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#1 |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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![]() How do we balance the right to own a gun with public safety? Let's take a dispassionate look at this question by thinking about it in terms of driverless cars:
Car crashes kill an average of 37,000 Americans a year and injure or disable around 2,350,000 people. The annual cost of those crashes is $230 billion. For the most part these are preventable crashes with human factors at their root, and if the aviation industry is any indication then we can easily save most of those lives using autopilot. There are about half a dozen major corporations already building or retrofitting self-driving cars, and that number will double in the next year or two. You can already buy a driverless car, and next year you'll be able to ride a driverless taxi around in certain cities. The technology works. It’s complex and expensive, but it’s already saving lives. Last year we heard the story of a man who had a heart attack on the highway whose car saved his life by driving him most of the way to the hospital. And there are already dozens of stories of driverless cars that saved their occupants by predicting and preventing collisions. As more stories like these accumulate over time, soon a generation of Americans will come to trust the autopilot more than they trust their own driving ability. What does any of this have to do with guns? Well, we all make mistakes and do dangerous, unpredictable things when we drive, so in much the same way that certain places are designated gun-free zones, eventually people will implore the government to establish driverless roads for safety and convenience. Driverless cars could be even safer, faster, and cheaper to design for roads where people are simply not allowed to drive. The cars could talk to each other via radio to coordinate their movements, making it possible to speed through intersections without stopping and without colliding. Already many people argue that when the technology is ready people should be banned from driving altogether. But being able to drive your own car is one of the greatest freedoms we have as Americans. This unique mobility provides us with job opportunities, it lets us go anywhere anytime we wish, and it allows us cross the country at our own pace. Driving is fun and rewarding in itself for many of us, and getting your driver's licence when you turn 16 is a right of passage. We’ll be hard pressed to give up that freedom, even as the younger generation inevitably demands that elderly Millennials put aside their freedoms and let the autopilots have the road. In time, that younger generation may prevail and a limited network of driverless roads will be established in one or a few major cities to test the idea. The government will enact a law that restricts people from using those roads without autopilot, and road signs will be posted that read “This Is a Driverless Road: No Driving Beyond This Point.” The experiment will be successful, perhaps for many years, until some suicidal psychopath–probably a man in his late 60’s–decides to break the law and take his own truck on the highway. The driverless cars, programmed to avoid obstacles, will tolerate and adapt to his presence right up until the moment he caroms into an intersection, colliding with a dozen self-driving cars and causing a hundred more to pile up at high speed. To ensure that never happens, future driverless cars will have to be designed to share the road with human drivers. Allowing people to drive themselves will always be risky and managing that risk will be costly, but to ban drivers would breed complacency among carmakers. The above scenario seems unlikely until you remember that engineers have to design cars as cheaply as possible. If the law banned drivers then engineers would happily omit the complex safety systems that make driverless cars so expensive today, leaving their passengers wide open to attack. Keep in mind that the law exists not to prevent crime but to punish crime. There are 253 million cars in America and the government can’t confiscate them all. Somebody is going to break the law someday and drive on a driverless road, that’s a guarantee. So in the interest of preserving personal freedom and preventing lone-wolf massacres, it only makes sense to preserve the right to drive. This will be a contentious issue in the decades to come for the same reasons that gun owner’s rights are so contentious today. Whether some like it or not, we will live in a future where driverless cars will mingle with people driving on the same roads just as today we must all coexist in a nation where personally owned firearms number in the hundreds of millions. But unlike with firearms, no Constitutional protection exists to guarantee the right to drive. The 2nd Amendment is sacrosanct for reasons beyond the scope of this discussion, and abolition is neither enforceable nor desirable since disarming the public will leave so many exposed to the threat of mass shootings. To those who study such things, it comes as no surprise that nine out of ten mass shooting occur in gun-free zones; shooters may be psychopaths but they aren’t stupid. It also comes as little surprise that violent crime rates are so low in towns and neighborhoods where gun ownership is prevalent; burglars and rapists aren’t stupid either. Criminals who don’t want to be shot will select unarmed victims every time. Nevertheless, there are many who think it's time to repeal the 2nd Amendment and, sadly, they forget that abolition has failed every time has been tried and it always leads to unintended consequences. Not even a Constitutional amendment could stop people from using alcohol, and instead it gave rise to organized crime rings to fulfill the public demand. The