Invited to write for an anti-gun blog

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This is what I sent:

To some degree I understand the anti-gun view. Part of it amounts to an idealized trust in government. Of course you're not foolish enough not to see the flaws in any government, but you would look to an ideal that it may be possible to achieve.

I see a limiting factor of human nature that you would perhaps not.

You may well see availability of weapons as a primary cause of violence. I don't. To me the greatest catalyst for violence is simple vulnerability.

You're also probably much more capable than I am in handling abstractions. I've often heard anti-gunners state wistfully "wouldn't the world be a better place without guns?"

That's a level of abstraction beyond me. Without a gun and both my willingness and ability to use it, I'd be long dead. It's good to be alive. Good enough, that I'll accept imperfections if it means I can live another day.

Some people who would disarm the populace agree with Chairman Mao's aphorism in his little Red Book "that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun" and they have no intention of sharing it with the people. The rest, I see as naive idealists. They may well live out their lives without ever fighting, but if so it's because hard men and women watch over them as they sleep.

There's this too: those who have willingly given up their freedom often feel great resentment toward those who won't.
 
I've often heard anti-gunners state wistfully "wouldn't the world be a better place without guns?"

Was it a better place before they existed, back when people killed other people with bare hands, rocks, sticks, poking devices, poison and stampeding animals?

Some people are narrow minded or just ignorant, you can try and educate them or just smile and walk away.
 
To me the greatest catalyst for violence is simple vulnerability.

This is an interesting way to phrase it. I’ve thought for some time that if one wanted to solve for violence, they ought to sell for access to healthcare, education, funding law-enforcement/training, and giving people opportunities to get out of poverty.

What sort of comments/reception are you getting from the post?
 
Thank you for taking the time to gather you thoughts, write them down, and share them with the antis (and us.)
I’m really curious what an anti gun publications purpose was is asking you..
 
This is an interesting way to phrase it. I’ve thought for some time that if one wanted to solve for violence, they ought to sell for access to healthcare, education, funding law-enforcement/training, and giving people opportunities to get out of poverty.

What sort of comments/reception are you getting from the post?

The person who runs the blog said my comments on government held no interest for him. I told him "Of course they didn't. Where you live in New Zealand the power of the government is a settled question."

I think all of the things you mention are areas we need to address as a society. Sometimes our attempts, decent as they've been, can easily create more problems than they've solved. I stop short at equating poverty with criminality, and I don't think you meant that either. Most poor people are decent.
 
Thank you for taking the time to gather you thoughts, write them down, and share them with the antis (and us.)
I’m really curious what an anti gun publications purpose was is asking you..

I really think this was just a small private blogger, someone I'd met on a writing site. I'd never heard of him, and it won't get significant circulation.
 
Was it a better place before they existed, back when people killed other people with bare hands, rocks, sticks, poking devices, poison and stampeding animals?

Some people are narrow minded or just ignorant, you can try and educate them or just smile and walk away.

I think the world is a better place now. An 1850's Colt advertisement expresses my sentiments exactly "God may have made man, but it was Colonel Colt who made them equal."
 
I think the world is a better place now.

I think you have a good argument to proceed with. The point being that we can retrace steps back to before they existed, with solid arguments that the world was not a better place.

That gives you good grounds to answer “no, the world was not a better place without guns.”

The hard part is you could likely wind up dealing with emotions, wishes, if’s, but’s and other hypotheticals vs the reality of the world we live in. Stick to facts, they are the enemy of the progressive liberal and they cannot face them directly. All you have to do is stick to them and not be lead down rabbit holes with numerous talking points, finish one completely before moving on.

Just like any math problem, remove the variables one by one and the solution at the end is easy to calculate, keep the variables ever changing and you are wasting your time trying to come to a conclusion.
 
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There is extensive historical and archaeological evidence that homicide rates were higher in pre-firearm societies. And higher in societies with bone/stone weapons than in bronze or steel-equipped societies. There has never been a positive correlation between the availability of weapon technology and murder rates. Violence is a biological and cultural phenomenon, not a technological one. The idea that targeting any particular technology could have any appreciable impact on homicide rates would be laughable if we stepped back a bit.
 
