Tragic and self explanatory (Gun Control)

[SapereAude]

What is absurd about Eiuol's question? I think the point was that we have limits based on practical factors as to the offensive weapons we allow anybody except the military to possess. Yes, we don't allow people to have their own nukes, or even a mere tank. They pose a public threat that violates the rights of everybody around them. This is a contextual issue and the practical details matter. You'd don't have an absolute right to do whatever you feel like doing regardless of how it effects others. That's not how rights work.

Thanks for proving my point about lack of knowledge, Crow.

Private tank ownership is not illegal.

In fact, you can buy one online.

Edited December 28, 2012 by SapereAude

[CrowEpistemologist]

Thanks for proving my point about lack of knowledge, Crow.

Private tank ownership is not illegal.

In fact, you can buy one online.

Wow, you got me there. Checkmate! When I said, "tank" I totally meant a surplus device devoid of working armaments. The context in which I was speaking would have never indicated a modern military weapon of the kind which is banned from civilian purchase. No siree.

I guess I don't know anything after all.

[SapereAude]

Wow, you got me there. Checkmate! When I said, "tank" I totally meant a surplus device devoid of working armaments. The context in which I was speaking would have never indicated a modern military weapon of the kind which is banned from civilian purchase. No siree.

I guess I don't know anything after all.

I'm sure everyone is impressed by your sarcasm.

Words MEAN things, Crow.

A tank is a tank, the armaments are armaments and whether working or not is another issue too.

You said "we don't allow people to have their own nukes, or even a mere tank".

This after wondering why it would be absurd to compare ownership of a nuclear weapon to ownership of a handgun.

Words MEAN things.

A tank is a tank and is still a tank without a tank gun. If the tank gun is removed you could still purchase and fire a different weapon from the tank.

Because a tank is a tank. A gun is a gun and a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon and A=A.

How many times has someone gone on about "machine guns" only to have pointed out that

1) the weapon they are referring to is not a machine gun

2) the guns they mean to be speaking about are most often already banned

edited to add- lest this digress too far into argument about the particulars of tanks- the attachment of a functional tank gun is *not* the distinguishing characteristic of what a tank is- the distinguishing characteristics of a tank are that it is an armoured vehicle propelled by continuous track. The types of weaponery used are secondary.

Edited December 28, 2012 by SapereAude

[Nicky]

Wow, you got me there. Checkmate! When I said, "tank" I totally meant a surplus device devoid of working armaments. The context in which I was speaking would have never indicated a modern military weapon of the kind which is banned from civilian purchase. No siree.

I guess I don't know anything after all.

Of course you don't. The US military and military contractors won't sell advanced, functional weaponry to private citizens (they destroy it), but there is no ban on commissioning military grade weapons (tanks, armored vehicles, etc., for instance, including armed and fully functional ones) from private manufacturers. The ownership of such weapons is of course subject to federal licensing/taxation and local laws, and ammo for them must be registered individually, on a "per round" basis, but they can be legally owned.

I've even seen such weapons on TV (Mythbusters emptied out several thousand rounds from a big ass vehicle mounted machine gun, for instance, that was clearly privately owned).

Edited December 28, 2012 by Nicky

[CrowEpistemologist]

The word, "tank" without any other qualification can in fact mean a lot of things. It could mean a toy, as in, "I bought my son a tank for Christmas". Words mean things. So does context.

But your distinction makes my point. Here's an example of what a civilian can buy (modulo local regulations):

http://www.armyjeeps.net/Grizzly0830/1943%20Sherman%20Grizzly.htm

Here's our military's current standard-issue tank, of which we have about 9,000 in service:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

Below is a movie dramatizing a battle between these two tanks (hint: the civilian relic is Bambi).

