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Originally Posted by kerowo
We're talking about gun regulations, mass shootings are going to be catalyst for change because they are very public and very horrible. Trying to minimize their importance because of the absolute number of people killed is ridiculous and callous and overlooks the other gun deaths that aren't so public which would also be reduced by gun regulation.
It does not overlook other gun deaths. My whole argument is that the focus on mass shootings is itself overlooking other gun deaths.
Maybe it is a good strategy to get people on board with gun control in general, I don't know. I can understand how it could work as a catalyst. However, legislation to deal with mass shootings and legislation to deal with general gun violence will look different. I have a hard time seeing how things like ammo caps or banning specific weapons like the AR-15 are going to reduce overall gun violence at all. At the risk of sounding "callous," even if I accept that that type of legislation may reduce mass shootings, so what? If we cut mass shootings down by half we haven't even dented the number of deaths caused by gun violence. The focus should be on reducing overall gun violence.
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If you claim a cave in the mountains as your property and a bear decides it his cave what rights do you have to that cave? "Rights" are a human invention created to allow people to live together with some semblance of order. All the rights you have flow from the society you live in agreeing that those are rights and protecting them via the leaders of that society; IE the government.
You only have rights to own a firearm on your property because the government says you do. People used to be able to own gold on their property but between 1933 and 1974 it was illegal for people to won gold bullion without a license.
Making it illegal to own gold is an abuse of government power.
This is getting too far into philosophy for me. I want to argue that government is simply wrong to suppress individual rights, but that is futile when it seems like most of the people on this forum don't value individual rights to the extent that I do. At the same time I can't in good faith argue that society would not be better off without guns from a utilitarian standpoint. I just can not morally accept denying individuals the right to own guns just because some individuals may abuse those rights to the detriment of others.
Society does have the power to grant and take away rights in effect regardless of how you define "rights." In general, I do not consider it acceptable when that power is exercised, and neither should you, but that's just my lowly opinion.