Gun Control
Recently I came across a video on the internet which was supposedly a debate on gun control, but looked more like an example of how not to do debates. (What's the best way to win an argument? Never let your opponent get a word in edgeways!)
Now, I didn't learn much from the video, but it did get me thinking. Gun control is something that every nation has to take a stance on, be it implicit or explicit. Should they be freely available for all? Should they be totally illegal? Should we restrict what kinds of gun are available, or where you can put them, or how long you have to wait before you can get one, or restrict who can get one? There is a lot of opportunity to finely tune gun laws for some purpose.
But that leads us immediately to the question, what is our purpose? What parameters are we trying to optimise? Reducing violent crime? Reducing deaths? or maybe something else?
Just as a disclaimer: I actually haven't picked a stance myself. When I write this kind of post people on both sides tend to think I am arguing against them. My purpose is not to make arguments but instead to explore possibilities. Maybe I will have reached a conclusion by the time I'm done writing this, but probably not ;)
Also, here's a quick glossary of terms I will be using.
Criminal: Someone who sets out with violent intent, either to steal, break, hurt or kill.
Civilian: A generally honest and law abiding person who would probably like to avoid being a victim.
State: The organisation which decides which laws to enforce and how to enforce them.
Police: The enforcers of the state's law.
With that said, I can think of four major perspectives/factors to consider when deciding what gun laws to enforce.
Crime
Crime is always one of the biggest factors when thinking about guns, partly because criminals use guns for crime, and also because some civilians would like to use guns to fend off criminals.
One of the biggest advantages of guns, from the civilians perspective, is that from aaaaaaall the range of weapons humans have invented across history, guns are among the most effective and easiest to use. Imagine for a moment the concentration of visceral effort it would take to stab a person; a gun takes that all away and reduces almost to a point and click ;)
One of the biggest downsides of guns is that the same goes for criminals. In general, if you're setting out with violent intent, a gun is probably your weapon of choice.
There are a whole host of details about precisely where to keep guns and how to use them for the purpose of fending off criminals, but it's not my purpose to elaborate on those. Instead, a simple thought experiment. Would humanity be collectively better off, in terms of crime, if every civilian was armed at all times? On the one hand, that could well be a strong disincentive for criminals, who would know that every crime carries the risk of grave injury. On the other hand, if every crime ended in a shooting, we'd probably have a lot more bodies on our hands.
So I'm kind of unsure on that front :P
Accidents
Accidental gun violence is a big, big priority as far as I'm concerned. I remember once reading a variety of statistics about how most gunshot wounds were accidents, and how most accidental gunshot wounds were inflicted by guns that the victim owned (or family/household member owned). But a quick glance I couldn't find those statistics so maybe I dreamed them.
Regardless, if that sort of statement were true, for me that would be a strong argument to outlaw all the guns, even if it meant letting the violent criminals get away with everything. If it meant eg. 50,000 more violent murders, but 200,000 fewer accidental deaths, I would count that as a big net win.
There are several tangents to this topic I want to explore. First, if your purpose for owning guns is preventing crime, you generally want your guns readily available in case of home invasion/mugging. But, if you're intent on preventing accidents, you generally want your gun less available eg. in a locked box on the top shelf. The horrible tradeoff to consider here is that the more safely your gun is kept, the less opportunity you have to get the gun when you really need it. But the more available your gun eg. by your hip at all times, the more risk there is of horrifying accident.
Second, even though I'm pretty sure that accidental gunshots are quite common (relative to intended gunshots), they are still quite rare when compared to the total number of guns. if 95% of gun owners can expect to go their whole lives without ever accidentally hurting someone, is it fair to take away their guns to prevent the 5%? (disclaimer: totally made up statistics)
So where I stand on this sense depends on what the actual statistics are, and anyone who does take a stance has to make up their mind on how many accidental deaths are an acceptable price for how many prevented crimes.
Police
A lot of people I know take the stance that civilians simply don't need to protect themselves, they can trust the police to do it for them. This is a twisty issue.
I think my problem with this is that, even assuming the police are totally trustworthy, they are small and distant. You can't keep a police officer on every street corner and in front of every building; they are too few, and hence they are far away.
Some police departments pride themselves on how they can get across entire cities in a matter of minutes, which is pretty impressive when you consider how far they have to go and all the stuff that gets in their way. But the fact is, in a couple of minutes the criminal could have taken your money, got into a car and made it several miles away.
And that's assuming that somebody had the opportunity to call the police; I expect criminals who have you at gunpoint don't like it when you reach for your phone.
To be realistic, I think we all have to accept that police generally aren't white knights charging to the rescue. Instead, the police and the courts have a dual-pronged approach of 1) Catching existing criminals and locking them away so they can't hurt more people (at least for a few years) and 2) Providing a disincentive, because every potential criminal knows they might end up in jail.
So while they benefit us all indirectly by keeping the number of wandering criminals low, it's rare that they will actually rescue you from a crime that is taking place.
