Let's talk about freedom.

[avevale_intelligencer]

Full disclosure: this is inspired by, but does not relate to, a post by filkertom in which he laments a prospective relaxation of what gun controls America has, and by various comments thereto.

I'm a big fan of freedom. I think, in moderation, it's a good thing, just as security, in moderation, is a good thing. I'm pleased to live in a mostly free society, mostly governed by laws which prohibit the more extreme abuses of freedom. And one of the greatest blessings which living where I do confers is that of freedom from fear.

Not all fear, of course. I'm just as scared of global warming, chemical pollution, world war, and sudden pianos falling from clear blue skies as the next cartoon character. But when I go outside, when I move amongst those scariest of creatures the human race, I can relax in the certainty that unless I do something stupid, I will almost certainly get home alive. Why? Because none of those people is carrying a gun.

The man who thinks men with long hair are homosexuals and should be sterilised to prevent them passing the taint along may curse me under his breath, but he can't shoot me. The woman who's recovering from a truly horrible experience with some sadistic bastard of a man whom, in a certain light and at a certain angle, I passingly resemble, may experience a shuddering upsurge of rage, but she can't shoot me. The man who's listening to the little voices in his head that tell him I am an agent of the Black Council of Tau Ceti and want to control his mind by pointing rays at his false teeth may yell gibberish at me, but he can't shoot me. The woman who's been driving for an hour with three shrieking kids in the back and really wanted my parking space can't shoot me. None of the people who think they have genuine good reason to hate me and all I stand for can do a blind thing about it, because they haven't got guns.

This is an important part of freedom from where I stand. The freedom not to be shot, or even to be scared of being shot.

I'm also a big fan of the human race. I think we are, if not mythically wonderful, the best there is at what we do, at least locally, and I think we will get better and eventually become the heirs of the universe. But in the meantime we are, in the mass, godsawfully messed up, and I have seen too much of life to trust that any given human being unknown to me will be sane and rational in all circumstances. If, on top of that, I had to worry that any given human being unknown to me might be carrying an instrument with which they could, from a safe distance, end my life (or, for that matter, deprive me of an arm, a leg, or an eye), I'd never leave the house. I would be in constant terror that someone out there might decide I was a criminal, or a rapist, or just too weird to live, and kill me. The freedom from that fear makes it possible for me to live an almost normal life. I'm eternally grateful for that.

And then there's the other freedom, the one that's even more precious to me.

When I was a smallish boy I had, as every small boy did, a cap pistol. I never put caps in it, because the loud bangs scared me. The click it made as the hammer went home was quite enough for me. As I grew up I abandoned those toys, and I have never held a gun or anything purporting to be an actual gun since. And I don't have to.

But say I did. Say I was, as I would be, the last person in the country to be reluctantly compelled to carry a gun about my person, having been adequately trained in its use (an expenditure of time I would strongly have begrudged) and having it in a position from which I could extract and use it in a couple of seconds, which would of course be the only useful way to carry a gun.

So here I am in this public place. I can't relax. I can't close my eyes. I can't allow anyone within two feet of my body, in case they're after the gun. I can't be aware of anything but this lethal device nestling next to my skin, accessible in seconds to me or to anyone else, because once it leaves my person I have no control and total accountability. When I'm at home I can't take it off, or leave it anywhere, in case someone else picks it up. And even when I know I have it secure, I can't drink, I can't take drugs (assuming I do that kind of thing) I can't do anything that might affect my judgment and cause me to do something stupid with the damn thing. I can't dance with a woman in case she's just looking for someone with a weapon she can pinch to kill her cheating husband with. I am myself a walking weapon, armed and primed and ready to go off, and all it takes is a moment's relaxation.

If I had to have a gun, I'd use it on myself within a week.

But I don't have to. I have that freedom, that glorious liberty that comes from living in a society where most people do not have guns, where it isn't written into the damn user manual for the country that everyone has to have a gun because there are bears and coyotes and Injuns out there, not to mention uppity niggers and scheming Chinees, and the fact that two hundred years have passed and some things have changed doesn't seem to have got home to some people. I am free not to be shot, and not to shoot. And to me that is truly precious.

