mrstickball said:
I did a study using open-source statistics on violent assaults and firearm proliferation a few months ago for these types of debates. The results were rather conclusive when taking the top 20 most-armed countries in the world, and the top 20 most violent: the more armed the country is, the fewer the violent assaults. Countries with major crime problems are some of the least-armed societies in the world. Criminals will always find a way to perpitrate their crimes with or without the aid of weapons. Furthermore, without a populace having a way to defend themselves, they become victim to more and more crime. By the way: If you want to stop crime, close the GINI coefficient. It's far more conclusive concerning crime than guns are. The issue is this: If a crime is being comitted by a criminal, how fast are the police going to show up? 5 minutes? 10 minutes? 15 minutes? The fact is that in an armed society, you have the ability to stop the criminal immediately. Firearms are a force multiplier: You do not need to be a 300lb linebacker to wield one. This allows the most defenseless to defend themselves. How do guns = bad society? If you live in a civil society, should it matter? Do you look at Switzerland with contempt due to their arms laws? If anything, I think it's the inverse: A society that can't cope with crime has to ban weapons for fear that their populace is so uncivilized in wielding an arm for defense may be a society that is built on fear of responsibility. Guns are a lot like drugs. Legalizing them in the hands of a responsible society produces no ill effects: If people are responsible, they will use them with caution, and for the benefit of society (hunting, self-defense from criminal elements). If they are illegal, then criminals typically use and distribute, causing more problems than if they were illegal. |
A responsible society would recognize they serve no use haha. If a society were all morally responsible then what would be the need of having them anyways. That's what I always have problems with those arguments. If everyone is responsible then you don't have to worry about the other doing something that would force you to protect yourself.
I do agree though, the problem isn't the guns but the people who are irresponsible and morally disturbed. But of course you fix that problem on a grand scale and you still make the world safer by not having guns. Because if everyone is that what is the need to have a gun. Once again like with a few issues, guns is an extreme posistion. Either everyone should have them or no one should have them. Because it gives an advantage to who has them and who doesn't, you can't simply allow some to have it, even based off responsibility, because then they have an up. If you take them all away or give a handgun at birth then nothing in the world has changed now. Everyone is the same, just with a pistol in the left or right hand.
But gun control has always been an interesting issue. Getting to the ideal setting as I said is of course the goal where a society is so responseible and morally justified that they recognize they serve no purpose. But seeing how that is not practical we have to levy it as beast as we can. Considering not having guns is a great way for those with power to take advantage of us so that extreme I proposed is a bad idea. But also everyone having guns is also a bad extreme because without the responsibility part, even though fair, firefights are going to be a norm. But of course I stated the middleground is not a good idea either. That means certain people will have control over those.
So how do you solve a problem that has no reasonable position, as I see it. Well you go back to the beginning of the argument and find out what is wrong with the premise of your argument. You do that and you'll find out the problem is with the people. Thus going back to Stickball and I's ideal proposition as not only the best but even the only practical one. Point is you give an irresponsible human a gun and he's going to do something irresponsible. Or if you give a responsible man a gun in a world of irresponsible people, then the same irresponsible outcome will occur. But if you have a responsible man in a world of responsible and justified people... you need not give him the gun.
So obviously I'm running in circles but it shows that not everything has a clear and practical best conclusion. Until then we need to keep trying to do what we are doing. Keep the guns in the hands of those who are responsible and keep them away from those who would use it to destroy the Bill of Rights. This is one of the few issues that I will not simply protect the liberties of everyone to own a gun. Mainly because I see that those who are irresponsible will take away the rights of those who are responsible when it comes to a gun. May not be the gun's fault, but it sure doesn't help the cause. Thus hopefully we can continue to maintain strong checks into every individual to make sure that when they obtain a weapon, they are obtaining it for protection or survival only, not simply to have one, not to do things that are irresponsible. So maybe that does mean tighter gun control laws but really I think it just means people who are supposed to be doing this to just do their damn jobs. Government doesn't need to complicate the process further, just people should do their jobs, gun sellers be more responsible, and people be more responsible.
