http://www.twotlj.org/against-consequentialism.pdf

This topic is huge and I’m bad at explaining things in writing without taking a ton of time so I’m sorry that I’m about to just link to a bunch of stuff. To keep things fair I’ll link to some of what I think are the best arguments for and against libertarian(deontological) and consequentialism(you might call it liberal but there are consequentalist libertarians as well). I don’t personally agree with either position by the way.

Deontological
For:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural-rights_libertarianism
Against:http://raikoth.net/libertarian.html

Consequentalist
For:http://raikoth.net/consequentialism.html
Against:http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/#WhaGooHedVsPluCon

Anyways I’m bowing out for now. Thanks for the interesting discussion Ron Paul 2016!

But the real issue is that your position assumes for you the position of population manager with all the rights and powers appertaining thereto without a shred of justification. What right do you have to tell your neighbors that they are forbidden from owning guns? This is directly contrary to the spirit of the American founding–all men are created equal.

Again, my point about the numbers is that they the anti gun lobby uses them as a red herring. This is not about risk analysis, as the car/gun comparison clearly shows. The shrill shriek reduced to print, aka the article by Paul Rosenberg, plays the same game, pretending that individuals have to justify their rights, to prove their existence. You and Rosenberg have it all backward. Insofar as an individual is not infringing on the rights of others, her rights are unlimited. It is government that bears the burden of proving that there is good reason for any restriction, and a red-herring numbers game doesn’t cut it.

Regarding your question about government possession of nuclear, biological, chemical, and other types of indiscriminate-killing weapons, I do not believe governments should produce/possess them.

I’m afraid I still don’t understand your point in the car analogy. Are you saying that the gun control activists don’t believe what they believe for the reasons they say they believe them? And they must not because otherwise they would be worried about cars too? If so, my critique of false-equivalence still applies.

Your indiscriminate qualifier seems subjective. Are you saying our government shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, tanks, biological weapons etc. either?

As I stated previously my main criticism of your post is that I believe it misunderstands the actual reasons an intelligent person would disagree with your viewpoint. So here’s a very well argued piece by Paul Rosenberg. I myself disagree with a few of his points but if you want to understand better why gun control activists believe what they believe this is a good departure point.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/20121226104857715225.html

Reality isn’t limited to calm, rational, safe experiences that we can all happily discuss with hyperbole and humor and then go off to warm safe beds. There are bad people in the world and the police can’t always be there to save us. Under a system of government that values individual rights and human equality, a person who has done no wrong cannot lawfully be restrained from purchasing the tools needed to effectively defend herself. Sometimes you need a tool designed to kill, because sometimes you need to kill someone to keep them from hurting you or others.

As for your question about property rights, I think I addressed some of that in my previous comment, but I’ll add here that weapons designed to kill indiscriminately don’t have a place in a free society, because there is no situation in which a person or government should indiscriminately kill.

I fear you have only rebutted the worst of your opponents. Your summarization of gun control advocates over-simplifies their position and in places mis-represents it. As a result your critique falls short and drifts into strawman territory.

“Arguments against freedom to own guns rely on false assumptions about consequences and causation. The usual anti-gun argument goes something like, “Guns are dangerous; people with guns sometimes kill other people; so we should take away guns.” A more moderate version includes the same false assumptions: “Some guns are especially dangerous; people with these especially dangerous guns sometimes kill other people; so we should take away these especially dangerous guns.” Can you spot the fallacy?”

The fallacy is there because you put it there by misunderstanding your opponents arguments. If you speak to more intelligent gun-control activists their reasoning will usually go something like the following.

Guns(excluding recreational or hunting) are intended to kill people, it is their designed purpose; It is easier to kill with a gun than with other objects not designed for that express purpose; Empirical studies have shown that killing with a gun is less personal, less premeditated, and faster and that all else being equal(same situation, stress etc) people with guns are more likely to kill than people without them. Societies with less guns in them have less people killed by guns and killed total; ergo the less guns we have, the less people will be killed by them. Unless you address these arguments and not the simplistic ones you seem to think your opponents have you will not get through to them.

“human will, not the gun itself, is the necessary ingredient.” You have pigeonholed your opponents into a false dichotomy. Gun control activists would likely respond that in general it takes both human will and a gun to kill someone. In specific cases in could take neither. Someone with a will and no gun could kill with a knife(although they are empirically less likely to do so) and someone with no will and a gun could kill as well as happens as you pointed out in your comment 606 times a year. I don’t think I need to belabor the point that in a United States without guns all 606 of those people would not have died. You are free to argue that less people would die in a US with guns than one without or that a deontological principle that allows gun ownership is more important than those lives but it simply cannot be argued that accidental gun deaths would still happen in a country without guns. You admitted as much later when you commented that, “Of course where there are more guns there will be more gun deaths. ” Your claim that that fact is irrelevant misunderstands the gun-control advocates position. Their thinking is as follows.

