Yet, we increasingly have people saying that the possession of firearms by civilians must end. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
"Right to sue" is irrelevant guff — andrewk
All that matters is: in what proportion of incidents where police were called to protect somebody being attacked, did they refuse to attend? — andrewk
Read your own post. In para 5 it says:Nobody has said anything about the right to sue, so you are attacking a straw man. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
If the police fail to protect you, even through sheer incompetence and negligence, don’t expect that you or your next of kin will be able to sue — =WISDOMfromPO-MO
We are not going to agree on that.No, what matters is the law. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
An egregious fact that is unconstitutional in spirit if not in fact. — Thorongil
Yet, with each new mass murder in the U.S. we have people from all over the world increasingly calling for civilians to be disarmed, for the indivudual's right to bear arms to be seen as a myth that never had any moral or intellectual foundation, and for only the police and the military to be allowed to possess firearms. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
The basis for the 2nd Amendment is not to assure the right of vigilantism of every citizen, but to protect you against a tyranical government. — Hanover
If a police department is unresponsive or inept, — Hanover
corrective efforts should be made, but there's no reason to believe that civil lawsuits are the best or most effective way to regulate the police. Instead of paying off injured parties on a case by case basis, it seems like a state regulator would be better suited than occasional juries. — Hanover
do not see how any honest, rational person can accept the latter. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Nobody referenced to in this thread or directly contributing to this thread said anything about "vigilantism" until you brought up, let alone that it was the intention of the 2nd Amendment. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
They are duty bound to protect you. The question is how you remedy a failure by the police. The case cited indicates it is not through the civil justice system.The point is that if you are in danger the people who many are saying that other than the military should be the only ones allowed to have guns, the police, have no obligation under the U.S. Constitution or under the law in many states and cities to protect you. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
I don't know that they have a single monolithic argument, but to the extent they are arguing you lack the right to have guns because there are police there to protect you, they have missed the point of the 2nd Amendment, which is that you have a right to own guns to protect you from the government.Yet, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that civilized, free, liberal democratic states have the police and the military and that individual citizens, therefore, do not need guns, let alone have any moral/natural right to possess them. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
But again the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee you the right to protect yourself from citizens, only the government. Why would the Bill of Rights contain a provision protecting you against other citizens when the reason for independence was due to an oppressive government?But, again, the argument from the individual-gun-rights-are-a-myth camp is that no right for an individual to possess firearms has ever existed and, besides, you have the police to protect you. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
This is an argument from policy, asking what is the best way to handle the problem, which I don't have a problem with, but at least realize you're not now arguing from a position of rights. The question then would be: will we have fewer violent crimes if we arm the public than if we require reliance upon the police? If the answer is yes, then I'd be in favor of legislating freer gun access, but if it's not, then I wouldn't. On the other hand, if the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, then I wouldn't care about the policy reasons or the consequences. A right is a right. My hunch is that reduction of gun ownership will reduce violent crime. Call it a strong hunch.Correcting the state's behavior after the fact of you having no protection or ineffective protection that was involuntarily outsourced does nothing to address the fact that an individual's right to protection was not recognized when he was in danger. It also does not guarantee protection to anybody in the future. An individual's protection will still depend on the state deciding to be generous and do him/her a favor. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
You specifically brought up the right to bear arms, which was a reference to the 2nd Amendment. — Hanover
The title of this thread suggests an inconsistency between not protecting your right to bear arms and the state's lack of duty to protect you from crime. — Hanover
I was pointing out that there was no inconsistency because your right to bear arms, to the extent it exists, is not based upon the citizen's right to protect himself from other citizens, but only from the government itself. — Hanover
There are better solutions to solving the problem of inept police enforcement than deputizing the public to self-police. — Hanover
They are duty bound to protect you. — Hanover
The question is how you remedy a failure by the police. The case cited indicates it is not through the civil justice system. — Hanover
I don't know that they have a single monolithic argument, but to the extent they are arguing you lack the right to have guns because there are police there to protect you, they have missed the point of the 2nd Amendment, which is that you have a right to own guns to protect you from the government. — Hanover
But again the 2nd Amendment doesn't guarantee you the right to protect yourself from citizens, only the government. Why would the Bill of Rights contain a provision protecting you against other citizens when the reason for independence was due to an oppressive government? — Hanover
