I'm not interested in arguing about gun control at the moment, but one thing that does fascinate me about these discussions are the differences in perception of firearms. I'm currently reading "The Probability Broach" by L. Neil Smith and will share a part I found interesting wherein a character named Clarissa is explaining why all citizens of her society carry firearms to another character named Win, who being from an authoritarian society (in another dimension... just roll with it) expressed shock at the lack of any form of gun control.

(The book is anarchocapitalist; I lean more "Ron Paul libertarian" or perhaps 'minarchist' at present but still find it to be very interesting.)

---

“Win, civilized people go armed to say, ‘I am self-sufficient. I’ll never burden others.’ They’re also saying, ‘If you need my help, here I am, ready – yes, a contradiction, but a pretty noble one, I think. Independence is the source of freedom, the first essential ingredient of mental health. You’re good at taking care of yourself, Lieutenant. Why can’t you allow others the same right?

“Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong?

“People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they’re begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically ‘right’. Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed populace to make it work.

“Wear a gun to someone else’s house, you’re saying, ‘I’ll defend this home as if it were my own.’ When your guests see you carry a weapon, you’re telling them, ‘I’ll defend you as if you were my own family.’ And anyone who objects levels the deadliest insult possible, ‘I don’t trust you unless you’re rendered harmless’.

“I’ll tell you something, Lieutenant. Whenever personal arms have fallen out of fashion, society has become something no sane person would consider worth defending. The same thing happens to individuals: they start rotting, too, becoming helpless, disdaining to lift a finger because it’s ‘beneath them’. They’re no longer fit to live and are simply proving that they know it.

---

(Forgive any errors in transcription; I couldn't find a ready source from which to cut and paste.)

Thanks, it was a good break down of the situation.

Why do you think those things to be incomprehensible to her paradigm?

Are you familiar with any libertarian philosophies? (There are several different forms; her society is 'anarchocapitalist'). Do you equate "libertarian" with simple greed, with a "me first" attitude? That is a dire mistake if so: The four words you list are practically cornerstones of many ideal libertarian societies...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_libertarianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism_and_minarchism

I understood your original point perfectly (I hope).

I think what you're saying is that killing and torture are morally wrong ("abnormal"), when they're sanctioned and/or carried out by a government (in the "normal" course of things). Please correct me if I misunderstood -- I don't mean to put words in your mouth.

I think it was Licurg that asked why it was wrong to want to torture a guy who kills children. I don't believe it is wrong to feel that way, however, that's an emotional response and the government shouldn't be in the business of carrying out criminal sentences emotionally.

How can a society ever expect the people living in it to fully appreciate and understand that intentionally harming another human is wrong when that society does that itself (through executions and torture)?

Oh, and there are always the obvious arguments against all types of criminal sentences stemming from differences in the level of legal representation one can afford. Poorer people deserve harsher sentences simply because they can't buy the best lawyers?

Anyway, I guess this could go on for quite a while... :)

-Justin

Perhaps it's a bit callous, but the shooter being dead is probably the simplest solution. If arrested, he would likely get a long prison sentence (maybe a life sentence) or the death penalty. While prison is presumably unpleasant, I'm not sure that I would feel any better that he's in prison vs. dead and now my taxes are paying for his incarceration and/or legal fees to fight his appeal of the death penalty. The shooter being in prison doesn't really benefit anyone and the government has to pay to keep them there.

He might be rehabilitated you say? Maybe, but we don't have a great record on mental health issues as it is, and I doubt he'd get what he needed or enough that it would actually be effective. I'm not saying we should just shoot everyone with a long prison sentence, since some people ARE rehabilitated or innocent, but I'm not about to be upset that he dead.

How so? How it is being naive not wanting even the worst of the worst to be lynched mobbed to be tortured? Is that the answer a civilized socieity has to violence? more violence, public execution?

Let us not get into that ;).

