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That violence is considered an acceptable means of change is the reason the second amendment exists at all. This "free republic" was created through a violent uprising and its creators wanted to ensure that violent uprising remained to be a means to change, albeit a method of last resort.

a violent uprising against a minority imposing its will on the majority through the use of force. the thing you're advocating is the thing they fought to stop. they then wrote a constitution that included gun rights and multiple mechanisms for citizens to reevaluate and modify those rights, a constitution that you would abandon in favor of effectively reestablishing minority rule through violence. as i already mentioned, the framers did not write that the second amendment, or any other amendment, was immune from change. that's why we have rules for amendments. that's why we have courts. that's why we have all these checks and balances. you know what doesn't have any checks and balances? mobs with guns.

Tyranny of the majority is still tyranny. Do gay men in Muslim countries really deserve to be thrown off a rooftop simply because the majority of the nation thinks it's alright to do so? It seems like you're alright with oppressing people's rights as long as those people happen to be in the minority.

but the minority enforcing its will on everyone with guns is somehow not tyranny? i can't think of any new ways to say it: when the majorty gets what it wants through free and fair elections and universal sufferage, then no, i don't think that's tyranny. that's democracy. when those votes are nullified because "but i didn't get what i want!," then i think that's tyranny.

"Tough luck, buddy, you voted and it turns out it didn't matter at all, none of your concerns matter!" Haha, good one.

awwwwww i'm so sorry that you didn't always get exactly what you wanted from the electoral process. how sad for you

"tough luck, buddy, you voted in a free and fair election, but fuck that and fuck you, i've got a gun and i'm willing to be violent. do what i say or you'll regret it." yeah that's much freer...

There are thousands of violent revolutions in history that have resulted in what you may say is a desirable outcome. Two of the most powerful countries on the planet have the governments that they do because of violent uprising: the United States and China.

Clearly violence has not only a great impact on change, but a very long lasting one. The French Revolution is my favorite.

it's almost as if my evidence never once said that violence never works ever.

You seem to have a strange idea of how armed resistance takes place, and I think this is why you keep saying "but but this is terrorism!!" Taking a rifle and shooting fifty people at a mall is terrorism. It accomplishes nothing and just generally pisses everyone off. To form a resistance, one must attack the sources of the government's power, which is generally logistics.

well, your advocacy doesn't delineate between justified and unjustified uses of violence beyond "but i really think i'm entitled to that right." i genuinely don't know how what you're saying wouldn't justify a lone gunman simply shooting someone for taking a legal action that the assailant believed infringed on his or her rights. you can't prove what your rights are. there is no objectively verifiable, universally acceptable set of rights. this is the whole reason for codifying our rights into a document that can be modified democratically.

my advocacy provides a super clear delineation: do you live in a democratically free society with universal suffrage? then you should not be violent. you should vote. you should not decide to hurt people because the outcome of the free and fair election didn't go the way you wanted it to. forget about terrorism or authoritarianism. that's just childish.

and with that, i'll let you have the last word. i don't mean that sarcastically; i just doubt we're going to get any further. for the record i'm not saying you're a terrorist. i just don't really get how anyone could be more outraged at 75% outvoting the rest to get its way than 25% out violence-ing the rest to get its way. there will never be universal agreement on anything. lets resolve our differences with votes instead of guns.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Gun Rights: The Definitive Edition

« on: August 14, 2016, 03:33:39 PM »

Actually, our divergence is in what procedures we deem acceptable. I never once stated that violence always has a desirable, or even righteous, outcome. You've placed that idea of me into your own mind.

my criticism is that you think violence is an acceptable mode of political change in a free republic, not that you think it's always good. our divergence is that i think the procedure should be "one person, one vote," not "one person + x guns, x votes."

