trap15 wrote:Edmond Dantes wrote:the "wild west" period of American history was actually not very violent at all, with a record low number of murders, assaults, rapes and every other sort of crime (save maybe cattle-rustling). The reason? Because it was a time where everyone carried a gun.
[citation needed]
One of the triggers of the whole "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" was tensions between the lawmen (Republicans mainly) with outlaws (Democrats and family of former Confederates, if not some being Confederates themselves). Specifically, one of the 'outlaws' got pistol-whipped by Wyatt Earp, I think, because he tried to ignore a regulation about turning your gun in when you rode into town.
LOGIC TIME!
BareknuckleRoo wrote:WHAT IF WE HAD MORE POWERFUL WEAPONS? Hey, we should all have tactical nukes, then we'd REALLY be safe! Fuck, I'm brilliant.
What you have tried to do is an impermissible logical move, and I can hopefully demonstrate why. We all know that this is the argument to absurdity, formally called the "reductio ad absurdum," or just "the
reductio." It works in some situations but not in others. Consider an example where it doesn't work: Rand Paul's argument in 2011 hearings on the Older Americans Act (also known as "seniors going hungry" - I believe the discussion might be seen
here; it's certainly in
here), and there is a partial transcript
here including the important bits):
PAUL: I appreciate the great and I think very collegial discussion, and we do have different opinions. Some of us believe more in the ability of government to cure problems and some of us believe more in the ability of private charity to cure these problems. I guess what I still find curious though is that if we are saving money with the two billion dollars we spend, perhaps we should give you 20 billion. Is there a limit? Where would we get to, how much money should we give you to save money? So if we spend federal money to save money where is the limit? I think we could reach a point of absurdity. Thank you.
FRANKEN: I think you just did.
Senator Paul's mistake was in trying to advocate a version of the opposing argument that is, in fact, not held by the opposition at all. There is obviously a point at which you don't need to add funding to the Act to make all its goals. But Paul wants to try to reduce things to a simple continuum to make it appear as if the underlying logic always leads you into this absurd proposition. Perhaps, in his defense, it could be said that the Democrats weren't specifically saying that there is a point at which you don't need to throw more funding into the Act. But this isn't a reading any reasonable adult would hold, and it only takes a jibe from Al Franken to collapse the whole ridiculous construction.
Alright, let's return to this argument.
The first step in using the
reductio reasonably, as I see it, is to make sure you aren't tilting against windmills and arguing against something which a.) isn't something the party you are arguing with believes and b.) is not a reasonable construction of their argument.
Proponents of gun ownership are a pretty diverse lot. There may well be some hardcore survivalists and secessionists who think that private ownership of nuclear weapons are reasonable (I'm not sure I've met anybody pretending to believe this online, but I have seen this particular point brought up and I don't recall anybody agreeing to it). They are obviously wrong and most second amendment advocates disagree with them strongly. The presence of idiots hanging around every fandom and movement doesn't reflect on those groups - but rather is a simple fact of life. Also, every person is able to construct their own version of an argument, and sometimes they split off from the previous group with disagreements. You can't say that the new splinter group should be responsible for defending the very beliefs that fomented their splitting from the original group - there's no original sin for an atheist.
There is a general understanding among academics that you should try to construct a stronger version of your opponent's views - a "steelmanned" instead of a strawman argument. This allows you to show off your superiority in understanding the issue while legitimately moving the argument forward.
So, here's a couple ways I might take the "nukes for all" argument.
- Under what circumstances are nuclear weapons permissible for private individuals?
- What is the purpose of private arms?
These points are similar in many ways. Without getting too wrapped-up in what the Founding Fathers say, it is clear that the Founding Fathers believed
at least that there are limits to what government (and, by reasonable extension, policing) can achieve. This is a reasonable thing to believe unless I'm very mistaken. Note: Many proponents of handgun ownership believe in something stronger than this - that not only are there limits on what government can achieve, but there are strong limits on what trust you should place in government (it's kind of hard to spell this one out without the view contradicting itself). In other words, government is thought to be ineffective when needed and often - if not usually - untrustworthy. Historically, this is actually not a completely irrational belief to hold, either, but it is unnecessarily extreme. I favor just reverting to the original proposition I present here - there are limits on what services governments and policing can provide the public citizen.
