Sex crimes as a whole occur at an appalling high rate. I tend to believe the figures that in the US 1 in 5 or more women are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. The vast, vast majority of those occur through relationships. Stranger rape is pretty rare. The risk from a stranger recidivist in general falls into that category, even rarer. And non-stranger recidivist relationships- every woman develops her own spidey sense- imperfect, to be sure, but still there. In our family we work a great deal on developing that spidey sense when it comes to relationships, though comparatively speaking that's a much greater concern to me in general than stranger rape. I'm just not worried that my daughters or wife are going to find themselves assaulted by a stranger, one who doesn't have a gun.
If that stranger has a gun, everything changes. And that's not a function of the risk of sexual violence, that's a function of the possession of the gun.
In general guns represent an unacceptable- to me- escalation of violent potential. The availability of guns is the most extreme form- that of violence- of inequality between people.
The reason we have a society, a political system, rule of law, regulated military- is so that disputes can be settled as much as possible without violence. Of course people participating in regulated violent entities- police forces, the military- have great difficulty controlling gun use. Many of them join because they want to use guns! But the use of weapons by those entities is vastly (!!) less dangerous than any category of use by even trained civilians.
So that's why. The bottom line is that both sex crimes and gun use are about violence and power. Someone who wishes to exercise power without a gun is vastly (!!) less of a risk than someone who does so with a gun. And I see vanishingly few use cases for the possession of a gun that don't involve the exercise of power.
Hope that makes sense. Best wishes. Thanks for the engagement.
I understand your concern, and appreciate the explanation you provided. I respectfully disagree in so far as in the United States, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Your interpretation that this requires the bearers to be part of a 'well regulated militia' has not been the interpretation of the appellate courts nor the supreme court. Definitions change over time, and 'well regulated' meant 'well equipped' and 'militia' was the entire body of males able to fight. More to the point, however, the appellate courts and the supreme court state that the key part of this is 'the people' and not the explanation as to why the right exists.
I absolutely believe you have the right to have your opinion that guns are dangerous, and that we need to do something about them. At this time, however, that will require changing the US Constitution and I believe that is not likely to happen in the future. There are only a few ways for the constitution to be changed, and getting this changed as an amendment is likely never to happen and calling for a constitutional convention could result in massive changes across the board that noone can imagine right now.
And with respect to you- we'll see. That particular line of argument is relatively recent and novel and "original"- in the creative sense, not in the originalist sense- and I have hope that one way or another the "plain meaning" that was dominant for 200 years prior to Scalia's and others inventions will return. Cheers.
Right, right. Guns are absolutely about power. What is interesting to me about this difference between us is that I really, really want people to have that power: I think it is very important that regular people have this "violent potential" as you put it. Having the potential is obviously not the same as deploying it, but having it still matters very much.
Most people are good, trustworthy, and deserving of this power. A few people are not, but taking power away from regular people really won't do so much to help them. In fact, at the end of the day, all it does is force them to become like children, dependent on someone else -- or really, a special class of person, since people absolutely should work together -- for their own security.
"Society" is really nothing more than these people: those that choose "cooperate". It's not the same thing as the "political system" or even the "rule or law". Some people choose "defect", and view the cooperators as prey. Correct me if I misunderstand, but it seems to me, that out of fear of defectors, you want to take power from cooperators and give it to a sanctioned, "regulated" class of people. Presumably because you think you would be safer.
I think you can imagine why this would be ill-considered. If you are concerned about "equality", it's hard for me to imagine a more unequal state. We've basically arrived again at a medieval distinction between peasants, warriors, and priests. Who keeps your warriors in check? The unarmed peasants? The priests with their "regulations"? I'm guessing you are more of a priestly type. I would caution you, your magic is not as strong as you think it is, and it doesn't seem to work at all on the bandits.