My parents once told me that the best strategy for dealing with a criminal is to quietly let them do what they want and let the police catch them after the fact. This probably would be a good strategy if we could be sure the criminals didn't want to do anything too traumatising/fatal.
Tyranny
One of the topics that was brought up in the video I mentioned at the beginning was tyranny. I actually hadn't considered this myself. While I tend to go about my day implicitly trusting the state not to terrorise me, the fact is they have the power to do so and states have gone tyrannical plenty of times. Just looking at the brutal dictatorships of the 20th century is a pretty harrowing experience; how can I be sure I won't live through such a period?
It has been proposed, then, that an armed and self-interested public is a much harder beast to subjugate than an unarmed one. And there is probably some truth to that. Indeed, many tyrannies in the making tend to make guns illegal, thus insuring that the tyranny is the only one with guns. But it carries a lot of caveats.
First, tyrannies in history typically did not start by sending men with guns down the street to take your babies. They tend to have a whole mass of propaganda to keep at least some of the civilians on side. So it'd be less of a case of you and your neighbour bunkered up against the invading army, and more a case of you bunkered up while some of your neighbours take pot shots :P
Second, there are sooooooo many cases where having a gun in the house just doesn't help you. Think of the allegorical group in the night who snatch you while you sleep. Did you have a gun under your pillow? Was it loaded? And, if so, is it more likely that your loaded gun will successfully fend off a group of nightsnatchers, or that you'll accidentally shoot your husband while sleeping?
Third, even if all the civilians are armed, it's still difficult to think of it as the good and honest public versus the tyrannical state. In a mess like that, things would probably devolve into factions.
Conclusion
This is a complicated topic, and there are probably a bunch of factors I haven't even thought of. Remember, this is mostly me thinking about by myself for an evening, rather than reading around a lot and seeing what everyone else thinks.
More guns does have some advantages. An armed civilian has at least a chance of preventing a crime before it happens, rather than chasing the criminal down after the fact. This can disincentivise both evil criminals and evil governments from attempting evil things. It grants the individual agency.
However, it could well be that be more guns leads to more shooting. Pulling a gun on a mugger only helps so far if the mugger pulls a gun right back. And accidents unquestionably, inevitably, happen. We might genuinely be better off if we allow the criminals free reign rather than pretending we can trust the masses with guns. It all depends on those statistics.
The fact is, the kind of non-violent lifestyle I'm used to depends heavily on me trusting the police to keep crime low, and trusting the state not to go crazy with power, and also trusting my neighbour not to turn thug. If those trusts break down, it could be that no amount of firepower will keep you safe. Or maybe you'll be glad you had that trusty rifle to hand at the crucial moment.
So, in conclusion, it's a good thing the decision isn't up to me =P
Now, I didn't learn much from the video, but it did get me thinking. Gun control is something that every nation has to take a stance on, be it implicit or explicit. Should they be freely available for all? Should they be totally illegal? Should we restrict what kinds of gun are available, or where you can put them, or how long you have to wait before you can get one, or restrict who can get one? There is a lot of opportunity to finely tune gun laws for some purpose.
But that leads us immediately to the question, what is our purpose? What parameters are we trying to optimise? Reducing violent crime? Reducing deaths? or maybe something else?
Just as a disclaimer: I actually haven't picked a stance myself. When I write this kind of post people on both sides tend to think I am arguing against them. My purpose is not to make arguments but instead to explore possibilities. Maybe I will have reached a conclusion by the time I'm done writing this, but probably not ;)
Also, here's a quick glossary of terms I will be using.
Criminal: Someone who sets out with violent intent, either to steal, break, hurt or kill.
Civilian: A generally honest and law abiding person who would probably like to avoid being a victim.
State: The organisation which decides which laws to enforce and how to enforce them.
Police: The enforcers of the state's law.
With that said, I can think of four major perspectives/factors to consider when deciding what gun laws to enforce.
Crime
Crime is always one of the biggest factors when thinking about guns, partly because criminals use guns for crime, and also because some civilians would like to use guns to fend off criminals.
One of the biggest advantages of guns, from the civilians perspective, is that from aaaaaaall the range of weapons humans have invented across history, guns are among the most effective and easiest to use. Imagine for a moment the concentration of visceral effort it would take to stab a person; a gun takes that all away and reduces almost to a point and click ;)
One of the biggest downsides of guns is that the same goes for criminals. In general, if you're setting out with violent intent, a gun is probably your weapon of choice.
There are a whole host of details about precisely where to keep guns and how to use them for the purpose of fending off criminals, but it's not my purpose to elaborate on those. Instead, a simple thought experiment. Would humanity be collectively better off, in terms of crime, if every civilian was armed at all times? On the one hand, that could well be a strong disincentive for criminals, who would know that every crime carries the risk of grave injury. On the other hand, if every crime ended in a shooting, we'd probably have a lot more bodies on our hands.
So I'm kind of unsure on that front :P
Accidents
Accidental gun violence is a big, big priority as far as I'm concerned. I remember once reading a variety of statistics about how most gunshot wounds were accidents, and how most accidental gunshot wounds were inflicted by guns that the victim owned (or family/household member owned). But a quick glance I couldn't find those statistics so maybe I dreamed them.