We're both arguing this, it seems. It is simply that you believe some X amount of citizens have more of a right to govern themselves then some Y amount. I am trying to point out that the notion of "if 75% of the people believe gun ownership is not a right, then it isn't" is inherently wrong, because that last 25% of people might not agree. And if that last 25% of people sufficiently rebel to make their voices heard, either through the ballot box or the ammo box, then so be it.

lol. you really don't get it, do you? in the losers of a 75/25 vote split decide to use force and violence to change the outcome, that's authoritarianism at best and terrorism at worst. there isn't any other way to describe it. you're just using guns to nullify votes. nullifying votes with guns is, to me, the exact opposite of living in a free society.

but...but...the tyranny of the majority! lmao. yeah shit doesn't always work out the way you want, but you got your vote, and that's how democracies go. since it's not a dictatorship where the folks with guns write the rules, then there will be future opportunities to lobby for what you want. frankly, "if 75% of the people [in a free republic] believe gun ownership is not a right, then it isn't" is more sensical than "if i really really really think it's a right, then it must be a right and everyone else must agree with me." protip: you can't prove to anyone what your rights are. feeling really really entitled to something isn't a demonstration that you actually are.

History disagrees. Ideas like "peace solves all" is why Islam is winning an ideological war with the West. Europe is the new Byzantine Empire and let's watch how fast it falls.

you're obviously not interested in a factual discussion of the merits of nonviolence. hint: "peace solves all" isn't anywhere in the literature.

empirically, nonviolent resistance is a more effective means of affecting political change than violence, even when it comes to resisting totalitarian regimes. the literature on this subject is compelling.

since 1900, nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their objectives as violent campaigns, and they come at a much lower cost.

civil resistance is empirically better at securing rights.

terrorism is empirically awful at achieving its objectives.

Something tells me that gathering in a big public group whilst brandishing rifles may very well be the worst possible way to go about protecting the second amendment.

if you think that, then i'm not sure how you think using them is going to be better for you, but whatever.

that said, nonviolent protests would be much more effective in this specific instance because it doesn't alienate you from either the military, or the rest of the population. if guns were actually outlawed, the best thing you could do would be to protest in large numbers and not shoot anyone. prove to citizens and the rest of the globe that you aren't violent and that guns aren't about that. let the federal government arrest people and use their own force if they want. that only makes you look better to everyone else, including military personnel who are more likely to align themselves with a nonviolent movement than one that is shooting at them.

if you think an armed resistance against the government to secure the right to own some shit you really really really think you should get to own, then i would point out that this actually happened once and didn't go well for the instigators at all.

1095

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Gun Rights: The Definitive Edition

« on: August 13, 2016, 02:40:58 PM »

i think our primary divergence is that you view this through a lens of outcomes and not procedures, and i think that preference is at the heart of totalitarianism. in other words, your arguments suggest to me that you would take no issue with living under an authoritarian regime so long as that regime gives you want you believe you're entitled to. you'd be fine living with lenin so long as lenin says you can own guns.

i'm more interested in whether or not our society is procedurally free, and i don't think that procedural freedom can exist in a world in which votes are nullified by violence to achieve an outcome.

Quote from: garygreen on August 12, 2016, 02:49:59 PM
in the context of a freshman ethics seminar, i completely agree. in the context of 'when is it acceptable to use violence to get what you want," i completely disagree.
Then we're at a basic impasse, then. You agree violence isn't acceptable and I agree that it is.

let's assume that i think violence is sometimes acceptable. i still don't think individuals or groups should get to unilaterally create their own laws, and then enforce those laws on others using violence. that's all you're saying when you talk about how not everything that is legal is permissible. forget terrorism: the unchecked use of violence by one group to enforce its views on all the others is pretty much the definition of authoritarianism. that you're advocating turning this violence against the democratic will of the citizens is even more authoritarian.

