Guns are literally why Americans have civil liberty in the first place. — MrLiminal

Most other democratic countries managed it without.

But do you think an armed populace is an impediment to tyranny? — RogueAI

Yes. Controlling who has access to weapons is one of the oldest tricks in the book. — Leontiskos

I just don't see this as plausible. If America becomes tyrannical, it will only be because the military and police forces support whatever tyrant there is. And if the military and police are involved, they're not going to be intimidated by American small arms in the hands of non-professionals. There will be very few gun owners willing to risk a drone strike on themselves or their families to take a potshot at a soldier or cop. — RogueAI

First, I am curious where you live?

Second, I am not seeing the plausibility of your argument for the conclusion, "An armed populace is not an impediment to tyranny." I think the key problem with your argument is the premise, "If America becomes tyrannical, it will only be because the military and police forces support whatever tyrant there is."

If I am right and—as has been claimed since at least Aristotle—tyranny and monopolies of coercion go hand in hand (and are perhaps even identical), then such a premise is not true. Therefore I would say that if America becomes tyrannical, it will in part be because the government has a monopoly of coercion, and that the more that monopoly is mitigated the less the probability that this will occur.

Note that when you distinguish "military and police" from the tyranny you are appealing to a distribution of coercive force, i.e. a distribution of arms. You are effectively saying, "If there is a population which possesses arms to oppose the tyranny, then the tyranny will be less likely to occur." That is precisely the point, and it is worth noting that a military or police officer who refuses orders from his superior is technically acting as a civilian. You are presupposing the point that I am at pains to make. Further, if the government is not monolithic then its distributed nature also militates against tyranny:

The second reason it is misleading is due to the fact that the government/civilian dichotomy is false, given that government and association exist at various levels of locality. Intermediating associations betwixt civilian and federal government—including non-federal governmental bodies—provide similar anti-tyrannical functions, even despite the fact that modern nation states are inherently bent towards tyranny due to their relatively monolithic nature. The age of nation states correlates to an absence of intermediating institutions possessing coercive force. — Leontiskos

Most other democratic countries managed it without. — Wayfarer

Civil liberty, or the minimization of gun-related homicides? You are equivocating given that the two are not at all the same thing. If a government wants to minimize gun-related homicides then obviously it should just confiscate all the guns. It's not at all clear why that amounts to greater civil liberty.

I live in California. Has there ever been a tyranny that was not supported by the military?

Has there ever been a tyranny that was not supported by the military? — RogueAI

Sure. The military is not the only possible monopoly of coercion, is it?

Has there ever been a tyranny which does not possess a monopoly of coercion?

Not being killed is fundamental to liberty.

I write from Australia. As is well-known, Australia has much greater controls on gun ownership, in part due to the reaction to an horrific mass shooting in Tasmania in 1996 (often held up as an example in debates on the issue.) Not to say there is no gun crime, but it is much less frequent than in the US. I've never felt the need to arm myself, although there are parts of the world where I surely would, were I to live there.

Something I notice in the posts of the advocates for gun ownership is an appeal to fear, and a sense of being menaced or threatened, which justifies it. It seems a very sad state of affairs, but I'll leave the discussion to those who wish to pursue it.

Not being killed is fundamental to liberty. — Wayfarer

Not-being-killed is part of civil liberty, but when that part is absolutized while other competing civil liberties are ignored then it becomes clear that conflating not-being-killed with civil liberty itself is a mistake.

For example, the right to self-defense is also part of natural law, as is the right to defend oneself in one's home. What follows is that one has a greater right to (relatively) heavy arms within one's home than outside one's home. The absolutizing of the societal value of minimizing homicide will tend to undermine the right to self-defense, especially within one's home.

More simply, if there is only one value, and that value is the minimization of homicide, then lethal weapons should be prohibited. The problem is that there is more than one value.

I don’t have a unique opinion.

We need to be practical. Realistic.

There are guns.

Why would anyone want only one group to have them?

The only gun control that makes sense is to destroy every gun on the earth and never make them again.

I’d talk about that. I’d say that would be great. Also, that is impractical and will never happen.

So we’re back to, there are guns.

