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Found this post on slashdot (and originally written by a Marine, so take with a grain of salt). I think it makes a pretty eloquent argument for the carrying of personal arms, and would like to discuss.
+ Show Spoiler +
The Gun is Civilization, by Maj. L. Caudill, USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or make me do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
  
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Wow, I never thought of it this way. Great read 5/5
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So what happens when I'm having a bad day, and I'm not thinking reasonably?
Suddenly it doesn't matter that everyone has guns, and the situation is just escalated. The author of this article is incredibly naive to think all human beings will act rationally 100% of the time, which is the fault in a world that relies on order by a Mutual Assured Destruction like leviathan.
Not only that, guns give the power to the aggressor, ie the person who acts first. If you think about the 'prisoner's dilemma' type arguments, that means it's more attractive to act first and take control, than to hope the other person doesn't act at all.
Threats do not save lives; They escalate otherwise less harmful situations.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
Sure, this is true. But while you can do lethal damage with a stone, or a bat, you can't have a school shooting where 40 people die because of some upset person with a gun. You get maybe one or two deaths, and even at that, if the person committing the violence is not a military trained killer, it's a lot harder to stomach killing someone by beating and stabbing, than it is to just squeeze a trigger.
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On November 26 2008 13:22 Chef wrote:
So what happens when I'm having a bad day, and I'm not thinking reasonably?
Suddenly it doesn't matter that everyone has guns, and the situation is just escalated. The author of this article is incredibly naive to think all human beings will act rationally 100% of the time, which is the fault in a world that relies on order by a Mutual Assured Destruction like leviathan.
Not only that, guns give the power to the aggressor, ie the person who acts first. If you think about the 'prisoner's dilemma' type arguments, that means it's more attractive to act first and take control, than to hope the other person doesn't act at all.
Threats do not save lives; They escalate otherwise less harmful situations.
Yeah. I also think guns make the act of hurting someone a lot less personal, and thus easier to perform.
Pulling a trigger from 20 feet away is NOT the same as walking up to someone and knifing them. You may have the courage to pull the trigger but the knife? Maybe not.
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On November 26 2008 13:22 Chef wrote:
So what happens when I'm having a bad day, and I'm not thinking reasonably?
Suddenly it doesn't matter that everyone has guns, and the situation is just escalated. The author of this article is incredibly naive to think all human beings will act rationally 100% of the time, which is the fault in a world that relies on order by a Mutual Assured Destruction like leviathan.
Not only that, guns give the power to the aggressor, ie the person who acts first. If you think about the 'prisoner's dilemma' type arguments, that means it's more attractive to act first and take control, than to hope the other person doesn't act at all.
Threats do not save lives; They escalate otherwise less harmful situations.
If a person is having a bad day and not thinking reasonably, its still easy for them to get a gun, even if you ban them, and now instead of people being able to stop this person, this person has a leg up on everybody else until the cops come, which could be 5 minutes of people dying unnecessarily.
Remember that crazy Japanese guy that ran over people with a truck and stabbed people to death? He wasn't thinking reasonably, but had the other people had guns, I can guarantee that he would've killed far less people.
People don't rationally kill people. If you're have the guts to kill somebody with a gun, you can kill them with a knife too. It doesn't make a difference. A rational person would not do this.
By your argument we should also ban scissors, as they can cut wires that could electrocute a whole bunch of people in a pool. And we should also ban cars, as crazy people might go on rampage and kill people with it. And we should also ban planes, because its easy for somebody to hijack it and kill hundreds of people with it.
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Wow, a shootout. That sounds fucking great, Caller. I really want to live in that world. No, I don't remember that at all, but it sounds incredibly statistically irrelevant.
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I'm thinking that the argument is that an unreasonable (or socially unacceptable), ie force-initiating person, otherwise known as an "attacker," is uncontrollable from the defender's point of view. We're past thinking everyone's nice and friendly; we're aware that there are people out there who will try to force you to do things, such as giving up your possessions or dying. Since that's not OK with many of us, (although some will argue that it's God's will that you met that mugger that day, or whatever,) having overwhelming force makes it infeasible to force you to do something.
Now, despite this argument, you believe that an armed defender makes for a more dangerous situation for the defender. Surely it makes a more dangerous situation for an attacker, but I don't see why I should care about that. How it is more dangerous than being at the mercy of an obviously unsociable attacker?
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its still easy for them to get a gun, even if you ban them
This is moreso in America than a lot of other countries, because America has let it be out of control for so long.
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On November 26 2008 13:28 Chef wrote:
Wow, a shootout. That sounds fucking great, Caller. I really want to live in that world. No, I don't remember that at all, but it sounds incredibly statistically irrelevant.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060800576.html
okay so give me an example where people currently owning guns legally decided to start killing each other. Please. I'd love to see your statistics here. Even Steven Levitt said that drowning in a pool is far more likely to happen than your kid killing another kid with a gun. it's not the actual risk, it's the outrage.
and the school shootings you will inevitably bring up don't count, because most of the time the shooters acquired their weapons illegally.
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Chef, your suggested scenarios where an attacker has a gun and thereby does more damage ignores the possibility that the defenders also have guns, which would change the outcome, to put it lightly.
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On November 26 2008 13:28 BottleAbuser wrote:
I'm thinking that the argument is that an unreasonable (or socially unacceptable), ie force-initiating person, otherwise known as an "attacker," is uncontrollable from the defender's point of view. We're past thinking everyone's nice and friendly; we're aware that there are people out there who will try to force you to do things, such as giving up your possessions or dying. Since that's not OK with many of us, (although some will argue that it's God's will that you met that mugger that day, or whatever,) having overwhelming force makes it infeasible to force you to do something.
