Only if they are the only ones with the guns, of course. So that's why they shouldn't be the only ones with the guns.
It's harder to kill someone with a knife or a club than a gun; a defender has some viable defenses against hand weapons, including the obvious one: "Keep your distance from psychos who carry knives or bloodstained baseball bats around in public, and discretely call the police when you see someone carrying an illegal weapon".
I cannot reasonably leave the safety of my family up to the police. That would be shirking my responsibility to my family. Police may not be able to do anything, in time or at all, if too busy, or prevented by other problems.
Guns favor attack; not defense
False. A gun is an excellent means of defense. A criminal who knows I have a gun is less likely to bother with me, and if he insists on attacking, I can drop him. How many cops have ever shot somebody, versus how often they deter violence by simply having a gun? The ratio is astronomical in favor of guns as a deterrent.
As George Orwell said:
... ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, thanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer to it--gives claws to the weak.
Note the imagery of "claws to the weak," referencing "common people have a chance." It's not about the people being able to win, but about being able to have a chance: you will be far less likely to shoo away a snarling dog than a happy one, because even though you know you could take that snarling dog in a fight if your life depended on it, you don't want to get scratched and bit.
So even if you would lose in al all-out fight, the gun still provides a significant deterrent against both criminals and tyrants.
I'd rather the psycho didn't get a chance to take me and my friends with him when he dies; but that's what raising deadliness threshold can do. Escalation serves only to provide greater violence.
The psycho will be able to get a gun no matter what. But even if you think we can possibly signifcantly reduce the number of cirminals with guns, we can only do so by taking away the primary defense of the people against the government, and that is unacceptable.
Ask yourself, would you feel better about your odds of survival if Iran (and every other nation on Earth, including the ones run by total psychos) was armed with nuclear weapons; or if no one had them?
That's an extremely poor analogy, for one obvious reason, and one reason that should now be obvious in light of Orwell's quote. Firstly, weapons of mass destruction or an entirely different sort of threat. To compare them make no real sense. Second, such weapons are, as Orwell said, tyrannical weapons, and guns are democratic ones.
In reply to Re^3: Principle of Inclusion
by pudge
in thread Principle of Inclusion
by apotheon
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