Regardless, if that sort of statement were true, for me that would be a strong argument to outlaw all the guns, even if it meant letting the violent criminals get away with everything. If it meant eg. 50,000 more violent murders, but 200,000 fewer accidental deaths, I would count that as a big net win.
There are several tangents to this topic I want to explore. First, if your purpose for owning guns is preventing crime, you generally want your guns readily available in case of home invasion/mugging. But, if you're intent on preventing accidents, you generally want your gun less available eg. in a locked box on the top shelf. The horrible tradeoff to consider here is that the more safely your gun is kept, the less opportunity you have to get the gun when you really need it. But the more available your gun eg. by your hip at all times, the more risk there is of horrifying accident.
Second, even though I'm pretty sure that accidental gunshots are quite common (relative to intended gunshots), they are still quite rare when compared to the total number of guns. if 95% of gun owners can expect to go their whole lives without ever accidentally hurting someone, is it fair to take away their guns to prevent the 5%? (disclaimer: totally made up statistics)
So where I stand on this sense depends on what the actual statistics are, and anyone who does take a stance has to make up their mind on how many accidental deaths are an acceptable price for how many prevented crimes.
Police
A lot of people I know take the stance that civilians simply don't need to protect themselves, they can trust the police to do it for them. This is a twisty issue.
I think my problem with this is that, even assuming the police are totally trustworthy, they are small and distant. You can't keep a police officer on every street corner and in front of every building; they are too few, and hence they are far away.
Some police departments pride themselves on how they can get across entire cities in a matter of minutes, which is pretty impressive when you consider how far they have to go and all the stuff that gets in their way. But the fact is, in a couple of minutes the criminal could have taken your money, got into a car and made it several miles away.
And that's assuming that somebody had the opportunity to call the police; I expect criminals who have you at gunpoint don't like it when you reach for your phone.
To be realistic, I think we all have to accept that police generally aren't white knights charging to the rescue. Instead, the police and the courts have a dual-pronged approach of 1) Catching existing criminals and locking them away so they can't hurt more people (at least for a few years) and 2) Providing a disincentive, because every potential criminal knows they might end up in jail.
So while they benefit us all indirectly by keeping the number of wandering criminals low, it's rare that they will actually rescue you from a crime that is taking place.
My parents once told me that the best strategy for dealing with a criminal is to quietly let them do what they want and let the police catch them after the fact. This probably would be a good strategy if we could be sure the criminals didn't want to do anything too traumatising/fatal.
Tyranny
One of the topics that was brought up in the video I mentioned at the beginning was tyranny. I actually hadn't considered this myself. While I tend to go about my day implicitly trusting the state not to terrorise me, the fact is they have the power to do so and states have gone tyrannical plenty of times. Just looking at the brutal dictatorships of the 20th century is a pretty harrowing experience; how can I be sure I won't live through such a period?
It has been proposed, then, that an armed and self-interested public is a much harder beast to subjugate than an unarmed one. And there is probably some truth to that. Indeed, many tyrannies in the making tend to make guns illegal, thus insuring that the tyranny is the only one with guns. But it carries a lot of caveats.
First, tyrannies in history typically did not start by sending men with guns down the street to take your babies. They tend to have a whole mass of propaganda to keep at least some of the civilians on side. So it'd be less of a case of you and your neighbour bunkered up against the invading army, and more a case of you bunkered up while some of your neighbours take pot shots :P
Second, there are sooooooo many cases where having a gun in the house just doesn't help you. Think of the allegorical group in the night who snatch you while you sleep. Did you have a gun under your pillow? Was it loaded? And, if so, is it more likely that your loaded gun will successfully fend off a group of nightsnatchers, or that you'll accidentally shoot your husband while sleeping?
Third, even if all the civilians are armed, it's still difficult to think of it as the good and honest public versus the tyrannical state. In a mess like that, things would probably devolve into factions.
Conclusion
This is a complicated topic, and there are probably a bunch of factors I haven't even thought of. Remember, this is mostly me thinking about by myself for an evening, rather than reading around a lot and seeing what everyone else thinks.
More guns does have some advantages. An armed civilian has at least a chance of preventing a crime before it happens, rather than chasing the criminal down after the fact. This can disincentivise both evil criminals and evil governments from attempting evil things. It grants the individual agency.
However, it could well be that be more guns leads to more shooting. Pulling a gun on a mugger only helps so far if the mugger pulls a gun right back. And accidents unquestionably, inevitably, happen. We might genuinely be better off if we allow the criminals free reign rather than pretending we can trust the masses with guns. It all depends on those statistics.
The fact is, the kind of non-violent lifestyle I'm used to depends heavily on me trusting the police to keep crime low, and trusting the state not to go crazy with power, and also trusting my neighbour not to turn thug. If those trusts break down, it could be that no amount of firepower will keep you safe. Or maybe you'll be glad you had that trusty rifle to hand at the crucial moment.
So, in conclusion, it's a good thing the decision isn't up to me =P