EDIT: meritmaat pointed me to this, which makes very reassuring reading.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Yes. Mostly I don't want to carry a gun because I don't want to have to be responsible, every minute of every single blasted day, for the gun.

Plus would be nice to know that no overexcited neighbor is going to start firing at random at sinister rustling noises in the dark and wind up shooting me totally by accident.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Exactly. We have better things to do with our lives, and we deserve a society in which we are free to do those things.

[eleri.livejournal.com]

yes that. The idea that it's a better society if we're all allowed to carry firearms 'just in case' squicks me to no end.

Like the guy at Folklife last weekend with a licenced glock in and ankle holster... which 'went off' during a scuffle. One shot fired, three people injured. And this from someone who'd supposedly been found 'safe' to carry. (lets just set aside for the moment that the carryer has been found to be a medicated schizophrenic, and the wonder that he was able to get a permit...)

It's supposed to make me feel safer, if there'd been an unnamed number of gun carriers there, all ready to defend against that gunshot? Riiight. Makes me feel like I'm apt to be swiss cheese.

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

I recently read a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine, which is one of the highest (if not _the_ highest) ranking medical journal in the world, which should a clear correlation of the availability on guns and death and injuries.
Now, this might not be surprising, as the common (European) sense would think exacly this, but the main argument, as far as I understood and as the NEJM pointed out, too, is, that owning a gun adds to your safety. This paper clearly proves that that is not the case and that, in fact, the very contrary is true.

And I am with you all the way.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Yay scholarship!

[howeird]

Just playing Devil's Advocate here, but the person who carries the gun is not the one being shot, most of the time. The person carrying the gun *is* safer than the person who is not.

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

Well, as the paper states, actually not. The highest percentage of the death are actually suicides. And if you extend the "person who carries a gun" to his next of kin, which are usually the ones who "those carrying a gun" want to protect, they are the ones who get killed or injured most.

[howeird]

I don't extend the damage past the person with the gun, there have been too many studies showing that the victim is usually someone the gun owner knows, most often a spouse, most often not by accident or anything remotely resembling an attempt to protect the victim.

I think the suicides would happen gun or no gun. It's not really that easy for most people to shoot themselves, compared to the dozen or so other popular ways it can be done.

While I have never owned a gun, I do hold a permit, and have earned a small pile of NRA sharpshooter awards for putting holes in pieces of paper.

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

The paper in NEJM stated that the number of suicides go up when guns are easily available.

I took a forensic medicine class, once, and one of the lessons I learned there that it is not that easy to kill yourself. Too me, it makes sense that the availability of fire arms makes suicide attemps more successful. Why would you think that shooting yourself is harder than, e.g. jumping from a bridge or cutting your veins?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"Why would you think that shooting yourself is harder than, e.g. jumping from a bridge or cutting your veins?"

Because I've heard too many reports of people shooting themselves, even in the head, and getting it wrong. It's not necessarily harder, but it doesn't necessarily have a greater chance of success either. Cutting your wrists probably sounds easiest, but in fact no method of suicide I know is guaranteed fatal (or to have a binary outcome, where either it works completely or fails completely). Which is the main reason I haven't tried...

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

Where did you here these reports? I heard exactly one story like that in my life. If you really want to take you life (please don`t, btw!!!) or, for that matter, kill someone, I strongly recommend taking forensic medicine. You learn quite a lot about that there...

With my original question, I did not mean actually getting yourself killed by the means of shooting, but actually pull the trigger. Why should that be any harder than choosing a different way of passing.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"Taking forensic medicine" -- is that like drinking formaldehyde? That stuff stinks, I don't want to know what it tastes like *g*.

No reports I can point to, but I've heard from several people about attempted suicides where there have been misfires, bullets going out through the cheek (and so not instantly fatal but certainly maiming), tec. And given my relationship with Murphy, if anything could go wrong then it would if I tried it.

