be right to do by himself. This means that since he can't individually limit the rights of another, he can't use the government to do it either.

This means that there are no concessions at all to personal freedom to live in a group. Not really anyway. I mean, yes, you can't take someone else's life (unless they attempt to take yours.) But that's hardly a restriction necessary only in large groups of people. It's kind-of implied as soon as you have at least two people.

Re: The Case for More Guns (And More Gun Control)

#30

Post by invalidOrTaken »

ISL wrote: post #23
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #19

HN is a pretty cold, logical place, so while the topic's raised, I'd like to ask a question: A year or so ago I watched a 60 minutes segment on so-called "sovereign citizens." The segment made them out to be relatively deranged, on my own cursory research supports this. One part DID stick in my mind, though: in an interview with someone with weak ties to the movement (I believe a radio host?), the interviewee said so…

That's the point. It's not an out-there idea. The Constitution was written by people who had taken arms against a government. It's reasonable to infer that they thought doing so was important and might be necessary in the future.

Thanks to all who've replied. I'm glad to hear confirmation. But I don't get the sense that this point is present even implicitly in the gun control debate. If the power to rebel is what's being protected, why limit assault weapons? Is an armed populace seriously supposed to take on the army with handguns?

I worry thatI might be coming across as a sock puppet with an axe to grind, so maybe I should take this question somewhere else. I'd be interested to hear any and all responses though; thank you in advance.

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