In thinking about gun policy, the more realistic dramatization is We The Living, not Red Dawn...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpBkc2jK-6w

[Nicky]

But your distinction makes my point. Here's an example of what a civilian can buy (modulo local regulations):

http://www.armyjeeps...man Grizzly.htm

Here's our military's current standard-issue tank, of which we have about 9,000 in service:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1_Abrams

Funny you should mention these, I have a fun trivia question that involves one of them. Out of those two models, which one does Tom Clancy own? Here's a hint, it looks like this:

Edited December 28, 2012 by Nicky

[SapereAude]

Your response was concurrent to my edit Crow.

You really don't seem to have a clue what you're talking about outside of quick check ins with wikipedia.

[Eiuol]

I believe "people" -plural- are ignoring the question because it is absurd and there is no obligation to respond to the absurd.

Things are absurd or not usually based on the principles one holds. It sounds absurd to you, but not to me. Again, you didn't even answer my question. If you can regulate one kind of weapon, in principle, you can regulate other kinds of weapons. But which kinds may be regulated, and which kinds may not be? FeatherFall is giving me a reply based on specific principles, so I will respond to that when I have more time.

[2046]

Words MEAN things.

A tank is a tank and is still a tank without a tank gun. If the tank gun is removed you could still purchase and fire a different weapon from the tank.

Because a tank is a tank. A gun is a gun and a nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon and A=A.

Actually, I think this is an interesting point. I, for example, used to own a hand grenade. It was inert and totally legal. Most of us wouldn't have a problem with this, it's not really a weapon, but merely a collector's item. So then, what about a tank that had all the weaponry deactivated or removed? Why ought this be banned from any and all ownership? If you answer this question that "well, no, it shouldn't be banned," then what about a nuclear weapon that was inert? Suppose it was just the outer shell and had no triggering mechanism? What if a museum wanted to display this? What is wrong with that? If you answer "nothing," then what about a nuclear weapon that had no triggering mechanism, but where the triggering mechanism was 100 miles away? 10 miles away? 2 blocks away? In the same room? 1 milimeter away? And the same for a gun. If guns ought to be banned, then what about an inert gun with no triggering mechanism? What if the triggering mechanism were stored right next to the gun?

Such interesting questions are less necessary when one accepts a principled approach based on property rights, such as the arguments laid out in my previous post, which does the opposite of ignoring.

Edited December 28, 2012 by 2046

[SapereAude]

Things are absurd or not usually based on the principles one holds. It sounds absurd to you, but not to me. Again, you didn't even answer my question. If you can regulate one kind of weapon, in principle, you can regulate other kinds of weapons. But which kinds may be regulated, and which kinds may not be? FeatherFall is giving me a reply based on specific principles, so I will respond to that when I have more time.

I am not deliberately ignoring you but am hoping you will look a bit deeper into the topic and its particulars so we aren't going back and forth in a tit-for-tat about the deatails of weapons, what regulations already exist, how they are used, and likely scenarios involving different kinds of weapons.

Lest it be unclear, my statement was not intended with disrepect, but your statement is rather like saying:

"if I have a right to a can of Raid (an air propelled poison intended to kill- ostensibly insects- but can be fatal to humans) why don't I have a right to release a cloud of poison gas over the entire greater Chicagoland areas?"

So I'd be willing to engage in the conversation if you back up to the particulars of things:

what is a gun

what is a nuclear weapon

how are they used

how do they function

what is the right to live and how does self defense work into that

we defer to the government the right to "retaliatory force" but is self defense really "retaliatory"

does "defer" mean to "give up all together"?

[SapereAude]

Such interesting questions are less necessary when one accepts a principled approach based on property rights, such as the arguments laid out in my previous post, which does the opposite of ignoring.

I've enjoyed your posts on the topic so far, but cannot open the file that needs to be opened to read that. Is there a link to the text without having to download?

[CrowEpistemologist]

Tom Clancy's tank has no working armaments nor would it.

Anybody you know own an AWACS plane for targeting? How about an F-117 stealth bomber? Without those (fully armed, fully supported by military infrastructure) you have pretty much no chance against against the government, which was, after all, my original point--that civilian weapons are completely irrelevant in the face of the US government.

Any more pedantic word games y'all want to play today?