No, pulling the trigger is no harder than slicing my wrists with a razor blade, but neither is it much harder (I expect; I've never actually done either, but I have known a couple of people who tried the latter and they seemed to find it quite easy). Taking an overdose of something is probably easier still (especially paracetamol/acetaminophen, the dose is quite low). Unless the gun is right there and already loaded, though, it seems to me that shooting myself would need more preparation (and be messy).

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

Almost :-) One of the most interesting things I heard in this class was that a lot of murderers try to cover up their murder by pretending that it was suicide. As they usually lack the knowledge needed, to the professionals, that makes quite clear that it indeed has been a murder. And, at least in Germany, about 98% of all murder cases that make it to forensics are solved.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I should also have said that these were from Americans (mostly ones I knew on USAF bases in the UK), and that they were obvious suicides (or attempted, in several of the cases the victim had to live with the results, in others they lived long enough to be found).

[howeird]

The paper was only looking at gun availability, not at the more important factors like the state of the economy. The US has always had guns available, so how can they even pretend to compare on that one item?

Shooting yourself is physically more difficult than jumping off a bridge or building or cutting yourself or turning on the gas. If you try to shoot a gun you'll understand better - guns are designed to shoot away from you.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I've been a shooter for a lot of the last 30 years. I would find it much easier to shoot myself than to jump off a building.

Given the number of suicides in the US by gun every year, I'm afraid the facts contradict your statement.

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/suicide-in-the-us-statistics-and-prevention.shtml

For men, 57% of suicides are by firearms. If it's that difficult, I guess we have to applaud their tenacity.
For women, it's just one in three suicides, with poisoning coming slightly higher.

Successful suicides, men outnumber women by 4 to 1. There were just over 32,000 successful suicides in 2004 (the dates of that NIMH survey) so one in five was a woman, so a little over 6,000 then. Which means about 25,000 male suicides.

So something over 1,000 men a month die from firearm related suicide.

Guns may be more difficult, but they *are* the method of choice among men in the US.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"I would find it much easier to shoot myself than to jump off a building."

Discounting psychological issues (I would be very put off jumping off a building, I wouldn't go anywhere near the edge) would it actually be physically more difficult?

Having never fired a gun, I do wonder about the recoil if it were pointing the wrong way. I can see that being a factor in un- or partially-successful suicides.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Put the barrel of the pistol in your mouth, pull the trigger (which can be anything from a hair trigger to a pull of several pounds depending on the gun and whether it is single or double action) and while the recoil may break a tooth, you'll be dead so you won't mind much ...

... some suicides set up a shotgun or similar on some sort of stand (possibly improvised) and use string or something to push the trigger. So a wobbly stand could be a problem, but then a shotgun sends a spray of shot so you don't need to be as accurate (but it could be less instantly lethal, so it wouldn't be my weapon of choice).

The psychological factors are (I believe) the most important part.

I haven't found stats for the number of non-fatal firearms related suicide attempts, just figures that say overall for every "successful" suicide (of *any* kind) there are between 8 and 25 failed attempts. So it isn't clear from that whether firearms are more or less effective ... however the success rate of firearms in actual suicide would indicate that firearms are lethal enough.

But this is becoming an unsettling conversation for a depressed person to be having, so I think I'll stop now.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Personally, if I had had a gun, I'm sure I'd be much more likely to be dead by now. Most of my early suicidal thinking was put off by not having a fast and easy method of killing myself, and I thought that a pistol in the mouth would be quick, painless and lethal (I now see this would have been possibly wrong!)

And it was the waiting and such with the other methods that meant I didn't do it.

http://www.teensuicidestatistics.com/statistics-facts.html
Teenage boys are only half as likely to consider suicide, but four times more likely to die if they attempt it. The "success" rate is attributed to the method they choose, something quick and lethal, primarily guns, jumping from a height or hanging. 60 percent of *all* US suicides use a gun.

Teenage girls tend to use pills or cut themselves, which gives time for this "call for help" to be answered.

Sorry, the stats disagree with you.

I have held a UK firearms licence for seven weapons (four pistols, three rifles) because I enjoy shooting. I have *never* owned a gun, and have never had one in the house or anywhere outside of a gun range or gun shop.

