the right of self defense does not concern itself with which instruments are acceptable but with whether the level of force used is acceptable — Benkei

Correct, this is why the second premise in my argument is there. I don't say the right to self-defense gives me the right to bear arms, but that bearing arms is one way to reasonably ensure that one's life is defended. I can exercise my right to self-defense by means of firearms. The defense of my life is put into effect by my employment of firearms to that effect.

We all must surrender our lives, that's the reality of living, and to claim a right against impending death is not natural. To claim the right to extend your own life at any cost to others, is selfish nonsense. — Metaphysician Undercover

These aren't the claims I'm making, but strawmen.

That's a slippery slope fallacy. — Michael

No it isn't. I haven't derived any ludicrous consequence.

You've been trying to argue against Agustino's claim (which I'm defending) that rifles are more dangerous than handguns. — Michael

Yes, I have done so. My position is that handguns can be as, if not more, effective than rifles under certain circumstances. I've not been presented with any evidence to be dissuaded of that.

So I believe this excludes semi-automatics, given that semi-automatics are not "rough equivalents" of the single shot pistols and rifles which existed at the time the Second Amendment was written. — Michael

I wasn't entirely accurate. There were guns like the Girandoni air rifle, made in 1779, that would be rough equivalents to the semi-automatic rifles of today. This gun was used by Lewis and Clark on their expedition, for example. The first revolver was invented not long after that, which is not technically classified as semi-automatic but does have a high rate of fire.

Regardless, a semi-automatic is clearly a more effective means of self-defense than a single shot weapon. It's also still more reasonable than a bazooka or a tank, being of similar dimensions and portability as single shot rifles and handguns, which means the slippery slope you and Agustino have raised against my position doesn't go through.

For one, it cannot be enforced (too expensive). — Agustino

I agree, but I am arguing on principled grounds here, not practical ones. The fact that it would be difficult to enforce doesn't say anything about whether it ought to be illegal in principle.

Do you think gluttony should be illegal? — Agustino

Sure, why not? And its logical consequences do affect third parties. It drives up the cost of health care, for one, and an obese pregnant woman puts their baby at various kinds of risk.

Your concern seems to be about mass shootings and the fact that rifles are typically used in them, which is true. The logic, then, is that if we want to reduce mass shootings, we should ban the guns that are most typically used in them. But handguns have also been used in mass shootings, so that if you ban rifles, but not handguns, then mass shooters will simply use handguns. And then, by the same logic that caused you to ban rifles, you would have to ban handguns as well, so that in the end, you will have banned all guns. I've been trying to get you to drop your pretensions of having proposed any compromise. Your position directly entails the abolition of all guns.

I'll just recapitulate it:

I possess the natural right to defend my life.
The use of adequate, effective, and reasonable means is sometimes required to do so.
Firearms are one such adequate, effective, and reasonable means.
Therefore, I possess the right to defend myself by means of firearms.

WTF! Who put you in charge of what things are proscribed by natural law? — Pseudonym

I had a feeling this comment would come up. Taking a principled stance always offends certain sensibilities. I make no apologies for not having my mind made up and for attempting to base my position with respect to a variety of complicated issues on what I have hitherto determined to be true.

There is a difference (you and Buxte will readily agree) between being a squishy little 6 week old fetus and a 6 year old child learning arithmetic when some well armed angry male decides to wipe out a batch of people. It's gunning down people who made it all the way to personhood, a name, preferences, friends, lovers, etc. that outrages people. — Bitter Crank

There isn't a moral difference. Both are wrong. And abortion outrages people, too....

There's this? — Michael

He's talking about the wounds caused, not the ability to kill many persons quickly, which was the criterion we were discussing. I just gave a list of factors that make handguns preferable, though they don't apply in all circumstances. The Orlando shooter killed far more people with a handgun than the Florida shooter with a rifle. The Vegas shooter would not have been able to pull off what he did with a handgun.

But a single bullet from a handgun is not likely to be as deadly as one from an AR-15.

Not in all circumstances, right.

This conversation is far too lost in the weeds to be productive, so I might bow out for now.

