h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"The reason people should pack heat is because it protects them from internal tyranny..."

That is probably the most hilarious argument for having a gun that I've ever heard. You live in the US, not Afganistan. George Dubya may be doing his best to ignore it, but you live in a democracy. If you want to oppose the elected government using force (why else would you need the gun?) that would make you...
you guessed it:-
A terrorist.

"The reason people should pack heat is because it protects them from internal tyranny" - The US has been suffering from an 'internal tyranny' for years. The tyranny of the gun. It seems to me to be a form of idol worship and the failthful will go through all sorts of logical hoops to justify having unfettered access to something that obviously causes so much damage to your society.

"The tyranny of the gun"

"Idol worship"

"logical hoops"

"unfettered access"

"damage to your society"

Humans worship authority. If they have none, they want some. They will use words, sex, weapons, religion, and politics to assume the illusion of access to authority. In the end, many who have authority wish they didn't, because it is tentative. Events and emotions can carry the authority away in an instant.

Not one single elected official on the planet has the same amount of immediate authority as a single determined human or a group of determined humans with weapons.
The people who make their livings wearing suits and skirts and telling the rest of us what to do are afraid of determined people with weapons. They want to control them. They want to make them docile. They want to use them as examples of what can happen to you if you don't do what you're told by the people who know better than you. They need to introduce certainty into your life and people who threaten that certainty are saying that "the emperor has no clothes".

A government cannot protect you. It cannot protect itself. So it will lie to hide that vulnerability. Every time you take one of those lies to your bosom, you fail to protect yourself and you relinquish your own potential authority, which is quite possibly the only form of authority that truly exists.

The "tyranny" is in believing that governments and legislatures are alive, that they can think, that they can, through consensus or compromise, arrive at some version of the 'truth'.

The "idols" are politicians and scaremongers.

The "logical hoops" are the ways in which they will call you to duty to defend their government but teach you to believe that you have no duty to defend yourself or your family.

The "unfettered access" that bureaucracies and ministries have to your life and your livelihood is what should generate concern, because a bunch of civil servants who are 'just doing their jobs' can make your life a living hell and then go home and sleep soundly.

Every "society" suffers from "damage". There is no perfect one. The fact that a 'nation' cannot truly have a 'society' is beside the point. The fact that wherever two or more are gathered together in agreement there is the beginnings of a 'society' is a frightening prospect to governments and churches. They want you to make a choice, their choice. 'None of the above', 'I'll go do as I please', 'Don't bother me, I'm fine as I am, thinking for myself', these thoughts and attitudes are damaging to any society, because it means the bean counters and people in the polling and prediction business cannot count on the support of those who will not be led.

Blame 'guns' all you want. That's easy.
Blame a society. That's easy.
Blame a cult. That's easy.
Blame me. That's also easy.
But when you're done blaming, ask yourself some hard questions.
I won't suggest them to you. You seem intelligent, they will come to you without my help.

"The reason people should pack heat is because it protects them from internal tyranny..."

I'm ambivalent about gun control, but I've always felt this argument carries little weight. If by internal tyranny you mean the State, then how someone with a rifle is supposed to fend of an organisation consisting of professional troops, tanks, APC's, gunship helicopters and chemical weaponry is a mystery to me.

Ask the Afghanis.
The Soviets went home.
Soon, the US will, too.

Yeah, the Russians were defeated,English too,by determined
Afghanis.Have you seen any pictures of Afghanistan lately? If
you haven't ,I can't blame you-there's very little left of Afganistan
to be photographed after all those heroic decades.

Not sure there ever was much of Afghanistan!

Hey we've come a long way from Gun Safety! Gun contol is a valid element of it (my view!) but international politics?

Fun though!

Stephen

"Blame 'guns' all you want. That's easy.
Blame a society. That's easy.
Blame a cult. That's easy.
Blame me. That's also easy.
But when you're done blaming..."

I'm not blaming anybody. I'm suggesting that there is no need for guns in a modern democracy and that having them only leads to them being used. If there was no flu virus, no-one would get flu. If there were no guns, no one would get shot. I realise you can't get rid of every single gun in the same way you can't get rid of every single disease. But surely the aim should be to limit them as much as humanly possible to reduce the possibility of people suffering?

