Reading Sam Harris on gun control, it is a bit stupid how people

get all hot and bothered about gun deaths, when we could save tens of thousands of lives by reducing the speed limit, yet choose not to because driving fast is fun and convenient.

"It now seems to me that there are two ways of approaching this discussion that may, in fact, be irreconcilable. The first is to consider the ethical and practical case for guns as a means of self-defense. To make this case—or even to understand it—one must know something about how human violence evolves at close quarters, and one must care about specific examples (e.g. a young mother shoots a knife-wielding intruder). Here, it is easy to establish (and impossible to deny) that guns occasionally save the lives of good people who have every right to defend themselves and their families from malevolent lunatics. The second approach is to consider society as a whole, emphasizing the statistics on gun violence. Here, it is easy to establish (and impossible to deny) that in countries where nearly everyone has a gun, violence tends to be more lethal, and suicides and gun accidents more common.

Many people seem to think that the broader statistical case trumps the ethical case for self-defense. More guns = more murders and suicides. End of argument. From this point of view, anyone arguing for the primacy of self-defense appears to be standing in the way of societal progress. Consequently, many people believe that no civilian, no matter how responsible or vulnerable to violence, should be able to possess a weapon as powerful as gun—because any society that would make guns available to such people will, of necessity, be unable to control the sale of guns to dangerous, negligent, and suicidal people who shouldn’t have them.

I do not accept that argument. I believe that the ethics of self-defense trumps the statistical case, for several reasons. First, we simply do not know what the statistics would be if there were more stringent controls on gun ownership. Most gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides—and while the presence of a gun in the home certainly makes suicide easier to accomplish, and perhaps more tempting, some of these deaths would occur anyway (there were 38,364 suicides in the U.S. in 2010, half of which were committed with firearms). Gun homicide in the U.S. is mostly the work of career criminals—not the result of ordinary gun owners with no history of violence suddenly going berserk. If we could keep the guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable, there is little reason to think that the rates of murder and suicide in the U.S. would be inordinately high. Of course, we have completely failed to do this. But taking guns away from responsible people isn’t a way of doing it either.

An ethical argument for the banning of guns must deal with the hard case: Where a legal owner of a gun—who stores it safely and knows how to use it—winds up protecting herself when only a gun would avail. I don’t see why a responsible person should be prevented from preparing for the rare encounter with violence just because other people are unfit to own guns. As I have said, the prospect of gun accidents does not decide the matter. It isn’t necessarily irrational for a person to incur added risk of injury or death to prepare for certain events that he or she considers worse than mere injury or death. We increase our risk of both every day in far more frivolous ways than by preparing to defend ourselves and our families against the worst possible violence.


Many people seem to think that guns radiate danger, rather like plutonium. Needless to say, if millions of our neighbors began asserting their right to maintain private stockpiles of plutonium for the purposes of recreation and self-defense, we would be outraged. And we would derive little comfort from the precautions that “responsible” plutonium owners took to handle this material “safely.” The mere presence of the stuff on our streets would impose an unacceptable risk on everyone.

But guns are not like plutonium. They are like cars. The number of homicides (11,078), suicides (19,392), and fatal accidents (606) with firearms roughly equals the number of highway deaths (33,687) each year. But when guns kill people, it is almost always because the person who pulled the trigger intended to cause a death (either his own or someone else’s). When cars kill people, it is almost always an accident. This strikes me as a very important difference. People are doing their best to stay alive while driving, and to avoid harming others, and yet they are failing at a rate that exceeds that of intentional killing with guns.

Judging by the rate of accidental death, cars are much more dangerous than guns. More important, we impose much greater risk on our neighbors by driving than we do by keeping a gun in our homes. Many readers will object that this is an unfair comparison—“Guns are for killing people, while cars serve many necessary purposes”—but this objection misses the point. We are talking about the ethics of assuming personal risk of injury or death and of imposing such risk on others. The statistical argument against gun ownership derives all of its ethical weight from the following claim: If we banned guns in the United States, we would save many thousands of lives each year.

We could make driving much safer than it is, at very little cost, and yet we haven’t done so for reasons that parallel the concerns of gun owners, while being far less compelling. We could, for instance, limit the speed of all automobiles in the United States, including Ferraris and other high-performance vehicles, to 65 mph. And we could reduce their powers of acceleration, so that it took over a minute to achieve top speed. How many lives would this save? Surely many thousands. Why haven’t we passed an “assault weapons ban” of this sort on cars? Probably because it would make driving less fun. Most of us want the freedom to drive faster than a performance ban would permit—faster, even, than the legal speed limit. We seem to be asserting our freedom to break the law at the cost of thousands of lives each year. This seems ethically indefensible.

Despite what many readers will think, this is not a comparison of apples to oranges, or a rhetorical trick designed to obfuscate the problem of gun violence. As I have said, I believe gun regulation should be much stricter than it is—stricter, in fact, than anyone can reasonably hope for in the United States, even in the aftermath of Newtown. But here, I am addressing the claim (generally made by readers living outside the U.S.) that guns should be banned altogether, based on the statistics. Never mind that no one can envision doing this in the U.S., I believe that the case is flawed even if the path to a gun ban were clear.

