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Linus: Ignorance applied to argument has a tendency to mislead. He made not one but two utterly falsifiable statements about the UK - first that it was the size of New Jersey and second that the scales on which the US and the UK operate are entirely different and thus that somehow there is no worthwhile comparison to be drawn. Neither of these is true. He took the approach of trying to insult his way out of being caught wrong, which rarely works. He used the adjective "Spartan" to offer some sort of historical validity to his idea of "empowered individuals", despite the Spartan ideals being at variance with his ideas. Wrong plus arrogant equals correction, plus rude equals slappy hand of slap. It's a simple equation.
Now, I think, I addressed the issue of "less nice parts of the world" (which I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence does not include where you, I or cusm live) above, with regard to the armed guerrilla/unarmed village dynamic. Since we are talking primarily about the US and the UK here, and by extension Europe, I'd say that would present a different set of arguments. But we are talking here about Michael Huemer's right to bear a gun, and as such Orr's questions above on risk assessment are pretty germaine.
So, back to rights. Cusm talks about his right to life, right to defend himself and right to own and carry a handgun as the same right. I believe this to be mistaken. On one level, because it is impossible to associate instinct, ideal and application that closely - it would be like saying that the right to live was the same as the right to learn C+, because by working as a C+ programmer one can make money which can buy food which supports life. So, let's go back to point one. What exactly is the right to life?
Way-ull... the right to life, speaking broadly, seems to stipulate that, as long as the bearer of the right is not indulging in behaviour that invalidates it, he or she has the right to expect others not to attempt to deprive them of life. That is, the right to life does not protect you against getting sick, nor does it protect you against the impact of a piano dropped from a great height. One could go further and say that this right is not in fact the right to live, but the right not to be killed by the actions of another person. That’s a much more restricted right, but it seems a good one to start with. Actually, it needs to be qualified further if we want to be utterly accurate, but let’s leave it like that for the moment.
So, the right not to be killed by the actions – in fact, the direct actions, as someone might say that by voting Republican, say, I have taken an action leading to the death of large numbers of people - of another person. I think, although I am not dogmatic about it, that the right to act in self-defence of one’s person is a subset of this right.
However. Let’s assume further that rights entail obligations, or duties. Let’s say duties. So, the complementary duty would be something like the duty not to cause the death of others through direct action. In certain situations, this duty may be superceded – if you are a soldier in war, for example, where there is a realistic expectation that the uniformed forces of the opposition will not be observing this duty themselves. However, an unforced decision on the part of an individual not to observe this duty will lead to consequences, most obviously the suspension of the feeling of compulsion among others to place this duty over their own right to self-defence. Hence the special legal status of killing in self-defence.
With me so far? Cool.
So, the right to self-defence, which is subsidiary to the right not to be the subject of life-threatening situations through the direct aggression of others, can override the duty not to kill others through direct action, if those others have previously infringed the right not to be the subject of life-threatening situations. What does this have to do with firearms? Well, not much. The right to defend oneself does not necessarily include taking any and all means preemptively to ensure that one is as well-armed or better-armed than anyone who might seek to infringe the right controlling the right to self-defence. If the keeping and bearing of arms can be said to be supportive of the right not to the be the subject of life-threatening situations through the direct aggression of others, then perhaps the keeping and bearing of arms can be seen as an act congruent with the upholding of the rights of man.
However again, I don’t think there is any coherent argument to support this case. In fact, survey seems to suggest that, where arms are kept and borne, the likelihood of the creation of life-threatening situations is greater – note, for example, poor neighbourhoods in both the US and the UK which have a “gun culture”, which also account for a lot of gun crime and a lot of gun deaths, that is infringements of the right blah blah fishcakes. Schools with troubled teens whose fathers own guns seem more likely to be on the receiving end of a shooting spree than those which do not. And so on. As such, the best way to enable the right not to be blah blah fishcakes would seem to be to minimize the situations in which the subordinate right of self-defence kicks in.
Now, Cusm has advanced an other arguments for the keeping and bearing of arms in the USA. One is to protect the decent people of America from the danger of the government making war against its citizens, currently demonstrated by such hostile acts as fixing roads and investigating cross-border crimes (the fuckers). It is my contention that this idea has no grounding in fact – that the US is not an environment in which an armed citizenry could credibly oppose its armed forces. The US is not Iraq, to put it another way, and the idea that the two theatres are comparable is inchoate. Red Dawn is a movie. To serve man is a cookbook. In the “Won’t somebody think of the children” thread, SUVs are mentioned as something that makes people feel that their children are safer, even though that safety has no basis in fact. Perhaps guns serve a similar function- see "empowerment" below.
There is also a discussion on “empowerment”, but the lamentable Spartan analogy means that I am not at all sure what this means. As far as I can tell it is a combination of the warm and fuzzies you get from having a concealed weapon and the sort of magic faraway tree position of security evinced by this:
I dimly recall a story from right after the Columbine school shootings of a copycat trying that in Texas. They got about 10 feet into the school with their assault rifle before a teacher shot them dead. Even if that was myth (which I suspect it was), it still makes a notable point.
The notable point this makes is of course that those who wish to carry guns around enjoy tales in which heroic members of the public use their guns to stop crime, no matter how real those tales are.
(Incidentally, .22 derringers tend to be inaccurate at longer ranges and cause significantly less trauma than .45 magnums (magna?). Although you certainly can kill somebody with one shot from one at medium range, I for one would be quite impressed if you actually did) |
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