Would you sanction that every person should have the right to bear anthrax spores? Or nuclear bombs? These too are weapons (which kill a lot fewer people than guns do) but I doubt you'd assert people's right to carry them around would you?

Firearms are part of my life. They have been since I was a child.
They have been part of my job and probably will be again.
Safety has been a focus accordingly.

The suggestion has been made that I am thus tainted and a potential or a current participant in evil.

The suggestion has been made that the country I live in (purely by accident of birth) is tainted and damaged by the existence of certain objects within its borders.

These suggestions are based on a fallacy: if you say something with enough conviction, it becomes real, regardless of the truth and if you say something with enough authority, it becomes law, regardless of the truth.

You can find laws applying to practically anything. There are law factories all over the planet. That's what those facilities do, produce laws. The customers are tripping over themselves to buy, too.

The law is something that an individual is not supposed to take into their own hands, because it threatens the producers and the consumers of laws.

A person with a firearm can be a law unto themselves, without a big building or an army of enforcers or a stable of robed interpreters.

This must not be. The law factories must be able to control the law, by producing more laws, by directing who can and who can't be in control. So they produce fantasies as well as laws. Those fantasies involve protection. One of the fantasies says that laws will protect you, that the enforcers and interpreters of laws will protect you.
Of course, this is almost always after the fact, event or offense that threatens you. You are thus protected by the fact that someone will do something to protect you if you survive. And that protection is limited to following procedure dictated by law. If you are not happy with the results of the procedure, contact the factory. They will get back to you.

Firearms are produced by factories, too. The law factories and the enforcers and the interpreters have to decide how much or how little they want to offend the firearms manufacturers, because the law factories rarely send enough business in the direction of the firearms makers to help keep them in business. If the firearms manufacturers go out of business, then the law factories have to find a way to make their own firearms when they do need them, and they really don't want to do that, because that will mean they will have to actually be in charge of producing something tangible and possibly dependable.

So, in order for the law factories to have their firearms when they want them, and at the price they want to pay, the firearms manufacturers have to have customers that are not associated with the law factories. This is where the individual or another country comes in.

This leads to the strange and irritating situation where the law factories, seeing that a number of unlawful individuals or groups have too many firearms, find themselves having to arm their enforcers to a similar or greater level of sophistication than the unlawful.
Some law factories, seeing that their firearms manufacturers have enough customers outside the country, decide to outlaw the possession of firearms in their countries and thus, with a stroke of a pen, make all the people who were actually obeying the laws, unlawful, and all the firearms manufacturers and dealers who were actually obeying the laws go elsewhere for business or go out of business.

But the laws are not real. They are ideas on pieces of paper.
The firearms are real and it is, in many cases, because of them that the law factories are allowed to produce the flavors and models that they do.

The evil is not in an object. It is not in a firearm.
The evil is in the ideas that lead people to lend their safety to other people who would rather be employed than truthful.

When the law-abiding are not safe because of the lawbreakers and the lawmakers, then there is a situation that is more evil and more untenable than the existence and the potential use of any object.
When both the lawbreakers and the lawmakers think of you as a victim rather than someone worthy of respect and consideration, it does not matter what you truly believe or what you really want, because, given the chance, both will ignore you except as an opportunity.

I am forced to conclude that I would rather have a world where nobody has access to firearms or everybody does, because the truth is, regardless of laws and treaties and wishful thinking, there is hardly anyone on the planet that cannot possess a firearm if they know who to ask and have something to trade or know where to steal it. That's a fact.

(tonsil revenge)... I commend you. My own arguments only stir up discontent, I lack eloquence and clarity. (And I made the mistake of calling Palestinians, Pakestinis. I apologize for any confusion that caused anybody.)
Your arguments lend to deep thinking and an expanded vision of the world. I find myself agreeing with everybody, in my own limited way. I don't like guns either, I don't "pack heat," and I don't own any weapons. I have used them, though. I have fired a range of weapons, varying from .22s up to AK-47s (semi-automatic, because fully automatic is illegal in the USA). The fact is, despite having used so many, they still scare me.
My position opposing gun control hinges on the argument "(tonsil revenge)" so clearly stated:
"I would rather have a world where nobody has access to firearms or everybody does, because the truth is, regardless of laws and treaties and wishful thinking, there is hardly anyone on the planet that cannot possess a firearm if they know who to ask and have something to trade or know where to steal it. That's a fact. "

That is my position.