If we accept your line of thinking then stopping at guns would be entirely arbitrary and we might as well include grenades and anti-personnel mines as those exist too. — Benkei

Then you haven't actually been reading my comments carefully. You don't understand my argument, which is no substitute for thinking it invalid.

Well, Buxtebudd, how common do you think abortions are? It would appear that they are at a 45 year low. — Bitter Crank

The almost 700,000 abortions per year, in the U.S. alone, is not a small figure, no matter how much it has statistically declined. The 32,000 gun deaths per year in the U.S. is couched as a nightmarish figure according to my interlocutors in the gun control thread, so I don't think Buxte is being hyperbolic if one accepts our premise that abortion is murder.

I not only practiced homosexuality back when it was both immoral and illegal, I was also promiscuous. It was great. I have no regrets, morally or legally. — Bitter Crank

Yes, fornication, masturbation, and homosexual acts are notoriously difficult to prosecute, for obvious reasons.

I checked and it's not illegal in the US. — T Clark

It is actually, in several states, including liberal ones like Massachusetts. I would need to think about and determine whether all the items you list are proscribed by the natural law to adequately answer your question. I take it, though, that you consider such examples as reductios of my position. If so, I must sadly admit to you, if your head will not explode in doing so, that I don't find that they are. If they are proscribed by the natural law, then I have no problem admitting that such acts ought to be illegal. I have no special loyalty to the unconsciously imbibed pieties of modern social liberalism. You are talking to someone who made a thread in the old forum considering whether sex itself, not merely its occurrence outside of wedlock, was immoral. The sexual impulse I regard as the most potent and dangerous of human drives and so not something to treat lightly or frivolously.

I also find that eating animal flesh is immoral, but recognize that such an immoral act is sometimes necessary — Buxtebuddha

Here we ought to distinguish between an intrinsically immoral act and a circumstantially immoral act. I also believe that eating animals is wrong in certain circumstances (such as ours as Westerners in the 21st century), but not intrinsically so. That is to say, I admit that there are situations in which it can be justified. Because of this, it needn't be made illegal. However, I view abortion as intrinsically evil (and to anticipate a possible objection, I agree with LT that cases of saving the life of the mother don't technically count as exceptions). Because of this, I maintain that it ought to be illegal. Do you view it this way? If so, then you have no reason not to support abortion being made illegal.

trade-offs and compromise — Buxtebuddha

We have been speaking in theoretical, not practical terms. On a practical and political level, I absolutely believe in trade-offs and compromises. I was in favor of the recent bill to ban abortions of fetuses that can feel pain. That's obviously better than the status quo. I would also be in favor of a political compromise that banned all abortions except in cases of rape and incest, for example. This doesn't mean I must abandon my principles, however, or cease supporting the goal of making all abortions illegal. This is not either/or but both/and.

I was thinking of "not moral" in the sense of "immoral," not as a general category of non-moral things. I think everything that's immoral should be illegal. And in point of fact, most immoral things are already illegal, but not everything, such as abortion.

Whence do the laws of the state acquire their authority, if not in the degree to which they reflect the natural (moral) law? If they are contrary to the natural law, one is obligated not merely not to follow them but to oppose them. Thus, if slavery is unjust, which is to say, unlawful according to the natural law, then any positive law that legitimizes the practice must be unjust. To say of slavery that it "ought to be legal" is to say that an unlawful law ought to be lawful, a self-contradiction. The same applies to abortion. If you are convinced that abortion is "morally reprehensible," as you say, you must oppose the positive law that protects it.

The one has greater destructive potential than the other. — Agustino

You've not demonstrated this claim.

Given the same amount of time and the same situation, the AR-15 will kill more people. — Agustino

The Orlando shooter disagreed, and he had a large death tally.

Also, I said that a handgun, under certain circumstances, is better than an AR-15, which is true. Handguns are, in the words of someone who knows more about guns than you or I do:

1. More concealable.
2. Ammunition and firearm are lighter, allowing shooter to carry multiple pistols and ammunition.
3. Less moving parts, therefore, less opportunities to malfunction.
4. More accurate at close range with less recoil.
5. Harder to disarm an active shooter, especially if the shooter has no "real" training or understanding of "Pie" with regards to clearing a room.
6. Barrel won't overheat as quickly.
7. Less recoil for faster target acquisition.
8. Requires less skill to operate with efficiency.

