But gun laws are backwards and make little sense when considering the violent crime statistics (e.g. the US has plenty of gun crime while Canada has comparatively little even though both have a gun carrying population). Guns don't kill people, people do. Anti-gun laws don't stop killings, they just give gangs and the police a monopoly on the most violent type of crime.
Gun laws are one of those things where intelligent, well meaning people replace reality with their model of reality and end up with a backwards system which does nothing to address the root causes. Hint: the root cause of violent crime has a lot to do with inequality, not the number of guns in someone's basement.
Anti-gun laws don't stop killings, they just give gangs and the police a monopoly on the most violent type of crime.
And that's a bad thing? I suspect the number of casulties from six-year-olds shooting their classmates and teenage rampages would drop significantly if it weren't so easy to get at daddy's gun...
Gun laws are one of those things where intelligent, well meaning people replace reality with their model of reality
In contrast to all these omniscient people who don't argue from their mental model of reality?
and end up with a backwards system which does nothing to address the root causes.
Only because it doesn't address the root cause does not mean you should stop treating symptoms.
>And that's a bad thing? I suspect the number of casulties from six-year-olds shooting their classmates and teenage rampages would drop significantly if it weren't so easy to get at daddy's gun...
>In contrast to all these omniscient people who don't argue from their mental model of reality?
Some models are better than others.
>Only because it doesn't address the root cause does not mean you should stop treating symptoms.
In my opinion, it is by far more important to resolve the root causes of problems than it is to duct tape them in an effort to partially stop the bleeding. I thought this was obvious. Humanity has a bad habit of going for quick fixes where none exist and that is the root cause of many of the problems which plague us. Instead of thinking about "saving the children", how about we stop treating each other like crap and encourage people to cooperate not because a stick is being held over their heads but because they actually want to?
Besides, if violence begets violence then are we even duct taping the wound by using oppression to treat oppression or are we reinforcing those pesky root causes even further? Consider that the system which enforces these laws is inherently unfair in that the rich have orders of magnitude more leverage than the poor. How is reminding people who have stepped over that line and taken the inequality into their own destructive hands that they live in an unfair system going to help anyone? The duct tape has a sting of it's own.
I'm sure that the casualties from shootings would indeed go down. Casualties from knife injury on the other hand...
But guns are far superior tools than knifes if your intent is to kill. If the body count goes down, that's a win in my book...
Some models are better than others.
No argument there, but you haven't convinced me that yours is the better one.
how about we stop treating each other like crap and encourage people to cooperate not because a stick is being held over their heads but because they actually want to?
Because our monkey-brains are not wired for that. We're at least partly subject to the whims of the blind idiot god of evolution, and being an asshole has been a sound strategy for a long time and still largely is. Education can help with that, but is no cure-all.
Besides, if violence begets violence then are we even duct taping the wound by using oppression to treat oppression or are we reinforcing those pesky root causes even further?
There are many countries with stricter gun laws than the US, and I'd be surprised if most of their citizens would feel any more oppressed than their counterparts in the US.
How is reminding people who have stepped over that line and taken the inequality into their own destructive hands that they live in an unfair system going to help anyone?
How is restricting access to personal firearms a reminder of an unfair system if it applies equally to all citizens? Also, do you have any data on support of stricter gun control laws by income? It's nice to speculate about the opinion of the downtrodden masses, but some facts would be even better...
and cars are more superior tools than guns(how many died in car accidents this year? 10's of thousands?), but you don't see cars being outlawed... this tells us it's more an emotional reaction than a logical decision.
Gun laws are one of those things where intelligent, well meaning people replace reality with their model of reality and end up with a backwards system which does nothing to address the root causes. Hint: the root cause of violent crime has a lot to do with inequality, not the number of guns in someone's basement.