Cheerio!

This appears TR, to be more an article of faith to you than a subject to be debated and as such, nothing I or anyone says is going to make the slightest dent in your beliefs. I guess in America guns are sort of a religion and any sort of religion is IMO unhealthy (that's religion NOT faith by the way.)
It does kind of scare me, your attitude to your elected representatives, lawmakers, police services etc. I don't suggest for one second that you are in any way an "itchy trigger" if you will, but it's attitudes similar to yours in people a lot less rational or a lot more disregarding of their fellow man that results in kids killing each other at school, snipers wandering around in cities or a huge prevalence of armed robbery, and gun-crime. Remove the guns and you make it a whole lot more difficult for these people to do these things. Surely the democratic process is a much better way to achieve you aims than capping someone?

Yes, with enough money and contacts you can buy a gun anywhere. You can also buy plutonium, cocaine, slaves, policemen etc. if you have enough money and the right contacts. That doesn't mean that we should make it easy for people though does it?

As a final point, I'd much rather I was faced by someone with an illegal gun when I wasn't armed as there is a hell of a lot less chance of getting shot that way. If someone really wants what I've got that they're prepared to bring a gun, they can have it. If the difference is between losing my stereo and kids having easy access to firearms and killing each other in high school with them, you can have the damn stereo!

Oh and surely you meant
"Israelis in Palestine" not the other way round. Last I saw the Israelis were the occupying army, illegally encroaching on the Palestinians homeland (albeit with tacit British and American approval.)

I favor the personal possession of firearms for personal protection and as a final check on liberty.

Personal Protection

There aren't that many police in the US. In my experience, they're almost never present when a person on person crime takes place. Furthermore, they have no duty to protect you from crime. Even if you could call them while the crime is being committed, it will take them minutes to respond. If you're in a situation like that, you're all the protection that you have.

Incidentally, crime does go down in areas where more citizens have concealed carry permits.

Liberty

The average republic lasts 200 years. The United States has done fairly well now that it's passed it's best if used by date, but it still shows signs of sliding towards true democracy, tyranny or both. The United States military may be the extremely potent, but there's less than two million people in the armed services and there are about 100 million gun owners in the United States. Armed resistance is possible.

Balancing Gun Rights

Since guns are dangerous, the state should balance individual liberty and the protection of society. I think it does that best by aggressively prosecuting people who commit gun related crime. I don't think we're well served by preventing law-abiding people from protecting themselves or those around them.

>As a final point, I'd much rather I was faced by someone with an illegal gun when I wasn't armed as there is a hell of a lot less chance of getting shot that way.

Having a gun in when confronted with another person with a gun does not increase your chance of being harmed. You have to choose whether or not you use it. I would argue that it decreases your chance of being harmed. I'll grant you that in a robbery, you probably don't want to resist, but in many other crimes, you dramatically increase your chance of survival if you resist. You have to use your best judgment in all situations where deadly force is going to be used.

This is totally fascinating.TBTPM , you sound like reasonable
person, well informed too,and that's why your arguments boggle
my mind.Obviously, you're reflecting the US reality, I've no doubt
about it. I need an advice-namely, I plan to visit States one of the-
se months,New York to be more specific. Do you have any Rent-
A-Gun services over there? Surely, I can't take my own piece, e-
ven if I had one, for the obvious reasons. So, what am I to do?
The last thing I want is to move around NY unprotected- would
the knife do, by the way?

New York City has a bunch of absurdly restrictive and ineffective gun laws. You're stuck. Wihtout a diplomatic passport that you won't be able to. I don't know what their restrictions on a knives are. I don't care much for knives. You need a lot more training to employ a knfie than you do a gun.

Standard Precautions
Be observant.
If anyone is watching you, make eye contact with them.
Don't go anywhere you feel uncomfortable.
Pay attention to your instincts.
Make sure you have an escape route and a reactionary gap.

Waves to Two-bit.
Waves to Hobbes.
Waves to Doc.
Waves to Damned if I do.
Waves to everybody else.

waves to self and wonders why...

I spend a good portion of each day reexamining my prejudices.
I have faith in almost nothing since Charles Shultz and Smythe died.
I spend a lot of time taking a look at the backside of the flats on the sets of the daily movie that presents itself as reality.

