OK, as promised, here is my response to some of the many points that were raised towards the end of the earlier thread on gun control.
6 Kings said -
I would bet that having some of us armed citizens as neighbors and friends would give you an idea how this worldview you have is skewed.
Well, that all rather depends on whether one of them does a Derrick Bird and turns his weapons on his neighbours and friends. These incidents involving legal gun-owners may be rare but the fact that they stubbornly keep happening poses a significant problem for your whole argument. Even worse, Bird was by all accounts a fairly decent, rational person until very close to this incident. Tragedy only ensued because he snapped while in legal possession of deadly weapons.
What it seems to boil down to is that you fear people and no matter what circumstances are, keeping people unarmed allows you to feel safe.
I'm delighted that you have such a rosy view of human nature, which begs the obvious question - if people are essentially trustworthy, who do you need the gun to defend yourself against? It's clearly surplus to requirements - throw it away, man, it's far too heavy to be lugging around on a hot day.
There is no endangerment of fellow citizens. Where do you get this information? Do you think that normal people get around a weapon and suddenly murderous thoughts occur? More people carry every day and there continues to be fewer and fewer incidents of crime and an infinitesimal number of permit holders that are in trouble with the law. You have no basis for this other than your 'feelings' and Hollywood movies.
Don't take this personally, but I've always much preferred European cinema to Hollywood films, so you're on the wrong track there. My 'information' is derived from indisputable fact - that three massacres have occurred in the UK in the last twenty-five years, and that all three have been perpetrated with legally-owned firearms. There's actually no mystery about why this would be the case - as previously mentioned, the most dangerous scenario of all is when an ordinary person snaps very suddenly, in a wholly unanticipated way. If the law can make it less likely that such a person will have the means to kill at that crucial moment, the law can save lives.
Missed by a mile. Nothing can guarantee equality of outcome. Show me how equality of opportunity puts the weakest in a worse position? That isn't logical. There are hundreds of stories that show this to be false and you have nothing to stand on with this statement.
And I can present you with one very big story that demonstrates my point eloquently - nothing less than the national story of your own country. The most meritocratic country in the world, and yet with some of the most shocking and disgraceful inequalities in the western democratic world. You're right, nothing can literally guarantee equality of outcome, but that doesn't mean it's not an ideal we shouldn't be striving to get as close to as practicably possible (especially when it comes to something as important as public safety) - equality of opportunity simply doesn't do the trick, and never has done.
Not everyone, you have shown this yourself, wants to arm themselves. That is perfectly fine but forcing disarmament for those that are comfortable and want/need that security is terrible, especially because your 'feel' it is better that way.
And this simply highlights the importance of my previous point - the 'equality of opportunity' that some people will take up of owning a gun will create a much greater 'inequality of outcome', ie. a much more dangerous world in which more weak and vulnerable people are in fear and peril.
Nate : You keep talking about how important it is that people feel safe. Feeling safe and being safe are two very different things; you can feel blissfully safe in a very dangerously erroneous manner, and you can be terrified of perceived danger that doesn't exist.
You've been very good about answering my hypothetical questions, and I thank you earnestly for that. I'd like to ask another. Purely hypothetically, and assuming that you could have only one, which would you prefer, feeling safe or being safe?
The straight answer is being safe, but of course it's a wholly false choice and both are vitally important in a civilised society. Frankly, it would be a bit hard to claim that the other side in this argument are not themselves preoccupied with 'feeling' as well as objectively being more safe - we constantly hear about the feeling of security and empowerment that carrying a gun bestows.
But your postulate is that more guns equals more crime, right? So then, as we here in the United States amass even more guns year by year (around the order of 12 million annually), our levels of crime should rise, no? Since we now have millions and millions more guns than we did in, say, 1980, then we should have a higher level of crime now than we did then, right?