[tadmjones]

why has rural america been 'swatified' ?

[Nicky]

Yay, everyone, good news: gun control is working. Chicago authorities proudly reported today a DECREASE in the rate of the yearly increase of homicides (that's an actual spin I heard, with my very own ears, on live television). That's right, ladies and gents, the gun control capital of the United States registered its 500th homicide of the year yesterday (and hit that mark for the first time in four years).

Luckily, they will be adding a $25 tax on all legally owned weapons in Chicago (all five of them, I guess) starting next year. That will decrease the increase of the murder rate even more. I bet they won't even hit 600 next year, forever proving that gun control works.

Tom Clancy's tank has no working armaments nor would it.

Anybody you know own an AWACS plane for targeting? How about an F-117 stealth bomber? Without those (fully armed, fully supported by military infrastructure) you have pretty much no chance against against the government, which was, after all, my original point--that civilian weapons are completely irrelevant in the face of the US government.

Any more pedantic word games y'all want to play today?

Like I explained to you, the US military disables decommissioned weaponry, so it doesn't sell anything that's fully functional, to civilians. That's a policy of theirs, not a law against buying such weapons. If Tom Clancy wanted to and had the resources , he could obtain the proper licenses and legally build/commission himself a fully functional, modern tank, too. It would probably cost more money than even he's willing to part with, but if he had the money, he would be allowed to do it.

There's nothing pedantic about pointing that out. There is no law against Tom Clancy owning a tank, because there's no reason for a law against Tom Clancy owning a tank: Tom Clancy's fully functional tank would not be a threat to anyone. Pointing that out defeats your whole argument, it doesn't just prove your ignorance of facts.

[CrowEpistemologist]

So Tom Clancy could get an F117 fighter, an AWACS plane or three, and hire the military infrastructure run all of that? Note that with stealth weapons and the targeting infrastructure, I believe he'd need to have to part with many billions of dollars. After all that, he would still be no threat to the US military, which is my point--which you absolutely refuse to accept.

Civilian weapons, even at the absurd and impossible edge cases that I'm allowing here, are completely irrelevant to our government. That is my point. You can go ahead and pretend I had some other point and then proceed to tear that down, if that will make you happy, but why don't you do it on your own thread since it has nothing to do with this one.

[tadmjones]

Of course you don't. The US military and military contractors won't sell advanced, functional weaponry to private citizens (they destroy it), but there is no ban on commissioning military grade weapons (tanks, armored vehicles, etc., for instance, including armed and fully functional ones) from private manufacturers. The ownership of such weapons is of course subject to federal licensing/taxation and local laws, and ammo for them must be registered individually, on a "per round" basis, but they can be legally owned.

I've even seen such weapons on TV (Mythbusters emptied out several thousand rounds from a big ass vehicle mounted machine gun, for instance, that was clearly privately owned).

Wouldn't it be great if Mythbusters offered a program similar to the Nascar camps? For a fee come and play around with our shit for like a week, let's see what we can blow up. Edited December 30, 2012 by tadmjones

[Nicky]

So Tom Clancy could get an F117 fighter, an AWACS plane or three, and hire the military infrastructure run all of that? Note that with stealth weapons and the targeting infrastructure, I believe he'd need to have to part with many billions of dollars. After all that, he would still be no threat to the US military, which is my point--which you absolutely refuse to accept.

Civilian weapons, even at the absurd and impossible edge cases that I'm allowing here, are completely irrelevant to our government. That is my point. You can go ahead and pretend I had some other point and then proceed to tear that down, if that will make you happy, but why don't you do it on your own thread since it has nothing to do with this one.

Like I explained to you, the US military disables decommissioned weaponry, so it doesn't sell anything that's fully functional, to civilians. That's a policy of theirs, not a law against buying such weapons. If Tom Clancy wanted to and had the resources , he could obtain the proper licenses and legally build/commission himself a fully functional, modern tank, too. It would probably cost more money than even he's willing to part with, but if he had the money, he would be allowed to do it.

