Tyrphanax said:
dahmage said:
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.
Guns and gun ownership are parts of an issue, sure, but a much much smaller part than the overall issue in my mind (we have more guns in the country than people, but we’ve not all been murdered yet). Tackling that issue is going to be difficult and hard, like you said, but I’d rather go after that than ban guns… and then ban knives… and then ban sticks and rocks… and then ban karate lessons… and then tackle the root cause. Let’s get the hard part done first and I think we’ll find that the smaller problems solve themselves to an extent.
knife bans would never happen. that sippery slope argument doesn’t make sense. The argument is all about weapons that allow for easy mass murder. i can take the argument to the other extreme, we absolutely would not let a citizen own a nuclear weapon, becuase of how easy it would be completely wipe out the country / world. so, how dangerously do we want to live? Cars can be used to kill lots of people, and frankly, i would be fine if we solved transportation in such a way that i didn’t need a car. 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?
