No, this is not about risk limitation, far from it, furthermore; the result is only ever as good as the process by which it was achieved. Now, I’m not all to concerned about any average Joes being mentally unstable carrying a gun or keeping hunting rifles at home as I am of the insane nutters in power with their Führer aspirations. We all have different perspectives of what is and on what should be deemed as dangerous and less dangerous, the *fact* is that we are getting our freedoms and rights eroded more and more by the day so perhaps it would be prudent to address that as well as keep our heads levelled the next time Big Brother shouts “Hannibal add portas me lambs” whilst immediately after removing even more of our freedoms and rights, all in the illusionary name of safety. Cheers.
At least he'd have to get through a locked door. With a knife, he'd have to get close to me. With a gun, he can plug me from across the road. Bang bang: headshot (w00t!). If Nathan Martin et. al. had stuck to knives, what do you think the outcome of that tragedy would have been? And how do you think Horrett Campbell would have fared with a gun instead of a machete? Call it hysteria if you want, but guns make killing a lot, lot easier than the biggest knife ever can. Warfare moved on from swords for a reason. You can own your gun. I just like to know about it. There's nothing criminal about it, just like there's nothing criminal about my car having a licence plate. Some personal information is good for the public to know, some is not. I'm not in favour of Megan's Law simply because I think that the public can't handle the responsibility of knowing such information. But being able to find out if their neighbour owns a gun? I can see some positives in that. You can argue that people can apply for a licence and be vetted by their GP (sanity), and the legal authorities (criminal status), and perhaps even get obligatory training in handling firearms safely (responsible use). But people can change, and unless you want to get people to renew their licence on a regular basis there is no way of knowing whether that gun owner is going mad, bad or dangerous to know. People fall through the cracks. Better than some anonymous government deciding whether you can own a gun, let your community decide. Relatively speaking, they know you best. They are at the receiving end of your interactions with them. If they don't agree with you owning a gun, they can raise an objection to the police, or they can exercise their personal freedom and get guns of their own (and you can find out about them, so it's all good). If gun ownership is no big deal, then people knowing about it shouldn't be either. True freedom is freedom of information.
But being able to find out if their neighbour owns a gun? I can see some positives in that ........yes if you are a criminal there would be a lot of positives in being able to find this out
OK, I'll break it down for you. If you are a criminal, you have three options: 1. you don't know if the person has a gun 2. you know that the person has a gun 3. you know that the person does not have a gun. Re. 1. You don't know if your victim has a gun. But you know that you live in a state where people can own guns, and carry concealed, so you figure the safest option is to make the calculated assumption that the victim has a gun: goto 2. Re. 2. You know that the victim has a gun. In 40% of cases (research shows), this is sufficient to discourage the criminal. The gun acts as deterrent, which is the best-case scenario (i.e. avoiding confrontation altogether). But in 60%, it is not. These are the criminals who are not intimidated by a gun: who will step into a confrontation knowing that the victim will try to use his gun. For them, it is simply a matter of life and death: to make sure that they have a gun too, and that they're the first to use it. Escalation. Re. 3. You know for sure that the victim has no gun. There is less need to have a gun cocked and ready: you know that just waving it around is enough. You know that you don't have to worry about pursuit. You know that this is not a matter of life and death*. OK? Now from the victim's point of view: I don't have a gun. But I know that the criminal may have. So I'm careful. I lock the doors. I avoid dark alleys. I avoid dodgy people and places, especially at night. If I'm mugged, I hand over the goods and let him run --no point in dying over a wallet. I have a gun. I feel more confident, in control. I won't avoid dark alleys. I take more risk. If I'm mugged, I will feel compelled to try and pull my gun and use it --I mean, I'm not going to stand there like a sap and have my wallet taken off me, am I? Not when I'm armed. So I will always pull my gun, regardless of the risk. Regardless of whether he's got one pointed at me (regardless of whether he has a buddy out of sight, covering the scene). It's life of death: only the fastest draw survives. Escalation. The certainty of guns is a "mutually assured destruction" scenario. For 40% of criminals, this is a reason not to engage, which is good. The gun is a deterrent. 60% however, is not stopped. These are the guys desperate, violent or just plain crazy enough to jump into a life-or-death situation with both feet. Guess who has the edge in such a confrontation? * In this regard, the "three strikes" law was the stupidest, most self-defeating piece of legislation known to man. Because it suddnely turned relatively harmless petty crime scenarios into very serious life imprisonment ones. It escalated the game. Many petty crooks panicked and became murderers at the thought that a victim might identify them during their third crime.