The very fact that you are undecided about euthanasia — Pseudonym

I qualified what I was undecided about with respect to euthanasia, which you have ignored. I'm not undecided about one person taking the innocent life of another. If that's what euthanasia is, then I'm totally opposed to it.

either untrue to say that all killing of another person is automatically murder — Pseudonym

Yes, it is untrue to say this. Killing someone unintentionally and/or in self-defense isn't murder. Killing a heinous criminal wouldn't be murder but capital punishment. Abortion is murder because it intentionally kills an innocent life.

there are circumstances in which the killing of a completely innocent person is not automatically morally wrong — Pseudonym

No there aren't, and it is for this reason that I lean toward believing euthanasia is murder. My indecision is due primarily to certain grey areas involving non-physician-assisted "suicide." I'm not sure if someone deliberately refusing to take their medications, for example, would count as suicide (and thus euthanasia), and I'm not sure if suicide counts as murder. But my indecision in these areas doesn't affect my claim with respect to abortion.

So your claim is that if something is not morally right then it ought be made illegal? — Michael

Mhmm.

I'm using it in the sense of "not legal" throughout. — Michael

I got that already....

It seems you're equivocating over the word "unlawful," which can mean "not legal" or "not morally right." Abortion is lawful in the first sense at present, but not in the second. Because it's not lawful in the second sense, it ought to be made unlawful in the first.

Guns exist today and they didn't in the past. I fail to see how this fact disables the right to own and carry them for self-defense. The natural right to self-defense wasn't invented by the Romans. It applies to human beings as such. A hunter gatherer who defends himself with a sharp rock against someone or something threatening his life is as justified in doing as the Roman who defends himself with a steel Gladius and the modern individual who defends himself with a gun.

Abortion should be made illegal, because it's a form of murder. You seem to think that no laws can contradict.

So is euthanasia murder? — Pseudonym

I haven't quite made up my mind on that issue, but I tend to think so, yes.

I said that it's illegal by definition. — Michael

Yes, and?

But that's not all it is. Murder is not merely illegal, it is in addition to that unjust and immoral.

Murder is an unlawful killing. — Michael

And if murder were legal, that would make it okay? Surely not. Murder is intrinsically immoral. Laws don't make it so.

No one's talking about murder. — Pseudonym

:brow:

I'm seeing a distinction without a difference.

but you have not demonstrated objectively that once a thing has been identified as a human being it is automatically a moral duty to keep it alive — Pseudonym

There is a moral duty not to murder it once alive.

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2011/01/2380/

The 9mm Glock would be one. That's what the Orlando shooter predominantly used once he got into enclosed spaces, for example.

But the same people who fulminate against abortion do not want to take responsibility for any of the many unwanted children languishing in care homes, let alone people whose lives they could save. — unenlightened

A very large, unwarranted assumption. It's actually false: https://www.conservativebookclub.com/book/who-really-cares-americas-charity-divide-who-gives-who-doesnt-and-why-it-matters-2

Define "force" and you'll see that it says quite a lot about guns.

which weapon can kill more people faster? — Agustino

There are handguns that, under certain circumstances, will kill more people faster than an AR-15.

Why are there no philosophers and no threads arguing that when a homeless person freezes to death while there are warm places locked up all around him, that is murder; that refusing your spare bedroom to a refugee is murder. — unenlightened

For these examples to be parallel with abortion, one would have to set them up so that a homeless man or a refugee has his neck snapped by a doctor and is sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner, otherwise, they bear no resemblance to abortion.

Also, these examples you've given are ironically emotional appeals.

What I mean by “double effect” is that the intention has to be to save the mother and NOT to directly end the life of the baby. — LostThomist

Exactly.

Thus by using this example as a case for not making abortion illegal is bad logic. You are using a VERY obscure exemption that does not affect the main topic because the example is so rare. — LostThomist

Right. I don't use it as a case for making abortion legal. I'm assuming the "you" here is meant generally and is not directed at me.