This is an argument from policy, asking what is the best way to handle the problem, which I don't have a problem with, but at least realize you're not now arguing from a position of rights. — Hanover
The question then would be: will we have fewer violent crimes if we arm the public than if we require reliance upon the police? If the answer is yes, then I'd be in favor of legislating freer gun access, but if it's not, then I wouldn't. On the other hand, if the 2nd Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms, then I wouldn't care about the policy reasons or the consequences. A right is a right. My hunch is that reduction of gun ownership will reduce violent crime. Call it a strong hunch. — Hanover
The core of the argument is that 1) gun control, up to and including a ban of firearms, would reduce deaths, injuries, and increase social welfare, — Chany
2) owning a firearm is not a right like free expression of ideals or freedom of religion. It is, at best, a civil right whose primary justification- arming a citizen's militia against the federal government- no longer makes sense in a modern context or is not strong enough to warrant the level of protection guns currently have in American society. — Chany
If one wants to ban firearms, then one thinks the Second Amendment should be repealed somehow and that people, while having the right to self-defense, do not possess to the right to whatever weaponry they desire. — Chany
The police and their response to crime are ultimately irrelevant to the argument. The core of the argument is reduction in deaths per capita and the fact that owning a gun for either the purpose of either self-defense or defense against a tyrannical government are faulty. — Chany
The inconsistency is between the two sides, not within either of them, which is what one would expect in most debates about most subjects. The pro-gun camp bases its position on its belief in an inalienable human right to own guns. The anti-gun camp is generally concerned with consequences. They want gun control because the evidence strongly shows that it reduces harm. When the anti-gun camp discusses rights, it is because of the pro-gun camp's claim that there is an inalienable human right to own guns. Human rights can sometimes trump consequences, but only if one is convinced that the human right exists. So what the anti-gun camp does is point out that it does not believe the claim that the current legal right is an inalienable human one, and return to its consequentialist argument.People need to be consistent: is it about inalienable human rights, or is it about the best utilitarian scheme? — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Okay, so collectively there will be greater safety.
Now what about an individual who, consequently, is killed or severely injured by a threat that he/she could have neutralized if the aforementioned gun control had not been enacted?
Is he/she collateral damage?
Collective public safety is greater than the safety of individuals?
We need honest answers to those kinds of questions before we can get any real traction on the issue. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
Well, I have never seen that point thoroughly, honestly evaluated, analyzed, debated, etc.
In the United States of America we are talking about a government that through murder and other violence removed the indigenous peoples from its part of North America, leaving only a small percentage of them alive, and continues this policy today.
People can argue that armed citizens have no chance militarily against a state with the military manpower and weapons like those of the United States, but "no longer makes sense in a modern context" is highly debatable.
I have never seen that debate happening, let alone in an honest manner. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
The right to self-defense is useless if one does not have the right to the means necessary to effectively defend him/herself from a threat. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
It is not about "crime".
It is about the threat of being harmed immediately, or the process of presently be harmed. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
So far as I can see, nobody has said any such thing. You are the first to mention 'dignity'.But now we have people calling for ignoring the dignity of individuals
It is up to you to make the case that it is a universal human right to own a gun. You have not been successful in making that case.and for the refusal to recognize a human right
"In general, court decisions and state laws have held that cops don’t have to do a damn thing to help you when you’re in danger. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
This is a fairly radical claim. More facts, please. — Bitter Crank
If you are in danger from the actions of another person, then they are committing a crime, and the police are (I believe) supposed to stop crime. — Bitter Crank
That's how you get protected. — Bitter Crank
How do you account for the reality that the police actually do protect people from bad things happening to them? — Bitter Crank
So protecting the "general public" from harm is like public health protecting the people from sickness. It invariably involves individuals. The "general public" doesn't get shot, robbed, hit over the head, or murdered. Similarly, "the public" doesn't get sick. Individuals get sick, so they are vaccinated, one by one. — Bitter Crank
It is your point. It is not a point that anybody else cares much about, because other people care about whether protection is provided, not about whether the law says it is provided.The point is that in the U.S. the law has been written and interpreted to say that the government has no legal obligation to protect individuals. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
We could speculate for pages and pages about that. Among other things, one could take a functionalist perspective and say that for a society to stay together its members have to believe that they are being taken care of, and that the police serve that function. But that is another thread. — WISDOMfromPO-MO
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