My guess would be that there's a saturation point beyond which having even more guns around can't really make matters much worse. And, yes, I do say guess - unlike Kevin Baker and several others I have never had the conceit to say my 'philosophy' is literally provable beyond all doubt. It's an observation I've made before, but if a neutral in this debate were to witness a no-holds-barred exchange consisting of nothing but detailed statistics, the only conclusion they'd come to is that neither side is capable of scientifically and definitively proving their case by statistical means - there are too many variables at play in the numbers. People will jump one way or the other based on common sense and force of argument, and I do think from a UK perspective our relatively low gun crime rate as compared to the US does for most people amply demonstrate the wisdom of our much stricter laws.
Last, and in every sense least, I turn again to 'The Happy Rampager' -
Simple. Because you didn't answer the question I put to you. You know, the one about whether, in the face of the clear failure of banning guns for self-protection, you would rather any of the victims would have used a gun to stop Bird from killing them, or whether you would rather they died because it's more important to you that they be disarmed.
You didn't answer because your answer would have been the latter. It's more important that people be disarmed, and if their disarmament leads to their death, you couldn't give a s***.
Congratulations on a landslide victory in the Stupid Comment Of The Week Award. This was an instance of disarmament leading to death, was it? Remind me - at what point was Derrick Bird disarmed of the legally-owned weapons with which he went on to kill twelve people?
Monday, June 7, 2010
Where is the campaign for private citizens to have the right to possess nuclear weapons?
The discussion on gun control on the thread before last took an unexpected turn, with JP Scholten asking whether it would not be logically consistent for gun rights advocates to concede that all countries should have the right to possess nuclear weapons. After all, one of the points that is repeatedly made is that guns are necessary to 'even the score' - the weak and the vulnerable, the argument goes, can only properly defend themselves against the physically strong with the help of a firearm. By the same token, JP Scholten asks, how are weaker countries supposed to defend themselves against the might of America by any other means than nuclear firepower? Presumably, Kevin Baker and his disciples would not be terribly comfortable with the idea of America being 'stopped' at all (especially at the possible expense of their own lives), but given their moral certainties it's hard to see how they could credibly take issue with the proposition that countries should have the right to defend themselves by any means that prove necessary.
Now, this is indeed a fascinating question, and Nate gave a very interesting and surprising answer (essentially that all countries bar a few should be entitled to a nuclear capability). But I think there's an even more fascinating question to be asked, and indeed I asked it of Joe Huffman last year - isn't the logical conclusion of the gun advocates' philosophy that any weapon, regardless of its potency, be available to ordinary people? To spell it out, doesn't it follow that private citizens should be permitted to possess nuclear weapons? That might seem an absurd suggestion at first glance, but unless someone can provide a serious answer to it, it seems to me that it in fact drives a coach and horses through one of the articles of faith of the American gun rights fundamentalists - namely that a government that deprives its citizens of the right to possess any given weapon will eventually turn that weapon on its citizens, who will be left defenceless. So, obvious question - come the presumably inevitable day that the US government turns its stockpile of nuclear weapons on the American people, how will the Second Amendment and the right to retaliate with puny guns be of any help?
Whenever I've asked this question in the past, all I've heard back is that such a scenario is a "grandiose fantasy". That's as maybe, but it's also a scrupulously logical extension of the fundamentalists' own philosophy. So does anyone have a more satisfactory answer? I take it no-one is going to be crazy enough to actually welcome private ownership of nuclear weapons, since a touching faith in the general goodwill and trustworthiness of 'decent, law-abiding citizens' isn't going to be good enough when it would only take one rogue individual to cause the deaths of untold millions.
Lesson - there isn't a state in the world that doesn't restrict its citizens' right to own weapons, and it's impossible to credibly argue against the rationality of that principle. Negative freedoms must have their limits, otherwise by the wonders of modern technology everyone would end up dead. The only question is how far those restrictions should go - but that's not a question that will appeal much to those who don't like to view the world in shades of grey rather than black and white.
