Are owning a gun a bad thing?

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The creation of a militia and the preservation of the citizens right to arms was the purpose of the 2nd amendment not solely one or the other and most certainly not with more weight given to one more than the other they are codependent clauses for the security of our nation. America's government is based on the rule of law, but that law has limits and those limits are meant to be guarded by the citizens as well as the government, how do you propose this be done without civilian guns? I have seen the text plenty of times, I don't understand why you would try and belittle part of the 2nd commandment when it is so readily available to be read itself.

What is the rule of law? What enforces, what makes people keep to it?

^^^^

It works the same way that it does in other states where they do not have an armed population, by the social contract. If you need to arm yourself in order to have a social contract, then you simply do not have one. The view you have taken is not really supported by a reading of the document or the supporting Federalist Papers. Where those papers mention the right to bear arms they do so in the context of protecting the country from outside forces and not self-defense against fellow citizens.

Last edited by 91 on 12 Jan 2011, 1:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well most people would have the sense to not pull a gun out over a parking ticket. Besides the fact that most people have either a conscience or enough fear of the law to not resort to it, if you have no ties to the criminal underworld then I'd think most people would not want to risk losing their jobs and getting f****d by 12 guys in the shower in prison.

I don't know where all this talk about fearing neighbours comes from. It wouldn't make any sense for my neighbours to do a home invasion on my house when everyone around the neighbourhood knows exactly who they are. I can identify that person, and so can everyone else. A home invasion would most likely be committed by an outsider.

And guns aren't meant to be social contracts, that is straight up tyranny. They are meant to defend your most basic right, which is the right to live. Don't get me wrong, I'm not overzealous about guns. Social skills, street smarts, and not hanging around in a sketchy bar at 3 in the morning are the biggest factors to my safety. Plus you're more likely to die in a car accident than die from a shooting.

However, I don't take social skills and street smarts as guarantees and I don't blame anyone if they feel they need a back up plan. Plus when it comes to home invasions, social skills and street smarts no longer become factors to your safety. While I don't feel a need to carry a gun, I definitely feel a need to have one at home.

I think all this fear about military style firearms is just because they look big and scary. A lot of it has to do with cosmetic features rather than any functional features. A pistol grip? Oh snap he's gonna empty his clip from the hip! Flash suppressors are big and scary! Let's ban barrel shrouds and make these paranoid bastards worry more about black hands than black helicopters!

A Saiga .308 is more powerful than an AK and is pretty much just as practical in a shootout, but guess which one's the big bad terrorist gun?

I don't know where you get the idea that I have a cavalier attitude towards gun safety from. I s**t my pants every time I see someone recklessly swinging their gun around with the finger inside the trigger guard, which is why I'm in favour of everyone obeying the golden rules of safety at all times.

i wish it were possible to have better discussions on the topic of "gun control" (as if we can control firearms that are not in our own hands.)

it's a complicated issue that lives at the intersection of public safety and individual rights. i thought that my experience with firearms was extensive enough to qualify my anti-firearms position but, to be honest, it wasn't. i've handled less than a dozen types of firearms in very limited situations. i've never taken one hunting and i've never been in combat. for me, it was difficult to realize that my anti-firearm stance was so staunchly rooted in my desire for the world to operate how i think it should. none of us actually get to live in that world.

it'd be nice if people didn't shoot each other but some people are a**holes. those 5 words can end many sentences. i think it's ridiculous to try to take everyone's weapons away. i don't think it's ridiculous to regulate firearms. there is a legitimate concern that overregulation could lead to outright banning and "jack booted thugs" coming to take away your guns. i tried to consider how this concern could be alleviated in order to precipitate a productive conversation about intelligent regulation and i came up with "take that option off the table." but then i felt stupid because that's already in the bill of rights... but some people are a**holes.

i still think a real conversation on the shades of gray that color this issue is possible. is there a place in society for civilian owned fully-automatic pistols? possibly, but probably not. is there a place in society for civilian owned semi-automatic pistols? in a perfect world, no. i don't live in a perfect world, though. fully automatic weapons aren't useful in hunting and seem, to me, a dangerous idea for self-defense. the 2nd amendment isn't about a burglar in my house or a mugger on the street, though. the spirit of the 2nd amendment is often considered (appropriately, i think) to provide for a tough-to-oppress citizenry capable of backing up demands they make of their government. should i be allowed to keep a cache of anti-vehicle mines? should the government be allowed to confiscate someone's home made explosives and charge them with a crime for creating/possessing them?

remote controlled drones, as surreal as the concept may be, are not just for military/paramilitary organizations anymore. civilians with smartphones can field small drones for just a few hundred dollars. should it be legal to modify one into a weapon?

most importantly, how can we even begin to discuss these things if all we have is the false dichotomy of "no one should have guns" vs "everyone should be allowed to have whatever kinds of guns they want."

i don't think either position makes that much sense and i sincerely doubt that anyone thoughtfully holds to either. i used to think that i held to the former, but i really can't without being willfully ignorant of reality. i think that most people who come off as holding to the latter are really just opposing the former.

but i'm sometimes surprised by what other people actually think and some people are a**holes.