- You may have missed my edit to an earlier post:

Substitute guns with "nuclear weapons". — RogueAI

Everything I said also applies to nuclear weapons. I even mentioned nuclear weapons in my post. — Leontiskos

Thinking about nuclear weapons is helpful because it takes some of the emotion out of the word "tyranny."

A nuclear threat is a coercive instrument par excellence, and the whole disincentive to nuclear disarmament is the absence of nuclear deterrence. A country which yields up its nuclear arsenal forfeits its seat at the international table of coercion. Ukraine is a great example of a country which yielded up its nuclear arsenal and now inevitably regrets it. Furthermore, it is easy enough to see how a nation state which seeks a monopoly on nuclear weapons is at the same time seeking tyranny.

Most other democratic countries managed it without. — Wayfarer

Nice chart. But, the question to answer to determine if it is misleading or not is quite simple: How's freedom of the press, though?

Without citizen's rights to defend themself and their voice, all there is is what is reported by the State.

Who knows, maybe some other place you don't live in will report a resurgence of unicorns in the area. How pleasant. But that doesn't make it so.

What's perhaps most interesting here is the extent to which folk are willing to not see what your graph so plainly shows - or to attempt to explain it away, or change the subject.

Plainly, they want their guns and will not be swayed.

Now psychosis is "a mental state where a person loses touch with reality, experiencing symptoms like hallucinations and delusions."

Madness.

I've switched my stance over time on gun control, basically because it works to prevent mass shootings from happening as often.

Originally, I was skeptical because I thought "mass shootings" wasn't a real problem: i.e. I thought "Do people really just want to go out and shoot people they don't know, or was that 1-off?" and I grew up with weapons.

Well, it's not a one-off. People really do want to do that.

So some kind of gun control is warranted if we care about life enough to curtail our freedom to firearms.

That mass shootings continue to occur is a good reason, IMO, to abolish the 2nd amendment. Not that that'll happen in my lifetime, but if gun control advocates want to be serious about controlling guns that's a good target, even though it's immensely difficult to amend an amendment.

Of course homicides aren't the same as mass shootings... there's sense in which if guns are available of course homicides using the better weapon will increase relative to places where that's not the case.

But, really, if we can prevent mass shootings with such a simple fix I don't really care about any other argument for firearms.

On the canard of an argument that an armed populace keeps a government in check: If you're a revolutionary and can't even smuggle firearms, but rely upon Bass Pro Shop to do your munition logistics, that might not work out when you decide to fight. (also, since fascists have taken over, it seems like that whole line of defense is beyond over -- we didn't "rise up" just cuz we could buy weapons)

But, the question to answer to determine if it is misleading or not is quite simple: How's freedom of the press, though? — Outlander

In all those countries in that chart, I would think freedom of the press can generally be assumed, can't it? Got any counter-examples?

Plainly, they want their guns and will not be swayed. — Banno

It's what I said - there is a strong belief that guns=freedom.

That mass shootings continue to occur is a good reason, IMO, to abolish the 2nd amendment. — Moliere

The Second Amendment was framed in the context of the War of Independence in terms of 'well-armed militias'. Switzerland has a similar provision, but are much stricter on the regulation of firearms, which have to be kept in stipulated conditions i.e. locked cabinets etc. There are regular stories out of the US of infants shooting other children or themselves or adults with guns left lying around the home.

There was a Supreme Court ruling that definitively established the "well-regulated militia" term in the Second Amendment applied much more broadly than to actual regulated militias, and instead protected an individual right to bear arms for self-defense, namely, District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). In a 5-4 decision, the Court held that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to possess firearms for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense in the home, unconnected with service in a militia. The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, analyzed the two clauses of the Second Amendment ("A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.") and concluded that the "prefatory clause" (regarding the militia) announces a purpose but does not limit the "operative clause" (the right of the people to keep and bear arms).

But the obvious principle still applies: the main reason people want guns, is the high likelihood that the guy next to them has one. If you knew that hardly anyone had a gun, then you wouldn't feel the need, or so you'd think. Furthermore many sources from psychological and media studies report that by the end of elementary school (around age 10-12), the average American child has witnessed thousands of violent acts, including murders, on television. It's modelled for them. Now there are also shoot-em-up video games, which allow users to simulate the process of mass shooting. All up, the recipe for the violent gun culture we see in today's America.

