|
|
| Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' (1444497) | |||
 |
|||
| Home > SubChat | |||
|
[ Read Responses | Post a New Response | Return to the Index ] |
|
||
|
Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' |
|
|
Posted by Nilet on Tue Jul 25 22:09:17 2017, in response to Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'', posted by Dyre Dan on Tue Jul 25 11:41:49 2017. But (many would say) they also have a basic right to be able to defend themselves against those who would harm them.The right to self-defense does not require a gun. In fact, the right to self-defense is not a fundamental right; it's derived from the right to safety. (IE, the right to safety is a fundamental right; the right to self-defense is an essential part of that.) Which means that the right to self-defense cannot justify anything that violates the right to safety. And allowing guns is contrary to the right to safety; if you can have a gun, then so can anyone who means you harm, and if you find yourself facing a criminal it's far better that neither of you be armed than both of you. Worse, if anyone can have a gun, it means that any criminal I face may well be armed— which means I'm deprived of my right to self-defense unless I have a gun too. By practical necessity, the "right" to own a gun quickly morphs into the obligation to carry one. And that itself brings another problem along for the ride. See, when a criminal is pointing a gun at you, it's too late— that you're armed doesn't matter because the criminal can shoot faster than you can draw, aim, and shoot. The only way the gun can protect you is if you use it preemptively— if you ready it to shoot someone before they actually point a gun at you. Which means that you actually can't use a gun to defend yourself unless you do so preemptively— but "preemptive self-defense" is just a silly euphemism for aggression. When everyone has guns, you get a powder keg in which everyone is a split second away from shooting everyone else on the mistaken belief that the other person might shoot first. It turns society into a constant n-way standoff, which is not conducive to safety in general, not being shot in particular, or defending yourself from harm. And that's not even considering the potential for negligence (many shootings are the product of "accidents"), or the fact that a gun allows you to kill someone in a moment of anger, or that quick access to killing tools dramatically increases the suicide rate among the mentally ill. As for living in a "modern society", people in 1932 Germany were pretty sure that they were living in one. Yes, and? If people in 1932 Germany had easy access to guns, that would have made everything worse, not better. Do you seriously think it would have improved things if every thug who ran around smashing synagogue windows also had military-grade weapons? There is no guarantee that any government will always have the best interests of its people at heart. The government almost never does. And guns do absolutely nothing to fix this. Protests do. Primaries do. Voting does. Civil disobedience does. But the fuck are you going to do with a gun? Can you name even one occasion in which a representative of the US government (politician, cop, soldier, etc) was shot by a civilian that you consider fully justified in the name of self-defense or defending the interests of the people? Can you name one occasion in which a representative of the US government (politician, cop, soldier, etc) definitely should have been shot for those reasons? Fact is, if someone says we need guns to defend ourselves against oppressive governments, it is virtually guaranteed that exact same person supports oppressive governments. And even if it does, there's the old saying, "When seconds count, the police are just minutes away." And having a gun would do nothing to change that. It would just make the police more likely to shoot you when they finally show up. |
|
|
|