A gun makes it relatively easy for a person to kill other people and himself, whether intentionally or by accident. A fast car confers the same power. But it is easy to argue that a sane, law-abiding person could find himself in a situation where he needs a gun to save his life—and that he should be able to have one despite the attendant risks of gun ownership. It seems grotesque to argue that a person who finds himself endangered by violence in this way should be made to pay (perhaps with his life) for the irresponsibility and criminality of others. I cannot as easily make the same argument about a car that drives faster than the maximum speed limit or that accelerates from 0-60 mph in 4 seconds. And what if most highway fatalities were the result of criminals and suicidal people intentionally crashing their cars? Who would then advocate that we ban all cars or limit their speed for everyone else?"

He seems to be happy to dismiss almost every statistic to support guns being dangerous whilst playing up almost every one he can lay his hands on for cars being moreso.

We want them to have to justify it, so they humour us.

has a gun, violence tends to be more lethal, and suicides and gun accidents more common."

Cars fulfil a practical purpose. They are entirely necessary to modern life and the fact that many people can't be trusted with them is does not outweigh their practical necessity. Thus, banning, restricting or severely limiting their use is not practically possible.

Guns serve pretty much zero practical purpose for most of their owners other than to give them some illusion of safety or just for fun. However, enough people have shown that they cannot be trusted with them to make it clear that their widespread sale is a bad idea. It would be perfectly possible to take guns away from people with virtually no significant ramifications for the economy or society as a whole other than saving thousands of lives.

Call me a wooly mided, peacenick, faggy-euro, elitist, ****o liberal (you wont be the first) but I simply dont get it.

The only reason you need a gun is that other people have guns. Or you are massively insecure in your own manhood.

It seems to me that your average Yanqui has several definitions of who he is - many of which are inherently contradictory.

The kickaway at the end :cloud9:

http://www.gifsdivertidos.com/wp-con...ama-skater.gif

Merely a small reduction of the speed limit, even by so little that its effect on the economy is probably negligible, would almost certainly save many lives. Why do we choose not to do so?

It is very much an ethical and philosophical issue, and you inadvertently prove that. It's about the ethics of objects and what they represent in our minds based on their cultural meaning.

knocking around, is there not a large degree of rationality behind wanting to own one yourself.

Put it this way, the second you were confronted by someone with a gun, and were offered one by a passer by, what would you do?

You are conflating two issues: 1) the motives of people wanting to own guns, which can range from being despicable to utterly logical, and 2)what should be done about the fact America's clear and undeniable gun problem

Nobody else has the guns to steal the money to buy guns. If you follow me.

cannot go above 65mph. That is impractical and prohibitively costly.

This is not about what objects represent, it's about weighing their value against their dangers, factoring in the practical problems associated with making them more safe and offering a course of action.

Twice up close and once when shots went off near me.

You're also confusing them, in that case. The motives are what the motives are, mostly they boil down to fear. The fear stems from the fact other people have guns.

What should be done about it? I'd suggest the genie is well out of the bottle there, like 300 years out. They just have to live with the fact that nutjobs have the constitutional right to go and shoot up a school or a church.

criminals than there are instances where legal gun ownership has resulted in suicide, murder or accidental death, so the whole 'Only criminals will have guns' thing doesn't stand up, since the legal ownership of guns is effectively causing criminality.

The vast majority of mass shootings in the US (of which there are a horrific number - far more than most of us realise, in fact) are carried out using legally-owned firearms. No legally-owned firearms, no mass shootings.

suppose you can understand them being a bit jumpy.

Oh.

more deaths from car accidents, if these restrictions could be implemented in way that was not prohibitively expensive?

Like, say, dropping our motorway speed limits to 50mph?

almost never get burgled is hardly newsworthy, is it.

we just have to accept that people cannot be trusted with them. Obviously, I think you or I should be able to walk into a shop and buy an assault rifle and have a spot of fun whanging off rounds. However, that desire is ultimately outweighed by the fact that, in order to let us do that, we'd also have to let the truly dreadful people who make up the rest of mankind do the same. And that's too high a price to pay.

I blame democracy for this mess, of course. Once upon a time, it was simply assumed that someone who'd gone to the right school and behaved like a gentleman could be trusted to do whatever the f**k he liked - and that was pretty much right. Now, however, we can't have one rule for decent people and one rule for scum and the whole thing's f**ked. :-(

Which is why I have absolutely no desire to go there again and I'm perfectly happy for them to keep killing eachother, though I reserve the right to object to them pumping guns - and all sorts of other dangerous weapons - to any tinpot puppet dictatorship they choose to set up in the rest of the world.

Plus, as has been pointed out, a gun that is responsibly kept in the recommended locked cabinet is unlikely to be of much practical value during your average home invasion situation, is it?

as such.

I would consider Zambia or Cambodia. Laws are for ordinary people only there.

Are you a bit, you know, mean?

they are statistically the safest place to drive.

practical benefits of legal gun ownership in the US outweighed its negatives. He doesn't because he can't. :shrug:

to enforce, would instantly criminalise most of the population and would have a deleterious effect on the economy.

No worries, of course, though, if you are well-to-do and live in a nice neighbourhood with a polite, attentive police presence, some of which may or may not be armed.

While this may reflect the situation in the White House, I gather this is not always the case in the rest of America.

However, since they represent a vital part of our supply network, there's not much practically to be done about that.

Essentially, what you're proposing is an arms race. And criminals are always going to win an arms race with law-abiding citizens because - well - they're criminals.

as braking distances have dropped as technology has improved.

There is a case for reducing speed limits in towns as that is where most deaths occur