Can you state the argument for Gun Control?

[Horsesense]

I'm trying to debate some antis and as part of that debate, I am honestly trying to restate their position so that, hopefully, they will have to restate my position and think.

This is my attempt:

Gun ownership should be restricted (banned?) because some people do bad things with them. The difficulties involved with restricting or banning gun ownership, the bad guys not turning them in and instead selling them to other bad guys, defenseless good guys etc. do not compare with the overall good that would manifest if gun ownership was restricted or banned. We can trust government to protect us.

How about it? dose someone out there have any insight to the anti argument?


Wars don't determine who is right, they determine who is left. In a culture war, he who writes is the one who will be left

 

[Rumble]

That's one argument. There are a couple others that come up that I have seen, and will try to restate simply:

1. Guns make killing easy, and therefore simplify killing large numbers of people quickly. It is bad to be able to kill a lot of people, so therefore guns are bad.

2. Guns are weapons. Weapons are meant to kill (or injure, at least). Since those things are bad, guns are therefore bad.

3. If we could just get rid of the guns, we would return to a better time, when people didn't kill each other.

and finally,

4. There is never an excuse for violence of any kind, ever, and since guns automatically inspire violence by their very nature, they are bad.


Frankly, the arguments tend to (a) appeal to an imagined "golden age of peace," (b) assume that humans cannot resist the pseudosexual lure of a gun's alleged "inherent violence," or (c) logically reduce to "killing a couple people is no big deal, but anything that lets you kill a lot of people is bad and must be banned."

 

[GEM]

If this is a serious debate then I suggest:

Gun Control and Gun Rights: A Reader and Guide (New York University Press, 2002). David Kopel, Andrew McClurg and Brannon Denning.

They are rational pro and antigun scholars and have a readable dialog about the issue.

When debating antis - one can fall into the trap of calling them traitors, commies, liberals, etc. Standard gun board rhetoric as useful as them calling a progun person as having a small penis or wanting to be a commando.

The legit progun argument is that guns are deadly and used to commit acts of violence. Removing guns would reduce such acts of violence or at least cause less harm to be done. Why should society allow the citizen to have access to instruments that can kill so many?

You will have to counter this view without the inflammatory rhetoric or sounding nuts. Many on gun boards can't do that.

But the book is a good one. Kopel presents the progun side well and McClurg is not a raver.