Comment from: Pamela White [Visitor]
Pamela White

Thanks for your insight…very well worded and I agree with your stance.

01/14/11 @ 21:15
Comment from: Don Saavedra [Visitor]
Don Saavedra

That’s not what I meant at all. Sorry you had to write all of that.

:p

Thanks! That was great!

01/14/11 @ 22:40
Comment from: Sergio R. Garcia [Visitor]  
Sergio R. Garcia

1. I appreciate that you begin by claiming to have thoughts on the issue, but not the answer.

2. Regarding your response to “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns": First off, the argument I prefer to this one, which also applies to her response is “Gun control is great at keeping weapons out of the hands of law abiding citizens". Sure the military and law enforcement will have guns to protect us, but they are a clean-up crew. Anybody who has had to call 911 knows that you can expect to wait several minutes for help to arrive. When someone is confronting me with a gun, I’d prefer to be able to defend myself and/or others, not wait for the situation to be over (hopefully still alive) so that I can call the clean-up crew. In addition, a gun is an equalizer. Without a gun, the stronger person will almost without kick the ass and/or rape/assault the weaker. Guns allow a small or elderly person to defend his/herself.

3. Regarding your response to “guns don’t kill people. people kill people.” I think you miss a few key points. Having guns in the hands of law abiding citizens isn’t just to allow them to kill. It’s self defense. Simply having a gun is enough to deter many criminals. If people are unlikely to kill someone at close range, even when they are under imminent threat of death, that is unfortunate. If you are being attacked and have the ability to stop that person (with any force at your disposal), you not only owe it to yourself and your family, but to the rest of society to stop this attacker/criminal even if that means he or she has to die.

4. Regarding your response to “if someone breaks into my home, I will protect my family". So fucking what HOW low the odds are that someone will break into my house? If I want to be able to protect myself, that’s my right. What about people who’ve had restraining orders put on others? If they are under threat, allow them the choice to defend themselves. Aside from that, the knowledge that many households contain guns is a deterrent to home-invasion-criminals.

5. Regarding your response to “what about my 2nd amendment rights". It says clearly, “the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” and I agree with that. I don’t have a clear-cut definition of “arms", but I doubt anybody in the mainstream is demanding the right to own tanks, grenades and rocket launchers. But if they were? SO WHAT!? That’s right, so what? Let me explain. From a self-defense perspective, these are weapons with the ability to kill several people virtually instantly. They are more likely to kill innocent bystanders than handguns and rifles. Any company that manufactured these and put them into the hands of average-joes would be boycotted by their biggest clients (military and law enforcement), and would soon be out of business.

6. Regarding your response to “fight crime, shoot back"…I’ll ignore the obviously ridiculous paragraph with all-caps. No, Diana. They aren’t implying that the ONLY way to fight crime is to be a vigilante, they are encouraging people to defend themselves. “Shoot first” isn’t telling you to become a criminal. If someone is stealing from your property, or if they are attempting to rob you, be the first person to shoot. Nothing criminal there.

Regarding the rest….

Criminals DO love gun-control. They can get their guns on the black market, if they don’t already have a gun. And the law-abiding citizens are less likely to carry or own guns.

Gun control is not crime control. Comparing that to greenhouse emissions control is a bad analogy. Again, you are assuming that gun control keeps guns out of the hands of criminals whom you’ve admitted will just steal guns from the homes of law-abiding gun owners.

Hitler registered guns then took them away. This isn’t an argument that I would use, but you, Diana, are being as black-and-white as you accuse others of being. The point is that gun control, again, makes it harder for law-abiding citizens to get guns and protect themselves. Period.

“Democracy” - That illustration of democracy and liberty isn’t calling for armed insurrection. It’s saying the following - Democracy results in some people deciding how everybody’s money will be pooled and spent, and how everybody must live their lives. Liberty is people making these decisions for themselves. The sheep isn’t trying to overthrow the government and rule, the sheep is armed and contesting the vote simply to protect his/her property and nothing else.

“on personal protection” Sure, you can construct situations in which guns won’t do any good for personal protection, but knives will. But how about letting people decide for themselves? If the gun owners start to see that guns aren’t effective at self-defense, the demand for them will drop. Hasn’t happened yet. In addition, many who carry concealed handguns ALSO carry knives. Another benefit to guns is the sound. If you are attacked and simply fire a warning shot, that alerts a large radius of people that shots are being fired and many of them will call the authorities. A knife can’t do that.

My conclusion…This is simply about liberty. First and foremost, you are entitled to your opinion, and I respect your freedom to voice it. If you feel more safe carrying a knife as opposed to a gun, go right ahead. If you feel that others are better off without guns, but with knives, that’s fine as well. But if you ever vote to have your personal preference imposed on others, then you have crossed the line. Then you will have become an enemy of liberty.

01/16/11 @ 13:39
Comment from: diana [Member]

Thanks for your feedback, Sergio. You just spent a lot of time arguing against a position I didn’t take, though.

d

01/16/11 @ 13:50
Comment from: diana [Member]

This bit seems worthy of response:

“Criminals DO love gun-control. They can get their guns on the black market, if they don’t already have a gun. And the law-abiding citizens are less likely to carry or own guns.”

I don’t think gun control laws make law-abiding citizens any more or less likely to carry/own. Why would you claim that?

Making weapons illegal for criminals to own/carry won’t keep weapons out of their hands entirely, but it certainly will help. I don’t believe that requiring all people to take a defensive driver’s course will do away with traffic accidents, either, but there’s no doubt that it cuts down on dangerous driving.