The only gun control that makes sense is to destroy every gun on the earth and never make them again. — Fire Ologist

A project supervisor holds an Armalite rifle during the 1996 Australian gun buyback.

Agreed. My mom almost got kidnapped when she was pregnant with me. Without her gun threatening the guy off, it's very possible she, my younger siblings and I might not be here. It's honestly wild to me that some people are so excited by the idea of making sure the most vulnerable among us have no personal protection in exchange for some nebulous idea of safety.

That’s right, and guns are great equalizers of power. A small woman can drop a very large man. Unfortunately, leaving everyone defenceless is a by-product of prohibitionism.

There are three types of people who wish to keep guns away from citizens and to limit the right to self-defense: criminals, tyrants, and gun prohibitionists.

What's perhaps most interesting here is the extent to which folk are willing to not see what your graph so plainly shows - or to attempt to explain it away, or change the subject. — Banno

Considering only two people replied to the post in question, one of which being me, I assume that as a invitation to reply.

Wanting to at least thoroughly cross-examine in the attempt to better understand a point, argument, claim, phenomenon, collection of data, or whatever it may be, will never be a negative, deflective, or avoidant thing. Despite your attempt to demonize basic philosophical and logical inquiry, it will never happen. But it does paint you as an odd one out, a strange outlier with a highly suspicious and blatant agenda. We all have agendas. From one to another, you should learn to be more subtle if you hope for yours to ever get off the ground, grasshopper.

In all those countries in that chart, I would think freedom of the press can generally be assumed, can't it? Got any counter-examples? — Wayfarer

No I like that, that's fair. But. Remember. There are close to 200 countries in the world today. Yet the chart pairs 11 (ot of 200) against 1. Does that seem standard or fair to you? I'm sure if you sample any random group of 20 people 1 of them will be awful people who should not exist. Is that really supposed to mean anything though? :chin:

In all those countries in that chart, I would think freedom of the press can generally be assumed, can't it? Got any counter-examples? — Wayfarer

Although it's hard to see the water you swim in, the freedom of the press in Australia is not great. For example, that Kim Williams, the chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, would publicly go after Joe Rogan and Rogan's speech speaks volumes, and would be unconscionable in a society which strongly values freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The Overton window in Australia is generally quite small, and there's a reason for that.

A project supervisor holds an Armalite rifle during the 1996 Australian gun buyback. — Wayfarer

Australia's success in buying back firearms is a large part of what convinced me that it's possible to do within a liberal democracy.

I could be wrong, but while "Abolish the 2nd Amendment" would not sound popular it's basically what would need to happen. The fancy arguments about "A well regulated militia" don't mean anything when we've decided the private ownership of firearms is what's up, especially in a conservative supreme court.

Roe v. Wade was overturned thru a sway in the court because it was a court decision, but an amendment takes something else and is almost impossible. (almost like the document was written to force people to not be able to accomplish things collectively)

Rogan has nothing to fear from the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And nobody here gets sued for criticizing the Prime Minister provided the criticism is fact-based.

Yet the chart pairs 11 (ot of 200 countries) against 1 — Outlander

It's true that (from memory) Guatemala and some of the Central American republics have a higher murder rate than the US. Hardly something to skite about. The point was comparisons of liberal democracies in the developed world where the US 'death by firearm' rate is clearly anomalous.

:up:

Rogan has nothing to fear from the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. And nobody here gets sued for criticizing the Prime Minister provided the criticism is fact-based. — Wayfarer

It's the simple fact that the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation is doing stuff like that. Obviously Rogan has nothing to fear. "...provided the criticism is fact-based," is a rather large caveat, and another good example.

To take another example, one can easily assess a country's commitment to civil rights when stress is placed on the country, and the Covid-19 outbreak was the most recent precedent. Australia was rather notorious on that score.

