Gun Plan

[Beet]

Ban all guns, including for the police.

[Beet]

No restrictions upon the right to bear arms.

I'm moving more toward this position. I've done a lot of reading and talked to a lot of people about this and I'm starting to look at gun ownership with less disapproval than I did. I still stand for background checks and I still don't think anyone needs to own assault rifles or any of that jazz but yeah

What reading have you done? I haven't seen anything that says that gun ownership makes sense, except for a very, very few instances.

[Beet]

A freedom that is protected only due to force of arms is no freedom at all. I've never understood how people miss the contradiction there.

[Beet]

A freedom that is protected only due to force of arms is no freedom at all. I've never understood how people miss the contradiction there.

If that were true, then most, if not all, of our current freedoms would be "no freedoms at all."

If it were not true, we would need to go through TSA just to get on the subway or go to a football game. The American way of life would not exist.

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Have you ever killed anyone? Most people are "pacifist" in practice.

[Beet]

A freedom that is protected only due to force of arms is no freedom at all. I've never understood how people miss the contradiction there.

If that were true, then most, if not all, of our current freedoms would be "no freedoms at all."

If it were not true, we would need to go through TSA just to get on the subway or go to a football game. The American way of life would not exist.

There are two things which prevent people from murdering and stealing from others at random:
1. The State's threat of force against those who do such things
2. The potential victim's assumed threat of force against the potential aggressor

Ideally, all people would respect the rights and freedoms of others. In reality, however, the threat of force is all that prevents a great many people from violating those things.

No the primary thing is that most people, believe it or not, do not want to go around randomly murdering and stealing from others. I can't tell you how many times I've lost my wallet in this city... and the last 10 times, someone has always picked it up and turned it into the lost and found, or pointed it out to me. Once, someone even drove to my house to deliver it. This is the kind of thing that makes society work.

[Beet]

So if the the police decided not to enforce anti-murder laws, and no one bothered to defend themselves against murderers, the right to not be murdered would still be universally respected? I mean, even with people doing those things murder happens all the time.

Yes that's sort of my point. It is social norms that govern crime, not the police. If someone is truly determined to kill you, no amount of laws or self-defense will prevent them. Anyway, the more police you put on the ground, or the more people with coercive weapons generally, the greater the chance for abuse. By the way I really think my position in this debate is the more 'libertarian' one.

[Beet]

So if the the police decided not to enforce anti-murder laws, and no one bothered to defend themselves against murderers, the right to not be murdered would still be universally respected? I mean, even with people doing those things murder happens all the time.

Yes that's sort of my point. It is social norms that govern crime, not the police. If someone is truly determined to kill you, no amount of laws or self-defense will prevent them. Anyway, the more police you put on the ground, or the more people with coercive weapons generally, the greater the chance for abuse. By the way I really think my position in this debate is the more 'libertarian' one.

To be clear, you believe that the existence of law enforcement has no effect on crime? I mean, as much as I'd like to think otherwise, I'd probably steal frequently if there was no one, not even property owners themselves, to stop me.

You're arguing with a strawman. I'm saying the threat of countervailing force is not primarily what deters violence. Law enforcement is sometimes necessary, but it's at most a stop-gap measure, an admission that something has gone wrong. Lack of sufficient law enforcement is not main source of the problem of violence, in the view of those interested in a free society.

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Of course. No one would deny that. But at the most basic level it's still a use of force. The same force that the government applies to control the citizenry, only on a smaller scale. Thus it's more of an exception to liberty rather than its manifestation, and the libertarian fetishization of it is perverse.

[Beet]

I agree. Law enforcement is by no means the only thing preventing people from violating the rights of others. The threat of defensive force by individuals (which I believe was what your original statement was referring to) plays an even greater role. I'm not trying to say that "more force=more freedom." What I'm trying to get at is that if everyone (the State and individuals) simply declined to use force for the purpose of self-defense, I think that a much greater number of people would have their most basic rights violated.

You're still arguing against a strawman, and no, the threat of defensive force by individuals is no more effective than the threat of force by the police in deterring crime. By the time you've reached the point where force comes into question, you've already lost. The aggressor will always have an advantage in a physical confrontation.

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Again, I agree with this. The necessity of defensive force is one of the greatest tragedies of human civilization. However, that doesn't make it any less necessary.
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It's not a tragedy that self-defense is justified. Those that attack deserve to get beaten back. But it's not an expression of freedom to do so; it's an exercise of force, which is the opposite of freedom. Thus libertarians in particular would be concerned about solutions to violence which do not involve reaching that point in the first place.

