Monday, November 19, 2007

Right to bear arms, a valid reason

I thought the following was so good I copied as it was, its from the Munchkin Wrangler


why the gun is civilization.
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.

In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.

When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.

There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed. People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.

When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.


Yes its written by a yank, and yes he supports the right to bear arms, and one of the comments I found to be true as well..

Like Mao said, "political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." In a repressive totalitarian system, the folks who hold power always make sure that they're the only ones who can bear arms. They do this so they don't have to bother with reason when convincing everyone to get along with the program, skipping straight to force. (People who don't have reason on their side always favor force, of course.)That's probably a big subconscious factor in why so many Leftists are against guns in the hands of the citizenry (and not a small number of right-wingers as well, although they tend to deny the RKBA to specific undesirable groups, not everyone.)

Seems good writing is found where ever we look for it, feel free to go visit using the link above.

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8 Comments:

Blogger James Higham said...

I'm seriously undecided on this one. What do you think?

8:34 pm  
Blogger Mark Wadsworth said...

LFB, thought provoking post, no easy answers. No doubt Simon Clarke has one up his sleeve.

9:46 pm  
Blogger LFB_UK *The Legend* said...

Randy I worry that as we have no arms, and with the EU about to be imposed on us, we could need arming to protect ourselves.

11:52 pm  
Blogger Scott Freeman said...

Hi Mark ;)

Yes I'm from the UK and yes I believe in the right to keep and bear arms. I'm thinking of writing a sort of FAQ on gun control whereby I would list every argument I can think of made in favour of gun control and go through and debunk and refute each one with a combination of common sense and statistics. Let me know if you'd be interested. Until then, here's some good links on the subject:

http://www.a-human-right.com/
http://gunfacts.info/
http://www.justfacts.com/gun_control.htm
http://www.guncite.com/journals/okslip.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2409817.ece

To summarise my position, I oppose gun control for a number of reasons. Firstly, governments shouldn't tell people what they can and can't peacefully own or do. Secondly, gun control doesn't work. Thirdly, law abiding citizens owning and carrying guns for self-defence makes everyone safer, except criminals.

The most common argument, indeed what seems to be almost the entire basis for continued gun control is that Britain has tougher gun control and less gun crime than America. Ther's a lot of things wrong with that statement, but the main one is that Britain has always had low levels of gun/violent crime and murder, even when any person, including children, could mail order a machinegun on lay away (prior to 1937) or walk into an hardware store and walk out with a pocket revolver and carry it with him at the pub and at work and in the street. This argument is totally bogus because it ignores what went before gun control

Britain's gun control experiment has been a disaster: deaths and injuries from the illegal use of guns (not including airguns) has increased ten fold since the gun bans of the 1980's and the same figure for handguns has more than doubled since the handgun bans in 1996 and 1997.

Conversely, America saw rising crime when it instituted increased gun control and that trend only reversed with the advent of 'right to carry' laws.

I'd love to write more, but it's quite late. I hope that's helped you towards coming off the fence on the right side :) I'll leave you with something a friend of mine said the other day. He doesn't shoot or own guns and I've only chatted with him about gun control on a couple of occasions. It was after a lethal shooting on the news and he said "there's so much f*cking evidence for legalised concealed carry its not even funny." I was very proud :D

12:03 am  
Blogger Scott Freeman said...

Oh, I should add another reason to the three I have in my second paragraph: the state shouldn't have a monopoly on arms. Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, Hitler, Lenin, Idi Amin, Mussolini, Mugabe and, to perhaps a lesser extent, Brown, have taught us that.

12:07 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Simon as an ex squaddie, I had thought guns were lethal and should be kept out of everyones hands.

But it isnt working (gun control) and I dont like the idea that only the state can be armed, I just cant trust the fuckers!

7:56 am  
Blogger Scott Freeman said...

Good to hear, lfb. Of course, if guns weren't lethal they wouldn't do us much good!

And can I just say thankyou for your past service :)

12:40 am  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

molleywop

2:26 pm  

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