That answered that. And here was your point, from two pages ago. Guess it slipped you mind:

Yes, we don't allow people to have their own nukes, or even a mere tank. They pose a public threat that violates the rights of everybody around them. This is a contextual issue and the practical details matter. You'd don't have an absolute right to do whatever you feel like doing regardless of how it effects others. That's not how rights work.

And my answer to this point:

There's nothing pedantic about pointing that out. There is no law against Tom Clancy owning a tank, because there's no reason for a law against Tom Clancy owning a tank: Tom Clancy's fully functional tank would not be a threat to anyone. Pointing that out defeats your whole argument, it doesn't just prove your ignorance of facts.

Then there's this:

I'm aware of far more of Ayn Rand's works than you will ever be.

Nicky, your posts are one personal attack after another. I'm done talking to you.

What happened to that? I don't know about you, but to me it feels like the reason for this post wasn't your determination to stop talking to me (after all, you're talking to me). It was your determination to avoid the specific question I asked you, back on the previous page.

Since we're back to talking to each other, allow me to refresh your memory on where we left off: Are you aware of Ayn Rand's descriptions of the relationship between the principle of rights and the role of physical force in society?

Edited December 30, 2012 by Nicky

[CrowEpistemologist]

My original point, which you continue to ignore, is that your premise that civilian weapons are a necessary part of securing our freedom is false. Like Ayn Rand, I do not believe guns are going to help us if the US government decides to make a turn for the worse.

But I concede your other points that I am not an expert on military weapons, which ones being legal and illegal and all. You definitely nailed me on that one. It was irrelevant to the point I was trying to make, of course. But oh boy was I ever wrong when I said you can't own a tank. Yes, in the context in which I was speaking I was clearly talking about a fully armed weapon capable of posing a significant threat to he US military, but you obviously see the the value of dropping the context in order to appear to win your argument (or at least make yourself feel better).

[Nicky]

My original point, which you continue to ignore, is that your premise that civilian weapons are a necessary part of securing our freedom is false. Like Ayn Rand, I do not believe guns are going to help us if the US government decides to make a turn for the worse.

That nonsense claim has already been addressed, by several members (including one who served in the US military, if I remember correctly, and one who's son is about to join the military). The US military would never fight against the American people, and American patriots would never fight against the US military.

The US military is a tool for defending the United States from foreign enemies. Members of the military know that. They would never allow themselves to be used against the American people (or, for that matter, in a coup against the US government - they would remain neutral).

But I concede your other points that I am not an expert on military weapons

It's not that you're not an expert, it's that you know absolutely nothing about the US military, its weapons, laws governing the US military, military culture, civilian weapons, or US laws concerning gun ownership.

Basically, you know nothing about any of the subjects you saw fit to comment on. No one with even the most basic idea of what the the US military stands for and stood for over the years would ever suggest that this institution would deploy fighter jets and tanks against American civilians. I doubt you've ever met an American soldier in your life, if you think they could be ordered to start dropping bombs on Americans.

[CrowEpistemologist]

That nonsense claim has already been addressed, by several members (including one who served in the US military, if I remember correctly, and one who's son is about to join the military). The US military would never fight against the American people, and American patriots would never fight against the US military.

The US military is a tool for defending the United States from foreign enemies. Members of the military know that. They would never allow themselves to be used against the American people (or, for that matter, in a coup against the US government - they would remain neutral).

Um, this is circular reasoning (which we did discuss before as well). Our military is, in real terms, our government. If our military doesn't "turn" then our government will have not turned and vice-versa.

Now, even conceding that (which guess I can since it's circular reasoning), then that too would support my point that civilian weapons are irrelevant to freedom. We basically must trust our military, under democratic control, to do the right thing. If they are made not to do so, our little pop guns and novelty tanks would be meaningless against the government.

The context (there's that word again) of this conversation was gun control. One of the pillars of those who advocate completely unregulated access to weapons is that we need them, as the 2nd Amendment implied, to ward off an attack by a rogue government. This is an anachronism at best.