It's what I said - there is a strong belief that guns=freedom. — Wayfarer

Actually, it's much harder to tell someone what to do when they have a gun. That's simple logic, and I'm afraid the prejudice lies with the one who denies such a straightforward fact, not the one who accepts it. Like it or not, arms really do help secure the freedoms of the bearer. They also increase homicides. Two things can be true at the same time.

No I like that, that's fair. But. Remember. There are close to 200 countries in the world today. Yet the chart pairs 11 (ot of 200) against 1. Does that seem standard or fair to you? I'm sure if you sample any random group of 20 people 1 of them will be awful people who should not exist. Is that really supposed to mean anything though?

Venezuela banned the private ownership of guns and ammunition in 2012. They stopped issuing firearm licences and confiscated thousands of guns. Ten years later it’s still pushing 43.65 violent gun deaths per 100000k people, the second highest in the world.

I generally supported the Australian Governments Covid precautions. Despite similar populations, Florida experienced a significantly higher number of COVID-19 deaths than Australia during the main period of the pandemic. For instance, an early comparison in October 2020 showed Florida with 14,142 deaths compared to Australia's 882. While numbers increased for both jurisdictions over time, the disparity remained pronounced, while American libertarians spread all kinds of nonsense about facemasks being an infringement of civil liberties and vaccinations being a UN plot. As with gun rights, the consequence is a lot more deaths.

I hadn't read your other post until you replied to me directly, but thanks for providing an example of the pathology I am pointing too. Yes, the US has this more in common with Brazil and Mexico than with France, the UK and Australia.

Is that a good thing?

I generally supported the Australian Governments Covid precautions. — Wayfarer

As do I. The misrepresentation of the policies notwithstanding.

I generally supported the Australian Governments Covid precautions. Despite similar populations, Florida experienced a significantly higher number of COVID-19 deaths than Australia during the main period of the pandemic. For instance, an early comparison in October 2020 showed Florida with 14,142 deaths compared to Australia's 882. While numbers increased for both jurisdictions over time, the disparity remained pronounced, while American libertarians spread all kinds of nonsense about facemasks being an infringement of civil liberties and vaccinations being a UN plot. As with gun rights, the consequence is a lot more deaths. — Wayfarer

But do you understand your own arguments here? Again and again you are saying, "The coercion is justified." You are free to make such arguments, but the whole topic here is whether there is a correlation between coercion and guns. Saying, "The coercion is justified on the basis of homicides," or, "The coercion was justified with Covid-19," is missing the whole point that what is at stake is coercion and freedom. One cannot dismiss questions of freedom while simultaneously justifying coercive measures, and it is no coincidence that the most coercive environments are those with the most potent monopolies of coercion.

Part of the difficulty in this thread is that people read "tyrant" as "bad guy," and they assume that they are always the good guy. But a tyrant is fundamentally just someone who forces others to do what they want them to do. It makes no difference whether they think the coercion is a good idea (and obviously they do!). That's really the whole crux: modern people think modern nation states—which are by definition tyrannical—are good because the coercion is justified. Upon considering moving away from the modern nation state, the modern person would basically say, "But how would we coerce everyone to do the good things we want them to do?" "Without a strong state we would not have national laws against gun ownership, and that would be bad; therefore we need a strong state to coerce citizens vis-a-vis gun ownership."

thanks for providing an example of the pathology I am pointing too. — Banno

I'm afraid that's all you my friend and your own solo show. Two people replied to the post, one of which being myself, and you used the term "folk", which implies more than one person, of which I would logically have to be one of said two. Again, you're your own frontman in this case. Not for an audience or agenda you plan, but go on. Floor is all yours.

Looking at this data, 5 out of 100,000 people are murdered by a gun in the US each year. I found some other data that showed that you are 4.23 times more likely to be murdered if you owned had a gun.

Based upon these stats, per one million people per year:

~40.4 gun owners are murdered

~9.6 non-gun owners are murdered

Other Causes Deaths per 1,000,000/year

Gun homicide (base rate) 50
Motor vehicle crashes 129
Sharp object (knife) homicide ~12
Choking (suffocation) ~17
Lightning strikes (fatal) ~1

So, yes, all deaths are significant, but your chances of being murdered by a gun if you decide not to own a gun in the US is not something you really need to spend your time worrying about, but for some reason it gets a lot of press. Non-gun owners are more likely to be murdered by a knife than a gun. This means that solid protection against gun violence is not to own a gun.

