Skykid wrote:I occasionally find myself in two minds about the right to bear arms, and that's in the one eventuality it would be absolutely necessary and useful. Funnily enough, this occasion would be based on the constitution that originally decreed the right to bear arms: that being to overthrow your government if they don't serve you as they should.
But, well, no group of individuals could beat an organisation such as a government in all probability. They are better funded, better trained, better organised, better sanctioned, better able to influence the outcome either way and above all better armed. It is a joke to think that your local shooter would stand a chance in hell against a government's potential resources.
If you look back in history very few 'armed responses' succeeded in much in the way of peace and order for very long. Rather, it is better to offer a social/economic solution and let things adapt accordingly.
As such, the right to bear arms really falls flat as being "something useful" on those grounds.
If you look back in time the one thing that the US police wish to have done differently was that they armed their police in which case the criminals 'had to be' armed. The other was when they banned alcohol sales which in turn strengthened organised crime groups.
If you break it all down:
1. Number of deaths due to fire arms - easy to find.
2. Number of deaths due to fire arms in error - easyish to extrapolate.
3. Number of lives saved due to fire arms use - much harder to 'prove' despite what the NRA have to say about any related matter
Then think what would happen as the number of fire arms tended to zero - what would happen?
I think back to old Japan with its laws on the use and licensing of swords. There was and is a whole culture that surrounds the katana and the tanto and other weapons but there was also a well grounded and understood method for controlling the availability and use of the katana with pretty heavy and strict laws pertaining to their use. It takes substantially more conviction and will to kill someone with a blade than it would with a gun - there's this 'abstraction' of will and action and a deferment of understanding the implications when using a gun.
As such, a whole professional class and indeed a social class arose around the use of the katana in Japan and that is not present in the US. You would never have been able to buy a traditionally made katana in those days and apart from some campaigns in and around the time of WW2 the katana was never mass produced and has not been mass produced since.
So, we find that:
1. Availability: katana in Japan was comparatively rare and expensive to acquire vs. Guns galore in the US.
2. Social status: ANYONE who owned a katana was required and able to look after it and not flout it and indeed a whole social group developed around this weapon - the US does not have anything that approaches this level of discipline when compared to Japan and when you have people "buying them for their kids" as birthday presents I do not need to say any more - that's madness right there!
3. Conditioning: The real truth of conflict is that it is not something glamorous or in any way shape or form 'sexy'. Japan had literally hundreds of years of internal conflict and I dare say that during those times people came to appreciate the cost of armed conflict and indeed the social group created as the means of this and the application became custodians and over time their purpose changed. So you have a group that own, understand and have a history of dealing with conflict and war and eventually become the experts on the subject.
It makes it very difficult for others to challenge such a social construct as to be any threat you would at the least have to overcome the custodians of the weapon of the day.
Guns have been around for a long time now and they have changed the nature of war in concept: we do not need to commit with will and be physically in place any longer and this abstraction has changed the nature of war and conflict. Real conflict is right in your face, it smells bad, it is harrowing and this 'education' prepares and tempers hands over time.
With the coming of the industrial world and automated manufacture we find that yes we can mass produce items that can be for our benefit and indeed those that are lethal and cause death. What is missing is the social aspects, the responsibility that comes with such a large means of attaining things. Sadly, that part has been missed out and until people sit down, work out that it is a losing game to perpetuate the use, glamourisation and objectification of the gun as something to be revered and offer social status nothing will improve over there in the US.
Weapons are really means to kill and to cause death. Their use, I feel should come with the largest responsibility we can really ever expect to undertake. They are not, to my mind, for the commoner - you invest your trust in those that serve that purpose to protect you and your community. I would never attempt to fix my electrical supply at my home, that is better carried out by persons who appreciate, are trained, understand and whom are better qualified than me to carry out such work. Weapons, I feel, carry an even greater burden to the individuals charged with them.
If those who are ordained to carry out this action and to protect the commoner are not fulfilling that obligation ask why is that? What's failing? Where did we get it wrong?
As opposed to: "hell, I'll just do it myself". You encourage vigilantes, you encourage the usurping of common law and you make the system heterogenous. You effectively add noise and chaos to the system and chaos is the greatest source of options/opportunities and indeed "mis-kills" in this case.
I'd wager to bet that more people shoot themselves over there than any would be robber.
The majority of people are not adept, not disciplined and cave in under any serious pressure and we are expected to accept that people of that disposition and under those conditions make the best you guys have got as a response to crime - you have got to be joking me.
Leave it to the professionals and that's not most of us any day of the week.