Nice grandstanding on the military stuff though. You should have inserted an audio track of the marine corp hymn in your post as well for effect. That wouldn't have been relevant to our conversation either, but that hasn't stopped you thus far.

Edited December 31, 2012 by CrowEpistemologist

[moralist]

"A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man’s right to his own life."

That's an apt description.

I'd add that that right rests upon the personal responsibility of a man to govern his own life properly. Failure in the latter forfeits the former.

[aleph_1]

I'm saying that drugs (psychotropics for example) frequently make things worse. Immoral people love it when their evil behavior is declared a physical or mental ailment which needs to be treated with drugs, because it absolves them of taking any personal responsibility for their own behavior. Once set free from moral accountability, they can now express the evil inside of them...

Moralist,

I can attest from experience that you are absolutely wrong concerning drugs related to mental illness. My son, who is sweet by nature, inherited a mental illness from his mother--the existence of which I was unaware until my son started hearing voices. The voices he heard told him to commit suicide. His psychosis is treatable, though it took some time to get the dosage right. I would say that the drugs he has taken have restored the sweet son I knew. He is happy, gregarious, and has a lot of friends.

It is sad that the kid in Connecticut didn't realize that by being committed to a mental hospital and getting the appropriate drugs, he may have become a happy and well-adjusted man someday. Identifying the mentally ill and administering the appropriate medicines should be the lesson of this tragedy. Gun control is wrong, futile, and completely misses the mark.

[CrowEpistemologist]

I was going to weigh in on that as well: you can't blame drugs per se.

First, attributing a casual relationship between the drugs and kids like the CT shooter is bad science: correlation does not imply causality. You will probably also find that a lot more people who are on heart medication get heart attacks, for instance. Without context this data is meaningless.

Second, as the poster before implied, there are a lot of drugs and a lot of treatments treating a lot of different mental problems. It's improper to lump them all together.

Third, medical treatments are not an exact science in that there is complexity in the human body that is currently beyond our ability to predict. We try our best to predict everything we can, but there are so many variables that we will invariably get things wrong occasionally.

People looking for the "silver bullet" solution to this tragedy are going to be disappointed. Sometimes things just plain suck, and there's nothing you can do about it.

There are things that we know partially contributed to the tragedy, including:

1. Mental illness, and perhaps poor treatment, and perhaps poorly prescribed drugs.

2. Poorly prepared parent(s); lack of resources/visibility into the child's problems (i.e. this boy, "fell through the cracks" somehow).

3. The ubiquitous availability of extremely deadly weapons.

4. Fox News, and the continual promises that the End is Nigh because a Democrat got elected, fostering the entire ridiculous "prepper" movement of which this boy's mother was a part.

None of these factors can be "fixed" and all of them are extremely complex problems in their own right. Even if they were magically fixed we still might have witnessed this tragedy.

[Eiuol]

The US military would never fight against the American people, and American patriots would never fight against the US military.

Uhh, the US military isn't immune to corruption or doing bad things. Everything else on this, I agree with Crow.

Like I explained to you, the US military disables decommissioned weaponry, so it doesn't sell anything that's fully functional, to civilians. That's a policy of theirs, not a law against buying such weapons.

Having an equipped tank is de facto banned. Why do you think the military disables the weaponry? On top of that, you said "he could obtain the proper licenses" to acquire/make a working tank, meaning that there are regulations Tom Clancy must comply with! As related to gun control, I'm saying that such regulations are good and proper for guns, too.

Tom Clancy can acquire a tank if he complies with regulations. The US military is just as fallible as any other institution. Now that that's done with...

*

Nuclear arms can only be used to initiate or to retaliate [...] Therefore, nuclear/chemical/biological weapons can rightly be controlled exclusively by the government.

Aren't the only ways to use a weapon for its purpose either initiation or retaliation? I don't know a third option, except for say, hunting, which I think is not even part of the context here, in the same way I said how the essential purpose of a weapon can be objectively defined.

