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Raees wrote:
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Raees wrote: If the NRA ran the tobacco industry their solution to lung cancer would be more cigarettes!
How do criminals get guns in the first place? They steal them from law-abiding gun owners.
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navycpo7 wrote:
Raees wrote: I don't really believe that that individuals always have an inherent right to own firearms in all cases. It is certainly true for for people who live in sparsely populated areas where they have no neighbors and never interact with anyone else, but as soon as they live in a "society", then a lot of rights that we hold dear "come" from the consent of their community - they're just conventions that are chosen to so that everybody can get along productively. It'd be nice to have complete freedom to do whatever you want, but that's just incompatible with living in a community where your actions impact the lives of those around you. Unfortunately, people can't pick where they're born (and it is unnecessarily complicated to move to other countries), so those rules are imposed on us in a unilateral manner, without our consent, and with the threat of force, but that's pretty much life - most of the earth is occupied and there's not much room for anyone to have their own sovereign nation anymore. I'm all for humans having the right to be left alone as much as possible, but that's difficult in densely populated areas, because interactions are inevitable and your neighbor's freedom necessarily has to stop where your freedom begins.
Pretty much nothing in the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence is absolute. We deny prisoners the right to free speech and association. We deny felons the right to own firearms. We execute criminals (weren't they entitled to "life"?). I guess we do have liberty, since that is by definition a limited freedom where you're not impacting the freedom of others, but that's about it.
As for when the use of force is moral, my general philosophy on this (and I make no claims at being good at philosophy) is that it is immoral to unnecessarily hurt others. I'm fine with using force to defend one's life and the life of their loved ones. I'm less fine with the use of force to defend property - part of living in a civil society is giving up the "Wild West" "every man for himself" freedom for a system of laws and police protection (which, when it works well, is a huge improvement, because it frees you up to do productive things instead of spending all your time defending your property). Having a social safety net helps too, because then fewer people are stealing to support their family (is it immoral to steal to save your child's life?)
I wouldn't say that rights don't exist without government, but the rights you'd get in the ideal "state of nature" aren't necessarily the same as the rights you get in a civil society. It's just inevitable that you'll have to give up some personal freedom to avoid being negatively affected by the exercise of that same freedom by your neighbors. Each society needs to agree on where they want to put that balance - it's a messy process and, as nice as it'd be if everyone had a say, a lot of it is determined by historical reasons (one of the reasons I like that Jefferson quote about Constitutions expiring every generation).
So yes, I don't deny that gun restrictions render individuals less able to defend themselves. That's unfortunate (and part of why I'd somewhat prefer that private gun ownership continue, though I do want to see it restricted more than it is now), but it's a decision that's coming from the consent of the governed, because part of living in a community is giving up some freedoms for the common good. The whole "America: Love it or Leave It" thing is obnoxious, but it's hard to be "free" when you've got 300M neighbors, and the line between "majority rules" and "these rights are too important give up under any circumstances" is really hard to draw sometimes.
Sorry I disagree with this, I do not live my life to make a community happy with me. I live my life for me and those I care about. Not for the neighbor or anyone else. I do not worry about what people think of me, as they really do not know me, I know where I have been, what I have done. I need to be happy with myself not worry about others. the so called community does not and will not dictate or consent what I can or cannot do.
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archer wrote: I too thought of the war on tobacco....more regulation, higher cost, and education certainly did have an effect.
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