Girl mistakes gun for Wii controller - kills herself

[Wiped]

crumas2 said:

Wiped said:

I literally couldn't agree with you any less, but I'm happy to have a mature debate about it.

I think the fact that Americans hide behind guns being 'constitutional' is ridiculous and archaic. Your country bases a fundamental law on a bit of paper that was created 200-odd years ago? Times change. We no longer live in a state of near-anarchy and we don't have to have guns in case the government goes on a bender. The government is there to protect us, to serve us, and yes, occasionally, to control us. That is inevitable. The American populace, like in any other nation, are controlled and manipulated by their government. The US people have guns, but that is still true. Guns haven't changed that - so I don't accept the argument. It isn't like the government will ever become tyrannical, either. We live in a democracy. 2010 is not 1800. Even when modern atrocities happen, guns wouldn't have helped. In Nazi Germany, if the people had had guns, would that have changed things? Not one bit. Hitler manipulated his people and gained popular support through propaganda and campaigning - he was elected legally in 1933. He still had the support of the German people through most of WW2. Guns, in such a situation, are irrelevant.

Your argument about absolute power is wide of the mark. We can, and must, trust that governments will never have absolute power or abuse it. Governments are elected in a modern democratic society. Even if, for some unknown reason, an American or British government was to start behaving tyrannically, the people owning guns would not make the situation better. It would make it much worse. A state of civil war, of lawlessness and 'every-man-for-himself' style uprising would result. There'd be riots against police and armies - we'd look like the streets of Iraq or Afghanistan. The point is though that the government will not behave tyranically, ever. They are elected, not dictators, and laws are in place to control that elected leader's power. In the UK, a law must pass through the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and approval by both of these groups is necessary before it is passed.

Guns are made for one purpose - to kill or injure. The very idea that weapons can be 'defence' is very, well, American. Give people guns, and they will kill others. Hell, the majority of shootings are by family members to each other - proof that they do more harm than good. It is also a fact that gun crime, murder and crime in general are all lower in the UK than the US, even in proportion in terms of population.

America needs to modernise, desperately. It cannot cling to a tatty old document to maintain that guns are lawful. In the UK, we have no constitution. None. We continually review our laws and update them if necessary, and America should ditch its reliance on the constitution and outlaw guns.

 

You may some interesting points, but the biggest problem is that you're viewing history through a 20th-century "enlightened" lense.  It seems just so obvious to so many people around that world that the way things work right now is modern democracies is the right way to do things.  Unfortunately, it's still a lense, and it's not necessarily any more enlightened that the views of those who lived 200 years ago.  I'm fairly certain they would look at much of what we have accomplished today and be saddened by how much we've lost, particularly in the areas of freedom, with notable exceptions such as the abolishment of slavery, expansion of who has the right to vote, etc.

I think to a large degree we're like frogs in the pot of warming water... our freedoms/liberties are very slowly removed from us, yet most of us never notice because it's done very slowly and we feel no pain.  Let's disallow handguns in New York City and the UK.  See... nothing bad happened.  People are still free.  Let's remove the right to own semi-automatic weapons now.  Still, everyone seems to be free... no harm done.  Let's put security cameras on every street corner in London to monitor the populace to deter crime.  See, crime went down and we're still free... no harm done, no Orwellian 1984-like society.  Now let's install face-recognition software in every sports stadium to make sure terrorists or other violent offenders do not pose a threat.  See, no government abuse of all that tracking information... no harm done.  Everything is still just fine.

If this trend doesn't change over the next 50 years, the society in the UK and other societies around the world may become completely unrecognizable.  One day your grandson may be asking you "But grandfather, how did you feel safe without the authorities knowing where you were or what you were thinking in case someone was considering committing a crime?  I just can't understand how you can have a safe and effective society where people are not monitored electronically for improper or dangerous thoughts, or where they can actually live with any amount of anonymity.  That is so primitive and unenlightened."

The scenario I just described may sound ridiculous and scary to you and me, today, but may not sound ridiculous at all to our children or grandchildren.  After all, the liberties we enjoy today are being *slowly* eroded... as a society we don't feel the pain.  Yet I would look at a society like that and think what a horrible world it would be to live in... we are becoming sheep out to pasture.

And our one hope here in the US is to cling to that crufty old document called the Constitution that tries to prevent that slow erosion.  Owning guns won't stop the erosion if we willingly embrace it and redesign our constitution, but they may allow a revolt if our government official decide that government of the people, by the people, and for the people is no longer the "enlightened" way.  And guns also allow us to defend ourselves instead of relying on the state to do so... oh, how primitive, eh?

 

 

You're right. We definitely need to ensure that as a society, as a people, we do not allow our freedoms to be impinged upon. We can't stand bu and watch 1984 become reality - that much is completely true.

But we musn't make the mistake of thinking that guns are one of the freedoms we should have. That's like saying we should legalise drugs, because them being illegal is hurting our freedoms. They are illegal because they are massively destructive to us as individuals and as a collective society - the same reason, in fact, that guns are illegal in the UK. I don't complain that my rights to murder are impeded by the state's law against it.

Revolt is simply not the answer. The American government spend billions of dollars every year on guns, arms, the army in general. If ever there was a revolt, the people pulling pistols out from under their pillows would change nothing, it would simply make the whole process much more messy. Sadly, if the American government wanted to change to an undemocratic society, there is very little that the people could do, guns or no guns. They'd have to hope that another nation would declare war to put a stop to it (much like how UK and US fought against Hitler's regime in WW2). The idea that guns should be a right simply because it might help a revolt against a government that may become undemocratic is absurd. For one thing, it's far too hypothetical. Let's say it never happens, and that the government more or less keeps within a modicum of power-restraint. Then all the innocent lives lost to the ready availability of guns - such as the little girl of this article - all of the crimes committed, all of the people killed by firearms. would be for nothing. The revolt argument is the one argument with a shred of credence, but it simply isn't strong enough to warrant such old-fashioned and destructive practice such as gun use (and abuse) to freely continue within a supposedly modern society.