Now, this is indeed a fascinating question, and Nate gave a very interesting and surprising answer (essentially that all countries bar a few should be entitled to a nuclear capability). But I think there's an even more fascinating question to be asked, and indeed I asked it of Joe Huffman last year - isn't the logical conclusion of the gun advocates' philosophy that any weapon, regardless of its potency, be available to ordinary people? To spell it out, doesn't it follow that private citizens should be permitted to possess nuclear weapons? That might seem an absurd suggestion at first glance, but unless someone can provide a serious answer to it, it seems to me that it in fact drives a coach and horses through one of the articles of faith of the American gun rights fundamentalists - namely that a government that deprives its citizens of the right to possess any given weapon will eventually turn that weapon on its citizens, who will be left defenceless. So, obvious question - come the presumably inevitable day that the US government turns its stockpile of nuclear weapons on the American people, how will the Second Amendment and the right to retaliate with puny guns be of any help?
Whenever I've asked this question in the past, all I've heard back is that such a scenario is a "grandiose fantasy". That's as maybe, but it's also a scrupulously logical extension of the fundamentalists' own philosophy. So does anyone have a more satisfactory answer? I take it no-one is going to be crazy enough to actually welcome private ownership of nuclear weapons, since a touching faith in the general goodwill and trustworthiness of 'decent, law-abiding citizens' isn't going to be good enough when it would only take one rogue individual to cause the deaths of untold millions.
Lesson - there isn't a state in the world that doesn't restrict its citizens' right to own weapons, and it's impossible to credibly argue against the rationality of that principle. Negative freedoms must have their limits, otherwise by the wonders of modern technology everyone would end up dead. The only question is how far those restrictions should go - but that's not a question that will appeal much to those who don't like to view the world in shades of grey rather than black and white.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Does Miss Nash cut a dash?
In his Saturday post over at Political Betting, David Herdson has pointed out that the new 'Baby of the House' Pamela Nash achieved almost exactly the same share of the vote in Airdrie and Shotts that her predecessor John Reid managed in 2005 as a senior Cabinet minister. Herdson's suggestion is that if the public are demonstrably prepared to put their faith in such an untried young candidate, perhaps political parties should do so more often as well. Now, I have no particular axe to grind against Ms Nash (yet) as I literally know nothing about her other than what she looks like, and it may well be that the public would have every reason to put their faith in her. But one thing I'm almost certain of is that they didn't, or at least not in any meaningful sense. It's the classic 'monkey in a red rosette' scenario - if anything, the result told us more about John Reid's lack of a distinctively personal vote.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
My response to the KBFC
As is probably obvious if you've seen the last thread but one, the tragic events in Cumbria on Wednesday have led me to get embroiled in yet another exchange with Arizona-based gun enthusiast Kevin Baker and his ever-delightful Fan Club. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon rebutting various points at Kevin's blog, but as has happened on previous occasions his gang seem to multiply with water, so I'm (not for the first time) going to bail out of a trainwreck of a comments thread and instead give my thoughts here on some of what has been said over the last few hours.
Someone calling themselves 'The Happy Rampager' told me this -
"Let’s face it, you’re the type who puts his own satisfaction ahead of other people’s lives. Mine, the 12 dead, everyone in the UK whether they agree with you or not. You also think you can fling mud to hide the fact that you hold other people’s lives in contempt. What sort of person does holding other's lives in contempt make you?"
A comment that's plainly beneath contempt, but it's worth just pointing out the supreme irony of it being said by someone who clearly puts the personal satisfaction and pleasure of owning a gun before everything else, including other people's lives, safety and peace of mind. The 12 people he referred to were gunned down by someone who owned weapons on exactly the same legal basis as he does. It seems quite likely that without a gun licence, Bird would not have succeeded in killing so many, and perhaps would not have killed at all. There is, therefore, at least an arguable case for asking legal gun owners to accept some small disappointment in return for greater public safety and reassurance. Is 'Happy Rampager' prepared to be socially responsible and make that sacrifice? It seems not, and perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise given his deeply unfortunate choice of moniker.
The poster Ken (who has been making some utterly baffling points all day) followed up with this observation about me -
"Why, it makes him a slave who knows he is a slave, can imagine nothing else, and will not rest until everyone else is likewise enslaved (as witness his ill-disguised glee over National Health coming to America)."