I started out as a child wanting to trust adults and other children.
I needed to believe that what I was told was true.
I needed to believe that what I read was true.
That was my personal religion. I wanted to have faith in other people.

I was confused for a long time.
I kept running into "You didn't know that? Everybody knows that!", and
"Do as I say, not as I do."
As a result, I lost my religion and I lost my faith in other people.

Accusing or associating me with criminals and social deviates because of an object is a waste of your time and mine. Attributing my attitude to known offenders is an exercise in clairvoyance. Despite this being the year 2002, and thus the 'future', despite billions of monetary units being spent on research, we're not really sure why anyone does anything, from buying a certain brand of chewing gum, to driving their vehicle half a block before they put their seat belt on.

I have not lived your life and you have not lived mine.
Yet, we are talking.
That is what matters.
I am not blaming or accusing you of anything.
No purpose would be served by that, except possibly to offend you.

The fear of firearms by those who have actually had experience with them is understandable. I respect those people enormously. I have seen what firearms can do and what they can't. They are not magical. They are mechanical devices whose functions are based on simple scientific principles.
A cheap firearm that can fire an entire magazine faster than you can blink twice is the easiest thing in the world to manufacture.
Witness the Sten submachine gun.
A semi-skilled machinist with a basic workshop or an intent blacksmith can turn out a firearm that loads and fires one round in a day. If factory-made ammunition is not available, then a fairly dependable substitute can be made, or a homemade propellant and ignition source can be resorted to.

The fear of firearms by those who do not have experience with them is irrational. You trust the police and the military with them, but not the fellow next to you in the shop queue. If the person next to you turns out to be a policeman or a soldier who is carrying a firearm because it is part of his duty, then that's a bit scary, but okay.

The problem that both you and I are trying to deal with is the ability of humans to fool themselves.
It is a short trip from "if we do this, everything will be all right" to "If we want everything to be all right, it can be", to "Don't worry about it, everything's O.K." to "if you think there's a problem, then the problem is with you."

You believe that you are not fooled, that you know what is best and any fool who will just set aside his preconceptions can see it if he will just listen.

I believe that I am too easily fooled by people, movements and philosophies. That's why I like tools, hard things made of metal and wood. The reality of their use is a remedy against foolishness. If I truly do not know what I am doing, it will become very apparent almost immediately... 'cause I just broke something!

So, set aside your prejudices and cling to what you can depend on.

By the way, any 'burglar' worth his salt will case the 'joint' and chose to remove your possessions when you are not around.
If you find yourself faced with an armed stranger in your home, he is probably armed with intent and he is probably not as much of a stranger as you would like to think.
And, on a more somber note, if there can be one:
If you do find yourself in a situation where you have an armed person threatening you, do your best to fight back.
It is better to be found dead with defensive wounds on you in a crime scene that the police can use to catch the fellow than to allow yourself to be removed to a secondary crime scene or to acquiesce to someone that the police might be looking for already.
The human ability to second guess forever may make you want to put your best foot forward in the event of a crisis. Otherwise you will suffer a nightmare of "I shoulda" forever.

Oh, by the way, Illinois, the state I grew up in, not only has had a moratorium on executions for a year or so, but they are now engaging in Clemency hearings for a number of death row inmates.

If the Governor doesn't trust the results of the police and the prosecution and he is doing something about it, then, regardless of my native skepticism, I think that he is trying to do the right thing within his belief system.

My catch of the day:
USA 2000
Population: 280 million
Murders: 15 thousand
Murders per million inhabitants: 53+

GB 2000
Population: 58 million
Murders: 380!
Murders per million inhabitants: 6+

This being statistics there is now way to tell whether this means americans are just homicidal or have easier access to guns, but it doesn't look like guns protect much against getting murdered.

And yes, I know that the number of gun-deaths would have been more interesting, but it does show something about the crime rate.

Not really. Crime reporting to a national compiler is notoriously inconsistent from jurisdiction to jurisdiction in the US. The local cops are usually too busy with the day to day paperwork of the job.

I refer the honourable gentleman to the sketch on handguns by Bill Hicks...

As for your dismissing of the stats given, you have to expect that homicide ones are fairly accurate (being that it's seen as the worst possible crime) and that, even if they are out by as much as +-50% that's still somewhere between 7500 and 22500 murders in the states and a max of 540 in the UK. Still fairly incriminating wouldn't you say?