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In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion.
Just because you don't use force to persuade somebody, doesn't mean you are moral.
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Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
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When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
Really? If i approach you from the back and shoot you in the head what exactly does your personal firearm do for you? If somebody starts shooting a semi-automatic or fully-automatic weapon in a crowd while wearing body armor and by chance you survive long enough to draw your gun, what then? Do you really believe you stand a chance? Guns don't remove force from the menu, it only gives you that illusion.
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There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for an armed mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.
It's not about being more or less civilized, it's about lowering as much as possible the probability of you or your loved ones getting killed. Guns make it very ease to kill someone, that is what they are designed for. If guns are rare in a society, criminals will have a harder time finding one, and so the probabilities that your loved ones are are caught in a shooting are lower. Also if the criminal thinks you might have a gun and fight back he will shoot first and ask questions later, and will make an example off of you to the rest of the community. Solving violence with more violence will only generate more violence.
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People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Oh yes, the young, the strong, and the many rule not the 1% that owns 40% of the nations wealth, not the firearms industry who in 2011 had a 31 billion dollar impact on the economy, not the military-industrial complex, and so forth and so on...
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then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst.
This is so wrong. Of course fists, bats, sticks or stones can be lethal, but guns are considerably more so. Try doing mass murder with sticks, bats or stones.
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The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level. The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
Really? Guns are equalizers? A gun is as useful in the hands of an octogenarian as they are in the hands of someone younger who has better timing, reactions, balance, sight, etc? What if the mugger just shoots you in the back and takes your money? what if there are several muggers with bigger guns and Kevlar vests? Guns are not equalizers, they will just get more people killed.
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When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation… and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
What a load of bullshit. You can't be forced? What if they shoot you in the back? What if you are being assaulted by several armed people with bulletproof vests? It doesn't remove force from the equation, it only adds more of it to the equation while filling the firearms industry pockets.
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I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid.
This one takes the cake. What a ridiculous statement.
Kurzy no disrespect intended to you, but this is just pure propaganda.