In the UK, if you kill anyone with a gun, you are in the wrong. There is no situation where having a gun and using it against anyone, even someone breaking into your home, is condoned by the law. Your response has to be appropriate to the threat, and guns are always inappropriate.
And I am glad that I do not live in the UK. Here is a scenario. My neighbor has eyes for my girlfriend, and knows that I work nights. So when I am gone one evening he breaks into the house to rape her. Situation A: She does what I have trained her to do. Yells she is calling the police, if running away option take that, if in room locks door, goes to closet, unlocks shotgun and turns on old cell phone, readies shotgun pointed at door, calls police on speakerphone. If the person tries to get into the room, yells she has a gun, if they continue to try to get in, shoot to kill. Situation B: There are no guns in the house, she yells she is calling police, runs away if option, if in room locks door and calls police. If person breaks in, prepare herself for a beating and a raping, and if lucky not a murder afterwards.
Your game theory says situation B is better because the rapists life is worth just as much as hers. And there is only a chance he will murder her afterwards. Rape is nothing compared to a persons life, and most likely he will not kill her. So overall it is better to not have a gun.
I say that a person who derives pleasure from hurting others life is worth less than a good person's life. And if it comes down to a good person receiving physical and emotional scarring and a chance to be killed, or a persons life who in my opinion is worth less than a good person's life. Then I feel there should be a means of defending oneself.
And so here's where you might think I'm the fucked-up one:
I don't think prevention of rape is grounds for killing the attacker. I think a rapist should be punished to the full extent of the law, and everything should be done to stop all rapes happening (so I'm not going to go into all the ways this could be reduced now).
And while I do agree that a convicted rapists life should be worth less than a non-rapists life, I don't think that justifies the death of that person.
This comes back to the non-killing extremism thing, which I know is a sticking point for some of you to understand.
I see it as a slippery slope. If it is okay for a rapist to die, when should they be killed? After conviction, by lethal injection or electrocution?
How about after they raped someone, and are running away? In other words, before they are tried and convicted?
How about as they are caught raping someone?
How about when they attack a woman, and it looks as though they intend to rape that woman? If at this point, should they die before they get a chance to back down and not actually rape someone?
How about when a woman thinks she is going to be raped, because the attacker is already in the house? This is before he has shown any sign he might rape her.
How about as a man is breaking into a house?
How about as a person is on the property outside the house?
How about as a person is approaching the house, and they look suspicious?
I'm doing a reverse-slippery-slope here. At what point on the slope is it okay for someone to die? You seem to think entry into an occupied home is the line where you can just presume someone intends to kill you, so death is the best option for them. I personally don't agree, as the slippery slope now means that George Zimmerman can chase after someone and kill them, and not be punished.
Appropriate use of force in trying to stop an attack is a very difficult topic. Females using guns to kill a rapist comes very close to being appropriate, in my opinion, but I just can't take that step. It's going to seem horrific, but even though someone can destroy a woman's life by raping them, I don't think it means they should die. The woman will disagree! The boyfriend will disagree! I understand EVERYONE disagreeing with me. I can take it.
As stated earlier, I have a different view. The basic math is: Does the person derive pleasure from harming others? Then I value their life less. Everyone else who does not like to harm others is on equal ground. Rapists? Less value on their life. People who like to beat their kids? Less value on their life. Like to torture insurgents? Less value on their life. Like to emotionally scar women or men? Less value on their life. Like to go to bars, get drunk and beat people up because it fulfills some void in your life? I don’t value their life as much as the people they beat up.
I actually DO agree with your views on the worth of lives. If we had line of people who could get on a plane to escape a blowing volcano, the rapists and sadists and child molesters would be waaaaay down the back of the line. However, I don't think their victims should exclude the convicted criminals from even being in that line on the spur of the moment killings when first attacked.
Even if George Zimmerman HAD been attacked, and WAS right to kill his victim, what if later he turned out to be a wife beater? Maybe his attacker's life was worth more than his, rather than the other way around. It comes down to punishing people in advance for perceived hypothetical future harm, with the sentence and execution carried out by the least objective party possible. I'd like to think that anything short of death is better than death.
The intent of most self-defence laws in the United States (even if the implementation of these laws is varied, many times overly-broad, and many times incompatible with the realities of assault) is that if someone is in immediate mortal danger from an attack, they have the right to use lethal force to defend themselves.