I wasn't trying to disguise my glee - yes, I do believe that health care is a basic human right, not just a perk for the well-off. I'm not quite sure what the value of all this high-minded stuff about the 'freedom of the individual' is if someone is too ill to do anything with that nominal freedom. But the Alice in Wonderland notion of being 'enslaved' by a decent standard of universal healthcare is indeed one to conjure with!
On the broader issue of liberty, I wrote at some length last year about what a limiting freedom it is that can only be guaranteed by the constant possession of a firearm, along with non-stop vigilance and the readiness to use the weapon at any time. That really is a counsel of despair, and yet it's precisely the sort of world more lax gun laws would condemn us to, as people would probably have to consider purchasing a gun whether they 'freely' wanted to or not - because they'd need one to protect themselves against all those countless 'decent, law-abiding' gun-owners they'd suddenly be having brushes with on a daily basis. There must be a deeper, richer freedom out there to be won than that.
'Geek with a 45', in response to my suggestion that it is legitimate for the authorities to disarm private gun owners if mandated to do so by democratic legislation, had this to say -
"No, Democracy, in and of itself, is not the highest value. While it is may be necessary for a free society, it is hardly sufficient."
Agreed, the rights of individuals and minorities need to be enshrined, otherwise you can end up with extreme outcomes like a majority ethnic group making a 'democratic' decision to wipe out the minority. But, in truth, Europe on the whole does a better job than the US of protecting the rights of individuals - by far the most important of which is the right to life. No European country other than Belarus takes the lives of its own citizens, whereas unfortunately most US states still have the death penalty on the statute book.
On the issue of guns, there are two potential rights that can be afforded citizens, but that plainly clash with each other - a) the unlimited right to amass tools for the purposes of self-defence, and b) the right not to be attacked, and perhaps even more importantly, not to have to live in constant fear of being attacked by fellow citizens. Which of these rights should be accorded precedence? I'd say the latter, every time.
Ed "What the Heck" Man, at the end of an interminable exchange in which he imagined (bless him) he was toying with me, finally answered my question -
"I never claimed that these items were as quick and efficient as a gun. (Though in this latest incident, it's entirely possible to kill more people in the same time frame using a baseball bat than this guy killed using his guns.)
What they do accomplish is also to multiply force, even if not as much as a gun does. So even if a person doesn't have a gun available, they can (and will) still find a way to kill. Agreed?
When faced with someone intent on committing violence, how do you stop them? (Remember, you've already agreed that violence comes from the individual's intent, not the gun.)
That point has already been dealt with on the previous thread. Without a phenomenal number of private citizens undergoing a phenomenal level of training, it is simply not very likely that just any old bod with a gun is going to stay cool enough to bring such a frightening and totally unanticipated situation to a clean end. It may even make matters much worse, and lead to more lives being lost. But even accepting your flawed premise for a moment for the sake of argument, your fellow poster Matt gave the game away - he claimed that, in America, people are stopped from committing these massacres "ALL the time". Whereas this was only the third incident on this scale in the UK in the last twenty-five years. Quite clearly, quick 'stops' to these situations on most occasions would not be sufficient to offset the number of lives lost as a result of the hugely greater number of gun attacks occurring in the first place.
Britt said -
"You banned all handguns in 1997. Yet there are still handguns in the UK. In fact, there is more handgun crime every single year. Explain that Jimbo. Handguns banned means zero handgun crime? Right?"
No, it means fewer handguns, and less handgun crime, than would have been the case had the ban not been implemented. That is not the same thing - as has been repeatedly pointed out to Kevin - as saying the level of handgun crime has fallen in the UK since the late 1990s.
Scott Ganz -
"James Kelly demonstrates this mental hitch rather well, focusing entirely on THREE incidents of legally-owned guns being used in atrocities while THOUSANDS are murdered in less sensational ways."