[Beet]

I agree. Law enforcement is by no means the only thing preventing people from violating the rights of others. The threat of defensive force by individuals (which I believe was what your original statement was referring to) plays an even greater role. I'm not trying to say that "more force=more freedom." What I'm trying to get at is that if everyone (the State and individuals) simply declined to use force for the purpose of self-defense, I think that a much greater number of people would have their most basic rights violated.

You're still arguing against a strawman, and no, the threat of defensive force by individuals is no more effective than the threat of force by the police in deterring crime. By the time you've reached the point where force comes into question, you've already lost. The aggressor will always have an advantage in a physical confrontation.

That simply isn't true, though. Let's use property rights as an example. If the majority of property owners simply declined to react to the violation of their property rights (namely the destruction or theft of their property) the number of people who have their property stolen or destroyed would increase significantly. I think it's fair to say that "everyone loses" when force is used, but I still think that its defensive use is net-beneficial when we consider the violations of rights that it prevents.

You're assuming the question, though. In order for property owners to fail to react to the violation of their property rights, the violation must have already occurred to begin with. My question is, without assuming anything, what is the reason why property rights are generally secure? And my argument is that the security of property rights rests primarily on society's inculcation into it's citizens that rights ought to be respected, as a matter of moral principle. And that, to go back to TNF's original point, that this is the foundation of free societies. I never said that the police ought to be gotten rid of; only that the police (Or the parallel use of force by private citizens is an inferior solution to the real problem that must be dealt with to the extent that we want society to survive. Force, in other words, while may be necessary to reduce violence tactically, is inimical to freedom. If you want to look at a country where the social norms I am talking about have broken down but the police and individuals are responsible for their own 'defense', just look at Syria; there are plenty of guns there, but would you want to live there ?

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I think that the right to self-defense is very much a freedom. If people have the right not to have their persons violated, that would imply that they have the right to prevent such a thing from happening.

In addition, I would agree that peaceful solutions are greatly preferable to violent ones. I'm not so sure that I agree with the solution that you seem to be implying.
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Not just that they're preferable, but that they're inherently better.

When a person is attacked, their rights have already been violated. The whole point of a right is that you have the expectation it will be respected. The 'right' to strike back is not much of a right; after all, there is no guarantee you will win. In fights, there are no 'rights'; there are only winners and losers. Rights are a construct of society and that's why it's courts that enforce them. The implementers of violence, justified or not, do not dole out rights; they dole out damage.

[Beet]

I agree. Law enforcement is by no means the only thing preventing people from violating the rights of others. The threat of defensive force by individuals (which I believe was what your original statement was referring to) plays an even greater role. I'm not trying to say that "more force=more freedom." What I'm trying to get at is that if everyone (the State and individuals) simply declined to use force for the purpose of self-defense, I think that a much greater number of people would have their most basic rights violated.

You're still arguing against a strawman, and no, the threat of defensive force by individuals is no more effective than the threat of force by the police in deterring crime. By the time you've reached the point where force comes into question, you've already lost. The aggressor will always have an advantage in a physical confrontation.

That simply isn't true, though. Let's use property rights as an example. If the majority of property owners simply declined to react to the violation of their property rights (namely the destruction or theft of their property) the number of people who have their property stolen or destroyed would increase significantly. I think it's fair to say that "everyone loses" when force is used, but I still think that its defensive use is net-beneficial when we consider the violations of rights that it prevents.

You're assuming the question, though. In order for property owners to fail to react to the violation of their property rights, the violation must have already occurred to begin with. My question is, without assuming anything, what is the reason why property rights are generally secure? And my argument is that the security of property rights rests primarily on society's inculcation into it's citizens that rights ought to be respected, as a matter of moral principle. And that, to go back to TNF's original point, that this is the foundation of free societies. I never said that the police ought to be gotten rid of; only that the police (Or the parallel use of force by private citizens is an inferior solution to the real problem that must be dealt with to the extent that we want society to survive. Force, in other words, while may be necessary to reduce violence tactically, is inimical to freedom. If you want to look at a country where the social norms I am talking about have broken down but the police and individuals are responsible for their own 'defense', just look at Syria; there are plenty of guns there, but would you want to live there ?

I agree that moral principles and social contracts are also part of what allows us to preserve our rights and freedoms. Ideally, they'd be all we need to preserve them. However, I think we can agree that the threat of force is still necessary to a certain degree.