Like I said, the implementation in most of the United States is either way too broad (Zimmerman) or too narrow (attackers who live suing defenders for their injuries), but I agree with the moral argument posed by my first paragraph. In the hypothetical situation where it's nearly guaranteed that either an attacker or I will die, I think it is morally justified for me to kill them. This is, I think, where Luke and I differ. Note: This has a near-zero probability of happening and I don't own any guns (though I'll probably inherit my great grandfather's WW2 rifle sometime in the next 30 years, which I'll keep for sentimental reasons and most likely never fire).
As for implementation of self defense / gun laws, I agree with Rym's list of mandatory requirements for gun ownership, and think that there should be a cultural push towards "non-lethal" self defence weapons (I would be 100% behind a "Guns for Tasers" program). In fact, I'll go as far as to state that Rym's list is the absolute minimum amount of gun regulation a civilized society should have.
EDIT: "Platonic ideal assault situation" seems like a really strange turn of phrase, but I hope you know what I mean. That hypothetical situation is pretty much solely a thought experiment to illustrate Luke and my differing views, and should not be used in any anecdotal argument for or against gun control.
EDIT2: I'm not qualified to make a judgement about defensive gun use in situations of rape, prolonged (non-lethal) torture, or systematic oppression, etc so I'm not going to pursue that line of argument.
The intent of most self-defence laws in the United States (even if the implementation of these laws is varied, many times overly-broad, and many times incompatible with the realities of assault) is that if someone is in immediate mortal danger from an attack, they have the right to use lethal force to defend themselves.
... In the hypothetical situation where it's nearly guaranteed that either an attacker or I will die, I think it is morally justified for me to kill them. This is, I think, where Luke and I differ.
Actually, I agree with you completely. In literal kill-or-be-killed situation, I do think one is morally justified to kill someone.
Meanwhile, in the real world, gun ownership makes ANY violent situation where both parties have guns into a literal kill or be killed situation.
And in the case of anyone armed with a gun for self defense, the person with the gun is the one deciding if their life is in imminent danger. This is my point.
If we allow women to use guns to stop attackers, they have to be trained to be 100% sure their life is in danger. But personally I don't want a woman to have to be 100% sure. Or any man either, for that matter.
Wouldn't it be better for 100 accidental tasers and pepper sprays to be used on suspected attackers than one gun to be used on one non-attacker by accident? This is the kind of math I'm talking about.
Yes, it will be inconvenient, and some people might get sued, etc etc. I'd rather 1000 people get sued defending themselves in a non-lethal manner than one non-attacker be killed.
I agree with Luke on this point as well. While I'm for the right to carry a gun, I think there are a lot more likely situations where one might need some form of self defense that is more than their fists, but doesn't warrant killing someone. And even if you think it is justified, the courtroom might disagree. I worry more about some drunk asshole messing with me or similar incidents than I do someone holding me at gun/knife point and even that is pretty unlikely.
The mistakes which lead to death by gunshot wounds are made in fight or flight at the very base neurological level where the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems are charged to make sure you live.
Fight/Flight is interesting because everyone acts differently when they are in it. And from what I understand it is not just a on/off switch, but rather graduating degrees. I don't think it is fair to say that because someone is in fight/flight they do not retain any of their pre-planning and training. If that were true then why would anyone train for a violent situation?
Are you implying that there are biological processes which can be turned off? If so then I think you would be mistaken, however the emotions brought up during the situations can be conditioned.
How much of gun licensing in America devotes itself to emotional conditioning?
Does murder include all loss of life or is it only referring to premeditated death? I think it would be logical to use a figure derived from gunshot related wounds and deaths. This would include suicide, the various classifications of mortality that is obfuscated by the legal system. It would also include those people that survived gunshots because really who shoots someone and says "just kidding".
No they do not include suicide. And I don't think they should. I don’t see any reason to lump the number of people who take their own life with the numbers of people who decide to harm others when we are talking about the need to control access to guns. You are going to have to make a good case as to how the person with cancer who decides not to live their short remaining life in pain is the same as someone who uses a gun to murder another person.
The main reason that the suicide rate is the highest for Veterinarians is because
A. It's a poor (in every meaning of the word) profession
B. We have ready access to lethal drugs and have trained through our career how to most efficiently use them.
My buddy and class mate committed suicide 2 years ago. He was the happiest guy I knew in my entire life, he left behind a wife and a kid.