Why are you so ignorant to put all gun owners in this "Gung HO" box... if not gung ho then they are all portrayed as potential nut cases.. Your post's are pretty insulting as are your generalisations of gun owners Your last paragraph is utter Bollocks
Thank you for your coherent counter-argument. This is not about "gung-ho". Legal gun owners do not go around waving guns, but if they carry them for self-defense, that is how they will use them. Else there is no point, see? Having a gun for self-defense compells you to use it in self-defense --it dictates your behaviour in that context. You are simply not going to let yourself be mugged knowing that you carry a gun to protect you in exactly this scenario. In another thread I argued against arming airline pilots for the same reason. They would be given a gun, but would also be expected to stay safely esconced behind the locked, armoured cockpit door in case of a hijack, so that they can keep control of the plane. But that's not going to happen if they have a gun. If the terrorist starts threatening to shoot little Cindy (the cute little 7-year old in row 33B that reminds the captain so of his own little daughter), no self-respecting person is going to cower behind the locked door with a gun, FFS, while little Cindy gets her brains blown out. They will feel that they should do something to save the little girl. I know I would. Even if there may be an armed terrorist right behind the door waiting for him to come out. Even if there is almost no chance he can put a bullet squre between the terrorist's eyes. The gun obliges him to try. If you don't understand that dynamic, you should not carry a gun.
You have such a blinkered one sided view this really is pointless However I have read everything you typed and agree with very little So lets just agree to disagree and leave it at that
I have tried to answer all your points, but you really have given little back except repeatedly stating your position. Discrediting views is not the same as challenging them. You feel that you live in a society in which need to carry a gun. Not knowing your personal circumstances, fair enough; South Africa is not exactly a laid-back piece of the world right now and I might well feel the same. But I wonder if you are the one who has acquired the one-sided, blinkered view along with the gun. Perhaps it's because one has to squint over the barrel. So yes, I agree that our exchange in this debate is over. At least spec gives seriously good counter-arguments...
Sorry for the late reply. It's been a busy day. I can think of only one real reason to carry a concealed weapon: you might need to shoot criminals while you're out in public. Statistically, you'll probably miss. When your personal freedom is whizzing past my head, it becomes my business. Considering 50% of the population functions at or below average intelligence, and considering even trained professionals are known to miss at point blank range in the heat of the moment, I'm not comfortable knowing that a redneck who hangs testicles from his truck might be hiding a gun in his jacket, just in case a bad guy might want to shoot up the mall. When I'm walking through that same mall with my family, I'd feel safer knowing that regular folks aren't carrying a loaded weapon that could very well hit one of us in the crossfire. Barring a total ban on carrying weapons in public, I'd at least like the opportunity to know who's carrying, so that I can avoid sharing the same open space. We impose any number of restrictions on society when there is a good chance at reducing serious risk. People can't be trusted to regulate their own speeds, so we impose speed limits on roadways (especially in neighborhoods and school zones). In my opinion, prohibiting people carrying weapons in public removes the likelihood that legal gun owners will hit passers-by while trying to take out the criminal, or at least keep them from shooting each other in the confusion of the event (hey, that guy had a gun and was crouching behind the wall. I thought he was the shooter). -monkey
All of that is again, irrelavant supermonkey. It doesn't matter what my reason for carrying a weapon is, because the idea that I need to even announce my reason for doing an act that harms no-one is contrary to freedom. I belong to me, you belong to you - we do not need to justify each other to oneanother so long as we aren't stepping on each others lives. Carrying a gun does affects no-one but me, so I do not need to justify, explain, or even tell the truth about the matter. Using a gun does tend to affect other people, so when you use a gun you often do need to justify, explain, and tell the truth. That's the proper way for things to exist though, not treating the gun owners as if they've all just used them to commit a henious crime. You guys are skipping past the main argument here and on to more convenient and more common arguments, the main argument being that banning CCW's or even simply requiring their users to give up name and address to a publicly available personal register (Try asking the DVLA for my name and home phone number while only providing them with a number plate no. nexxo - the two are not equal paralells) is an attack on freedom. And since as a society we claim to believe in freedom above most other tenets, we clearly wouldn't want to degrade it. Of course...that does assume everyone actually wants freedom and not just security and prosperity....
