Some very interesting ideas, and some examples I had not heard before. I think I agree. I am still very much pro-hunting, though, and I think people should be able to own guns, but deer don't wear bullet proof vests, so why should ordinary people need guns made to pierce them? Sadly, like so much in politics, it seems to be all-or-nothing; either vote in someone who wants to get rid of all guns, or someone who wants everyone to have all guns.
However I doubt you'll receive the kind of vitriol in the comments on this post, that you would on a post that criticized anything homosexual.
I used to be very much against hunting as a young man, but now I recognize it as a part of my townie inheritance. One rabbit, one rabbit, one, one, one! Here comes the farmer with his gun, gun, gun!" There are a million reasons for a farmer or country-dweller to have a gun; there is, practically speaking, only one, for a town-dweller who is not a sports shooting enthusiast. That is why I would advocate different laws for different territories.
(I am not saying that every person who holds such views is necessarily unreasonable in this fashion; indeed, the hope that my friends may not be is the one thing that keeps me writing this article. I am, however, saying that this aggressive-defensive attitude is so widespread as to be characteristic, and that the possibility rather than certainty of encountering it is enough to discourage argument.)
Well, I hope I shall be able to disagree in a reasonable fashion; I admit that on the topic of the right to bear arms I do have strongly held opinions, so please do warn me if I should wander off the path of reasonability.
I apologise also that I lack - for work is pressing me quite considerably at the moment - time to put together a full and coherent argument in reply, and so must content myself with just answering a few points here and there.
By the same token, the Second-Amendment theorist cannot be cured of the paranoid vision of a world in which only his piece of metal stands between him and an oceanic wave of monsters, rapists,
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Likewise, the Second-Amendment theorist experiences any attempt to remove his ability to kill people easily as a violent and personal assault, on the same level as a criminal assault. He does not want to accept that he has demanded, as part of his supposed political freedom, the ability to behave like the Texas Tower sniper or like Booth, Czolgosz or Lee Harvey Oswald (all people who really did believe that they were taking the part of the “armed citizenry” defending freedom - remember what Booth shouted after murdering Lincoln?). He does not want to accept that killing is what he is speaking of.On the contrary, I am quite prepared to accept that killing is what I'm speaking of. I merely stipulate that not all killing is a bad thing
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Um, I'm not exactly sure why you think that banning guns for law-abiding citizens will prevent criminals from having them, since criminals are unlikely to obey the law banning guns any more than they are to obey any other laws. Given that criminals will have them, the public interest in having non-criminals be armed should be fairly obvious.
I do not actually advocate banning guns. I am saying that, in American law, it ought to be up to the States to regulate such things as they see fit, and that the Second Amendment simply is not relevant to the matter. Incidentally, in most European countries, guns are not "banned" but regulated, and you can obtain permission to carry one if you can show reason. In Italy, for instance, most country dwellers will have a hunting gun - with permit; whereas, in the cities, only people with a professional reason (e.g. security guards) tend to have them. Britain is the only country I know that completely bans the private use of guns, and even so, hunters are exempt.
Even more ridiculous - and I am sorry to have to say it, because the person who has said it most frequently is (thus far) a friend of mine: sorry, johncwright - is the argument that “an armed citizenry is a defence against tyranny.” This would mean that, given that gun ownership is far more widespread in Muslim and especially Arab countries than in western Europe, Europeans are less free than Arabs. At which point, since prejudice reinforces prejudice, I can imagine that a certain kind of American will be willing to argue that the Europeans, under their terrible Socialist tyrannies, are, if not less free, certainly no more free than the citizens of Lybia or Syria.
Well, while I wouldn't go that far, as a recent ex-Briton, I would certainly argue that I'm significantly more free now in Wichita, KS, than I was back under Tony Blair's stifling nanny-state, and I certainly feel vastly more free. But I certainly wouldn't claim that Europeans have anything like the freedom-deficity of Syrians, no
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Some very interesting ideas, and some examples I had not heard before. I think I agree. I am still very much pro-hunting, though, and I think people should be able to own guns, but deer don't wear bullet proof vests, so why should ordinary people need guns made to pierce them? Sadly, like so much in politics, it seems to be all-or-nothing; either vote in someone who wants to get rid of all guns, or someone who wants everyone to have all guns.
However I doubt you'll receive the kind of vitriol in the comments on this post, that you would on a post that criticized anything homosexual.
Reply
One rabbit, one rabbit, one, one, one!
Here comes the farmer with his gun, gun, gun!"
There are a million reasons for a farmer or country-dweller to have a gun; there is, practically speaking, only one, for a town-dweller who is not a sports shooting enthusiast. That is why I would advocate different laws for different territories.
Reply
Well, I hope I shall be able to disagree in a reasonable fashion; I admit that on the topic of the right to bear arms I do have strongly held opinions, so please do warn me if I should wander off the path of reasonability.
I apologise also that I lack - for work is pressing me quite considerably at the moment - time to put together a full and coherent argument in reply, and so must content myself with just answering a few points here and there.
By the same token, the Second-Amendment theorist cannot be cured of the paranoid vision of a world in which only his piece of metal stands between him and an oceanic wave of monsters, rapists, ( ... )
Reply
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Well, while I wouldn't go that far, as a recent ex-Briton, I would certainly argue that I'm significantly more free now in Wichita, KS, than I was back under Tony Blair's stifling nanny-state, and I certainly feel vastly more free. But I certainly wouldn't claim that Europeans have anything like the freedom-deficity of Syrians, no ( ... )
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