This (ie. the disproportionality point) was something else we went into last year, and it was one of the few points that Kevin made that gave me some pause for thought. However, having reflected on it, the view I came to was that even if only a small number of lives can be saved, these incidents still justify relatively draconian gun laws because the right to own a luxury item like a gun simply isn't important enough. It's not like the brutal logic of weighing up the mind-boggling number of traffic deaths in a year against the huge benefits to society of easy travel.
There was, predictably, quite a reaction when I pointed out that the right to proportionate self-defence is enshrined in law in the UK.
Ken : You lie.
Kevin Baker : No, he doesn't. Well, "enshrined" is a complete fabrication . . .
Ed : You know, I could have sworn that you were arguing for banning shotguns and .22's. Furthermore, I could have sworn that we were challenging you on imposing that desire on others through government force. Are you now changing your tune on that?
Don't be obtuse, Ed. The comment from Kevin, meanwhile, is slightly baffling - the law does indeed provide for proportionate self-defence, and it's as "enshrined" as any law can be in a country that does not have a written constitution.
And back to Ken again. He asked me why, if I believed so strongly that private gun ownership was undesirable, I didn't simply unilaterally go and confiscate people's guns, without any need for legislation. (What a fascinating insight into the mindset of the KBFC.) I pointed out that I believed in democracy and the rule of law, as opposed to 'might is right' and the imposition of one's will by force. But it turns out that Ken doesn't seem to see any distinction whatsoever between democratically-mandated action by the authorities (eg. the collection of taxation), and an individual arrogantly taking action by himself -
"How is any action on the basis of "Do this or I'll imprison/kill you" appropriate? To say that it's okay for the (G)overnment is to say that some people are more equal than others and enjoy prior claim to the property of their lessers. On moral grounds, taxation under coercion is most certainly theft.
Ability is certainly heterogeneously distributed, but on what basis can the legitimate claim that 'Government Agent over there is a better person than regular people, and therefore enjoys a prior claim to my life and property?'"
But, Ken, as I've already pointed out, it's only in your country (well, yours is the only major one in the western democratic world) that the government reserves the extraordinary right to literally take the lives of its own citizens by judicial means.
UPDATE (couldn't resist this one) :
Carnaby : With the conclusion that we ought to increase the restrictions on legally owned firearms. Well, given that logic, how do we solve the following problem here in the USA: you're (anyone) far, far more likely to be shot in the US by a black person than a white person. Furthermore, you are far, far more likely to be shot by a black person using an "illegal" gun than anyone using a "legal" gun. Your solution, James?
A massive policy effort to raise the educational and living standards for black people up to the national average, and then the differential will disappear over time. Unless you're about to tell me that black people are somehow innately more prone to violence. Of course, rational gun control laws would reduce the problem in itself, without the slightest need for racial discrimination in its implementation.
Phew. And, that ladies and gentlemen, was my response to a small selection of the points raised by the KBFC!
Someone calling themselves 'The Happy Rampager' told me this -
"Let’s face it, you’re the type who puts his own satisfaction ahead of other people’s lives. Mine, the 12 dead, everyone in the UK whether they agree with you or not. You also think you can fling mud to hide the fact that you hold other people’s lives in contempt. What sort of person does holding other's lives in contempt make you?"
A comment that's plainly beneath contempt, but it's worth just pointing out the supreme irony of it being said by someone who clearly puts the personal satisfaction and pleasure of owning a gun before everything else, including other people's lives, safety and peace of mind. The 12 people he referred to were gunned down by someone who owned weapons on exactly the same legal basis as he does. It seems quite likely that without a gun licence, Bird would not have succeeded in killing so many, and perhaps would not have killed at all. There is, therefore, at least an arguable case for asking legal gun owners to accept some small disappointment in return for greater public safety and reassurance. Is 'Happy Rampager' prepared to be socially responsible and make that sacrifice? It seems not, and perhaps that shouldn't be a surprise given his deeply unfortunate choice of moniker.
The poster Ken (who has been making some utterly baffling points all day) followed up with this observation about me -
"Why, it makes him a slave who knows he is a slave, can imagine nothing else, and will not rest until everyone else is likewise enslaved (as witness his ill-disguised glee over National Health coming to America)."
