Re^4: Principle of Inclusion

[spiritway]

in reply to Re^3: Principle of Inclusion
in thread Principle of Inclusion

It has been my experience that most people anywhere are well-intentioned, even here in Chicago. One problem is that we have a skewed sample of things because the media report violent and horrific news, overlooking the boring stuff that doesn't sell papers or ads. Almost everyone in the US (and anywhere else) is decent, inclined to be helpful, and peaceful. Almost no one commits violent crimes; almost no one hurts anyone. Most people, if it won't be too intrusive, and if they aren't scared, will help someone who needs it.

This so-called "gun culture" isn't that; it's not a "culture". People choose to own guns for different reasons, not just to blast perceived threats to them. The original founders of the Constitution weren't just thinking of protection from criminals or foreign invaders. They also had in mind protection from a government gone wrong, the recent tiff with England being fresh in their minds. In light of recent (past five or so years) behavior of the US government, the idea makes a great deal of sense.

The US isn't that much of an anomaly; in many countries, people own guns. In Switzerland, for example, this is quite common, and isn't a big deal. Their murder rate is very low. I think the US murder rate is so high because of the large number of severely oppressed and abused people; many of them are able to get some sort of firearm. In the hands of someone who feels he has nothing to lose, this is dangerous.

[apotheon]

I think the US murder rate is so high because of the large number of severely oppressed and abused people; many of them are able to get some sort of firearm. In the hands of someone who feels he has nothing to lose, this is dangerous.

As is a knife, a car, a chemistry textbook, the Internet, a boxcutter and three buddies on a commercial airplane, a beer bottle, a prescription drug, rat poison, or any number of other "dangerous" items readily available in this country (the US). It's the person that feels there's nothing to lose that is dangerous, not the weapon of choice.

The truth is that a gun, as opposed to a knife, doesn't make someone significantly more dangerous except in actions that are not premeditated -- which includes self defense. I'm inclined to grant people the ability to be more dangerous in self defense. What do you think the chances are that a bunch of fundamentalist yokels with box cutters could have hijacked an airplane and flown it into a skyscraper, contributing to the deaths of thousands, if several passengers had been armed with handguns loaded with Glaser Safety Slugs or other frangible ammunition designed so that it wouldn't penetrate the fuselage of an aircraft? Pretty slim, I'd say.

Let's examine the counter-argument: the hijackers have handguns with frangible ammunition. So do a couple passengers. Rather than give up when they see they can't succeed, the hijackers decide to go for it, and a shootout ensues. Six people die -- still a difference of -2500 people, give or take, that died that day. On the other hand, I tend to guess that the passengers who were packing would be smart enough to avoid showing their hand, as 'twere, before they had a clean shot.

More likely, they wouldn't have tried that tactic, knowing they could not achieve easy superiority of arms, because literally anyone (within reason) could be packing.

[spiritway]

I wholly agree with what you say, though I think you also missed the emphasis of my point. I have nothing against handguns, rifles, or other weapons. What I object to is any system or society which tends to create (or allow to exist) people who feel they have nothing to lose. This was the reason I noted that Switzerland, which has a high per-capita number of weapons, has a very low murder rate. The number of weapons isn't the cause of murders; it's the inclination to kill.

I agree with your scenario. Even with ordinary munitions, you balance losing a whole planeload of people against a building's worth - it still comes out better than what actually happened. And there are any number of other incidents in which a lone gunman was able to slaughter large numbers of people because no one had a way to neutralize him (or her - there have been some women who have done this, as well). A few armed citizens could have saved many lives in each incident. Of course, in your scenario, the passengers might not have been able to distinguish the bad guys from the good. Someone pulls out a gun, and what? Is he yet another bad guy, or someone trying to stop the bad guys? There could be some friendly fire in addition to taking out the bad guys. Still - with armed citizens, chances are that many such crimes wouldn't occur at all.

Unfortunately, here in the US we have a huge population (composed of various ethnic, social, religious, national, and other groups) that feels it is "disenfranchised", members of which feel they have very little or nothing to lose. Murders will happen in that case, with whatever weapons happen to be available. It is all but impossible to disarm anyone completely.

[apotheon]

Actually . . .

I understood your comments and simply used them as a jumping-off point to make some of my own. I didn't intend my preceding statement to sound like disagreement or a refutation, but rather an expansion upon one of your points and some tangent-chasing that was relevant to the larger discussion.

In general, it seems to me that "disenfranchised" is exactly the correct term to use to describe those who are driven to desperation: it is perceived restriction of a person's individual sovereignty (his or her "franchise", or civil liberties) that contributes most egregiously to that sense of desperation that can lead to desperate acts. Many factors can contribute to that sense of desperation, such as a society stratified by bureaucratic interference in the fluidity of the economy, opportunity inequality distributed by superficial demographic characteristics, and oppressive micromanagement of the whole populace.

These are the problems that need addressing to reduce the incidence of violent acts, as you've hinted. Playing a game of musical chairs with the available weapons doesn't eliminate violent impulses.

[Anonymous Monk]

Man, I really hate that Bin Laden dude, if only for the utter shit that some Americans keep spewing since 911. Sure, having a planeful of amateurs hold a shootout at 10,000 feet is a much better option than having proper security checks on domestic flights. And I'm not talking about the paranoid and publicity-stuntish "what have you got in that tooth-filling ma'am, and was your grandfather a commie" stuff that has been instituted since. The rest of the civilised world has had decent pre-flight checks on all flights for decades, only in the US were these not done, because it was "too expensive" and we couldn't have the government imposing those sorts of restrictions on free enterprise, no sir. What goes around comes around, and exactly the same is true for gun control.