Re: GUNS: Why here?

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Sep 23 2000 - 15:49:30 MDT


hal@finney.org wrote:
>
> Samantha writes:
> > Frankly I have had enough friends raped, mugged and even
> > had a second level friend beaten to death. Like most of us I tend not to
> > dwell on these things too much. But I can't help but wonder if one
> > friend would still be alive and if the others would have been a lot less
> > traumatized if they were armed. The issues aren't all academic or a
> > matter of 2nd amendment justifying of not justifying it. These things
> > are also a matter of life and death of real people, some of them quite
> > close to me.
>
> To carry a lethal weapon, as others have pointed out, means adjusting
> your thought processes to the point where you are prepared to exercise
> lethal force. You have to be ready to kill, if you carry a gun.

Yes.

>
> And for it to be useful in the examples cited, you have to be ready to
> kill in response to an assault of less than lethal magnitude. You need
> to be ready to kill in response to robbery, for example.
>

You have to be ready to use whatever force is necessary to defend
yourself and your loved ones, yes. In the case of the friend beaten to
death with baseball bats it certainly was not a less than lethal
situation. In case of rape or mugging it is not at all unknown for the
assailant to freak or wish to remove witnesses and resort to murder.
Having a gun in your hand means you are willing to use it. It doesn't
mean you will use it. Statistically many crimes are stopped by an armed
would be victim or witness with no shot fired.
 
> I don't think most people are ready to kill. I don't think they are
> prepared to personally take a human life. From what I've read, for most
> people (not all) this is a tremendously traumatic experience. To kill
> a human being carries the ultimate degree of finality. You take away
> everything he will ever have and will ever be. There is no chance of
> reconciliation, no chance of recovery, no chance of reparing the damage
> which has been done and beginning to start anew. It's over, permanently
> and forever.
>

Ah, but the same is true if they take away my life or if the take away
the life of someone I care about or seriously assault them and I am
powerless to do anything at all. The damage was done by the assaillant.
It is pointless to blame it on the victims or those who would defend
them.

 
> It seems to me that preparing yourself psychologically for this action
> requires a certain amount of distancing and depersonalizing your
> attitudes towards other people. You can't think of your target as a
> human being with hopes and aspirations, struggling under the weight of
> damaging experiences and harmful thoughts. He needs to be thought of
> impersonally, as a threat to be eliminated.
>

I have not found it to be so in people I know who are armed. At the
point of the threat it is certainly true that you can't take the time
for a philosophical debate or a psychological rap session. Although I
have seen explosively violent situations be defused by this with and
without someone having the force to back up their defense. There is
little that is more personal and immediate than staring in the face of
death or injury at the hands of another human being. At the point
someone treats you as an object of their pleasure or as an it or the
target of their rage at the world it is they who are practicing
impersonalization. Not you in taking the precaution of being able to
defend yourself and others.
 
> In the long run, isn't it possible that this psychological adjustment will
> be damaging to your relationships with other people? Aren't killers (and
> potential killers) going to be a little more cold-blooded, a little more
> impersonal and hard-hearted? Might they not face a burden in setting up
> alliances and working together with other people, compared to those who
> are more trusting, open and accepting of human limitations and weaknesses?
>

Again. I have not seen any such thing in people who are armed. It is
precisely because they care profoundly that many of them are armed.
 
> Taking the responsibility of carrying a gun is going to change you.
> It forces you to think of yourself as a killer, as one who is willing
> to kill. Admittedly, if you actually save your life by carrying the
> gun then any costs it imposes are worthwhile. But the chance that you
> will actually be killed by violence are highly remote.
>

This is assumption piled on assumption. This categorical statement you
make is utterly unjustified.
 
> Given the very small probability of this outcome, the costs in terms
> of your alienation from society must be considered significant. In the
> long run your survival prospects will be hurt by having a lesser degree
> of social connectivity.
>

You have built a magnificent strawman.

- samantha



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