I wasn't trying to disguise my glee - yes, I do believe that health care is a basic human right, not just a perk for the well-off. I'm not quite sure what the value of all this high-minded stuff about the 'freedom of the individual' is if someone is too ill to do anything with that nominal freedom. But the Alice in Wonderland notion of being 'enslaved' by a decent standard of universal healthcare is indeed one to conjure with!
On the broader issue of liberty, I wrote at some length last year about what a limiting freedom it is that can only be guaranteed by the constant possession of a firearm, along with non-stop vigilance and the readiness to use the weapon at any time. That really is a counsel of despair, and yet it's precisely the sort of world more lax gun laws would condemn us to, as people would probably have to consider purchasing a gun whether they 'freely' wanted to or not - because they'd need one to protect themselves against all those countless 'decent, law-abiding' gun-owners they'd suddenly be having brushes with on a daily basis. There must be a deeper, richer freedom out there to be won than that.
'Geek with a 45', in response to my suggestion that it is legitimate for the authorities to disarm private gun owners if mandated to do so by democratic legislation, had this to say -
"No, Democracy, in and of itself, is not the highest value. While it is may be necessary for a free society, it is hardly sufficient."
Agreed, the rights of individuals and minorities need to be enshrined, otherwise you can end up with extreme outcomes like a majority ethnic group making a 'democratic' decision to wipe out the minority. But, in truth, Europe on the whole does a better job than the US of protecting the rights of individuals - by far the most important of which is the right to life. No European country other than Belarus takes the lives of its own citizens, whereas unfortunately most US states still have the death penalty on the statute book.
On the issue of guns, there are two potential rights that can be afforded citizens, but that plainly clash with each other - a) the unlimited right to amass tools for the purposes of self-defence, and b) the right not to be attacked, and perhaps even more importantly, not to have to live in constant fear of being attacked by fellow citizens. Which of these rights should be accorded precedence? I'd say the latter, every time.
Ed "What the Heck" Man, at the end of an interminable exchange in which he imagined (bless him) he was toying with me, finally answered my question -
"I never claimed that these items were as quick and efficient as a gun. (Though in this latest incident, it's entirely possible to kill more people in the same time frame using a baseball bat than this guy killed using his guns.)
What they do accomplish is also to multiply force, even if not as much as a gun does. So even if a person doesn't have a gun available, they can (and will) still find a way to kill. Agreed?
When faced with someone intent on committing violence, how do you stop them? (Remember, you've already agreed that violence comes from the individual's intent, not the gun.)
That point has already been dealt with on the previous thread. Without a phenomenal number of private citizens undergoing a phenomenal level of training, it is simply not very likely that just any old bod with a gun is going to stay cool enough to bring such a frightening and totally unanticipated situation to a clean end. It may even make matters much worse, and lead to more lives being lost. But even accepting your flawed premise for a moment for the sake of argument, your fellow poster Matt gave the game away - he claimed that, in America, people are stopped from committing these massacres "ALL the time". Whereas this was only the third incident on this scale in the UK in the last twenty-five years. Quite clearly, quick 'stops' to these situations on most occasions would not be sufficient to offset the number of lives lost as a result of the hugely greater number of gun attacks occurring in the first place.
Britt said -
"You banned all handguns in 1997. Yet there are still handguns in the UK. In fact, there is more handgun crime every single year. Explain that Jimbo. Handguns banned means zero handgun crime? Right?"
No, it means fewer handguns, and less handgun crime, than would have been the case had the ban not been implemented. That is not the same thing - as has been repeatedly pointed out to Kevin - as saying the level of handgun crime has fallen in the UK since the late 1990s.
Scott Ganz -
"James Kelly demonstrates this mental hitch rather well, focusing entirely on THREE incidents of legally-owned guns being used in atrocities while THOUSANDS are murdered in less sensational ways."