The rest of this is in response to SapereAude:

what is a gun

For this context, let's say a Glock, which was used/carried by the shooter in question. It is used to shoot other people. I am aware he took his mother's guns, though.

what is a nuclear weapon

A weapon that when it detonates, it sets off a massive explosion caused by atomic fission. Of course, it is now known that this also leaves behind radiation at damaging levels. They vary in level of destruction.

how are they used/ how they function

Glocks by pulling a trigger. They can be used for self-defense of the moment, such as during a burglary. They can also be used to initiate force. They can even be used in attempts to take over a corrupt government, although if it came down to that, whether or not there is a right to bear arms is moot. If the government were corrupt, you'd do illegal things. American Revolutionaries did that, even.

Nuclear weapons can be detonated in a suitcase, delivered via missile, dropped out of a plane, or even shot by artillery. They are intended to be use when extensive destruction is needed, perhaps against North Korea.

Speaking of North Korea though... Someone may feel threatened by North Korea, so they may build a nuke in the event that their oil drilling rig near the Russian-Korean border is attacked by North Korean soldiers for whatever reason. This is indeed hypothetical, but it's not so farfetched. As a defensive weapon, this would actually make sense in my opinion, as a means of self-defense. Furthermore, North Korea is a dictatorship, so it's not as problematic as it would be if the other country were Italy. I would even suppose this business could properly possess a nuclear weapon, because self-defense would be expected in this circumstance.

what is the right to live and how does self defense work into that

The right to life derives from how existing in a society depends upon individual people being able to use reason in order to pursue what one evaluates as conducive to their life/morality. As a matter of clarification, since people mention it, self-ownership isn't a valid idea, and plays no role in my reasoning here. The concept of ownership first depends on the concept of a right, so a right to life can't be premised on self-ownership. It'd be a messy discussion.

Still, starting with a right to life, I notice that force is the one thing that violates a right to life, thus banning/controlling force is in no way a violation of rights. Important to controlling force is having regulations of its use and means of use, in particular, private defense agencies (the anarcho-capitalist sort), and weapons. By nature, these things involve potential rights violations whenever they are used - legitimate use has to be demonstrated in a court of law. If I use a gun in self-defense, I may be in the right, but how does anyone else know? Again, maintain the context: weapons, things intended to inflict bodily harm. With regards to defense agencies, dealing with the very real possibility of improper use of force is best minimized by establishing a government, and in fact doesn't violate a right to establish a private business. Formal rules ought to be in place agreed upon in society for establishing special considerations of how force may be used and who may be in charge (e.g. leaders should be mentally competent, age minimums, etc).

By the way, I'm not suggesting that government is infallible and can't violate rights, as many people seem to implicitly suppose (see my comments directed at Nicky; the military is the forceful arm of government, after all).

For weapons, my reasoning is similar, but only applies after government is established that can enforce regulations. There ought to be rules in place agreed upon in society for establishing how weapons may be used and who may be in charge (e.g. mentally competent, trained gun users, etc). In other words, this is my response to Rand thinking about how to resolve the issue of protecting oneself without giving others the privilege of killing people at whim. Given that a Glock pretty much works one one target at a time, regulations with as far as establishing mental competence and licensing seems appropriate. The level of regulation should be related to how much destruction a weapon is intended to cause - tanks and nukes would require more regulation. Now, someone is bound to say "a murderer on the loose with a hammer can kill people at whim, so what now, hammers should be regulated?", but that's not addressing the issue of *weapons and guns*. (A can of Raid isn't intended to be used against people!!!!)

we defer to the government the right to "retaliatory force" but is self defense really "retaliatory"

Yes, self-defense is retaliatory, because force is either defense/retaliation, or initiation.

does "defer" mean to "give up all together"?

Not necessarily. I never argued for banning guns, though.

Edited December 31, 2012 by Eiuol

[CrowEpistemologist]

Thanks, Eiuol. You are far more patient than I could ever be.