So, then, the two ways (which I think are just two halves of the same argument):
One purpose of owning private weapons is to defend oneself. The purpose of using a tank, or a bomber, or a nuclear weapon, is very much undermined by the difficulty in one person using them. We're also implying necessity here: In defending yourself, there is a necessity of having some abilities. For some people this might just be their ability to shove and punch. I also think this fairly implies that you are only acting within a reasonably small space. If you are surrounded by enemies, you might be able to hold them off with a handgun, or you might need something bigger. But long before the time things escalate to nuclear weapons seeming to be required, you had better have friends to assist you. In this case, "friends" means "the armed forces." There's also an obvious link in to responsibility: If your ultimate response technique is to send off a Davy Crockett or Little John, it's hard to see (in the usual case) why that's really just a private defense, and not an event of great magnitude. Now, you
can modify this belief to argue for limits on how powerful a weapon people can have - I think it'd be foolish to disagree with that entirely (again, firearms proponents tend to have trouble with this one, because they don't see handguns and nuclear weapons on the same scale, but they tend to like the idea of being able to own a private mortar or cannon, just in case).
The other part of this argument is about something like the reasonableness, effectiveness, and accountability of acting in isolation. Clearly, no government has the ability currently (and possibly never will!) of absolutely protecting its citizens, even from mundane things like traffic accidents or forgetting to breathe, let alone intentional murder. There are some things that a government does better than other things: It's impossible to give each citizen a personal guard, and each person has a natural right to protect themselves - so there is a simple necessity of each person taking some responsibility for their own safety, at least up to some level - I don't think anybody can reasonably refute this (though some have apparently tried, i.e. Jesus in the Gospels, maybe). At the same time, a government is generally good at providing a massive, coordinated response to large attacks - and more accountable and effective at it than private individual who answers to no chain of command. Of course, many people will say that nuclear weapons are never reasonable for use in human conflict, so there is that.
We agree that just a large number of people with sticks and stones, or a small handful of people with weapons, can overwhelm a private citizen's ability to secure their safety on their own, so they will have to rely on outside help from the gub'mint at some point. At this point, the person's private weapon or shelter becomes less about subduing the opposition, and more about surviving. Here is another point many firearms aficionados stumble on: Many say (at least in forums) that it's good to kill another scumbag. But the purpose of firearms isn't to kill random people doing supposedly terrible things; it's to protect yourself. If you can shoot the gun out of a mugger's hand, great! Of course, if you can't (like basically everybody) then you will have to shoot to kill, if you can, and if you manage not to kill the person then that is even better. If you can't kill the opposition, then you protect yourself by holding them off, hopefully long enough for the cavalry to arrive, or to convince them that attacking you isn't worth it.
Of course, if you live alone on an island and are surrounded by evil flesh-eating demons that must be killed (God said so), then perhaps having the nuclear weapon is reasonable. But this isn't a situation any of us live in, unless I'm mistaken about the true thrust of that Canadian plan to secure the Northwest Passage with stealth snowmobiles.
By the by, I am generally not too sympathetic towards some supposedly good uses of firearms, like clearing "varmints" from the land. But I haven't actually been infested with them - it's been my observation that the handful of squirrels, rabbits, woodchucks, possum, and raccoons that hang about tend to get killed by cars long before they can become any kind of nuisance, and probably before they can even stabilize their numbers. But maybe I would change my tune if I had to grow a garden to feed myself and my family, and it was overrun by critters. But generally I see people who talk about casually clearing random critters out of the woods behind their small house as wanton killers doing nothing for the ecosystem.
The problem that concerns me most is the same one pretty much everybody agrees on: There are dangerous people, idiots, and then there are dangerous idiots. Supposedly the Second Amendment protects the right of each person to have a gun, without demonstrating competence or the right attitude towards gun ownership. Even barring the mentally disturbed has been challenged by some as a violation of the Second Amendment, but of course nobody ever thought of putting a firearm in the hands of a prisoner, or somebody appearing at court. There's definitely lots of problems to be worked out still.
And now Japan seems to be abandoning the clamshell design as well.