Post No.: 0997
Fluffystealthkitten says:
“Guns kill people” proclaim proponents of stricter gun control. “People kill people” proclaim opponents of it.
Advocates of stricter gun control for civilians don’t hold that guns themselves do the killing but recognise that guns influence the decisions and lethal potential of those who wield them. The opposers don’t deny that guns play a role in lethal attacks but argue that people could and would simply use other objects to hurt or kill others if they really wanted to instead.
Objects play a mediating role that affects our decisions and actions hence they’re not just passive things in the environment. What good product designers understand is that an object, like a gun, will have a considerable influence on our choice of action and in turn outcome. If people are rational then they’d understand that the probability of success of murdering someone and escaping decreases when they have only access to something like a screwdriver, axe or sword compared to something like a pistol, shotgun or other lethal ranged weapon – particularly one that’s easy to aim and/or can rapidly fire repeatedly like a rifle compared to a bow or crossbow – hence having only access to the former makes attempting murder more risky and thus less rational to attempt.
Well it’s the combination of guns and people killing when it comes to firearm homicides. We might call this combination either ‘an armed person’ or ‘a wielded gun’. It’s not ‘subjects’ (agents like humans) and ‘objects’ (insentient things like guns) but ‘subjects with objects’. With no guns, there’ll logically be no gun crimes.
We could also assert that if there were no people, there’d be no gun crimes either because, for instance, puffins or guppies cannot wield or operate these guns (and besides, human laws don’t apply to other animals, including chimpanzees who maybe could learn to load, aim and discharge firearms). But better than making all humans extinct, it’d probably be wiser to make all guns extinct(!)
Some will argue that if someone really wanted to kill someone then they’ll find a way to regardless of the objects available to them. But many crimes or accidents wouldn’t occur or lead to death if it weren’t for the combination. For example, drive-by knifings are trickier for criminals to commit hence removing the access to guns discourages drive-by murders; plus accidents with knives aren’t likely to be as lethal as accidents with guns.
And I suppose the above argument could also be flipped to ‘if good people want to defend themselves then they’ll find a way to regardless of the objects available to them’ too. Another flipped point of view is ‘the best way to deal with a good guy with a gun is a bad guy with a gun’(!) If we wish to be consistent with our logic then what’s good/bad for good-intentioned folk should also be similar for bad-intentioned folk.
Perhaps alcohol doesn’t cause drunkenness, people do(!) Guns make people feel powerful like alcohol makes people feel tipsy. It’s not a chemical drug but a loaded firearm in your hand has a psychological effect on you nonetheless, more than if you were holding a knife.
Rapid-fire and/or large-calibre lethal firearms in particular are just ‘penis extensions’ to many in this context of ordinary civilians wielding them. A compensation for their insecurities. If it’s for target or simulation sports then there are several less or non-lethal alternatives like airguns, airsoft or paintball. Or any lethal sports firearms could be kept strictly in designated licensed and secure shooting ranges. If it’s for sport hunting then there are ‘green hunting’ options using non-lethal tranquilliser guns or bows and subsequently releasing the captured animals alive. Meow.
Perhaps it’s hypocritical for pro-gun supporters to believe that countries like North Korea or Iran shouldn’t be allowed to have nuclear weapons because ‘nuclear weapons don’t kill people, people do’! If it’s about the mental faculties of the leaders of those countries then one could question the mental faculties of at least one former POTUS!
Why not let ordinary US citizens legally possess lethal weapons like RPGs, claymores or even tactical nukes because ‘the danger isn’t the weapons but the people’? (Although this argument might goad some pro-gun supporters to say, “Yeah, why not?!”)
An object like a gun does not indeed possess its own will but it might possess some ‘design intentions’. The telos of a gun is limited to hurting, killing or at least threatening someone with death or injury. Meanwhile, the telos of a car can be for transport or shelter. The telos of a knife can be for cooking, crafting and other constructive rather than just destructive activities.
It’s also much less easy to maim or kill multiple people rapidly with something like an axe compared to a semi-automatic firearm – and sinful citizens are more likely to want to shoot multiple people rapidly than honourable citizens who merely wish to act in self-defence – thus a ban on assault weapons, and rapid-fire modifications like bump stocks (as used in the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, which killed 60 people and wounded at least 413), just makes sense. No one needs a semi-automatic assault rifle (like AR-15-style rifles) to protect themselves or their family. Semi-automatic firearms are used in the vast majority of mass shooting incidents in America. They’re used for indiscriminate shooting. The real life zombie hordes aren’t imminent.