“Gun control is not crime control. Comparing that to greenhouse emissions control is a bad analogy. Again, you are assuming that gun control keeps guns out of the hands of criminals whom you’ve admitted will just steal guns from the homes of law-abiding gun owners.”

Lack of gun control does, in fact, seem directly related to violent crimes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence. It’s interesting to compare the gun violence rate by country.

Yes, criminals will steal guns from law-abiding citizens (this is probably easier than the black market, but who knows). I advocate responsible gun ownership if people want to have guns.

I think we need requirements that everyone who has or wants a gun must take classes on gun operation, safety, and storage. We should need a license to own a firearm.

Making it harder for criminals to get these weapons won’t keep them from getting them entirely, but it certainly will help if we were more serious about controlling who gets to have a gun and who doesn’t.

My biggest issue with the cliches I was responding to in my post, I guess, is how they frame the debate. They frame it as a fight for law-abiding citizens to have guns to protect themselves when in fact no one in the mainstream has suggested such rights should be taken away. (Yes, some people have suggested that America should be gun free, but they aren’t in the mainstream, by any stretch.) The debate is framed as a choice between “freedom” and “tyranny,” where “freedom” is no gun control laws and “tyranny” is complete confiscation of weapons.

d

01/16/11 @ 14:50
Comment from: Mila [Visitor]
Mila

I once discussed violence on tv and videogames with a friend who is also
in the military, and my argument was similar: many of the young American men and women (I dare say especially men) who were deployed to war zones after 2000 have grown up playing shoot-em-ups and watching Terminator or whatever, and their image of killing consists of pressing buttons and seeing some image disappear. Fake moaning, fake injuries, fake blood. They are already desensitized by the time the armed forces train them; that’s the conception of ‘death’ that is wired into their brains. My friend explained to me why it is necessary to teach a human being that killing another human being is actually OK, if you do it for the right reasons. I, of course, will never understand such an idea, no matter
how many times or in how many ways he
explains this.

“When our brains are confronted with effective poetic devices, we willingly forfeit logical proceedings.”

This is SO true, and SO well put, and I’ve learned it the hard way SO recently, I just had to point it out.

You know, the OBLIGATION of the people to arm themselves in defense of the nation and the constitution is specifically stated in the constitution
of Argentina (21st article). When we had the dreadful communist guerrilla warfare that started killing people who they felt as traitors, the constitution
wasn’t even mentioned, and soon after that, there was no constitution, but a military government, armed to defended… I still don’t know what(plus, the guerrilleros didn’t “arm themselves"; they were armed by the Russians). The point I’m trying to make is this: our constitution gives Argentinians the power to take arms, and guess how many times we’ve done it…

“Fight crime - shoot back”

I think this also implies that there should be no police or military, but just people with guns, all over.

“People with violent convictions should not be able to get guns legally.”

How do you suggest this is determined?
Should there be a “convictions test” or something?

Specific points aside… I think that any form of general rule (including and ESPECIALLY laws passed by Congress or whatever competent institution in a given country) should be based on what NORMALLY happens, and not on far-fetched hypotheses that have very little chance of ever happening.

Mila.-

01/16/11 @ 20:21
Comment from: diana [Member]

Good morning (for me), Mila!

I always enjoy your contributions to my blog, and not just because you agree with me (but that, no doubt, helps; it’s so much easier to be thoughtful and interesting and to avoid being nasty when you’re not on the defense; sez me…who knows from experience).

“How do you suggest this is determined?
Should there be a “convictions test” or something?”

There is already. It’s called the Brady Law. It just isn’t enforced as it should be, AND it has loopholes you could walk a camel through.

“Specific points aside… I think that any form of general rule (including and ESPECIALLY laws passed by Congress or whatever competent institution in a given country) should be based on what NORMALLY happens, and not on far-fetched hypotheses that have very little chance of ever happening.”

I agree completely. Too bad we aren’t sitting on the Supreme Court…. ;)

This Amendment was for another era entirely, when we had a fighting chance against a controlling government. Now we don’t have a prayer, so it’s silly to use this argument for a reason to bear arms now (even if I grant that the amendment refers to private ownership and not a well-regulated militia, which is another can of worms).

I’ve studied and loved poetry most of my life, but I learned that little truism from a book by a Pulitzer Prize winning creative nonfiction writer, oddly enough. He pointed out that this is an easy way to skip from one chunk of a story to the next necessary bit when there’s no logical connection between the two. If you create a logical connection, your reader is likely to become distracted and think of something else he’d rather be doing, so you want to smoothly transition your reader through your story, even when there is a logical gap. The answer? Poetic devices. :D

d

01/17/11 @ 10:02
Comment from: diana [Member]

I know this is an old post, but I was thinking of writing an update on my gun control thoughts and reread this first to see if I’d change or update anything. Sadly, the only bit I’d change or update is the embarrassing failure-to-get-my-history right about George III (not George I, who is sometimes thought to be georgie-porgy, but most demonstrably wasn’t).

Wups. :)

The rest is still how I feel–mixed. Sergio’s misunderstandings aside, I said and still stand by these opinions today.

d

11/03/12 @ 09:54
Comment from: Aunt Bann [Visitor]
Aunt Bann

But now, we are being told that soon we won’t be allowed to have any kind of guns! They will all be confiscated, and if we don’t turn them in, we will be treated as crooks (but not in those words, of course!)!!

12/05/13 @ 23:15
Comment from: diana [Member]

Interesting passive sentence structure, Aunt Bann. ;)

Who, exactly, is telling you this? And how do they substantiate those claims?

DO tell.

d

12/06/13 @ 17:54


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