Switzerland is also a good example. Every male of a certain age is conscripted into the militia in Switzerland and guns are as thick there as fleas on a dawg.

500 years of peace and brotherhood, and what has Switzerland produced. The 21 jewel watch and the chocolate bar.

ruveyn

If there is no threat or punishment of threat from breaking the contract their is no logical reason to believe your contract is secure. Your assertion that an enforced contract is not a contract is silly(where I would argue that an unenforced contract can be broken with no immediately apparent consequences, which would mean it would not be questioned if breaking it was a good idea.) and I'm not sure how you reached that conclusion, explain?

I don't really think Switzerland has any real justification left for its armed populace any more, but its historical ties to weapons are hard to extinguish. I find the Swiss to be a quite strange people sometimes, they all have guns but they think having a modern counter-terrorism team for self-defense might violate their neutrality. Their media also criticized their ARD10 CT team for planning to rescue fellow citizens and leaked their deployment (it is interesting, if a media outlet did the same where I live their actions would be considered borderline treasonous). They seem to love and hate their Army at the same time, more-so it seems, than most countries. So basically I find them one big paradox, interesting people though, nice chocolate.

@ Ace of Spades, by neighbor I mean, fellow citizen.

I agree, the analogy is imperfect--as is the case with many analogies.

There is a lot of merit to your self-selection notion, but I do caution that public policy must often be written to the lowest common denominator. Most recreational pilots tend to be serious people who aren't looking to casue themselves any unnecessary trouble--but we still require them to be licensed before opening up the throttle.



The Canadian issue has been extremely polarizing. Opinion polling suggests that a majority of Canadians oppose scrapping the LGR, but the registry's opponents are firmly entrenched in their positions.

One factor that tends to weigh in favour of the registry for me is the practical impact of finding a person in possession of an unregistered weapon. In Canada, certain classes of offenders are subject to a reverse onus on interim release. Normally the Crown must satisfy a judge that a person is a flight risk, or presents a risk to public safety. Offences involving firearms are one of the areas in which that onus is shifted.

In practical terms, the gun registry won't keep illegal guns out of criminals' hands--but it may serve to prevent those criminals from being released on bail before trial.

Cold comfort to the conscientious objector, I know.

The average sane and law abiding citizen probably is no problem with guns. Some are very decent but very careless and this is a problem. The aberrant individual, the guy who lives in paranoid fear, the macho teenager whose only sense of power is the gun, the mentally unbalanced person with no competent judgment, the religious or political radical who can only see the world put right by self righteous indiscriminate murder, these people are the ones whose powers are magnified hugely by the possession of automatic or even ordinary firearms and it is here that even those who are in favor of general gun ownership should seek tight control. What strikes me as most peculiar is that even gun owners who are expert and careful and well aware of the potential mayhem in an armed individual disdain even the most minimum regulation of gun ownership. These responsible individuals should be in the forefront of seeing to it that only individuals of their competence should be privileged to dispense death at a finger twitch. If they see themselves as guardians of public safety and against government suppression it is they who should strongly support that only competent people should have access to the easy sentence of death.

The two obvious justifications for gun owners in the USA to the limitations and even logical regulations of possessing arms are based on the distrust of the government and distrust of the efficacy of law enforcement. Normally one might think that a citizen distressed by these basic lacks in the nature of government, and there is no doubt that these lacks are real and not the uncontrolled outage of wild imagination, would be to form community protests and political action groups to remedy the problems. It seem that gun owners are fascinated by the possibilities of potential and perhaps actual violence rather that civil use of effective government. This is perhaps a reaction to the increase of open corruption in all sections of government and the gross misuse of government power to subdue normal effective political protest. I'm afraid this signals dire consequences in the near future for the country.

Last edited by Sand on 12 Jan 2011, 9:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Problem: Then the government would be able to choose who and who can't own a gun. There would be no defense against tyranny. They should not have that power.

I'm still not sure what role in "defence against tyranny" handguns and rifles and the like serve, when the tyrant has handguns, rifles, armoured cars, tanks, planes, UAVs, satellites, aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, spies, policemen, artillery, paratroops and divisions of infantry... nice token though I suppose. (Actually, do you still have paras?)

Well if there was a rebellion there would of course be defectors from the military, who could potentially bring military resources with them.

I hate to belabor them, but: Iraq, Afghanistan (both times), Vietnam... Those are just some of the US examples where military superiority and overwhelming hardware didn't guarantee victory.

I don't subscribe to the tyranny thing as my primary argument when defending the 2nd Amendment, but I can (and have) certainly argue the point.

The Afghanistan objectors to the US invasion seem to do very well indeed with bombs buried in the road and cars loaded with explosives. Handguns seem to be a minor concern.

And when that happens whether or not you pack a handgun is of minor concern.

Not really, a handgun can be of life and death importance even in a skirmish, as can any extra arms.