Now, despite this argument, you believe that an armed defender makes for a more dangerous situation for the defender. Surely it makes a more dangerous situation for an attacker, but I don't see why I should care about that. How it is more dangerous than being at the mercy of an obviously unsociable attacker?
Think about the people you meet everyday. I don't trust these idiots with a gun. I don't trust drunk guys riding around in a car who yell profanity at people walking home at night to also have a gun. What if you get in an argument with someone, and they happen to feel very passionate about it and lose their temper?
I'm not talking about robbers with a gun. I'm talking about ordinary people with guns. I don't even trust myself with a gun, cause I'd have killed someone or killed myself if it were that easy in certain situations of hysteria.
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On November 26 2008 13:22 Chef wrote:So what happens when I'm having a bad day, and I'm not thinking reasonably? Suddenly it doesn't matter that everyone has guns, and the situation is just escalated. The author of this article is incredibly naive to think all human beings will act rationally 100% of the time, which is the fault in a world that relies on order by a Mutual Assured Destruction like leviathan. Not only that, guns give the power to the aggressor, ie the person who acts first. If you think about the 'prisoner's dilemma' type arguments, that means it's more attractive to act first and take control, than to hope the other person doesn't act at all. Threats do not save lives; They escalate otherwise less harmful situations. Show nested quote +
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
Sure, this is true. But while you can do lethal damage with a stone, or a bat, you can't have a school shooting where 40 people die because of some upset person with a gun. You get maybe one or two deaths, and even at that, if the person committing the violence is not a military trained killer, it's a lot harder to stomach killing someone by beating and stabbing, than it is to just squeeze a trigger.
qft.
If I was walking around in a world where every other person was packing heat, I would be so fucking afraid for my ass.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom#Homicide_and_firearms_crime
If you trust wikipedia, it says in there that the homicide rate for New York is about 3 times high than the homicide rate in London(In Britain guns are banned, if you didn't know...). I think there might be some relation between the homicide rate and gun bans, just maybe.
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On November 26 2008 13:32 Caller wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2008 13:28 Chef wrote:
Wow, a shootout. That sounds fucking great, Caller. I really want to live in that world. No, I don't remember that at all, but it sounds incredibly statistically irrelevant. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/08/AR2008060800576.htmlokay so give me an example where people currently owning guns legally decided to start killing each other. Please. I'd love to see your statistics here. Even Steven Levitt said that drowning in a pool is far more likely to happen than your kid killing another kid with a gun. it's not the actual risk, it's the outrage. and the school shootings you will inevitably bring up don't count, because most of the time the shooters acquired their weapons illegally.
I wasn't aware the argument was about making guns legal. I was under the impression the OP was about a hypothetical world where you could choose for guns to exist or not. My bad.
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Well, the fact is that there are people out there who have weapons, not necessarily guns, and are willing to use them on YOU.
I would trust myself with a gun more than I trust those people.
Your solution is to trust those people more than you would trust yourself.
Or am I misunderstanding your argument?
Oh, and the idea isn't that guns exist or don't exist, it's that should everyone carry one in a civilized society.
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Yes. I'm imagining a situation, such as a population of people going to work, who can go thru a metal detector to prevent guns from entering a place, where everyone doesn't have a gun.
In a world with guns, of course some of my arguments don't make sense  My understanding of the OP was that overwhelming force via guns created peace, as opposed to a world without guns, where people who are just bigger, younger, and stronger rule the world.
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Fontong, we're talking more about the theoretical aspects. I'm not sure how relevant statistics are, unless you can show that they have a very direct relevance. For example, many more people (in terms of % of population) died in war BEFORE the gun was invented...
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is awesome32268 Posts
"When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone."
lol. Please. This sucks from an argument point. What if he want's to force me? He has a gun now. Imagine I had a gun too. He's trained to fire arms, I'm not.
Where the gun putting everything on equal. There's reports of people getting injured because the bad use of guns. How does he address this issue?
Kids? Unstable people?
He's thinking of a world where muggers will be paranoiac of people they assault because they could have guns. For people who muggers for whatever reason this may stop them, or not. But somebody who steals to survive it will only lead to more pre-preemptive shots, more deaths, more gun accidents.
The force monopoly should be left to the armed forces of a nation alone. These are the people trained to use guns and who follow a set of rules to do the best for society.
A civil with a firearm could be somebody who uses it for recreational purposes, a weapon maniac, someone who may flip out some day, somebody who is instructed, or someone who's not; he may or may not follow the rules the armed forces follow.
I would like the random factors to be as small as possible thx.
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I'll say right now, in Canada, I don't know anyone who owns a gun. If I had to guess, I'd say less than 1 in 10,000 people carry a gun with them at all times (and maybe a bunch of people just have a gun from WWII hung up on their wall). I feel very safe.
If you live in Detroit, where I imagine a lot more people carry guns around with them all the time... Would you feel safer than I do? I wouldn't.
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On November 26 2008 13:42 Chef wrote:
I'll say right now, in Canada, I don't know anyone who owns a gun. If I had to guess, I'd say less than 1 in 10,000 people carry a gun with them at all times (and maybe a bunch of people just have a gun from WWII hung up on their wall). I feel very safe.
If you live in Detroit, where I imagine a lot more people carry guns around with them all the time... Would you feel safer than I do? I wouldn't.
the man who trades freedom for the illusion of security gets neither, as somebody once said (Ben Franklin?)
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guns are what makes neighborhoods dangerous and make even the police scared to roll through high crime areas
that article was total bullshit
it makes sense until you think about the fact that guns arent merely deterrents. they are weapons of aggression
the police have numbers and guns but that doesnt stop drug dealers or murderers from shooting at them
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EPT