War on Drugs has certainly put lots of people in prison but has done nothing to address rampant drug addiction. And many States are tacitly nullifying the federal ban on marijuana either by allowing medical prescriptions or by legalizing possession outright. A gun ban, too, would lead to organized crime, widespread incarceration, and sedition among the States. It is guaranteed make life worse. So if a gun ban won’t work then what will? As with all complex problems, that depends. Most gun deaths are suicides. Taking their guns won’t give them a reason to live. To save them requires a different solution. Other than suicide, most gun deaths are gang-related. Taking their guns won’t put an end gang rivalry nor will it prevent gangs from recruiting. To help them requires a different solution. After gang violence, the next most gun deaths occur in domestic disputes. Taking their guns won’t remove murder from their hearts, and kitchen knives and baseball bats kill just as effectively as bullets. To help them requires a different solution. But for some reason, suicides and gang shootings and domestic violence are not the problems that make us question the value and necessity of the 2nd Amendment. This topic never comes up until a mass shooting occurs. Such a shocking event galvanizes our passions as no other form of violence could, but when you think about it, mass shootings appall us not because they are so common but because they are so very rare. Here’s a test: do you ever give a second thought to the high number of gun crimes that occur in the city of Chicago each and every day? A Chicago citizen dies from gunshot wounds every 12 hours. Does it surprise you the same way the Las Vegas Strip shooting surprised us all? To be fair, Chicago’s per capita rate of gun violence isn’t particularly high compared with other large cities, but it’s population is so large that the equivalent of one Las Vegas Strip Shooting occurs in Chicago every single month. Try to imagine, if mass shootings were as common as Chicago shootings, we would take them for granted. We’d ignore them while the media focused our attention on other problems. It’s sad but true. So in the interest of looking at the problem of gun violence dispassionately, we must appreciate mass shootings for the rarity they are and be thankful for that fact. And though we must never ignore mass shootings, with the proper perspective we can get down to the business of solving the far worse problems of domestic violence, gang shootings, and suicide. The only obvious link between these problems is the weapon of choice, a gun, but take that away and those problems will still remain. Abolition is no solution. As with every issue which balances public safety with the rights of individuals, be they questions of firearms or of self-driving cars, there are no shortcuts. |
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#2 |
my name is Ranking Fullstop
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Promontorium Tremendum
Posts: 4,391
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![]() when i become your benevolent dictator, i will take away all your guns and we will all be better off when i do.
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#3 |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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#4 |
flippin 'em off
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: the real world
Posts: 3,232
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![]() Wow! Huge copy and paste Mazer. Good job not thinking for yourself, that would have been very hard for you.
Yeah, take away the guns knife, fentanyl-poisoned darts dropped from a drone have so much potential, or just some baggies of it wrapped around M-80's. So many ways to kill. Until recently the biggest mass murder in U.S. history was done with a container of gasoline in a crowded firetrap. I think it was 80+ people. In accordance with the "Iron Law of Bureaucracy" the government needs criminals to justify and expand its power, specifically the law enforcement bureaucracy, the justice system bureaucracy and the prison system system bureaucracy which have all grown massively over the years, let alone their general campaigning value, so it's against the government's interest to eliminate criminals. ![]()
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Taking power from the many and giving it to the few corrupts the few and degrades the many. |
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#5 |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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![]() You've always been a dick, albed, but accusing me of copypasta is about the laziest insult you've ever used.
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#6 |
Global Security Octopus
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: In the 1960s
Posts: 621
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![]() When I become your benevolent dictator, I will restore the full rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment for all law abiding people to have the means to defend themselves from criminals who still have guns no matter what the law says, and to legally resist a tyrannical government as the Constitution says, and we will all be better off when I do.
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Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words. This is the Century of the Insane.
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#7 |
My eyes are now open.
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford uk
Posts: 1,409
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![]() Lots of things about my life make me smile.
Everyday it's something. Yesterday it was my little grandson playing in the bath. Today it's you Mazer. Your comment just made me smile.