[billroper]

Note: I used to own one of my father's hand-me-down shotguns. I don't any more, as my brother ended up with it. That would be the total of my experience with guns.

I choose not to own a gun. I am happy to live in a society that gives me that choice, where gun violence is, in fact, uncommon enough that I feel no great need to carry a gun. There are other places that I can see from my sixth floor office where I'm pretty sure that I'd strongly consider making the decision to carry a gun (were it legal there and possibly if not) to defend myself against the large number of illegal guns that are out and about in the area. I consider myself fortunate not to live there.

I can be killed just as dead by a gang wielding knives and baseball bats as I can by someone carrying a gun. I can certainly be injured by a non-gun-wielding fellow who wants to make what is mine into what is his and doesn't really care if he injures me in the process -- or perhaps prefers it so. I recall reading that something like that happened to one of the folks on my friends list in England in recent years.

I'd like to design a better human being, but I think that process is going to take a bit longer than I have to wait for it.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

In what country is it "written into the damn user manual for the country that everyone has to have a gun"? Hint: it's in geographical Europe. Switzerland is the only country I know where it is written into law that everyone[1] has to have a gun (even there they can get out of it by paying a tax). Such a hotbed of gun crime, Switzerland, it's a wonder they aren't all dead now. It certainly isn't the USA, otherwise most of the people I know there would be criminals for not owning a gun. They simply have the opportunity (in some places) of actually being allowed to make the choice themselves, and not told by nanny state that they are children not to be trusted with a gun -- or a steak knife or penknife. I remember when if anyone said "Has anyone got a knife I could borrow?" at an SF convention or mediaeval event they would be offered dozens of them on the spot (and to my knowledge none of those knife owners ever stabbed anyone with the knives), these days they are all illegal. And the same happened with guns, a couple of people went nuts with weapons which the police shouldn't have allowed them to buy, so suddenly no one has a gun. That's why all the reports of gun crime in the newspapers are obvious lies, of course, there's no way criminals could get hold of them now...

BTW, you aren't free to not be shot. You can still be shot by the police for wearing a jacket on a warm day, or a rucksack. Or by any of the criminals using their illegal guns (which are therefore more difficult to trace because they aren't registered).

[1] It might be every adult male, females may be exempt (and also may not be the case any more, I'm not current on their laws). And in fact nowhere insists that babies have to be given a gun when they are born, or even at puberty, and even countries where guns are common they tend to be forbidden to the insane and criminals, so the actual answer is "nowhere, because that would be silly".

[billroper]

Just checking: common Swiss Army knives are illegal?

(I haven't been bringing mine over when I visit England, because I don't want to forget to stick it in the checked luggage and lose it; it was my 20th anniversary gift from my employer.)

[patriciamc.livejournal.com]

Yeh, I'm grateful for the gun laws in Australia. An extremely well written piece, thanks.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

His or mine?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

It may still depend on the length of the blade. And also where you have it, the rules are a lot more strict about what you can have in public places. It also can depend on the mechanism, the traditional Swiss Army Knife where you had to pull the blade out using a fingernail was legal when ones with a spring were classed as 'flick-knives' and have been illegal for several decades at least.

(Note that I'm using SAK as a generic, including Leatherman and other similar multi-purpose tools.)

Most people I know who used to carry SAKs no longer do, or not openly (they may have them in a briefcase or otherwise not immediately available, I believe that is permissable or at least gives plausible deniability). Even ones which may still be strictly legal can cause problems, because police (and other 'security' personnel) are unlikely to check exact blade lengths.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

As Keris said, yes, SAK are illegal in many situations in the UK. We still have a low incident of gun crime but a seemingly large increase in knife crime and they are talking about putting metal detectors in tube and train stations.

Any offensive weapon, which includes *any* knife can be a criminal offense. You basically have to prove you have a good reason for carrying that particular "weapon" with you (a chef on the way to work with her/his knives in a case, fine. A teenager with the same knife hidden under a jacket, a crime. Ditto "work knives" (stanley knives etc.))