The designers and manufacturers of civilian market firearms probably don’t think that the purpose of guns is to say ‘go ahead and hurt people with them’ – but whom and what are they designed for then? Truly self-defensive rather than offensive products would be something like personal body armour – so perhaps product designers and manufacturers in the defence industry should be working harder to develop technologies that protect and save civilians from fatal gunshots instead of technologies that make the killing part easier and more efficient? If guns in civilian possession are really about personal protection (whether against criminals, terrorists or a tyrannical government) then – thinking a bit sci-fi – a protective energy force field would be cool. Well we do already have body armour. It’s not 100% effective. But guns evidently aren’t 100% effective at stopping people before they’ve murdered either.
Objects can be abused too. So even though gun designers may claim that they’re intended for deterrence and self-defence, not offence – it’s quite obvious to anticipate, and continually evident with hindsight too, that guns are being used/abused by murderers and terrorists to kill innocent people.
In a murder, we might need to ask if someone was given the order to kill someone else (hierarchy)? Did that someone have sufficient mental awareness and capacity to overview and understand the consequences of their actions, and/or should a third party have known and prevented that person from having access to a gun in the first place (capability)? And was there some present critical danger that permitted the action of killing someone else as proportionate self-defence (context)?
It’s not just the gun and the perpetrator implicated in a gun crime that and who is at fault. It’s also strongly arguably the fault of a government that allowed citizens to have easy access to firearms. This includes the lawmakers, and those citizens who voted for, or voted to keep, the legislature or the politicians who did so on their behalf. These are part of the wider traceable chain of events that led to making that gun crime possible. There are also maybe those who designed that gun, manufactured it, those who funded these parties, and the individual or retailer who sold the gun in question to the perpetrator. A gun itself cannot answer for being used since it possesses no agency and the ultimate decision to shoot falls onto the shooter – but remove the option or ability to shoot and there’ll logically be no possible shot, and this option or ability is actually provided by a whole chain of people, not just the person at the final link of this chain who pulled the trigger. When investigating the chains of events that lead to an outcome, we can see that if one step is removed then that chain can be broken and the outcome potentially averted.
Responsibility may become less direct (but not necessarily weaker) the earlier someone is situated in a chain of events, but if responsibility falls onto those who have control of an outcome then all these people have control of the outcome, not just the end shooter. We must deal with the background socio-economic conditions, and culture that glamorises violence, that can lead to the common causes of gun crime too. Perhaps we all as citizens of a nation have a responsibility towards everything and anything that happens in our country then, especially if we live in a democracy? If we don’t bear this responsibility then I guess voting is utterly pointless because our individual vote makes no difference to anything whatsoever (although democracy involves far more than just voting once every few years).
In a representative democracy, we’re all collectively directly or indirectly responsible for the party that’s in power and in turn who they select in their cabinet and what they do/don’t do on our behalf. It’s even more direct in a direct democracy. In a non-democracy, we’re all collectively directly or indirectly responsible for not uprising against and replacing whoever’s in power if we don’t like what they do/don’t do on our behalf.
Definitions vary from 3+ or 4+ persons shot in a single incident, excluding the perpetrator(s), and excluding gang-related killings, organised crime, drug wars and/or terrorism – but it’s like there’s a mass shooting incident every fortnight on average in the USA. And then there are the many more gun-related incidents that involve only 1 or 2 casualties. They’re so common it’s just like background noise in the news sometimes.
Countries and US states that have stricter gun laws overall have lower gun death rates according to Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Introducing stricter gun laws after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 vastly reduced lethal gun-related incidents in Australia. (Many Australians today think those laws should be even tighter.) A 2016 meta-analysis conducted by the journal Epidemiologic Reviews revealed that 130 studies in 10 different countries demonstrated a clear link between increased firearms legislation that reduced access to firearms and lower firearms-related injuries and deaths later. Guns provide the option of a relatively quick and painless exit when at hand thus suicides are reduced too because many attempts are impulsive and regretted if less lethal methods are used i.e. with a suicide attempt involving a gun, there’s a far lower chance of surviving to regret the attempt.
A lot of violence upon others is committed in the heat of the moment (like when Marvin Gaye’s father shot and killed his son after an argument) and is regretful afterwards too. Guns make such ‘hot-headed’ events more lethal – fulfilling extremely short-term interests to ‘shut someone up’ that have extremely lengthy and lamentable long-term costs. Being under the influence of psychoactive substances like alcohol may also affect one’s decision making. So many civilians who own firearms have stated that the reason is in case of intruders and potential murderers – only to end up being the killers themselves.
Apart from during the major world wars, homicides actually kill more people than wars in total per year across the world (although war deaths are hard to count, and war deaths per 100 people within certain countries may be individually higher). Most homicides aren’t premeditated but are the result of a sudden loss of control in a heated moment – hence probably why capital punishment doesn’t reduce homicide figures, and why having access to quick, easy and lethal weapons like firearms massively increases homicide rates in places where these are widely owned. Accidental deaths rise too.
Meow. Best leave firearms to the police and military if we want to protect ourselves I’d say.
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