Violence is found throughout all of nature. That cannot be wished, or legislated, or medicated away. Firearms are an offensive weapon for those who wish to do harm, and a defensive weapon for those who don’t want harm brought upon themselves. Nirvana was a band. Never a reality.
 
Geed and envy are part of the make-up of the human psychology. We all have those negative thoughts and tendencies. That's why we have morals , ethics , laws , and means of enforcing laws.
Good people suppress greed and adhere to morals and laws. Bad people give in to greed and do not adhere to morals and laws.
Amoral , lawless people prey on others. Defenseless prey become easy targets and victims of crime.

Ridding people of guns - even if that were possible - will not change human nature. All it would accomplish is to make good people easier prey.
This is all quite obvious and not at all complicated ; it just requires a bit of realistic , objective thinking.
 
Violence is found throughout all of nature.

No doubt about it, for some of nature’s creatures, survival depends on other nature’s creatures.

If you are a person that couldn’t sustain their own life, on your own, but subside a meat eater, gas driving person to feed you at a vegan restaurant, are you really making the world a better place or just subsidizing making it worse?
 
The problem with the anti gun crowd is there’s no reasoning with them.
The FBI violent crime statistics show that since 1990, violent crime rate has been cut in half while the number of guns soared. They ignore that.

I remember when states were voting in CCW laws. The antis were predicting blood in the streets, and gun battles in the neighborhoods. It didn’t happen and they won’t admit it.

You can show them hundreds of incidents where a good guy with a gun stopped a bad guy with a gun. And yet they still want to insist that only the police and military should have guns because of their training.

These leftists have an agenda and that’s why they refuse to admit to facts like these.
 
Was it a better place before they existed, back when people killed other people with bare hands, rocks, sticks, poking devices, poison and stampeding animals?

Some people are narrow minded or just ignorant, you can try and educate them or just smile and walk away.

To play the devil’s advocate that’s an interesting question, to be honest “better” is quiet a broad question. I can tell you that I have been told historians generally agree that more people were murdered in the 20th century than in every other century combined.

if that’s true, and I don’t doubt it is, the question may not hold up well in a honest debate. Not that it really has much to do with guns.

just to state the obvious hands, rocks, pointy sticks, and other primitive weapons are less effective than guns and other modern weapons. As a result more effective weapons generally kill at a higher percentage than less effective weapons. Therefore many people might say, “yes, we were better of without guns simply due to the increase of killing effectiveness.

Of course none of this matters because "wouldn't the world be a better place without guns?" Is as silly of a question as “will my unicorn out run your Labrador?” Neither question is anywhere one the realm of realism.


Edited to add:
For some reason this thread reminds me of a Latin phrase:
Si vis pacem, para bellum


translated "If you want peace, prepare for war"
 
Violence is found throughout all of nature. That cannot be wished, or legislated, or medicated away. Firearms are an offensive weapon for those who wish to do harm, and a defensive weapon for those who don’t want harm brought upon themselves. Nirvana was a band. Never a reality.
Man, That's a really, really good one! :thumbup:

I have always said that if man didn't have an inherent streak of violence and an insatiable desire to conquer/enslave those weaker than they are from day one, then famous authors like Machiavelli, Sun Tsu, and even those who compiled the stories mentioned in the Bible wouldn't mean anything to anyone today. It's always been about conflict.

Neil Peart (RIP :() wrote this about the Manhattan Project:

Imagine a time
When it all began
In the dying days of a war
A weapon — that would settle the score
Whoever found it first
Would be sure to do their worst —
They always had before…

Imagine a man
Where it all began
A scientist pacing the floor
In each nation — always eager to explore
To build the best big stick
To turn the winning trick —
But this was something more…

The big bang — took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
The end was begun — it would hit everyone
When the chain reaction was done
The big shots — try to hold it back
Fools try to wish it away
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say


Imagine a place
Where it all began
They gathered from across the land
To work in the secrecy of the desert sand
All of the brightest boys
To play with the biggest toys —
More than they bargained for…

The big bang — took and shook the world
Shot down the rising sun
The end was begun — it would hit everyone
When the chain reaction was done
The big shots — try to hold it back
Fools try to wish it away
The hopeful depend on a world without end
Whatever the hopeless may say


Imagine a man
When it all began
The pilot of “Enola Gay”
Flying out of the shockwave
On that August day
All the powers that be
And the course of history,
Would be changed for evermore…

It makes perfect sense for not only the ultimate ending of WWII, but about the search for the winning weapon by combatants in every war before... and in every war after... and it won't ever stop.