It's a bad idea to dox gun owners, but I personally would be very pleased to learn that my neighbors are well armed. I already know a lot of them are. Perhaps you would not be. But if not, consider that you might need better neighbors or maybe a better relationship with them.
I couldn't disagree more. With respect, all of these arguments are specious and exist in the world of fantasy, not reality.
The "dependent on someone else" business is in fact the way the world works, with billions of people, trillions of capital, millions of businesses, deeply interconnected trade, etc etc.
In this reality, everyone has a few jobs that they perform, and many, many jobs they don't. Doing your job, and leaving other jobs to others, is what adults do.
Children are people who don't understand reality and live in their fantasies, dreaming about days that never come, inventing stories about the creatures in their minds, not living in the world.
The question of "who keeps the warriors in check" in fact empirically answers itself, every single day.
Similarly, every single act of civilian gun violence- so unique to the United States- is the evidence against any argument that there is a legitimate role for gun possession.
Finally, with respect to well armed neighbors- the data and logic and every ounce of decency know that a world where everyone has a gun is a world where everyone dies prematurely, violently, needlessly.
The magical thinking is yours. I hope that you come out of it some time. Cheers.
Writing an insult and punctuating it with “cheers” is so insincere and sanctimonious that your argument is it’s own counter-argument.
If you think civilian gun violence is unique to the US, you should really r check in on any country south of our border. All of which have much more restricted gun ownership.
>We've basically arrived again at a medieval distinction between peasants, warriors, and priests. Who keeps your warriors in check? The unarmed peasants? The priests with their "regulations"? I'm guessing you are more of a priestly type. I would caution you, your magic is not as strong as you think it is.
Except, in reality, the peasants are armed to the teeth and not keeping the warriors in check at all, rather they and the warriors tend to pay fealty to the same lords. Although the armed peasantry does like to boast that if they weren't as armed to the teeth as they are, things would be much much worse, that claim seems as dubious to many as the priests' magic.
Isn't it a good thing that armed citizens and the professional warrior caste like police and military -- who are also really just other citizens -- work together?
If you are asking why the glorious revolution hasn't happened despite having an armed to the teeth peasantry, then the answer is simple: the peasants are still getting their bread and circuses.
>then the answer is simple: the peasants are still getting their bread and circuses.
I think you're half right. The answer is the armed peasants like the feeling of power and "violent potential" of their guns, and claiming to be champions of the people keeping the warriors in check, but really couldn't give less than half a rat's ass what the warriors do as long as they get to keep their toys.
Sex crimes as a whole occur at an appalling high rate. I tend to believe the figures that in the US 1 in 5 or more women are raped or sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. The vast, vast majority of those occur through relationships. Stranger rape is pretty rare. The risk from a stranger recidivist in general falls into that category, even rarer. And non-stranger recidivist relationships- every woman develops her own spidey sense- imperfect, to be sure, but still there. In our family we work a great deal on developing that spidey sense when it comes to relationships, though comparatively speaking that's a much greater concern to me in general than stranger rape. I'm just not worried that my daughters or wife are going to find themselves assaulted by a stranger, one who doesn't have a gun.
If that stranger has a gun, everything changes. And that's not a function of the risk of sexual violence, that's a function of the possession of the gun.
In general guns represent an unacceptable- to me- escalation of violent potential. The availability of guns is the most extreme form- that of violence- of inequality between people.
The reason we have a society, a political system, rule of law, regulated military- is so that disputes can be settled as much as possible without violence. Of course people participating in regulated violent entities- police forces, the military- have great difficulty controlling gun use. Many of them join because they want to use guns! But the use of weapons by those entities is vastly (!!) less dangerous than any category of use by even trained civilians.
So that's why. The bottom line is that both sex crimes and gun use are about violence and power. Someone who wishes to exercise power without a gun is vastly (!!) less of a risk than someone who does so with a gun. And I see vanishingly few use cases for the possession of a gun that don't involve the exercise of power.
Hope that makes sense. Best wishes. Thanks for the engagement.