I'm in favor of those who choose to own guns just like I'm in favor of those who choose to hang glide. Chances are that if you crash you'll just kill yourself and not land on me.

This means that solid protection against gun violence is not to own a gun. — Hanover

In a given society, populace, or set of circumstances, that is correct. I don't think a family member would care very much whether their loved one were shot or stabbed to death, other than the fact they are deceased. Perhaps those who are inclined to acts or patterns of behavior or life choices that result in death, are also, coincidentally, or at best tangentially, are attracted to firearms. That's an aside, not a base of origin or some sort of defining quality. Like saying people who like fast cars end up in fatal car accidents more often that those who are not. Sure, there's an observable parallel. But it's an underlying human nature or choice of existence or "living life" that is ultimately response. The fast cars, or bad choices, or inclination to own firearms, is merely a catalyst for something attributable that would result in death or injury absent of any of the machinations mentioned, that something being "just how the person is" (or was raised?).

The argument is, once again, reckless people are attracted to reckless things. Power attracts those who least deserve it. That seems to be all that can be ascertained from your unusually dull and dense analysis of the topic at hand.

That seems to be all that can be ascertained from your unusually dull and dense analysis of the topic at hand. — Outlander

Just because you can't accept anything but applause at attacks on gun ownership doesn't make the analysis dull or or dense. It just makes the point that there is not a meaningful risk of loss of life to being shot by a gun in the US if you take the simple precaution of not choosing to have a gun nearby. The math doesn't support widespread efforts at gun control to reduce the negligible risk guns pose to those who, like me, have never owned, nor will ever own a gun. It's someone else's bad decision, and focusing on it is meant to and does in fact polarize and group identify.

Yay guns! is as boring and dense a battle cry as Boo guns! In a liberal open society where guns and all sorts of bad decisions surround you, you get to be stupid. I wish it weren't so, but the right to be stupid is a right you do have.

This means that solid protection against gun violence is not to own a gun. — Hanover

Yes, but this is a very individualistic assessment. It's a bit like saying, "The class which is most likely to die in gun-related incidents is police officers, and therefore solid protection against gun violence is not to become a police officer." But that leads to a world with no police officers, and a world with no police officers is ironically a world where guns are indispensable.

So I think that if one wants to minimize gun deaths then @Wayfarer's approach is better. In fact I am guessing that, at least on this score, you would rather live in Australia, where you give all the guns to the government and hope that the government never turns them on you.

I would say that in our modern-day world the idea that a first-world government would simply turn its guns on citizens is not overly plausible, but the rub is the manner in which that monopoly of coercion functions in the background, at the foundational level. @Outlander was right to mention the freedom of the press, which is a check on government overreach but which is also shaped by the powers of the government, including those latent powers that are not immediately focused on.

Originally, I was skeptical because I thought "mass shootings" wasn't a real problem: i.e. I thought "Do people really just want to go out and shoot people they don't know, or was that 1-off?" and I grew up with weapons. — Moliere

But, really, if we can prevent mass shootings with such a simple fix I don't really care about any other argument for firearms. — Moliere

Mass shootings aren't a real problem. Well, not compared to all the other shootings. If you wave a magic wand and end all mass shootings in the US once and for all, you will hardly make a dent in the gun death statistics.

Now psychosis is "a mental state where a person loses touch with reality, experiencing symptoms like hallucinations and delusions."

Madness. — Banno

but thanks for providing an example of the pathology I am pointing too — Banno

Psychosis? Madness? Pathology? I would appreciate it if the mods would consider the way that Banno consistently responds with unapologetic bigotry and trolling ad hominem. @Hanover? @Jamal?

From the site guidelines:

Types of posters who are welcome here:

Those with a genuine interest in/curiosity about philosophy and the ability to express this in an intelligent way, and those who are willing to give their interlocutors a fair reading and not make unwarranted assumptions about their intentions (i.e. intelligent, interested and charitable posters). — Baden