Ease of access makes suicide much easier then seeking help.
Ease of access to guns makes gun violence, intended or unintended easier than seeking help.
So should we ban rope so people don't hang themselves with it? Or knives so they don't cut/stab themselves? Or all prescription meds so they don't intentionally try to induce an OD? Or A/C sockets in bathrooms?
I am surprised that the basic list that Rym made for gun ownership is not employed in America.
I come at this from the requisite security around Veterinary drugs.
Now I've never owned a gun but I use a lethal "tools" on a regular basis - all S8 drugs and a S4RRD drug which is a highly concentrated pentobarbitone (not so safe anaesthetic/sedative) made for one purpose - euthanasia of Veterinary patients. It is also coloured green so that it cannot be mistaken for any other drug accidentally.
To have access to this tool I am not allowed to have a tarnished police record, I have to know a great detail on how the drug works, I need to know a great deal about the pharmacology of the drug and how it interacts with the body covered in 6 years of study.
I cannot take my tool home with me because my house doesn't have a license to allow for its storage. It must be stored in a safe which is bolted and attached to the wall and floor inside another locked room, inside a premises which has a Poison's Act license. The drugs in that safe need to be accounted for in terms of when, where, by whom and administered to whom and needs to be co-signed.
I can't even let my friends borrow a bottle or take a few syringes full to put on display at home or one under my pillow.
The drug laws around high security drugs are way too tight.
Why is there so much security around these drugs? I mean they are just a workplace tool.
Many of these tools can be used recreationally for a good time. The primary purpose of most S8's are to relieve pain and get you high or low.
Why do you need euthanasia drugs when some people are going to misuse them and hurt themselves or others with them? Even with all that regulation people still use them recreationally.
I don't know maybe it's because I also disagree with capital punishment that I have difficulty agreeing with guns as a method of self defence. It becomes a philosophical debate at that point.
So should we ban rope so people don't hang themselves with it? Or knives so they don't cut/stab themselves? Or all prescription meds so they don't intentionally try to induce an OD? Or A/C sockets in bathrooms?
Hanging oneself is not common if you are considering suicide. Knives deter people because there is feeling involved and you can stop cutting and be rushed to hospital since most people don't know how to bleed themselves out properly. Prescription meds are pretty well regulated. Your doctor should have enough understanding of your mental health when he gives you a prescription drug if it can be overdosed on and then there's always family and friends who can find these sorry people and get their stomach pumped.
I really wasn't aware that you could commit suicide with an AC socket or it might not be as popular. You can also electrocute yourself and be recovered.
Once you pull that trigger though, more than likely that you're dead.
Why do you need euthanasia drugs when some people are going to misuse them and hurt themselves or others with them? Even with all that regulation people still use them recreationally.
I'm glad you asked. We need them for their primary purpose - as drugs for euthanasia but as stated unfortunately only a very select portion of the population can access them, you can't buy the stuff needed from Walmart.
The American perspective is a bit different, as has been expressed. The founders of our nation had just broken away from England because of several factors none the least of which was the confiscation of their guns by the crown and being forced to quarter soldiers during peacetime. They had tried talking it out like gentlemen, but as the list of grievances aka the Declaration of Independence states, "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." They were tired of the mistreatment they perceived and thus took up arms to defend their lives, liberty, and property.
Do we NEED guns? Arguably not. But they were the most effective means of defense available at the time, and the founders said that every man (and we later, with more enlightenment, expanded that to every human) has the right to defend themselves as they see fit, from whomever may threaten them and in what ways. America was founded in the mindset of "fuck da police" to quote a colloquialism, and even today our authority figures don't often like authority. We don't trust our police, which isn't just an American thing, but also a continental Europe thing as the regimes people were often escaping when they immigrated to America were corrupt and those police forces were often just paramilitary wings of said regimes. I'm glad in Australia that you can trust and depend on your police, but to us you're giving up a fundamental right. One that isn't granted by some human authority, but one that is innate, or as some might argue, granted by a higher power. To claim that humans being stupid is a reason to take away that right goes against THE document that Americans have based their principles on for the past two hundred-thirty seven years. I personally (and I'm not alone) believe that with great power does come great responsibility, and you must be well-informed and trained to handle such a responsibility, which may not fly so far in the face of Rym's ideas.