Lets step back for a moment and think about the era of steal = severe punishment. You stole something from someone, you paid with a finger/beating/what-have-you. A murder was met with punishment of death nearly every single time and was dealt by the public (stoning for example). Now you can say "it was a barbaric time" or you can say "it was a peaceful time". Which would you say? The point I make with my weapon, is that "dont mess with me, or my family" cause the government sucks at actually doing what its suppose to do. Hence to my final thought of, the government is not here to run/dictate/control every aspect of our lives. It is pure non-sense to think 'laws' will protect your family! Good grief! This is why the founding fathers gave the right within our own society to bear arms, not for just the fact of hunting/recreation, but for protection! I dont support the NRA, yet. But what they are defending is the right to defend yourself! *sigh* it frustrates me to hear of places/countries that ban guns. It is making people defenseless and turning them to the goverment. And at the same time demonizing guns because its a death device? Well DUH! Its suppose to kill the freaks/murderers/rapists/kidnappers, is that what you want to happen to you or a loved one? I for one make my intentions clear, you violate my house in any threating manner to me or a loved one, expect death. Ok.... rant over...
Equally it frustrates me to hear of people so scared for their own survival they think they need to carry a gun at all times. This reminds me of the arguments with CK about how great a driver he was (n't) and how he wouldn't listen till he was crashed into due to his own inexperience. Edit: It actually reminds me more of scared bullied children.
My main problems with this is: - Not everyone can look up your license plate and figure out where you live. (At least not here in the U.S.) - The people who matter for knowing if you own a weapon, can look up the registration and track it to you. (Police, FBI, etc.) - In some rare cases Joe Criminal wants to get a weapon, has access to public weapons, has a plethora of places he can try to snag one Granted the last one of those isn't as likely the privacy matter of it all seems to lean (for me) to not have them a matter of public record. If you want stricter gun laws, add one more step to getting a weapon. Every manufacturer of a weapon, should test fire the weapon, and record the striations on the bullet, and affiliate that with the registration number. Would help at least track the gun down better to figure out what happened to it. My main problem is, most people who think out and commit a crime, aren't going to use a registered gun (or their own). People that do passion/anger crimes are going to have the gun anyway and you're usually not gonna have time to search them online to see if they have the gun or not. However, on the Flip side, if the information provided in such a database merely stated a Person's name, face and if they have a license/gun-registered then I wouldn't mind so much, because at least then you could search someone you know to find out, and would cut down a bit on the random people finding out about you. However the ability for someone to still find info on your or "case you" before hand then use that as the determining factor might still cause the same issues as if you had all of the information. Just my 2 cents..
What you have to decide is whether you want goverment to regulate society, or whether you want society to regulate itself (as much as possible). I'm sure you'll agree that the latter is preferable. Freedom depends on freedom of information: if I can find out whether you own a gun, I can decide whether I'm happy with that. If not, I can object to the authorities, or get my own gun (which you, in turn, can find out about and object to if you feel necessary). A free society that regulates itself is an open society. People hark back to the "good ol' days" of the pioneering West when people had the right to bear arms, but they forget that people then carried their weapons in plain view. Everyone knew where they stood, and that was the point of it: the gun was primarily a deterrent. Someone who carried concealed was viewed with decided suspicion --who would want to hide the fact that they had a gun? Only someone deceitful or up to no good. Exactly. All the people who argue that guns make us safer forget that most people in Europe manage to live quite happily without guns in the home or in their inside pocket. I think that it is the pro-gun people that are looking for that safety and security, while the against-guns crowd is prepared to live with some risk.