Where there are more guns there will be more gun deaths; therefore if we have less guns there will be more deaths. Less deaths would be better, so let’s ban guns.

“The irrationality of restricting gun ownership based on the inherent danger of firearms is further highlighted by a comparison of gun deaths with car-crash deaths. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, “32,885 people died in motor vehicle crashes in 2010.” 962 of those deaths were children younger than 13. The FBI recorded only 8,775 total firearm murders in 2010, with 96 of the victims under the age of 13. This also shows the irrelevance of comparing rates of gun deaths in the U.S. with rates of gun deaths in other countries. Of course where there are more guns there will be more gun deaths. That doesn’t answer any relevant question. One would also not be surprised to find car-related deaths are wonderfully low in societies with few cars. So arguing against gun-ownership because “guns are dangerous” simply doesn’t hold water. Very few would advocate that we ban cars.”

To the gun control advocate you have engaged in a false-equivalence. Your argument(correct me if i’m wrong) is this.

Guns kill people, but so do cars. If we were to ban things because they kill people we would have to ban both cars and guns. Therefore a position of wanting to ban guns but not cars is inconsistent.

A gun control activists would point out several reasons why these are not equivalent such as (1)that guns(the ones they want to ban) are built with the intended purpose of killing people. Cars are built with intended purpose of transportation. (2) The vast majority of car deaths are accidents whereas the majority of gun deaths are intentional (3) Cars are necessary for our society to continue functioning in a familiar fashion while guns are not.

Regarding the property rights argument I wonder if you think individuals should be free to build or purchase nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, tanks, biological weapons etc. Why would a right to own those those be different than a right to own a gun?

I don’t live in a high-crime area with heavy gang activity, so I don’t see the need to lug around a heavy assault rifle. But if I lived close to the border where there was smuggling activity, or if I lived in an area with gangs/organized crime, I might feel differently. Assault rifles are designed to engage multiple targets in rapid succession. High-capacity magazines are designed for situations where the fight might not end after the first few shots. Those who want to ban these types of weapons simply ignore the fact that many people live in conditions where these advantages could make the difference between life and death.

Any discussion of gun regulation would be incomplete without talking about property rights. Property owners have an absolute right to exclude guns from their property. This means that I can keep others from bringing guns into my home; the citizenry can vote to exclude weapons from government property—since they collectively own it; airplane owners can exclude weapons from their airplanes, etc. Moreover, if my neighbor has something on his property which—without intervention of human will—creates a risk to me on my property, I have a right to regulate the conditions of ownership. In other words, if my neighbor is storing high explosives, and my house is within the potential blast radius, then I have a right to regulate him. Maybe this means that he has to store the material in a certain way; maybe this means that he can’t own the material at all. That will be fact-dependent. For example, someone living in a 900 square foot apartment in a high-rise apartment building should not be able to store large quantities of highly flammable or explosive material, but the right to regulate him belongs to his neighbors and the building owner–not government.

Concerning your comments about vehicle registration as a model for gun registration, if vehicle registries were designed to prevent individuals from owning a vehicle until they had the government’s blessing, I would oppose them. However, I don’t think that is their purpose. Vehicle registries are designed to protect the owners’ property-rights. In the event of a theft, there is a record of who is the actual owner. This is similar to deed registries for real-estate transfers.

This is already getting too long, but briefly, my thoughts about pharmaceuticals track my beliefs about other drug use. Government shouldn’t have the right to dictate what a person chooses to ingest. Regarding the Congressional moratorium on using CDC funding to research firearm violence, this might be a conspiracy by the pro-gun lobby, but it could also be explained by the fact that there is a fundamental difference between researching intentional harm and researching accidental harm. Researching ways to prevent intentional harm seems to be outside the scope of the CDCs mission.

Don’t be concerned that you will offend me. I always welcome rational argument, all the more when it is strongly expressed. If you show me that my beliefs are wrong you have done me a great service.

While it is true that felons are not allowed gun ownership, gun ownership is not tracked or regulated at a governmental level, like car ownership is. Even passing a vehicle from one private citizen to another requires transfer of title and registration with the state. Should car ownership be regulated at all, or do you feel that licensing, training, and safety requirements of drivers and cars should not be done by the government? Why can the government regulate access to, safety testing and distribution of pharmaceuticals, but not guns?

Again, I hope you don’t feel attacked, but I’d really like to understand rational and cogent responses to some of these arguments. I’d also be interested to get your thoughts on the following restrictions on research allowed on gun violence: http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1487470.