106 thoughts on “The Problem With Gun Control”

  1. Sounds like you’ve conceded the main point, Pete, and are merely arguing ways and means and local variation. Have at it. But there’s not much point to having that discussion until you get down to the nitty gritty details of a particular community and its particular nature.

    Incidentally, speaking of gun cultures, you might want to ponder Switzerland. Every male citizen of Switzerland is enrolled in the reserves and required by law to keep a weapon and ammunition in his home. Not a lot of burglary in Switzerland. Nor much murder. Which means the best evidence agrees with your thought that whatever gives a nation a big murder rate, it ain’t the mere availability of weapons.

    If nothing else, 200 years ago the usual way to commit murder was by strangling somebody or poking holes in him with a sharpened metal blade. The inconvenience of primitive tools didn’t seem to stop people. The murder rate didn’t skyrocket when Colt introduced his cheap and reliable handgun.

    And speaking of “gun culture,” there’s one aspect of it I quite like: if citizens can carry lethal weapons about, and be trusted with their legal and moral employ, then you have to give them a substantial respect and expect from them a substantial responsibility. It’s a little hard to square the self-reliant sturdy yeoman who can be trusted with his own musket with a whiny needy “consumer” who needs “protection” from McDonald’s serving him overhot coffee or the pathetic “struggling” victim-citizen who needs his doctor bills paid for by the state because he’s too stupid or lazy to save up for a rainy day. If “gun culture” gets people to start laughing contemptuously when Congress or the President proposes treating adult Americans like Rain Man basket cases who need their hands held by wiser folks, then I’m all for it.

  2. No I have not conceded the point, sure I am happy with people having proper guns at home, that they can bring out if circumstances warrant it – that is kind of what a militia is all about and I have argued for that all along. What I object to is everyone carrying loaded handguns with them out in public in the vast majority of the world where that is just not necessary. The right to carry a handgun is not universal, it only really applies to that kind of violent places. For example, if you ever go to New Zealand, do not take a handgun (unless it is in your job description).

  3. It is one thing for an individual to take the life of another, quite another for the state to have such power.

    This is a very revealing statement. What is the state? Does it possess morality that an individual doesn’t? At one time you could assume that the people around you were moral and shared many of your own convictions. What changed? Can it be changed back?

    Taking the life of a murderer is a duty. We can quibble about the procedure but the individual morality of it hasn’t changed since Cain and Abel.

    What is this state you speak of? An abdication of responsibility perhaps?

    You want no blood on your hands… when the blood of a murderers victims cries from the grave. That’s immoral.

    Why do you want to punish someone for killing a murderer? Ah, for taking the law into there own hands. Who made them, judge, jury and executioner?

    Men are fallible. It only makes sense they should get together to make such important decisions. Let’s hope they all understand the morality issues. The merciful penalty for murder is a quick death. It’s not just about the murderer.

    The penalty for accidental murder used to be cities of refuge from which the guilty party could never leave on penalty of death. But that’s not intentional murder.

  4. Ah, for taking the law into there own hands.

    Ken, I think the law started out in their own hands, and it’s inalienable — unassignable. Think of it this way: you can’t farm out the job of shooting your own dog. Hiring someone to do what you don’t have the stomach to do yourself is the path to moral corruption, and our justice system is a God-damned sea of moral corruption, cynicism and inhumanity.

    Another way to put it: only men are made in the image of Christ. If there is any right to judge life and death, it resides only in individual men — never in collective constructs, like a jury or a system or a legal algorithm. I would assign the right to judge life and death only to individual men, and only those who have the appropriate direct experience. Which as a matter of course means the victim. In principle, I might consider assigning it to people very close: perhaps the mother of a murder victim should have the right of judgment? But in practise, those lines are so hard to draw that you open the door to blood fued, which was pretty much the justification for a “professional” justice system in the first place.

    Or to put it a truly revolutionary way: I believe in a government of men, not laws. Men can judge, have in theory the potential for the divine spark of insight that the Great Judge uses to sort the sheep from the goats. No robotic algorithm — set of laws — can do that. This is why we must always be governed by other men, and would not accept governance by computer program. In my view laws are merely guidance for men, or in cases bargains and promises between some men and others. But to venerate the law qua law above the judgment of men is, in my view, to indulge in idolatory — to put a man-made image of gold and jewels above the Lamb, to be a Pharisee.

  6. Then you must be a very good man. (From the classic Catholic joke: Q. How do you make holy water? A. Boil the Hell out of it!)

    Perhaps you are an avatar of Anthony of Padua, patron saint of the lost. While you yourself may wander, you help others find what they thought was lost or stolen. There are worse epitaphs.

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