The hope would be to get to a place down the line where people don’t really care about whether they have the right or not.
To go back for a second: I really don’t like this wording because it worryingly reflects the attitude of the world right now. Complacency is scary, and we’ve given up so many rights as it is because of it. Nobody would say this about freedom of press or any of our other rights, but because some people don’t like guns, it’s okay to give that one up. I’m not down with that.
Sometimes we have to give up things that were accepted as needed before. It’s part of life. It’s part of a country’s history.
Guns shouldn’t be a right.
but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.
Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)
All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…
I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee). It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.
sure, lots of great reasons for it historically, but even if we still elect dangerously insane senile old white men, guns won’t help us against that.
I kinda addressed this with Dom earlier, and again I don’t like going into this realm very deep, but I really don’t like the idea of just throwing my hands up in this incredibly hypothetical situation and saying “Well, nothing I can do” as their gestapo or whatever does whatever it wants.
This is the problem with our modern politics: It’s based to much on feelings.
Your feeling that you’re showing right now will never materialize, at least in America. If we’re at the point where we have the Gestapo, there are much bigger structural problems in our society that we should have fixed earlier.
So can we solve the perceived need for guns in a way that you don’t need the damn gun, but can still feel safe / kill animals?
I don’t need the gun (I’m not even a hunter) like I don’t specifically need a car or a bottle of whiskey or a bag of chips or a can of coke… but as a free person, I have the right to have all or none of those things at my leisure (but I’d never mix the first three, haha).
I think you know FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech. In that speech, he described the freedom from want. I know you’ve said you’re not a big liberal, but I do think that you think that the government has the right to make certain programs that give people the right to an adequate standard of living.
Wouldn’t having a limited number of guns be a similar sort of freedom? Sure, it’s taking away you’re freedom to want a gun… but it also might give a freedom to life.