This (ie. the disproportionality point) was something else we went into last year, and it was one of the few points that Kevin made that gave me some pause for thought. However, having reflected on it, the view I came to was that even if only a small number of lives can be saved, these incidents still justify relatively draconian gun laws because the right to own a luxury item like a gun simply isn't important enough. It's not like the brutal logic of weighing up the mind-boggling number of traffic deaths in a year against the huge benefits to society of easy travel.
There was, predictably, quite a reaction when I pointed out that the right to proportionate self-defence is enshrined in law in the UK.
Ken : You lie.
Kevin Baker : No, he doesn't. Well, "enshrined" is a complete fabrication . . .
Ed : You know, I could have sworn that you were arguing for banning shotguns and .22's. Furthermore, I could have sworn that we were challenging you on imposing that desire on others through government force. Are you now changing your tune on that?
Don't be obtuse, Ed. The comment from Kevin, meanwhile, is slightly baffling - the law does indeed provide for proportionate self-defence, and it's as "enshrined" as any law can be in a country that does not have a written constitution.
And back to Ken again. He asked me why, if I believed so strongly that private gun ownership was undesirable, I didn't simply unilaterally go and confiscate people's guns, without any need for legislation. (What a fascinating insight into the mindset of the KBFC.) I pointed out that I believed in democracy and the rule of law, as opposed to 'might is right' and the imposition of one's will by force. But it turns out that Ken doesn't seem to see any distinction whatsoever between democratically-mandated action by the authorities (eg. the collection of taxation), and an individual arrogantly taking action by himself -
"How is any action on the basis of "Do this or I'll imprison/kill you" appropriate? To say that it's okay for the (G)overnment is to say that some people are more equal than others and enjoy prior claim to the property of their lessers. On moral grounds, taxation under coercion is most certainly theft.
Ability is certainly heterogeneously distributed, but on what basis can the legitimate claim that 'Government Agent over there is a better person than regular people, and therefore enjoys a prior claim to my life and property?'"
But, Ken, as I've already pointed out, it's only in your country (well, yours is the only major one in the western democratic world) that the government reserves the extraordinary right to literally take the lives of its own citizens by judicial means.
UPDATE (couldn't resist this one) :
Carnaby : With the conclusion that we ought to increase the restrictions on legally owned firearms. Well, given that logic, how do we solve the following problem here in the USA: you're (anyone) far, far more likely to be shot in the US by a black person than a white person. Furthermore, you are far, far more likely to be shot by a black person using an "illegal" gun than anyone using a "legal" gun. Your solution, James?
A massive policy effort to raise the educational and living standards for black people up to the national average, and then the differential will disappear over time. Unless you're about to tell me that black people are somehow innately more prone to violence. Of course, rational gun control laws would reduce the problem in itself, without the slightest need for racial discrimination in its implementation.
Phew. And, that ladies and gentlemen, was my response to a small selection of the points raised by the KBFC!
Friday, June 4, 2010
No knee-jerk changes, absolutely - but the Tories' instincts are in the wrong place on gun control
So now we know - extraordinarily, this was yet another massacre perpetrated with legally-owned weapons. So, for all the protestations from the usual suspects about how it's the illegal guns that are the problem - nope, gun control laws really do make a difference. If Derrick Bird had not been licensed to own a shotgun it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that many of his victims would still be alive.
There was remarkable consensus tonight on Question Time on the issue of possible further tightening of the law, with Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru making the point that shotguns are in a different category to handguns as they are a legitimate tool for people who work in rural areas. However, I was mildly encouraged to hear the coalition's (as I suppose we must now call him) David Willetts hint that the door had not been completely closed on further legislation, if after a period of reflection it is deemed necessary. David Cameron had earlier given a very different impression when he suggested that the problem here was not the weapon, but the fact that someone had just 'snapped' - a factor that cannot possibly be legislated for. Now, where have I heard that counsel of despair before? From a purely practical point of view, the idea that Bird's 'snap' would have had such lethal consequences - and on such a scale - had he not been a licensed gun owner is simply not credible.