Ugh... I likely did not make myself clear enough - these words get a COMPLETELY different interpretation in her mind. She would have no idea why the hell anyone would mention them in particular. Similarly to how "drinking tea" is a perfectly understandable concept around the world but certainly not in the way British (or... Japanese as well, I think ?) people conceptualize it.
The key thing is that you cannot have both. There's a limited number of "virtues" a society can worship without the set becoming a steaming pile of ambiguity. You cannot heave stuff in there willy-nilly. You can't have Freedom (with a capital "F") and Discipline, Justice and Mercy, Progress and Tradition... unless you assume certain meanings of words, which is laughable, since the ideas they were supposed to represent still remain in conflict.
From what you've paraphrased it is obvious that Clarissa lives in a society driven by fear. The way they fight this fear is through "guns". The reason for this fear is mutual distrust.
Well - unless she subscribes to what my high school teacher called "the Bolshevik theory of trust", that is: "DO trust... but monitor the actions diligently".
To love is to lower one's guard completely, to allow another person to harm you, to hurt you, to kill you even. This isn't possible in a world where people think "I am safe because I can defend myself".
One could argue that we can pick and choose who we trust - certainly. As with Alice in Wonderland, though, we can never be sure we've made the right choice.
Ultimately - the more (in numbers and in degree) people trust, the less of a need for distrust and fear there is, the less of a need for a society locked down in a Mexican standoff of enormous proportions. The less of a need for guns.
If Clarissa lives in a world where everyone is armed and perceives such a thing as normal and necessary... I feel bad for her.
I'd love to have her by my side during a zombie apocalypse but... so I would a(ny other) paranoid schizophrenic.

I'm fairly certain he meant Licurg and you got bundled into the quote by accident ;P.

I will first say I think harping on your use of the word "unfortunate" was perhaps a bit on the cheap side. There is plenty to disagree about without trying to get behind the intentions of a particular word chosen in a brief moment. Beyond that you are not doing your view point any favors here. Right before you joined the conversation two people very civilly objected to some fairly blunt criticisms of their personal views. They were trying to make the point that not all gun owners are fanatical, but then you came in right after fingers a blazen as if someone just spit on your mother.

Now this is unfortunate because now we have a sample rate of three and 1/3 of them is ranting strait out of the magazines and jumping right into name calling. Any "facts" you have are being overwhelmed by calling someone a socialist fascist that "hates the common man" for disagreeing on gun use. What the hell is that? How about I take a stab and say its the problem with guns. People cant just like guns or own them. They have to take it too damn seriously and build their religious and political viewpoints around them . Don't like the view, well they are a socialist. Or before john McCain we could just call them America hating communists that hate all the noble patriots, and be done with it.

If you have the slightest interest in convincing someone from France that guns are a good thing, try not leading in with "Lay off MY country," and roll into how Hitler kicked his country's ass. This isn't my daddy can beat up your daddy. It's about people dying and the living disagreeing on how to keep more from dying. Disagree and bring your facts, but dial it down for the sake of your own argument.

I'm still somewhat confused as to your meaning, so I'll let my mind wander over the words and concepts for a paragraph or two (...don't expect anything too coherent).

You may be abstracting things too far from reality. Neither pole is valued as an absolute, neither absolute is realistically desirable. Given a shared world and conflicting interests, absolute "Freedom" is simply survival of the fittest; absolute "Discipline" or "Control" or "Safety" isn't possible unless government is somehow both omniscient and omnipotent; either would be a brutal tyranny under which actual Moral Freedom, or the Non-Aggression Principle, the moral middle-point, would not exist.

"Progress" either isn't possible or isn't desirable without a "Tradition" which can be improved upon; a "Tradition" might be moral, good, etc without need of "Progress"; "Progress" will eventually become "Tradition" if accepted. What should actually be pursued is neither "Tradition" nor "Progress" but simply "the Good" (or "what is good").

At this point, I'm not sure where the hell this is going (possibly vaguely in the direction of Aristotle), so I'm going to stop that train of thought. ;-)

(Edited, cleaned up a bit... still somewhat rambling tho... hehe)

To turn your phrase, I would say that "it is obvious that Clarissa lives in reality". One's love and trust isn't generally given without hesitation to strangers at first meeting. How is your defintion of love and trust any less damning to current societies than that of Clarissa? If vigilance negates love, then how can societies having police, enforceable laws, militaries, etc be any better by your measure?

Also, wouldn't disarming everyone in the hopes of reducing crime also indicate "a society driven by fear"?

But how can it not be necessary when crime both can and does happen on a regular basis?

I've been alert for the walking dead since the 21st, but no sign of zombies yet... Doesn't mean the plague hasn't started somewhere, tho, so we must remain vigilant! :-P

You have obviously missed my C&C:Generals reference. :P

Never played a single C&C game at all :P

Yeah. That was my meaning. Thanks for clarifying for me. :)