And a moderately recent ruling was that any folding knife where the blade could be locked open was an offensive weapon ... which rules out most recent Leatherman/Gerber etc. multitools.

I still carry my SAK and often my Gerber multitool (non-locking) but I am prepared to stand up and state that I use them just about every day for various things (which I do) and as such have a good reason for carrying them. But in the wrong situation, they could still be illegal.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Sorry, imprecision. "Has to be allowed to have a gun." And, as I'm sure must have been obvious, I was referring to the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, and not Switzerland.

I am free not to be scared about being shot on a daily basis, because the ordinary people around me (a) do not carry guns, and (b) do not have to be scared of all the ordinary people around them carrying guns.

And it's really irritating, even if gratifying in a backhanded sort of way, when people have to affect to misunderstand me in order to disagree with me.

One more time with this (http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/358/14/1421)--thank you again, Alexa--and then I rest my case and move on.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Well, it didn't seem to apply as written to the USA.

As I pointed out, even with your 'imprecision' corrected, it still isn't true. Many states in the US have restrictions on who is allowed to have a gun (as that article states), which makes it far from "everyone" (even if your "everyone" does exclude a large part of the population on the grounds of lack of age).

But does it make any difference? Sure, I can be reasonably sure that some random stranger won't shoot me. But I can't be any more sure that, forbidden a gun, he won't knife me or beat me up to get what he wants.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

The difference being that to do either of those things he has to get within arm's reach of you. Also, it's quite difficult to beat someone up accidentally, knives do not (pace Blake's Seven) go off while you are cleaning them, and so on.

And I'm well aware of the existence of so-called "gun free zones" in America (and just how effective some gun advocates think they are), and that makes no difference to the truth of my statement. Watch my electrons move. It is written into the Constitution of the United States, to which I whimsically refer as "the user manual for the country," that everyone has to be allowed to have a gun. What subsequent state legislatures have done to abridge that "right," what common sense restrictions on age and suchlike may have been imposed later, is irrelevant to my statement. When they wrote it, that was how they wrote it. True or not?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Thank you for saying a lot of what I was not eloquent enough to.

[gingicat]

I have commented to friends that if I had a gun, I'd be dead by now. Because during suicidal ideation moments, I'd have a reliable way to make myself dead.

Also, I have a temper. I'd have gone postal with it if suicide didn't hit first.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Both of those are reasons for /me/ not to have a gun (although as mentioned elsewhere I have heard too much to regard guns as a completely reliable method of suicide). I can't make that determination about anyone else, that would be a determination for them (or their counsellors) to make, their choice. I do know that of the people I have known who did possess guns there are none who caused me any nervousness about it.

I am in favour of limitations on weapons (not just firearms) in some cases (mine, for instance). As stated elsewhere, I don't know any country where everyone is permitted guns regardless of their criminal or psychological background. I do know countries where ordinary citizens are not permitted to defend themselves against criminals (who since they are outside the law have no trouble getting whatever weapons they want) or against 'government' organisations infringing their liberty. ~"When weapons are outlawed, only outlaws have weapons."~

[meritmaat.livejournal.com]

It makes it easy to recordnize an outlaw, though :-)

[dickgloucester.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear. *hugs you*

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I've been known to argue with you in the past ... but I can only hug you and say, yes, the fear that other people have guns and could shoot me (deliberately or accidentally) is 100% valid and I applaud your argument. Hear, hear!

[batyatoon]

Gun control is one of those issues on which I am paralyzed by seeing too many good arguments on all sides of the argument. At the moment I am leaning, just a little, toward your side of it.

I do, however, have to take issue with one of your points -- or not even the point itself, but your phrasing of it.

This is an important part of freedom from where I stand. The freedom not to be shot, or even to be scared of being shot.

That is not a freedom. That is a safety.

That is a protection from your fellow citizens that your government provides by making it illegal for them to carry guns. That is a restriction on their freedom (and yours) that makes you (and them) safe.