What's the difference between a group of people demanding a certain action be taken or they'll punish you versus the government doing the same thing? You seem to give the term "government" more weight than people in general. The true pinnacle of authoritarianism and fascism: the government knows what is best for you, even if you don't agree.
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You may be willing to bend over for others, but I am not. You are the 'useful idiots' that Lenin loved. Only the government should be armed, my dear citizen, as you are not able to defend yourself. Only the government should provide healthcare, dear citizen, as you are not able to care for yourself. Only the government should provide food, dear citizen, as you are not able to feed yourself.

The federal government needs to learn which pies it can stick its fingers in and which pies are going to get its fingers burnt.

dunno how much more clear i can be. i am not saying that citizens should not own guns, nor that state violence is preferable to non-state violence, nor that the state should monopolize the capacity to use force. i am saying that, in a free republic, all citizens, even those who work for the state (especially those who work for the state), should be bound to to the constitution. their adherence to it should not be resisted with force and violence.

at no point have i suggested that "the government knows what's best for you." i'm arguing that citizens should govern themselves, that our constitution in this republic facilitates that self-governance, and citizens who unilaterally usurp that facility are doing something both illegal and immoral. you're using guns to nullify votes. that's all you're suggesting.

if lenin comes back to life, seizes dc and rips up the constitution, then i'll have more sympathy for your position. until then, you're comparing leninism to the us constitution, and i don't buy it at all.

It's not surprising that more extreme measures must be taken to ensure your rights are where they should be.
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That depends on what you call a "free republic." A republic that has citizens which cannot own weapons is not free at all in my eyes.

there is no objective measure of what your rights "should be." there is no universal agreement on what counts as a right or not. this is my whole point. since we live in a society that uses voting/words/rules/persuasion to determine those rights and their boundaries, then let's keep doing that instead of the "might makes right" world you so desperately want to live in. again, that's how we get mosul. i don't want to live in mosul.

To wish the world is a different place and to do little to make it so is the gravest of sins.

then you should abandon your support for force and violence as a means of political change. nonviolent resistance is empirically much more effective than violence at achieving the goals of its users.

the most effective protest that second amendment supporters could mount against a government trying to disarm them would be to, very publicly and with much protest, simply refuse to relinquish them.

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Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Gun Rights: The Definitive Edition

« on: August 12, 2016, 02:49:59 PM »

for context, except that i don't believe in god or the divinity of christ, i'm basically a quaker, so i pretty much never think it's ok to be violent.

Actually, that's not at all how laws work. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it's justifiable or socially acceptable to perform a legal action.

in the context of a freshman ethics seminar, i completely agree. in the context of 'when is it acceptable to use violence to get what you want," i completely disagree.

You keep wanting to make this a "well, you think violence is only okay when you do it." No, I believe the right to be armed and fight for what you believe in is justifiable for every human being. Just as it is the right of the people they are fighting to fight back.

my problem is actually with the latter. i don't think it's ok to hurt others simply because you really really really believe that you're entitled to the thing you're demanding. that's just terrorism, and i don't think it's an acceptable mode of political change in a free republic.

How many people really believe universal healthcare is worth fighting for? Or any other given group? When you approach a "very many" answer, then you get violence. We're seeing groups like BLM approach that answer and that is their right.

i think this is the very problem that the constitution is designed to solve: everyone disagrees on what their rights ought to be, so let's let the people settle those differences with rules and words, not force and violence. i don't want to live in a place where it's ok for groups and individuals to settle those disagreements with violence. those places already exist and they fucking suck.

In other words, you want to force people to adhere to your beliefs, you simply don't like that other people try to do the exact same thing, albeit they take a different route.

twist my words all you like, but i was super clear: i want the president, whomever that may be, to do what is lawful and constitutional, regardless of whether or not i personally like or agree with the outcome. i would never suggest that president trump's supreme court nominee should be resisted with force or violence.

You live in a place that only exists because once upon a time a great amount of people unilaterally usurped the law. If you don't want to rock the boat, then I suggest you stop moving around.

they didn't unilaterally usurp a free republic, which is what we are. they didn't overthrow a democratically elected government. they actually fought and died to create the very document that you apparently have absolutely no regard for.