Well Nexxo, many of the arguments raised in this thread would suggest otherwise, admittedly; my own interpretation. As an aside: Regarding the Americans right to bear arms (not referring to concealed weapons) there are perfectly logical explanations for that right.
Guns are made to do damage. As such, they are good in only a few scenarios. 1: when you want to do damage. This applies to military scenarios, it includes hunting rifles... and that's about it. All other uses in this category are illegal, and rightly so. 2: when you want to scare others into submission, or at least scaring them into staying away. This only really works if you are sure that you are more heavily armed then the other guy. In a society that lets others have guns too, it doesn't work, it only escalates the violence. The reverse logic of this means that by carrying a gun, you practically force the other guy to carry one too, or he ceases to be free. There are only two outcomes to this: a society where everyone carries a gun, or a society where nobody carries a gun. I don't know about you, but i'd much rather live in the latter. 3: when you want to relax and have fun by unleashing some violence on uncaring bulleyes or bottlecaps. Nothing wrong with wanting to unwind by shooting 8.000 rounds per minute into a sand-dune. I can totally understand the fun, guns are inherently very awesome and cool things But where is the need to take the gun anywhere else then the locker at the shooting range? Do we use our tennisrackets or golfclubs at home? My opinion is that a gun should never ever be found outside the above three situations. Even the police should be excluded from carrying guns under reason of point 2. I feel THAT strongly against guns. ... ... and i still think that gun permit records shouldn't be made public. As much as i like to see the gun-lobby lose anyargument they make, i actually agree with them on this one. If government deems it safe to give out permits for concealed weapons, it makes no sense in making those permits public. I think the whole thing needs to be turned around. The guns should have records, not the people. A person would have to register taking a gun out, much like getting a book from the library. If those records are made public, you only lose a bit of privacy when you take out a gun. Now we have the trade-off between privacy and safety again, but every person decides for himself how much privacy to give up for safety. If you want privacy, dont take out guns. If you want safety, don't complain about your privacy. You can't eat your cake and have it too. Phew... So in short, i am against making these records public, and against guns in general. I can't help being dutch, sorry
I disagree. Well, actually, I pretty much agree with your entire stance, except for this line. In a 'mutually assured destruction' scenario, the premise is that the consequences of aggressive action are guaranteed to be equally catastrophic to all those who partake. As Joshua said in 'War Games', 'The only way to win the game is not to play'. And that is the problem with this gun culture. They think it's a MAD scenario, but the consequences are not guaranteed to be catastrophic for both parties (although they are likely to be catastrophic to one of the parties and perhaps to the children playing next door) and thus each side thinks that if they strike first/faster/better that they will win the confrontation - escalation. I'll have to be advised by our resident mental health specialist, but from where I stand, anyone who thinks the world would be safer with *more* guns is indeed a 'nut case'. He does indeed. Though I'd like to think that such thinking wasn't restricted to the medically trained. I agree with Benjamin Franklin: 'He who gives up a little liberty for a little security, deserves neither' (1). Strange given my anti-gun stance, perhaps. But not if you analyse the meanings of freedom and security. It is my argument that restricting guns increases both a persons freedom (to live in relative peace) and their security. Yes, gun crime is on the up in the UK. And if nothing is done, in another 25 years it will be at the same level as it is in the US. Two possible solutions: a) tool *everyone* up, or b) work harder (and smarter) at removing the illegal guns from the streets. Work is being done in certain areas (of London) to reduce so-called 'black on black' gun crime by promoting the idea (particularly among girls), that guns aren't really that cool. It's early days, but it is apparently having an effect because, above all else, guys want to get laid. (1) I haven't checked, but that must be the 4th or 5th time I've used that quote in these forums. Another quote: 'America is the first country to have gone from barbarism to decadence without the usual intervening period of civilization.' - Oscar Wilde Was the Wild West ever won? Sounds like many still hanker for it. The law of the gun. It's not the only country ruled by the gun, so it's unfair to single them out. Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq are equally culpable. But is that the company you want to keep?