This is where we disagree though. The social contract is not just "part" of our rights and freedoms; it's the very essence of our freedoms themselves. With no social contract we've got no freedoms or rights. We've returned to the Hobbesian state of nature. (This is where think traditional social contract theory has it backwards.) The fact that you can use violence to assert yourself in that scenario is all well and good, but you have no 'freedoms' or 'rights' in the sense that we talk about them today in that scenario. If a 'right' was anything that you could enforce yourself, you could simply declare your own right to $1 million and then go try rob a bank. Rights are social guarantees.

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The existence of the right to self-defense prevents its own use, at least to a certain degree. People are deterred from attacking others because they know that they will be attacked in return. Obviously this doesn't always work, in fact it often doesn't, but it still decreases the number of conflicts in society. In fact, that seems like a good example of a social norm that prevents violence, wouldn't you say?
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Yes, but it's trivial. That's my point. Anyone can defend themselves, and as I've repeatedly said you have a right to; but so what? Such as it has always been for thousands of years. Modern (classically) liberal societies involve more than that.

[Beet]

I never said anything about where rights come from (or if I did I phrased my thoughts incorrectly). I completely agree that rights do not come from force. All I'm saying is that force is (unfortunately) sometimes necessary for the defense of rights, and it is thus immoral for the State to restrict the ability of the People to adequately defend themselves.

I think we're talking past each other. I am saying the whole concept of "force is necessary to defend one's rights" is based on a misconception of the idea of what a right is. I agree that force is sometimes necessary to defend oneself against the violation of one's rights, but I also argue that a right is meaningless if it can only be defended by force. The whole point of a right is that you expect to have it respected without having to use force to exercise it.

Further, there is a difference between the right to self defense, which I obviously concede, and the right to own any weapon simply because it could hypothetically be used in self defense, which I obviously oppose.

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All rights are arbitrarily defined. Saying that a only negative rights exist, or that rights are defined by and only by the absence of aggressive force, is itself an arbitrary statement. The concept of rights are a social construction that were invented by people and are conceived differently by different people.

My argument does not rely on what any specific thing you consider to be a right, only what makes a 'right' different from a person simply imposing their will. A 'right' is something that you can expected to have respected as a matter of society. The 'right' to use defensive force is not in dispute, but it adds nothing to the quality of life over what exists in a state of anarchy, and is not therefore related to the concept of 'rights' in a modern sense.

[Beet]

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The existence of the right to self-defense prevents its own use, at least to a certain degree. People are deterred from attacking others because they know that they will be attacked in return. Obviously this doesn't always work, in fact it often doesn't, but it still decreases the number of conflicts in society. In fact, that seems like a good example of a social norm that prevents violence, wouldn't you say?

Yes, but it's trivial. That's my point. Anyone can defend themselves, and as I've repeatedly said you have a right to; but so what? Such as it has always been for thousands of years. Modern (classically) liberal societies involve more than that.
[/quote]Well, you originally said that a right which is guaranteed by the threat of force is no right at all. Philosophically and ethically, I agree with you. What I'm saying is that, in reality, the threat of reactive force is all that prevents many from neglecting and ignoring that philosophical and ethical truth. Is not the prevention of such neglect the justification for the existence of the State in the first place?
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Oops, I didnt see this...

You say you agree with me but your words reveal you do not understand what I am trying to say. I would rather you not agree and understand than not understand and agree. Where we both really agree is your last rhetorical question. I believe this is what Mafison was referring to when he wrote, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." Well men are not angels, and so government is necessary.

But the founders understood that the police powers of government, because they are an exercise of force (as with when when private individuals take the police power into their own hands) are an exception to freedom, not a manifestation of it. And further, the exercise of force, justified or not, can never by itself create freedom. It was not winning the Revolutionary War that made America a nation of freedom, or one of rights. After all, many Latin American nations also won wars of independence only to fall into dictatorship. It was the writing of the Constitution, but even moreso the respect for and living in accordance to the Constitution, to the extent that was done, that defines American freedom. No matter who was holding the guns.

 You seem to think this is all a nice philosophical debate but there are real criminals out there blah blah blah, but this is a very realistic point, because as long as guns are associated with freedom it will be hard to enact laws that objectively curtail crime in this country. But that association is perverse because a gun is a weapon of coercion, the opposite of freedom. A gun, by itself has zero to do with creating freedom.