Quite honestly, it should be no surprise to anyone to discover where the Tories' instincts are on this subject - although the post-Hungerford and post-Dunblane legislation was passed on their watch, it was overwhelming public opinion that had left them with little choice. Not that London Labour were any quicker to act on the scourge of airguns, of course. Let's hope that the Calman recommendations on devolving control of airguns to the Scottish Parliament are included in the legislation to be tabled in the autumn - and it wouldn't be a bad idea if responsibility for all gun control was transferred at the same time.
There was remarkable consensus tonight on Question Time on the issue of possible further tightening of the law, with Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru making the point that shotguns are in a different category to handguns as they are a legitimate tool for people who work in rural areas. However, I was mildly encouraged to hear the coalition's (as I suppose we must now call him) David Willetts hint that the door had not been completely closed on further legislation, if after a period of reflection it is deemed necessary. David Cameron had earlier given a very different impression when he suggested that the problem here was not the weapon, but the fact that someone had just 'snapped' - a factor that cannot possibly be legislated for. Now, where have I heard that counsel of despair before? From a purely practical point of view, the idea that Bird's 'snap' would have had such lethal consequences - and on such a scale - had he not been a licensed gun owner is simply not credible.
Quite honestly, it should be no surprise to anyone to discover where the Tories' instincts are on this subject - although the post-Hungerford and post-Dunblane legislation was passed on their watch, it was overwhelming public opinion that had left them with little choice. Not that London Labour were any quicker to act on the scourge of airguns, of course. Let's hope that the Calman recommendations on devolving control of airguns to the Scottish Parliament are included in the legislation to be tabled in the autumn - and it wouldn't be a bad idea if responsibility for all gun control was transferred at the same time.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
One more tragedy too many
What a truly horrendous day it's been. I'm usually able to retain a sense of distance when I hear about tragedies on the news, but as with Dunblane fourteen years ago, this sort of incident seems different somehow. It brings home once again the devastating capacity of a gun to snuff out multiple lives in a matter of minutes or seconds, in a way that few other weapons can match. Not for the first time, the oft-heard line of defence that 'guns don't kill people, people kill people' rings sickeningly hollow tonight. Derrick Bird simply would not have succeeded in killing as many people with a lower grade of weapon, no matter how murderous his intent. As a poster on a Dunfermline Athletic forum rather pointedly put it -
"Not to persecute anyone, but I have never heard of any spree-killings carried out with anything other than a gun or guns. I'd love to hear about any pool cue massacres that went unreported."
Of course it remains to be seen how Bird obtained his weapons, but there does seem to be one clear pattern in the limited number of these massacres we've seen in the UK - they tend to be carried out by 'ordinary' people, in other words not the sort who would be likely to have easy access to illegal stockpiles of guns. The idea that gun control laws have no impact at all on the likelihood of these incidents occurring is therefore very difficult to sustain. It's far too early to judge whether a further tightening of the law would have made a difference in this case, but the notion that more legal gun ownership would have helped matters I just find utterly incomprehensible. It may seem bizarre to us in the UK that anyone would advance such an argument, but as I discovered last year, it's a frighteningly common attitude beyond these shores.
"Not to persecute anyone, but I have never heard of any spree-killings carried out with anything other than a gun or guns. I'd love to hear about any pool cue massacres that went unreported."
Of course it remains to be seen how Bird obtained his weapons, but there does seem to be one clear pattern in the limited number of these massacres we've seen in the UK - they tend to be carried out by 'ordinary' people, in other words not the sort who would be likely to have easy access to illegal stockpiles of guns. The idea that gun control laws have no impact at all on the likelihood of these incidents occurring is therefore very difficult to sustain. It's far too early to judge whether a further tightening of the law would have made a difference in this case, but the notion that more legal gun ownership would have helped matters I just find utterly incomprehensible. It may seem bizarre to us in the UK that anyone would advance such an argument, but as I discovered last year, it's a frighteningly common attitude beyond these shores.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Earth calling Chekov, Earth calling Chekov...
I'm afraid doggedly referring to Scotland as a 'region' a minimum of fifteen times a week is not going to magically make our nationhood go away. Even most Scottish Tories got over that particular hang-up a few decades ago!
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