I don't carry a gun out of "fear of state actors". I'm pretty sure I'd need more than a 9mm pistol for that. -.-

I don't know of too many "pro-gun" people who also carry and are in favor of large government. Supporting the military in its mission isn't necessarily the same thing. I support those who volunteer to serve, but I also would rather they just be able to stay home and that government be way way smaller than it is.

Aside from possibly wishful thinking what is your basis for any of these beliefs? Having the fire extinguisher doesn't make me safer. Having it and knowing how it use it in the event it is needed contributes to that safety. Having a weapon and knowing how to use it also can raise your odds of surviving an encounter one would likely not want to face with nothing but a reliance on the good nature of someone who has already demonstrated they're willing to harm one to get what they want.

Romancing Alaska, huh? Would you care to rely on your winning debate skills in the relatively unlikely event a Kodiak came calling on your camp?

I wouldn't try to teach a two year old gun safety beyond "don't touch" and then keep them away from them until they've developed the mental capacity for more. I also wouldn't toss the keys to a 3600 pound steel missile, also known as a car, to an 8 year old nor would I hand a chainsaw to 6 year old because these are also recipes for "Are you bloody kidding me?" levels of awful.

None the less, every last one of those items are perfectly safe sitting inanimate and doing nothing. They all require a user to use or misuse. While you can try and fall back on the trope that guns are especially dangerous because of the "they were designed to kill" argument, the fact is that discounting suicides (reasonable as far as I'm concerned absent proof that presence of guns leads to more suicides) cars are twice as dangerous as guns if we're counting fatalities per year. If you somehow believe that discounting suicides isn't fair, then guns are merely as dangerous as cars. From that perspective the misuse of food, in the form of poor and overeating, is way way more deadly and I'm sure there are other examples as well.

The point is, guns are dangerous in the same way that other powerful and yes useful machines are dangerous. Their power means they can cause great harm if misused or used by the untrained. The exact same thing can be said about many things and yet no one is trying to ban them at the moment, are they?

I won't dispute that they were originally exclusively designed as weapons. In that you are quite correct. However, much as they have advanced way beyond the arquebus of the 15th Century their uses these days are far more diverse. Since we're speaking of problems of the current time it makes sense to take that into consideration. Perhaps this is an abstruse point but fair as far as I'm concerned. Target practice may be for destructive purposes or merely for enjoyment and I'd wager that as a function of the percentage of shots for a given purpose that probably out numbers other purposes outside of the military or police.

In any case, it is the use a given user puts it to that really matters in the end and that's the point I was trying to make. When one says that a given item is only for a given purpose and that purpose is ostensibly "bad" then one is merely trying to demonize the object and campaign against it and/or to place all blame for ill-use on the object and not the user.

Your example is looney, however, the gun is still not the dangerous actor. The child, if not properly trained in firearms safety, is the dangerous actor along with someone irresponsible enough to hand a firearm to such a person. The same would be true if one handed it to an untrained and clueless adult.

In other words, you proved the point I made. The gun will sit there and do nothing until the heat death of the universe, baring random events, unless a person picks it up and does something with it. Try again?

Short and possibly flippant answer, because a cop weighs too much.

Longer and more useful answer, because things happen and when it does the odds that a cop or such will be right there is vanishingly small. Sure, you can call the police and should do so. However, even under the very best of conditions it will still take them minutes to get there in a situation where seconds count. Do I have pretensions of being some super bad ass who will take on terrorists and vanquish evil? Don't be silly. I hope I could acquit myself well and have practiced with that in mind, less for terrorists (highly unlikely to ever happen) and more for mundane things, but still.

I have a fire extinguisher, but I am not the fire department. I have car insurance as well, and hope I never have to use any of these things. Yet, if I do I hope to be as prepared as one can reasonably be for such a thing. One could ask why you don't, if I may presume so much, carry one and be prepared as well. One could ask that, but as far as I'm concerned it would be rude to do so as if you don't I presume you have what you feel are good and proper reasons and I would not presume to judge anyone for doing so or not doing so. It's a personal decision and should remain such.

While realizing I replied above as well, I must say it is a fairly reliable indicator. You'll almost certainly never find a person who both says "strict gun control!" and also seriously say "maximum freedom for the individual!" unless they're laying some exceedingly serious caveats on that. While those in favor of guns rights and such may also sometimes lay caveats they don't tend to be as intrusive. Still, not ideal but possibly not as bad depending on whose bull is being gored.

Guns are designed to shoot. They are often used for killing, they are even more frequently (by volume of shots) used for other things. I know lots of people who own and use guns frequently. Strangely, none of them have ever killed a person and only a few have killed anything at all. Guns are tools designed to do a job. Hammers drive nails, saws and axes cut wood, and guns fire projectiles. All of these can kill and all of these have variants which are more or less suited to killing. They also all have variants which would be terrible at killing.

Trying to take tools away is silly when the people who use them evil purposes are still running around doing bad things. Blame the user, not the tool.
 

*looks over at his rifle on the wall* "Oi, kill anyone today?" *silence*

Oh.. right.. inanimate object. Doesn't answer and also doesn't jump off the wall and kill people. Weird that, isn't it?

Odd. I own guns and I carry a gun. Can't say I want power over anyone, unless we're counting myself. I've always found it odd that the people who are most afraid of non-state actors carrying are usually the ones who also want more and more State and centralized power and authority. Thoughts?

I imagine it depends on what one is proposing to do about it. If the danger is vague and ill-defined and questionably real, with a proposed 'fix' which will certainly cause massive economic and other hardships then it isn't as clear cut as you're making it out to be. If the danger was definite and the science truly settled, not this 'may' happen but 'if you don't do XYZ then ABC will definitely happen with a 95% probability' then taking drastic action would be warranted without question. However, with 'may' qualifiers up one way and down the other drastic action cannot reasonably be justified given the reasonably known costs of that action.

A much better line would be "make things more efficient and less polluting because clean air and water are good things and here's how we do it and not tank the economy and force fundamental over night changes". That's a message most people could get behind I'd imagine. Sadly, that isn't the message being put out there.

No one said anything about taking away the money, huge sums of it, which are already taken by government. I simply said there was no logical reason for them to come demanding even more when they have such a terrible record of taking care of what they are already taking. I'm proposing accountability.

Er.. I don't think anyone is suggesting that John RichGuy or Jane RichGirl sends personal checks to Senator ITakeBribes. There's a spot on tax returns to just give money. There are ways to just give money directly to the Treasury for addition to the General Funds.

Then logically they could give whatever they think they should be paying in taxes to the government and then make a big deal about that and encourage others to be as generous. Instead, they're calling for force to be used on others to make them do what they think is right.

That may not be how game theory works, but it would be a lot easier to swallow this attempt at "enforced altruism" if they themselves were already giving significantly more.