When one intent on doing you harm crosses your path, one may choose to be armed, prepared and able... or one may choose to be unarmed, ill prepared and feeble. I tell folks who live in a make-believe land of fairy dust and wishes it's a free Country, so feel free to make your choice. :)

Stay safe.
 
Thanks to all for giving us these thoughts to take in. There's a lot of good argument here, and well-balanced perspective; These are what we need to have a functioning discussion about what role firearms (and other weapons) play in violence in schools, and in streets, and in homes, and also in safety in those same places. What limits our ability to have any discussion is our human tendency to divide ourselves and others into US and THEM, to demonize others and to make arguments binary - all-or-nothing is going to leave us all with nothing. And grouping everyone who doesn't 100% agree with me into Them (and the othe way around) cuts the huge majority out of any discussion, leaving only the extremists - at both ends - and nobody involved who could make a reasonable or balanced argument or have any chance of finding agreement or workable solutions.

Most of us - who follow whatever rules there are and also follow our instincts to have and learn to use those tools we feel are necessary for our protection and which are our right to own - can and should do so. We are those who will make the world a safer place. And a few people - most people know someone - really shouldn't... And there's the trouble. Laws - like all rules - always have exceptions, and laws which exist to impose limitations on the few (for whom they are written) will always curtail the rights of the many, for whom they are unnecessary. But complete Freedom - no limitations on anyone's actions - doesn't work because of those few. Most laws aren't written for most of us. But a society is in large part its rules - moral and legal limitations. We have to have limitations on people's actions. And we must have limitations on what rules can be made, because those few will also find their way into rulemaking.

Only a person living without any other human contact can be truly without limitations, because any non-sociopathic interaction with other people requires some consideration of their needs and their humanity. In a real way, any functional morally-sound interaction and relationship between humans is founded on compromise, on balancing limitations with freedoms and on allowing other their freedoms with the understanding that they will do the same. But as others have said not all people are morally sound people. So now we have to try to find the balanced way to protect ourselves - to preserve our freedoms without removing the limitations that hold our morality sound...

If you want complete freedom and no limitations, then someone is going to do something terrible to someone you love, but if you want completely legislated safety, then nobody will be able to live any life at all - we will be imprisoned. Neither extreme is acceptable to most of us, to good people who would do right by others.

I'm not writer enough to try to summarize all that in a sentence. I've no intention to offend or insult; I'm afraid for my rights because of a Few and I'm afraid for my safety because of a different Few, and the only solution I see is the most difficult one - some kind of balance - which is also the natural state of things.
 
To play the devil’s advocate that’s an interesting question, to be honest “better” is quiet a broad question. I can tell you that I have been told historians generally agree that more people were murdered in the 20th century than in every other century combined.

if that’s true, and I don’t doubt it is, the question may not hold up well in a honest debate. Not that it really has much to do with guns.

just to state the obvious hands, rocks, pointy sticks, and other primitive weapons are less effective than guns and other modern weapons. As a result more effective weapons generally kill at a higher percentage than less effective weapons. Therefore many people might say, “yes, we were better of without guns simply due to the increase of killing effectiveness.

Of course none of this matters because "wouldn't the world be a better place without guns?" Is as silly of a question as “will my unicorn out run your Labrador?” Neither question is anywhere one the realm of realism.


Edited to add:
For some reason this thread reminds me of a Latin phrase:
Si vis pacem, para bellum


translated "If you want peace, prepare for war"
I would say most people were murdered in the 20th century at the hand of the peoples' own communist governments. The same type of government the left wants to see in America. Insane...
 
There are a lot of people who believe that history will not or can`t not repeat itself, but as we see there are lots of repeater`s of history all over the world. All one has to do is look around with open eyes and open mind.
 
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To play the devil’s advocate that’s an interesting question, to be honest “better” is quiet a broad question. I can tell you that I have been told historians generally agree that more people were murdered in the 20th century than in every other century combined.
-That's because there were more people in the 20th century than in most of the previous centuries combined.

Anyway, there are no violent guns, only violent people.
As long as violent people are a protected class then we will have violence.
 
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