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#8 | |
My eyes are now open.
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford uk
Posts: 1,409
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![]() Quote:
It just doesn't compute at all. I respect people points of view on most things but this is one subject I can't. Being allowed to possess guns yes.WITH PROPER CHECKS But Military assault weapons. Come on that's just stupid.
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#9 | |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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![]() Quote:
I agree that proper checks are necessary. We may disagree what a proper check is, and as we've recently learned, even proper checks fail to catch everybody. Sadly, the Texas shooter this week had passed a background check despite his disqualifying history of violent crime. And the Las Vegas shooter passed every background check as well because he had no criminal past to speak of. After a month we still don't know his motive. Perhaps a psychological evaluation would have somehow indicated his intentions, but to me, requiring a psych-eval for gun buyers with no marks against them would be improper. For the government to limit a basic human right requires a damn good reason, and the remote possibility that any one gun might be used to commit a crime isn't a good enough reason, given the vast majority of guns are never aimed at people (that's rule #1 of gun safety, after all). By the way, I'm not proud of what I said to albed, but I'm glad you got a kick out of it. ![]() |
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#10 | |
My eyes are now open.
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford uk
Posts: 1,409
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As to this gun thing. Of course I don't know the details of what guns are what. I have used a shotgun years ago. Also I used a firing range in the USA many years ago for the experience. I can't say I liked it really. I know it's in the DNA of many,Americans this love of guns. It's just not something I can get my head around. Surly something needs to be done not just repeating the same old arguments over and over again. As to owning a gun being a "basic human right" I find that hard to understand that sort of thinking Britain's police on the whole are still unarmed. Despite all the troubles in the world most police want to keep it that way. We do have armed response units which may need expanding in the present climate but I'm not really in favour of more guns on the street. There is gun crime in Britain but not enough to justify arming all of our police. It's a debate that we in Britain maybe shouldn't get involved in concerning American. A country that has so many great things going for it's way of life. Lets it's self down with this issue I feel. But we have a phrase here in Britain. "Non players stay off the green"
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#11 |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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![]() It's a cultural thing, I guess. As hard as it is for you to get American gun culture, I find I cannot in the slightest wrap my head around this: YouTube: 11 British police officers versus 1 guy with a knife. I get that putting a gun in a cop's hand is the equivalent of putting the power over life itself in his hand and the British people don't want that, but give the cops something. I mean, a guard dog's bark is only as assertive as the bite it threatens, and no matter how short a leash you might put on your dog, you'd never pull his teeth.
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#12 | |
My eyes are now open.
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford uk
Posts: 1,409
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Because of all the guns in America and the "Gun Culture"your police have to be armed.I don't at this moment feel our police either need to be or want to be.As to the average guy in the street being armed absolutely not. There are so many aspects of American culture I do so admire. But this ownership of guns with it's so obvious (IMHO)flaws is not one of them.
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#13 |
Global Security Octopus
Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: In the 1960s
Posts: 621
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![]() For my part, I don't own a gun and never have. What's more, for most of my life I held to the idea that guns were bad. That is what I was taught in school, on TV, in the media, in discussions, everywhere. We don't need guns because people will just use them to kill others, and besides, we have the police to save our bacon when we need them.