TL;DR: It isn't the guns themselves so much as the idea that we have the right and responsibility to protect ourselves.
Yes, mistrust of government and its various manifestations is not solely an American thing; it may surprise you to hear that many Australians share it as well. Where I disagree with you is with the idea that guns are the solution to such problems, or in fact any solution at all.
You act as though one cannot support a right to self-defense without supporting a right to gun ownership, despite the fact that there is a clear and obvious distinction between the two. Moreover, with regards to self-defense there are very important distinctions to be made as to what level of force is appropriate, and under what circumstances.
As for the constitutional point, you make it as though it was completely static bedrock, when in fact it is clear that your law, as with that of any other nation, evolves over time. Whether through changing interpretation or through amendment, it is clear that the U.S. constitution has required changes in the past, and continues to do so. If we're going to make claims about rights, let's not muddy the point - if we can agree that the actual right in question is one of self-defense, we should start from there, and then argue the extent of that right and how best to safeguard it.
Also, the curt summary that a right is being proposed to be taken away because "humans are stupid" is an obvious misrepresentation. The issue has to do with people dying; and (to reply in kind) although the American perspective may be different, there is another right that happens to be widely claimed called the "right to life"; many other countries seem to consider it to be a relatively important one.
Based on your latest statement that it "isn't the guns themselves", perhaps we can agree that gun ownership is not quite so fundamental? My perspective is that gun ownership is a freedom that (unlike, say, nuclear weapons) can and should be afforded to the populace, but not without reasonable protective measures, and not without a well established and sensible social contract on their usage.
Indeed, it seems to me that the fundamentalist perspective on this question is a major contributor to the greater problem. In holding so firmly to gun ownership as a fundamental right, the resulting intransigence makes it very difficult to approach issues such as in which situations gun usage is appropriate, and how the related societal problems can be improved upon.
The discussion we have been having is one of when and where the use of deadly force is appropriate, and it's a critical one. Whether you look at it in terms of duties and rights or from a consequentialist standpoint, there is a conflict between your self-defense and the other person's life that is not so trivial to resolve. Even Luke, the self-proclaimed "non-killing fundamentalist", still agrees that deadly force is appropriate in some circumstances.
So should we ban rope so people don't hang themselves with it? Or knives so they don't cut/stab themselves? Or all prescription meds so they don't intentionally try to induce an OD? Or A/C sockets in bathrooms?
Yes, absolutely. Ban all these things that are perfectly equivalent to guns.
We don't trust our police, which isn't just an American thing, but also a continental Europe thing as the regimes people were often escaping when they immigrated to America were corrupt and those police forces were often just paramilitary wings of said regimes. I'm glad in Australia that you can trust and depend on your police, but to us you're giving up a fundamental right.
I don't think you understand 18th centuary Europenan politics if you are ysing terms like police force, paramilitary and regime. Those are rather recent aditions, what you are thinking of is more 1910-70's communism. Yes there was some disidancy but nothing to realyl write home about, the biggest would be the french revolution. What would be better is to talk to the changing state of politcs, the rise of social independance, the shift away from a monachy and the massive amounts of wealth that the British and European empires now possessed along with their gobal domination.
Also that is a very very very broad statement to make about why people went to America, and in part Australia. You have glossed over the massive amount of religiouse zelots that were kicked out, the convicts, Dutch traders, Spanish missionaries and a whole host of people who were "fleeing from the man". Hell I would argue that the vast majority where going for the chance at a better life. Britain esspecailly had practically run out of land that one could get. With free land across the sea why wouldn't they go for it.
Finally if you do not trust your police force then either you need to get rid of that force or you are a crazy person. In what way are you better equiped to deal with a situation that a trained and paid indevidual.
Ah yes let me just go ahead and delete and re-roll the US police force.
This. And for starters with me being better able to handle a situation, for starters I'm right there. Not a nine minute drive away. Also I may very well be just as trained with guns as my local PD. We can't put a policeman on ever stoop and street corner, and one policeman might not be enough to defuse a situation.
The only thing worse than cops having guns and adamantly thinking they're on the responsible and good side of morality is civilians doing the same thing.
The only thing worse than cops having guns and adamantly thinking they're on the responsible and good side of morality is civilians doing the same thing.
"Worked" doesn't mean much. A lot of things work my dude. Slavery worked in regards to building a bunch of big ass pyramids. Ban guns, freedom is a red herring.