No. It's a choice between whether you want government to try to regulate society, or whether you want the individual to be able to self-regulate. Murder happens even in countries where you're not legally free to murder. People break laws whether you legislate or not, because people aren't very good at linking up immediate acts with long term consequences and because the police aren't particularly effective. Naturally. Whether you are happy with it or not is irrelevant. Ownership of a firearm or even a CCW licence has absolutely no effect upon you, hence it is no business of yours. Whether you're happy with the fact that someone does or does not have either of those things does not matter. Not true. A free society allows the individual to be as open or private as they want to be, within their private lives. I can tell you I'm straight, or I can not tell you I'm straight. That's my business, it doesn't affect you, whether you are or are not happy living next to a straight guy doesn't need to matter to me, and whether you'd want to know so you can move to a more circular neighbourhood doesn't and shouldn't matter to me. I can tell you if I want, or I can choose not to. That's freedom Nexxo. Inevitably, in a free society some will choose to be open, some not. If you force anyone to be open in a private matter, then you lose some of the freedom. And 200 years later, the world is a different place. Regardles, the issue of whether it is or isn't morraly reprehensible to carry a concealed weapon is, again, not relevent. There's no point in delving deep into motivations or issues that would be good arguments for and against firearms when there is a simple and fundamental issue: no-one has a right to tell a free man what he can and can not do so long as it does not affect others. When you start to do that, he is no longer free. The exact obvious could very easily be argued, that people who respect freedom are prepared to live life with risk and those who don't respect freedom want the government to save them and assure their security by banning firearms Security is not the issue here, and should never be lumped together with freedom. The two are totaly separate concepts and neither implies the other - they are, in fact, often contrary. Restricting guns may improve security at a national level, I'm not fully convinced one way or the other because there are a great deal of factors at work. It most certainly reduces freedom though. You say one solution to reduce gun crime is to work harder, but unless this is actually done, which it probably won't be then gun crime will continue to rise. Individual citizens of this country do not have the power to make government task forces work harder. What we do have the power to do is make our own decisions and run our own lives. Except, that it's illegal to do so.
...he would certainly be making some fundamental reasoning errors. Balance of power? The Cuba crisis nearly ended in WW3. Nope, anyone with the capacity for rational thought, really. I may phrase things in more formal psychological theory, but as Bruno Bettelhiem would say it: it's mostly "the art of the obvious". And even psychologists can get things wrong (just very, very rarely ). Exactly. People perceive gun ownership as increasing their options for self-defense. I argue that in fact, it collapses their options for self-defense. Think of it this way. If you have fire extinguishers in the building, you are more inclined to try and douse the fire when in fact the safest option might be to leave the building. This is what I mean with "a gun compells you to use it". Its mere presence dictates how you start approaching and thinking about certain situations. A great example of applied psychology. Arguably, as long as that chemical plant next to your home doesn't spectacularly fail, it shouldn't affect you what goes on in there, or what is stored on its grounds, or how. You don't need to know what doesn't affect you. But you'd want to, because it is friggin' next door to your home!. And guess what? If a company wants to build such a plant next to your home, they have to make a public application, so you can know, and object if you feel necessary. Not a valid comparison: your sexual practices would not impact on my life in any way (as long as you don't do it in plain view in the garden, in which case many people might object, and not because of your choice of partner). That's the whole problem with living in society: a person's freedom and privacy will always be in context of the community in which they live. You can have some privacy in your back garden to relax, but not enough to have sex. You can have some freedom to drive where you want, but within the constraints of the traffic rules. In a community, people are free, for a given value of freedom. If you want real freedom, you'll have to live on a desert island. As John Donne would say: "No man is an island, entire of itself".* And who decides that? Society does (remember, we get the government we deserve). People living in a community need to constantly balance their own interests (immediate benefit to self) with the interests of the group (long-term benefit to self), but as you yourself say, people aren't very good at linking up immediate acts with long term consequences, so they make some crap choices as far as community interests are concerned. Hence the community/society has created some ground rules and associated negative consequences for breaking them. * I could carry on with a variation: "...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know at whom the gun fires; it fires at thee."