What changed my mind was the understanding that people who don't have guns can still die from them. And they do. This is because only the law-abiding obey gun-control laws; criminals still have them and use them. The only difference is that the victim can't shoot back. This makes the criminals very happy. Ever since I started learning from alt news outlets, instead of relying on the main stream media, I have heard of many cases where law-abiding people who had self-protection were able to shoot back at a criminal, and stopped the criminal from continuing to do harm. This meant something to me. The Main Stream Media almost never report on such events. The media has for years painted gun-owners as rednecks who are reckless with guns and that the high American gun death rate is due to them. This is not born out by the actual statistics. American law-abiding gun owners are, over all, a fairly peaceable bunch. Millions upon millions of people own guns and never do gun violence to anyone their entire lives. Most violent gun crime in America is gang related, often over drug deals or gang turf. And this is not in locations where Constitutional gun carry exists; it's mostly in Gun Control areas like Chicago, LA, Philadelphia, Detroit, where legal gun ownership is nearly impossible. So the gangsters have guns illegally. They don't care about the law, and law enforcement can't stop them having guns, so disarming the law-abiding doesn't achieve a whole lot, except make honest people more vulnerable and please those who have been conned on this subject. People do point at the massacres that have taken place as an argument against guns, but the reverse is true. The people who were shot at were already disarmed. If any of them had the means to shoot back the situations may have turned out less destructively to human life. This, in fact, has happened a number of times when potential massacres have been less or nipped in the bud because someone was able to shoot the person starting the attack. The MSM tend not to report such things, so people are unaware of them. It is no coincidence that most of these massacres have taken place in gun-control areas, where people are unlikely to have the means to fight back. Then there is the matter of the US Constitution, which recognizes people's natural right to own guns with a view to self-protection and even overthrowing a tyrannical government that can't be removed by legal means and is oppressing the people. The founding fathers were savvy enough to know that governments invariably attract corrupt people because it offers them power and the means to make a lot of money. So they wrote that the Second Amendment, which protects the First Amendment, ie, the human right to freedom of speech, which includes the freedom to speak against the government. The Constitution requires government to protect people's right to free speech and to bear arms, not erode them. Proto-tyrannical governments love to take away people's guns; this has happened in so many countries over the years, before they felt free to become tyrannical; the people, having been disarmed 'for the good of the people', had no means to fight back. So all of this seem like reasonable arguments to me for the owning of firearms. I am conscious that I have probably alienated nearly everyone who still visits this forum, and I'm sorry for that to happen. But for me, in all good conscience, I do believe that the means to protect your life is a basic human right that no government has the prerogative to take away or infringe. The US government, at least, is supposed to be the servant of the sovereign people, not their master. The degree of departure from that foundational principle shows how far down the slippery slope America has gone, and in many other countries the people aren't sovereign at all, but subjects of either a monarch or the state. People are not encouraged to consider that reality, being intentionally distracted with other things. The implied social contract that the police will save our chestnuts out of the fire is a myth; police almost never can arrive in time to save us; they usually can only arrive, at best, a few minutes later, and most attacks on people are over by then. Over the recent years, since 9/11 in fact, I have come to realize how conditioned my thinking had become by my social environment. During this time I have been working at studying alternative views that the MSM don't acknowledge, or deride as nutter opinions. I have found many things out that have been liberating to me, but I know has put me outside what most people will accept. People generally don't like to have their world view disturbed. Most people don't want to be cast out by their friends, so they conform and fit in. That's their choice, but I prefer to value truth in all subjects, not just about self-defense. So sorry guys; I'm in a very different camp to the one I was in at the beginning of Napsterites, all those years ago.
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Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is the fear of long words. This is the Century of the Insane.
Last edited by Bright Eyes : 12-11-17 at 07:31 AM. |
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#14 | |
Earthbound misfit
Join Date: May 2001
Location: Moses Lake, Washington
Posts: 2,563
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#15 | |
My eyes are now open.
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Oxford uk
Posts: 1,409
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#16 |
flippin 'em off
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: the real world
Posts: 3,232
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![]() I theorized many years ago that thousands of years of human slavery had selected for large numbers of submissive, weak-minded humans like Malvachat who can't imagine everyone having equal rights. I've seen it confirmed enough that I ought to write a dissertation.
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Taking power from the many and giving it to the few corrupts the few and degrades the many. |
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#17 | ||
flippin 'em off
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: the real world
Posts: 3,232
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![]() Jeeze! I thought others would help malva become less stupid by pointing it out to him.
Quote:
The men who chased him down and shot him weren't. Quote:
I guess you all like him the way he is. ![]()
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Taking power from the many and giving it to the few corrupts the few and degrades the many. Last edited by albed : 25-11-17 at 10:44 AM. |
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#18 | |||
flippin 'em off
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: the real world
Posts: 3,232
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![]() https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...ss-destruction
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ght-by-senator Quote:
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Took them long enough but they're finally coming around. ![]() You're welcome Anna Edney. ![]()
__________________
Taking power from the many and giving it to the few corrupts the few and degrades the many. |
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