I am in a debate with a young relative who lives in New Zealand and is very anti-gun. I am going to quote you some of his comments to ask what you all think would be appropriate responses. I have already replied to him but I would be interested in comparing what I said with what you folks think and that might help me in future rounds in this debate. I have edited his comments very slightly so that they make sense out of context. I show his comments in italics as they might be a bit easier for you to quote in your replies than if I wrap them in quote tags.
In reply to me saying that keeping and bearing weapons for personal protection was a fundamental human right, he says:
Well, I don't actually believe in human rights personally, I believe more in a concept of duties and permissions, but I guess there is a right to protect yourself. However that does not relate to a right to harm others. I think if you kill someone in self-defense then you are just as culpable as any other murderer and the fact that you were able to do so because you secrete a weapon on your person each day makes you even more culpable.
He goes on to say:
Criminals generally commit crimes due to a whole range of socio-economic factors in their lives that may be equal in pressure to the desire to defend yourself and they do not deserve to be harmed any more than the person who is having the crime committed against them. We should be focusing on fixing them not killing them.
In reply to my saying that wider gun ownership by law-abiding citizens does not correlate with increased violence, he replies:
The fact is in the USA you have far more people shooting people in 'self-defense' to prevent things like robberies rather than murder attempts, which let's face it, are ridiculously rare in any society and therefore carrying weapons of any kind is completely unjustified. It is not the gun ownership laws that determine crime rates it is society's general attitude to crime and in NZ at least wider gun ownership would never help to reduce crime or make people safer.
Regarding my comment that wide gun ownership could help to defend against a potentially oppressive government, he says:
I'm sure a government hell bent on killing its population would do that but the fact is ours isn't. We trust our government here. Our police may not carry weapons, most do not have access to them although there is consideration at the moment for allowing them to have them in lock boxes in their cars more frequently. Even our army has low numbers of guns with most being trained as engineers, doctors and drivers/pilots to assist in other combat operations overseas without a focus on fighting themselves. We recently had a very large earthquake in Christchurch destroying hundreds of homes and we barely had looting because we actually got our relief workers in there within hours rather than leaving it weeks like you did with Hurricane Katrina. An earthquake the size of Haiti's with 1300 aftershocks thus far still has not resulted in a casualty. I know you are not a fan of governments over regulating things but for us it works. There are alternatives to using weapons to protect yourself and we do that.
In reply to me saying that keeping and bearing weapons for personal protection was a fundamental human right, he says:
Well, I don't actually believe in human rights personally, I believe more in a concept of duties and permissions, but I guess there is a right to protect yourself. However that does not relate to a right to harm others. I think if you kill someone in self-defense then you are just as culpable as any other murderer and the fact that you were able to do so because you secrete a weapon on your person each day makes you even more culpable.
He goes on to say:
Criminals generally commit crimes due to a whole range of socio-economic factors in their lives that may be equal in pressure to the desire to defend yourself and they do not deserve to be harmed any more than the person who is having the crime committed against them. We should be focusing on fixing them not killing them.
In reply to my saying that wider gun ownership by law-abiding citizens does not correlate with increased violence, he replies:
The fact is in the USA you have far more people shooting people in 'self-defense' to prevent things like robberies rather than murder attempts, which let's face it, are ridiculously rare in any society and therefore carrying weapons of any kind is completely unjustified. It is not the gun ownership laws that determine crime rates it is society's general attitude to crime and in NZ at least wider gun ownership would never help to reduce crime or make people safer.
Regarding my comment that wide gun ownership could help to defend against a potentially oppressive government, he says:
I'm sure a government hell bent on killing its population would do that but the fact is ours isn't. We trust our government here. Our police may not carry weapons, most do not have access to them although there is consideration at the moment for allowing them to have them in lock boxes in their cars more frequently. Even our army has low numbers of guns with most being trained as engineers, doctors and drivers/pilots to assist in other combat operations overseas without a focus on fighting themselves. We recently had a very large earthquake in Christchurch destroying hundreds of homes and we barely had looting because we actually got our relief workers in there within hours rather than leaving it weeks like you did with Hurricane Katrina. An earthquake the size of Haiti's with 1300 aftershocks thus far still has not resulted in a casualty. I know you are not a fan of governments over regulating things but for us it works. There are alternatives to using weapons to protect yourself and we do that.