People like to refer to Ben Franklin's line about "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," but they frequently gloss over the qualifiers of essential and temporary. There are essential safeties as well as essential liberties, and it is every bit as important to safeguard them.

I am all in favor of laws that keep citizens safe from each other. I just get annoyed when people say that those laws are there to keep us free.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, I disagree. By reason and by emotion I judge myself freer, because I can go whole days without even thinking about guns. I understand that for some Americans (I'm not saying you) possessing the ability, whether they use it or not, to blow off a stranger's head from fifty yards away is one of those "ancient rights unnoticed|As the breath we draw" that Leslie Fish sings about so movingly: they don't even think about it till someone wants to take it away from them. My culture didn't raise me that way, and for me having to acquire, master and carry a gun would be an intolerable imposition on my liberty, because for me the natural state of a human being is sans gun. (EDIT: I should of course say "civilised human being," before some clever person starts asking why I don't forgo clothing and take to the trees. There's always one.)

In the same way, I gather, some Muslim women feel the wearing of all-enveloping robes frees them from the pressure of the male gaze, whereas some Western women regard them as an imposition without which they would be freer. The difference being that all-enveloping robes cannot directly be used to kill people.

[batyatoon]

Well -- I can also go whole days without even thinking about guns, and in fact I generally do. I live in a country where it is legal to own a gun, and I live in New York City, and I don't think I've ever even seen a gun that wasn't a cop's service weapon. Holstered.

I could acquire, master and carry a gun if I wanted to, but I don't. And neither does anyone I know. And thus I refute your assertion that one must if one lives in a place where it's legal to do so. So how are you freer than I am?

(I'm not going to touch "natural state of a civilised human being". That's a completely different semantic argument from the one I'm trying to make, and anyway I think I know what you mean.)

Here's the basic definition I'm working from: Freedom is about what those who rule you can and can't do. Safety is about what your peers can and can't do. A government cannot increase the safety of its citizens without decreasing their freedom to some extent, and cannot increase their freedom without decreasing their safety. (It is perfectly possible to decrease either without increasing the other. I'm not sure why this is, but it's demonstrably the case.)

Thoughts?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

It's not my assertion. It's madfilkentist's. He's the one who's telling me that the only reason he can go anywhere without fear of being shot is because all the criminals "know there's a good chance they're up against people who can defend themselves." If no-one actually could, how long would it be before the criminals twigged and declared open season? Therefore, obviously, it must be incumbent on a proportion, if not all, of the citizens to carry and use guns, to keep the criminals at bay. If you don't, then I guess you're one of the lucky ones who gets by because the criminals all think you must have one. I've never been that lucky (nor would I want to be, on those terms), so I'm just glad to live in a country where that kind of thing is not required of ordinary people. And that, I think, makes me freer. (Also I think we must have fewer criminals to the square mile than you do.)

Freedom is about what those who rule you can and can't do. In my country, those who rule us can't opt out and expect us to preserve law and order for them by either being, or giving the appearance of being, lethally armed. (I'm not saying they do an outstanding job themselves, mind, but that I think is universal.)

I've seen an argument somewhere (but I can't remember where: I really should keep an index of these things) that as far as I recall set out to refute the view, to which I also subscribe, of freedom/security as a zero-sum game.

And, if you go whole days without thinking of guns, have never seen a gun that wasn't a policeman's, don't own one, don't know anyone who owns one, and don't think it's necessary, why is the "freedom" to own one worth defending? You could say that all freedoms are worth defending, but there are some that are not, such as the freedom to rape. To me, the freedom to own a gun is, in the end and no matter how many codicils and qualifications and special circumstances you put round it, the freedom to kill, and I don't see that as worth defending.

[batyatoon]

It's not my assertion. It's madfilkentist's.

Nope, I call foul. You asserted in your original post that because you live where you do, you are "free not to be shot, and not to shoot." And I'm still not getting why you don't think I'm just as free not to shoot as you are.

I'm just glad to live in a country where that kind of thing is not required of ordinary people.

It's not required of anybody here. I don't make the claim that a well-armed populace acts as a deterrent against the criminal population. I don't make it because I'm not convinced of it.

