Are nukes awesome?
Yes! While you are straying far from the topic with an analogy thats so absurd as to be relwvant, nukes are awesome. Their deterrent effect contributed more to the security of the planet than anything else since WW2, including hippies.
I dislike guns, i dislike killing -
That's cool. I am a pacifist, too. I don't think guns should be mandatory. But I'll kill anyone who credibly threatens my freedom to have one if I want. Im a hard man and youre on the sissy side of this equation:
People Sleep Peacefully in Their Beds at Night Only Because Rough Men Stand Ready to Do Violence on Their Behalf -George Orwell
if Rodney King had a gun... he would've been shot by the police (and rightly so by US law)
First, you don't know that. Second, its highly unlikely. Third, if he had it would have been worth it.
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. -Thomas Jefferson
Fourth, youve gone full-tilt boot-licking coward by saying its right for a person to be killed for defending himself against a threat to his life.
another statistic, another high speed chase ending in a man with a gun being shot by police.
My guess is you have a selection bias due to hearing only about the times cops kill, and never about the times they don't.
I've never been a fan of militantism
I don't consider a person a militant merely because he owns a gun. Atticus Finch had one. MLK had them (Nobel Peace Prize), Jimmy Carter (Nobel Peace Prize),
I much prefer peaceful methods - think Gandhi/
Me, too. But one wrench doesn't turn all bolts. Which is why the Mahatma advocated armed personal defense all his life. At the time of WW1, he said, "Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.” And, "I would make India offer all her able-bodied sons as a sacrifice to the Empire at its critical moment..."
When he described his philosophy of ahisma in his book late in his life he specifically endorses violence for personal defense in some circumstances.
Well that's only true if you ignore all the forms of democracy that existed before 1776 - i.e. greek city states, roman senate and a whole host of other examples from before and after Christ.
You are abusing the etymology of the word by playing a semantical game of parsing. "Democracy" as applied by the Greeks and romans does not describe the same institution, even if it uses the same word at different stages of evolution. Its as ridiculous as saying that if I use the word "bully," I clearly mean it as a term of endearment equivilant to "darling" because that's what it meant in 1500. The entire Greek empire had 30,000 citizens. That this small fraction of residents could vote places the meaning closer to "aristocracy" or "oligarchy" than modern democracy. Which Americans invented.
the magna carta,
It was a nice essay. Gets my vote for second greatest human rights acheivement. Have I gone and done it with British propaganda now????
the Universal declaration of Human Rights.
Followed and is modelled on the US Constitution. Made possible by the civilization built on the US Constitution. Damn good thing the US and quasi-American democracies like Canada, India, and the UK shoved that masterwork of American philosophy up Stalin's ass with their guns, eh?
would agree with you that the US constitution and the Bill of Rights are crucial in the history of human rights, but the greatest achievement? I'm not sure about that, and you'd be hard pressed to say that those things were born directly because of guns.
Without guns, they would just be pamphlets. King George didn't run away like a little girl because he liked our prose.
Even IF guns hadn't been invented people would still fight and wage war.
Agree. But to a much greater and more destructive extent.
All we've done is get better at killing one another.
This is factutally inaccurate. We've gotten better at NOT killing each other. The beauty of guns is in the times we don't use them because we have them.
security from tyranny I leave that to the organisations which our governments have mandated to protect us from tyranny,
Dude! Those are the people that tyrannize! Again, Burma, Tibet, South Africa, Rhodesia, Sudan, Sierra Leone, and on and on and on. All of those dead people counted on the organizations mandated to protect them. Those organizations killed them. The reason the US constitution guarantees the right to bear arms is not hunting, or protection from robbers, it's to protect ourselves from the government. Its to protect us from King George.
and as such train their members well in the use of such weapons.
And what do you think happens when the cops have guns and training and civilians don't? Egypt. Libya. Palestine. Tunisia happens.
where when implemented correctly, gun laws/control/training has lead to benefits for communities.
I am not opposed to regulations. We have some good ones, like waiting (cooling off) periods. We have some shitty ones, like Clinton's assualt weapons ban. We need some more, like mandatory training. We need to make damn sure we don't pass harmful ones, like concealed carry bans.
A little less gun worship wouldn't go amiss.
I agree with this also. All of our rights get fucked up by many or most people. Our right to petition the government is abused by people who file frivolous lawsuits and disrupt legislative proceedings. Our freedom of speech is used by people who should shut up. But accepting this outcome is better than eroding the rights. I would rather suffer the expense of frivolous lawsuits than suffer barriers to filing them. With guns, I think the biggest danger is Bruce Willis. There are a vast number of macho dumbshits whose experience with guns is based on the fiction of movies. They get a grotesquely distorted expectation of what guns can do. They imagine themselves as potential heroes who can instantly kill 33 bad guys with the 17 rounds in their Glock handguns. They are children playing with dangerous toys. They are responsible for the unconsionable number of accidental shootings. I have no shame in saying I don't care much about US gun murders. Almost all of those murders would still happen if no gun was available. And maybe even more collateral casualties. I don't want guns regulated to prevent murder, because access to guns doesn't seem to increase the rate. But it damn sure increases the rate of gun accidents. The number is huge, it's a crisis, and that's what a want regulations to address. I want all those Rambo idiots to be required to use trigger locks, among other things. I want training for children who live in homes with guns. When I was a kid, we had training for nuclear war, fires, hand washing, tooth brushing, bicycling, playing near railroad tracks, avoiding landmines and booby traps set by cannabis growers near the places we went fishing, condoms, covering our mouths when we sneeze (I can still sing the Jiminy Cricket song), boy scout first aid and CPR, mandatory swimming lessons, poison control, and at least 300 other public health campaigns, but I have never heard of a school that talks about guns, seen a public service announcement on TV, or an episode of Sesame Street, or anything else related to not killing your baby sister because dad left his Dirty Harry pistol under the seat of his car.
However... My dad would not let me have a little pocket knife until I was 8 years old because I was not mature and responsible enough. But he gave me a .22 rifle when I was six years old. My kids will get them, too. Because I want them to know that King George is real, that they don't have to take any shit from that crazy inbred mongrel, and it is their sacred duty to be hard men so George will fear kicking down their doors.