re: #10 Political Atheist

Whatever the numbers crunch down to we come back to my central question. These big stats are low resolution. They count jewelers and pawnbrokers and convenience store owners in aggregate to everyone. Those are not uncommon jobs or careers, and they certainly face an elevated risk.

I don’t think this is really true, since I’m not aware of shopkeepers in Western Europe facing an “elevated level of risk”. Obviously robberies happen, but again, banning guns makes people more safe from being killed by guns.

But whatever the numbers are, we come back to a certain fact and my central question. The fact is we have the 2nd as an individual right. There is no repeal or amendment in sight.

Whenever we have this argument you go back to this. If this is your sole defensible rationale for gun ownership (and I suspect it is) I can’t argue with you because it’s essentially “this is the way things are”. The point of having a discussion is to determine whether it’s a sensible state of affairs or not. Bringing up the constitution is an appeal to authority; it’s not convincing to me beyond the superficial appeal of “this is what a few white, wealthy, slave-owning men thought in the 18th century”.

As an aside, I note that the Wikipedia page on gun laws in the UK cites a “right to bear arms” provision from the 1600s that covered crossbows and the like. Things have moved on since then.

My question-Shall we be slavish to the big broad stats or shall we look carefully and make a choice with more intelligence than reading charts?

I would suggest banning all guns but making very narrow targeted exceptions for occupations in which there is a clearly demonstrated need to own a firearm, and making it illegal to keep the gun at home, thus targeting domestic violence. This is basically what the UK went to after the Dunblane massacre.

By the way, there’s nothing “slavish” about looking at statistics. Ultimately they tell you what your risk is of something happening. You may like to think that it won’t happen to you, but unfortunately that’s not the way it works.