Just wondering

[redbird]

How evil of it is me to have responded to a simplistic anti-gun-control comment in metaquotes with "This is also why laws against burglary and assault don't work: no thug is going to look at his thug buddies and say 'Wait a minute, we can't steal that guy's car, it's illegal. I'd better drop these burglary tools off at the police station.'"

[The subject line is a lie.]

Comments

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

*snicker*

[sraun]

Ooh, I like!

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

.... I don't think he got your point.....

[zsero.livejournal.com]

False analogy. Burglary is itself an evil that it's the state's job to prevent. Making it illegal might directly deter people who are willing to hurt others but are reluctant to break laws, but more importantly it allows us to punish burglars when we catch them, the prospect of which will deter many would-be burglars.

Gun ownership is not itself an evil at all; even those in favour of restricting gun rights admit that it's not gun ownership itself that they hope to deter, but the burglaries, murders, rapes, etc, that people commit with the help of their guns. The idea is that if they don't have guns, many of them will not commit those crimes. But someone who is willing to commit those crimes, which are already illegal, and which carry penalties far higher than anything that is proposed for gun ownership, is clearly not deterred by the prospect of lawbreaking. Making gun ownership illegal isn't going to stop her from owning a gun illegally, and committing crimes with it. And those are precisely the people whom you want not to have guns.

Meanwhile, those who are deterred by laws, will indeed disarm themselves, so total gun ownership will indeed go down, but that is not a benefit to anyone. The ultimate object, remember, is not to reduce gun ownership but to reduce burglary (and other crimes that work better with guns), and burglary is going to remain the same. Or rather, it will increase, because the very people whom we should want to be armed, the ones who will use their arms to prevent crimes, are the ones who will be disarmed by legal restrictions, while the ones whom we want to be disarmed will ignore them.

[zsero.livejournal.com]

Wow, that was longer than it looked. OK, short version: The purpose of banning burglary is to prevent burglary. Any reduction in the burglary rate is by definition a good thing, to be desired. The purpose of banning guns is not to prevent gun ownership, but to prevent burglary indirectly, by reducing gun ownership among burglars. A reduction in the overall rate of gun ownership is not in itself a good thing at all, it's merely a means to an end, so it needs to be justified by whether it's likely to achieve that end, not by how effective it might be at achieving the means.

I hope that's clearer.

[maviscruet.livejournal.com]

You could restate your position as....

"The aim of Gun Control laws is to prevent people the state deems unacceptible from having a gun, by giving the state the means to punish those they do not deem to have right to own a gun."

But equally burgalary laws could be seen as

"The aim of burglary laws is to prevent people the state deems unaceptible from entering a building, by giving the state the means to punish those they do not deem to have the right to enter a building."

Laws exist to be broken, they exist so that when they are broken the state has a punishment it can enforce. If gun ownership was removed, yes then you'd end up with lots of illegal guns in bad guys hands, but then the mere fact of owning that gun would allow the law to take it away - rather then them having the right to own it until it's used in some way the state deems bad.

[redbird]

The purpose of regulating guns [and we are discussing regulation, not an outright ban, so put that card back] is to prevent damage caused by malicious or careless use of guns--"careless" ranging from leaving one around so that a child shoots himself or a playmate, and accidents caused by people who don't know how to handle one safely.

Making guns illegal might or might not lead to a reduction in murder by gangsters--but it will do so, or not, by methods other than "oh my god, this is illegal, I'd better not use a gun" in the mind of someone planning a murder.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

It's not that the govt expects everyone to up and obey each law, but that they stand ready to arrest at least some of those who don't.