And, if you go whole days without thinking of guns, have never seen a gun that wasn't a policeman's, don't own one, don't know anyone who owns one, and don't think it's necessary, why is the "freedom" to own one worth defending?

Well ... I also tend to go whole days without thinking of pentacles, or NASCAR, or cigarettes, or pornographic comic books, or bourbon, or violent video games, or pet ferrets. That hardly means I want to see any of those things made illegal. The fact that I don't want one doesn't mean the right to own one isn't a freedom worth defending; it just means I'm not the right person to defend it.

And I'm not defending it here. I'm just objecting to the notion that one is more free without it. You will not see me object to the notion that one is safer without it, or better off.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Well, my opinion on that was shaped, when I wrote the original post, by the first few dozen responses to this post (http://filkertom.livejournal.com/824932.html)--which I was trying to avoid linking to because Tom has had enough grief, and wasn't saying what I'm saying anyway, as he has now pointed out. I don't automatically assume that America is like it is on the films, but the impression I got from some of those responses was that it was more or less obligatory upon Americans to carry guns everywhere they go lest they be blown away. Obligation, to me, is opposed to freedom.

You say it isn't like that. Fine. I believe you. You are just as free as I am. But if it were like that, if it were necessary for you to carry a gun in order to survive, then I still maintain that I would be the freer. As well as the safer.

[madfilkentist]

"Freedom" does not mean having your own way at the expense of others. Prohibitions on guns leave guns in the hands of two classes of people: criminals and governments. (Or to be more concise, criminals.)

I live in New Hampshire, where people are free to carry guns. I can go pretty much anywhere without fear of being shot (though there are always places anywhere that I'd avoid at 3 AM). Why? Because those who'd commit violent crimes know there's a good chance they're up against people who can defend themselves.

It isn't necessary for you to carry a gun if you're uncomfortable with it. It's the knowledge that people do carry guns, and that you might be carrying one, which is sufficient.

Virginia Tech banned guns from its campus. The result wasn't that people were safe from all harm. It was that no one could stop an armed maniac.

People think that if only they can silence "hate speech," or ban guns, or keep everyone under surveillance, they'll be safe. But these things don't create safety; they make people helpless.

I knew I shouldn't have looked at this, but I did...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

So in order for me to be safe in America, people in general have to think that I might be carrying, and both able and willing to use, a gun. I have to let them think that about me, encourage them to think that about me, or I'll get shot, because there's nothing else to stop them.

Can you see why I might still have problems with that? Or why I'm happier here, where people know for a fact that I'm not carrying a gun and still, for some strange reason, mostly leave me alone?

I guess not, since you don't see how carrying and being ready to use an implement that can blast a hole through a human body might be likened to "having your way at the expense of others," no differently for you than for the criminal, or the innocent bystander, or the child who gets caught in the crossfire.

(EDIT: and of course, in a society where resources are unequally distributed and competition is necessary, freedom means exactly "having your own way at the expense of others," since in order for you to be able to live free others must be deprived of the ability to rob, enslave or kill you. I speak, of course, as I always do, from the perspective of the underdog rather than the rugged he-man survivalist who regards government as a hindrance. I am free to live and repudiate the use of firearms because others are prevented from using them on me. If they weren't, I'd be dead, the ultimate unfreedom.

There are always two classes of people who own guns (FURTHER EDIT: assuming you countenance the ownership of guns in the first place): those who should, and those who shouldn't. Banning guns restricts the membership of both those classes to the minimum, which is fine with me.)

I have pointed out earlier that having a so-called "gun-free zone" in a country where the national law permits guns is about as effective as having a "non-smoking area" in an open-plan restaurant (where smoking was permitted) used to be. If the entire country was a gun-free zone your armed maniac would have had a lot more trouble getting armed, and might well have been picked up before he got the chance to shoot anyone. But let's not let logic get in the way of a passionate appeal to fear. That is, after all, something that America does so well.

Oh, and thanks for the implication that anyone who isn't equipped to kill is "helpless." I take a somewhat broader view of human capabilities than that.