"Worked" doesn't mean much. A lot of things work my dude. Slavery worked in regards to building a bunch of big ass pyramids. Ban guns, freedom is a red herring.
Or you could use slavery in the South as an example but you know what? All those things collapsed! They failed! The US has been going strong for nearly a quarter of a millennium because it has been flexible and adaptable. We've been a country of rugged individuals who come together for the common good but don't lose that sense of personal responsibility which was the cornerstone of our founding.
Or you could use slavery in the South as an example but you know what? All those things collapsed! They failed! The US has been going strong for nearly a quarter of a millennium because it has been flexible and adaptable. We've been a country of rugged individuals who come together for the common good but don't lose that sense of personal responsibility which was the cornerstone of our founding.
And what has Europe been doing farting and gurning?
Jack, it's funny that you're saying "It works!" The very point of this conversation is that it DOES work, to your very narrow and personal definition of "work", but the price America pays for having laws that are able to make gun ownership for self defense work for you personally is waaaaaaay high.
And in the rest of the developed world, not using guns for self defense also works. And the price we all pay for it working is waaaaaaaay low.
Or you could use slavery in the South as an example but you know what? All those things collapsed! They failed! The US has been going strong for nearly a quarter of a millennium because it has been flexible and adaptable.
The U.S. attitude to guns is the opposite of flexible and adaptable, and that's one of the biggest problems here.
We've been a country of rugged individuals who come together for the common good but don't lose that sense of personal responsibility which was the cornerstone of our founding.
Those are grand principles, and ones I don't disagree with, but alone they simply don't make much of an argument. You're not arguing against people who are saying we should do away with personal responsibility.
Well I guess mostly what I'm saying is we need to go back to that. Too much nowadays it seems a lot of people are willing to blame anything, anything at all (including the gun) than blame the individual. The gun doesn't make you use it; it is up to you to understand when and when not to use it. Just like our founders it should be only a last resort, though I would hardly blame anyone for trying to talk down a mugger and go right for the shooting. Another element is that you must understand that if you draw a firearm you must be willing to follow through with the implied threat of killing whomever you draw it on, so it is not something to be done lightly. I don't want to restrict ownership for sane sober adults (though I do agree with ensuring any unstable individual can't get a hold of weapons), but I do think it needs to be impressed, very firmly, that it is a big responsibility to carry a firearm. And while I understand there are situations where only the absence of the firearm might have prevented there being such a tragedy, such as the Newtown massacre (though I'll remind everyone a Chinese man did the same thing with a knife) they are thankfully few and far between considering the overwhelming amount of responsible gun owners, and yes, they are tragic, but I consider them a small price to pay to have the most expedient method of defending oneself available.
Comments
I don't think prevention of rape is grounds for killing the attacker. I think a rapist should be punished to the full extent of the law, and everything should be done to stop all rapes happening (so I'm not going to go into all the ways this could be reduced now).
And while I do agree that a convicted rapists life should be worth less than a non-rapists life, I don't think that justifies the death of that person.
This comes back to the non-killing extremism thing, which I know is a sticking point for some of you to understand.
I see it as a slippery slope. If it is okay for a rapist to die, when should they be killed? After conviction, by lethal injection or electrocution?
How about after they raped someone, and are running away? In other words, before they are tried and convicted?
How about as they are caught raping someone?
How about when they attack a woman, and it looks as though they intend to rape that woman? If at this point, should they die before they get a chance to back down and not actually rape someone?
How about when a woman thinks she is going to be raped, because the attacker is already in the house? This is before he has shown any sign he might rape her.
How about as a man is breaking into a house?
How about as a person is on the property outside the house?
How about as a person is approaching the house, and they look suspicious?
I'm doing a reverse-slippery-slope here. At what point on the slope is it okay for someone to die? You seem to think entry into an occupied home is the line where you can just presume someone intends to kill you, so death is the best option for them. I personally don't agree, as the slippery slope now means that George Zimmerman can chase after someone and kill them, and not be punished.
Appropriate use of force in trying to stop an attack is a very difficult topic. Females using guns to kill a rapist comes very close to being appropriate, in my opinion, but I just can't take that step. It's going to seem horrific, but even though someone can destroy a woman's life by raping them, I don't think it means they should die. The woman will disagree! The boyfriend will disagree! I understand EVERYONE disagreeing with me. I can take it.
