I'l give you a tip, a government assassin coming after you will be trained in covert operations and may not come to the front door waving a gun and shouting threats which would give you enough time to retreive your gun from the gun cupboard and protect yourself.eumaas wrote:Aside from the deterrent/armed insurrection argument, there's also the home invasion thing.Wolter wrote:See Wally? This is how it's done.Dr. Medulla wrote:Weigh that, however, against the general insecurity and violence (random and otherwise) that accompanies widespread gun possession. It's not as simple as apparently burying one's head in the sand and hope that martial law isn't declared. It's an awareness that if you want plenty of guns out there to protect you from that hypothetical scenario, then there's also increased gun violence. Is the trade-off worth it? I say no.Wolter wrote:You don't accept the basic anarchist (or even minarchist, or for that matter Jeffersonian Democratic-Republican) premise, so I don't have any possible way to explain to you why waiting until the government/army/police force is a personal threat is unwise. But, hey, no government in history has ever turned on any group of it's citizens after consolidating power...ever.
Personally, I hate guns. Hate them. But I'm on the fence about the trade-offs - for the reasons both Hooks and eumaas state. But to automatically gainsay without evidence and just attack me for disagreeing with you as some sort of fictional tag team with eumaas is just immature and shows a lack of reasoning behind your arguments.
Shooting targets or tin cans is fun, but outside of that context I don't take any enjoyment in having a gun, nor do I use it to "feel safe." For me I consider it worthwhile to have it as an option. I live in a high crime neighborhood where the already meager benefit of a cop patrol approaches zero. This is a slow response neighborhood. I don't even hunt--I'm quite squeamish about taking lives. I was a vegetarian for five years, and there are only a few classes of bugs even that I'll kill willingly. I'm not sure whether I'd reach for the gun or the phone in the case of a home invasion. But having a gun on hand increases my options for response.
By the way, U.S. citizens don't have a constitutional right to protection, so if the cops don't come, there's nothing you can do about it after the fact.
I believe that self-defense is legitimate. I also believe that it is legitimate to step in if someone is menacing another person or already engaged in violence against that person. Furthermore, I believe that proportionality, while not an absolute constraint (i.e. once deadly force is involved, you don't have to go tit-for-tat--that is, a knife for a knife, a gun for a knife--you can bring a gun to a knife fight so to speak), is a good guide to the exercise of self-defense and defense of others. So if someone threatens me with fists, I won't necessarily whip out a pistol and kill him.Sure, although I think the state at home is far more likely a threat than that of an overseas government. I put both on the same plane though--whether you're defending against an invading state or your own is irrelevant. My other defense for the ownership of a gun (note that I don't think it's a mandatory thing--you can choose on your own whether or not to own a gun) is the broader issue of self-defense as outlined above.101Walterton wrote:So just to make sure I have this clear, you need a gun to protect yourself from United States and overseas governments killing you ?
Another tip would be to stop doing whatever it is that causes an overseas government to send an assassin after you.