I understand that it's frustrating at best to have to adhere to rules because someone else can't be trusted without those rules, but surely that's the whole point of society? We have rules so that everyone adheres to the same standards, in order to keep innocent people safe from stupid people.
When you're talking about enforcement of law, like using police with guns and jails and destroying lives and families, you have to be pretty sure that you're on solid moral ground before you start enforcing rules. It's fine to have rules, but those rules need to actually warrant the force used.
To expand upon this, why should we need driver's licences? If the argument is that one person's misuse of a deadly weapon shouldn't infringe upon your "right" to use a similar deadly weapon, then surely the same should be true for cars. If some people can't be trusted to drive safely and thus put the rest of the people on the road at risk, then do you feel it's necessary to control who can and can't use a car legally, and require safe drivers to adhere to the same standards and regulations?
We don't actually require driver's licenses in the US. You can drive a vehicle on your own property without one. Driver's licenses are only needed for operating a vehicle on public property.
I suppose it comes down to the ethical and moral argument regarding whether or not gun ownership is a fundamental right, or a privilege, a question to which there is no one right answer. But I think the same argument could be applied to many different aspects of our lives which are also limited by legal regulations in order to protect our safety.
I think one of the biggest problems here is that people see this issue as black and white, when it's simply not. Nothing is.
When it comes to human rights, in this case, property rights, the bottom line is that you have a right to your property until you mess up and infringe someone else's rights. Until that point, nobody has any authority to come in and tell you what you can and cannot have. Any alternative is the exercise of force against an innocent person.
I think Beeblebrox nails it to be honest. I'd also add that as already mentioned, chances are if someone breaks into your house and is threatening you, you are not going to have access to your gun in any particularly quick amount of time, particularly if it's properly stored away. The situations in which a gun would genuinely protect you properly are incredibly rare.
We actually went over how incredibly common they are earlier in this thread. The estimate was something on the order of 2 million times per year in the US that guns are used in self-defense. Which was, IIRC, 80:1 in terms of comparison to gun homicides. None of that matters, of course, but your intuition on this one is not lining up with the facts.
So you think that everyone should be allowed to keep hold of their weapons on a sort of moral ground, despite the fact that literally tens of thousands of lives could be saved by controlling them?
Yes. More particularly, you cannot save a single life by controlling MY guns. The government does not have the right to impose force against me, an innocent person.
I appreciate what you're saying, just because there are a few idiots about doesn't mean that you're not responsible, but you can apply that to anything. Society has to function at the slowest point. You might be able to control a car perfectly at 100mph, or under the influence of 2 pints, but not everyone can, so it's banned. I appreciate your sentiment but in the real world it's a bankrupt point; it doesn't work and the facts speak for themselves.
See above regarding public/private roads.
Maybe it's not American v non-American, but certainly that's the sentiment from much of the UK I reckon. Again, I appreciate your sentiment, and in an ideal world you'd be spot on, but there's clearly a problem which has an absolutely obvious solution (from our perspective of course) to many outside of the US.
...and it's lazy to knee-jerk to removing guns from law abiding citizens who wish to be capable of defending themselves. This problem is more nuanced than that response, and requires evaluation of the downsides of banning guns (of which there are many) rather than myopic focus on assumed benefits.
The thing that gripes me is that I really can't see why Americans are so sad to see their guns go. It's really not a massive part of life, and if they're banned for everyone, what are you missing out on? Is it really that much to let go of in return for thousands of lives being saved?
Personal responsibility. Yes, my rights are a lot to let go for the sake of others. It is the trolley problem. Do you sacrifice 1 to save 5? Do the ends justify the means? No, every single time no. This is morality at its most basic. The moral dilemma you are failing is essentially the trolley problem. I'll present it to you in one of the easiest forms I know of to answer correctly.
You have 1 healthy person. You have 10 unhealthy people who match the healthy person's blood type. Each of the 10 needs and organ that the 1 healthy person has. Do you murder the healthy person to harvest his organs? That, is "the ends justify the means". It's "the greater good". It's a sacrifice of the innocent for the sake of utilitarian calculus.
I also tried to prove the same point with the fact a World with better gun control is a safer World. But Its deepseeded culture difference which is hard to understand sometimes. People are inherently adverse to any change which influence their own culture and traditions. We in The Netherlands have a holiday where people will put on blackface. In it self it is harmless and not intended to be racism. But there is so much pushback from the community who see it as a Dutch tradition. They will and just don’t want to see the opposite side of the conflict, Because it threatens their traditions. Like the people in the us opposing taking away confederate statues. They refuse the fact in modern times it offends so many people on many levels.
Nope, see above.
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