: I'm following this with interest because there's a sort of gun debate going on here at the moment...: : How about if they own a machine gun, or bubonic plague acquired by illegal means, or a child pornography mag? We sometimes jail people for owning inanimate objects because society has deemed those objects too dangerous to be owned by the public, and so we enforce that decision through the criminal code.
::: To an anarchist, owning jails is worse than owning Bubonic Plague-why do you think people"avoid the cops like the plague?"
: Well, I assume there will be an appropriate execuative authority to deal with this, even in an anarchist society or republic, otherwise people will revert to statism, which the anarchists would hate.
::: What I actually advocate is a balance of military power where each social group has enough power that nobody can gain anything by agressive war against another group-and nobody has the military power to reimpose a state
: : That's really overdoing it. The vast majority of government employees, including those authorized to carry and use weapons, are not psychos.
:::Tell that to the children the Federal Bureau of Incineration burned to death at Waco.
::However, if indeed they are psychos, your owning a handgun or rifle will only result in their flying over your house in a military helicopter and dropping napalm on you -- after all, that's the way psychos operate, i.e., psychotically.
You mean like they did at Waco and they did in Philadelphia to MOVE? at least when thy have to go this far to kill their enemies they cannot cover it up, and they risk that somebody will pop off and do the same too them. Oklahoma City comes to mind as an example of what this kind of behavior can stir up.
: : :For instance, the war on drugs runs into a LOT of trouble with the armed general public in some inner city neighborhoods, and many, many traffic stops have been deterred by the fear of an armed victim(as well as burglaries, etc.)
: : You have it backwards. What an armed public produces are shootings like the Amadiou Diallo case, where the cops shot an unarmed man 41 times because they thought he was armed. The proliferation of handguns, especially in inner city neighborhoods, makes the police afraid (understandbly) and hence more willing to shoot first and ask questions later, as well as increasing their willingness to ignore citizens' rights by conducting warrantless searches and frisks without probable cause.
: This is true aswell, however, these heighbourhoods have such a proliferation of weapons because they feel excluded from the 'service' the police are meant to provide and the amount of gang warfare.
::: The police had no right to stop Diallo in the first place-so if the stop is a crime, than it leading to a death makes it first degree murder under the government' own "felony murder" rule. Personally I wish Diallo had HAD a gun and gotten some of them-he would be no worse off and the enemy would have been made to pay-and if Rodney King had had a gun, perhaps the LA riots that killed 51 people would never have happened no matter who won the gunfight. Also, if the police were SURE Diallo had a gun(and he actually had one and so did everyone else on the street), than everyone would have been playing by the same rules and Amadou Diallo might be alive today(perhaps they would have thought better of stopping Blacks for fitting a description in the first place under these conditions).Also, it's hard for a cop to stick a toilet plunger up a Hatian immigrant's rectum when he(the immigrant) has the option of shooting it out to avoid a torture worse than death(peritonitis).
: : :NOBODY is proposing to take the guns away from the government
: : That's because under our system of government, it is the government's duty to protect citizens from criminals; would you rather have an unarmed government and replace it with citizen's militias which are not publicly accountable to anyone?
:::I feel that the TRUE purpose of government is to protect the RICH from the POOR
: This is a good question, I think that any militia has to be accountable to some kind of executive, even in Spain during the revolution the anarchists militias where accoutable to the trade union executive.
:::see above comments about balance of power and nothing to gain from aggressive war.
: : :and any criminal can make a gun(or a bomb) from a piece of pipe and some homemade powder(a simple procedure).
: : It's far easier for most criminals to obtain a handgun than make a reliable one, and very few criminals hold up people with bombs or engage in drive-by bombings.
::: This would change fast. A drive by bombing is as simple as throwing a grenade from a passing car.
: : As my link above demonstrates, gun control in other countries has resulted in far fewer gun deaths than here in the U.S. Gun control works.
::: Those countries usually have far less violent CULTURES than the U$-and British gun control sure doen't keep guns out of the hands of IRA freedom fighters in the Six Counties.
: : :The hunting issue is completely seperate. Guns were invented for war, not hunting. I do not eat meat, so I do not hunt. Hunting something you do not eat is murder, by the way. If you insist on eating meat, I think you should get a rifle and hunt ALL your own meat so as not to support the horrors of confinement factory farming. If someone wants to eat me, let them come and hunt me, it's better than being raised in prison for food(some of my PETA and COK friends will kill me for saying this,by the way).
: : I said I also agreed with you, and here it is. I'm a hardcore PETA type, but I think it's far preferable for a wild animal to be shot for food, than any animal to be raised in factory farms and killed in slaughterhouses. At least the wild animal is living free and unmolested until killed by the predator (in this case, human). That said, as a healthy vegan I see no reason to eat flesh, and so therefore no reason to hunt by most people (the exception being people who live in the wilderness, but that's not most people).
: Interesting again. However a hunted animal is put through a great deal of distress before it is killed an animal that is butchered in a slaughter house is killed more instantaniously.
:: They most certainly do-all I said is that a slaughtered animal from the store goes through all that plus imprisonment or even total confinement against all motion to reduce appetite and build flab(fat).
The correct answer is not to eat meat(I don't touch it and hate the smell)-my comments on hunting were directed to those who refuse to give up meat.
None.