I actually DO agree with your views on the worth of lives. If we had line of people who could get on a plane to escape a blowing volcano, the rapists and sadists and child molesters would be waaaaay down the back of the line. However, I don't think their victims should exclude the convicted criminals from even being in that line on the spur of the moment killings when first attacked.
Even if George Zimmerman HAD been attacked, and WAS right to kill his victim, what if later he turned out to be a wife beater? Maybe his attacker's life was worth more than his, rather than the other way around. It comes down to punishing people in advance for perceived hypothetical future harm, with the sentence and execution carried out by the least objective party possible. I'd like to think that anything short of death is better than death.
Like I said, the implementation in most of the United States is either way too broad (Zimmerman) or too narrow (attackers who live suing defenders for their injuries), but I agree with the moral argument posed by my first paragraph. In the hypothetical situation where it's nearly guaranteed that either an attacker or I will die, I think it is morally justified for me to kill them. This is, I think, where Luke and I differ. Note: This has a near-zero probability of happening and I don't own any guns (though I'll probably inherit my great grandfather's WW2 rifle sometime in the next 30 years, which I'll keep for sentimental reasons and most likely never fire).
As for implementation of self defense / gun laws, I agree with Rym's list of mandatory requirements for gun ownership, and think that there should be a cultural push towards "non-lethal" self defence weapons (I would be 100% behind a "Guns for Tasers" program). In fact, I'll go as far as to state that Rym's list is the absolute minimum amount of gun regulation a civilized society should have.
EDIT: "Platonic ideal assault situation" seems like a really strange turn of phrase, but I hope you know what I mean. That hypothetical situation is pretty much solely a thought experiment to illustrate Luke and my differing views, and should not be used in any anecdotal argument for or against gun control.
EDIT2: I'm not qualified to make a judgement about defensive gun use in situations of rape, prolonged (non-lethal) torture, or systematic oppression, etc so I'm not going to pursue that line of argument.
Meanwhile, in the real world, gun ownership makes ANY violent situation where both parties have guns into a literal kill or be killed situation.
And in the case of anyone armed with a gun for self defense, the person with the gun is the one deciding if their life is in imminent danger. This is my point.
If we allow women to use guns to stop attackers, they have to be trained to be 100% sure their life is in danger. But personally I don't want a woman to have to be 100% sure. Or any man either, for that matter.
Wouldn't it be better for 100 accidental tasers and pepper sprays to be used on suspected attackers than one gun to be used on one non-attacker by accident? This is the kind of math I'm talking about.
Yes, it will be inconvenient, and some people might get sued, etc etc. I'd rather 1000 people get sued defending themselves in a non-lethal manner than one non-attacker be killed.
If so then I think you would be mistaken, however the emotions brought up during the situations can be conditioned.
How much of gun licensing in America devotes itself to emotional conditioning? The main reason that the suicide rate is the highest for Veterinarians is because
A. It's a poor (in every meaning of the word) profession
B. We have ready access to lethal drugs and have trained through our career how to most efficiently use them.
My buddy and class mate committed suicide 2 years ago. He was the happiest guy I knew in my entire life, he left behind a wife and a kid.
Ease of access makes suicide much easier then seeking help.
Ease of access to guns makes gun violence, intended or unintended easier than seeking help.
I come at this from the requisite security around Veterinary drugs.
Now I've never owned a gun but I use a lethal "tools" on a regular basis - all S8 drugs and a S4RRD drug which is a highly concentrated pentobarbitone (not so safe anaesthetic/sedative) made for one purpose - euthanasia of Veterinary patients. It is also coloured green so that it cannot be mistaken for any other drug accidentally.
To have access to this tool I am not allowed to have a tarnished police record, I have to know a great detail on how the drug works, I need to know a great deal about the pharmacology of the drug and how it interacts with the body covered in 6 years of study.
I cannot take my tool home with me because my house doesn't have a license to allow for its storage. It must be stored in a safe which is bolted and attached to the wall and floor inside another locked room, inside a premises which has a Poison's Act license. The drugs in that safe need to be accounted for in terms of when, where, by whom and administered to whom and needs to be co-signed.
I can't even let my friends borrow a bottle or take a few syringes full to put on display at home or one under my pillow.
The drug laws around high security drugs are way too tight.
Why is there so much security around these drugs? I mean they are just a workplace tool.
Many of these tools can be used recreationally for a good time. The primary purpose of most S8's are to relieve pain and get you high or low.
Knives deter people because there is feeling involved and you can stop cutting and be rushed to hospital since most people don't know how to bleed themselves out properly.
Prescription meds are pretty well regulated. Your doctor should have enough understanding of your mental health when he gives you a prescription drug if it can be overdosed on and then there's always family and friends who can find these sorry people and get their stomach pumped.
I really wasn't aware that you could commit suicide with an AC socket or it might not be as popular. You can also electrocute yourself and be recovered.
Once you pull that trigger though, more than likely that you're dead.
I'm glad you asked.
We need them for their primary purpose - as drugs for euthanasia but as stated unfortunately only a very select portion of the population can access them, you can't buy the stuff needed from Walmart.
Do we NEED guns? Arguably not. But they were the most effective means of defense available at the time, and the founders said that every man (and we later, with more enlightenment, expanded that to every human) has the right to defend themselves as they see fit, from whomever may threaten them and in what ways. America was founded in the mindset of "fuck da police" to quote a colloquialism, and even today our authority figures don't often like authority. We don't trust our police, which isn't just an American thing, but also a continental Europe thing as the regimes people were often escaping when they immigrated to America were corrupt and those police forces were often just paramilitary wings of said regimes. I'm glad in Australia that you can trust and depend on your police, but to us you're giving up a fundamental right. One that isn't granted by some human authority, but one that is innate, or as some might argue, granted by a higher power. To claim that humans being stupid is a reason to take away that right goes against THE document that Americans have based their principles on for the past two hundred-thirty seven years. I personally (and I'm not alone) believe that with great power does come great responsibility, and you must be well-informed and trained to handle such a responsibility, which may not fly so far in the face of Rym's ideas.
TL;DR: It isn't the guns themselves so much as the idea that we have the right and responsibility to protect ourselves.
You act as though one cannot support a right to self-defense without supporting a right to gun ownership, despite the fact that there is a clear and obvious distinction between the two. Moreover, with regards to self-defense there are very important distinctions to be made as to what level of force is appropriate, and under what circumstances.
As for the constitutional point, you make it as though it was completely static bedrock, when in fact it is clear that your law, as with that of any other nation, evolves over time. Whether through changing interpretation or through amendment, it is clear that the U.S. constitution has required changes in the past, and continues to do so. If we're going to make claims about rights, let's not muddy the point - if we can agree that the actual right in question is one of self-defense, we should start from there, and then argue the extent of that right and how best to safeguard it.
Also, the curt summary that a right is being proposed to be taken away because "humans are stupid" is an obvious misrepresentation. The issue has to do with people dying; and (to reply in kind) although the American perspective may be different, there is another right that happens to be widely claimed called the "right to life"; many other countries seem to consider it to be a relatively important one.
Based on your latest statement that it "isn't the guns themselves", perhaps we can agree that gun ownership is not quite so fundamental? My perspective is that gun ownership is a freedom that (unlike, say, nuclear weapons) can and should be afforded to the populace, but not without reasonable protective measures, and not without a well established and sensible social contract on their usage.
Indeed, it seems to me that the fundamentalist perspective on this question is a major contributor to the greater problem. In holding so firmly to gun ownership as a fundamental right, the resulting intransigence makes it very difficult to approach issues such as in which situations gun usage is appropriate, and how the related societal problems can be improved upon.
The discussion we have been having is one of when and where the use of deadly force is appropriate, and it's a critical one. Whether you look at it in terms of duties and rights or from a consequentialist standpoint, there is a conflict between your self-defense and the other person's life that is not so trivial to resolve. Even Luke, the self-proclaimed "non-killing fundamentalist", still agrees that deadly force is appropriate in some circumstances.
Also that is a very very very broad statement to make about why people went to America, and in part Australia. You have glossed over the massive amount of religiouse zelots that were kicked out, the convicts, Dutch traders, Spanish missionaries and a whole host of people who were "fleeing from the man". Hell I would argue that the vast majority where going for the chance at a better life. Britain esspecailly had practically run out of land that one could get. With free land across the sea why wouldn't they go for it.
Finally if you do not trust your police force then either you need to get rid of that force or you are a crazy person. In what way are you better equiped to deal with a situation that a trained and paid indevidual.
And in the rest of the developed world, not using guns for self defense also works. And the price we all pay for it working is waaaaaaaay low.