"why do you need" & "speech doesn't kill"

[ProactiveReactionary]

i dont answer the question and i never will. i am not required to justify myself or why i own something.

the mere fact a person is asked this bothers me a lot. its none of their business and noone is required to justify themselves to another person.

i dont discuss such things with other people. asking me isnt going to change your mind so obviously you asked to start an argument or to tell me how wrong i am and you're going to try and change my mind. why do some people feel this overbearing need to do this to others? i never ask anyone to justify themselves to me, and i'm certainly not going to let them do it to me.

the best thing you can do is turn around and simply walk away saying nothing to them. giving them any answer, is giving them an opening for them to try and argue with you or tell you how wrong you are. they wouldnt like it if you did it to them but they sure enjoy doing it to others.

i am sick and tired of people telling me whats best for me, i'm tired of people telling me that if i think a certain way i'm stupid or "wrong" because its not what they think or believe. this is a nation where we are free to live our life our way, we are not required to answer such questions and quite frankly we shouldnt be answering them, they arent listening anyway so why waste your time and your breath?

 

[c_yeager]

In my frequent debates with the libs in Frisco,CA I all ways have to answer the "why do you need a gun" question. I usually reply with a why do you need a newspaper or Koran or Bible and tell them my rights are just as important as theirs. You know free speech and stuff, 9 times out of 10 they say that speech don't kill and I say my rights are not up for negotiation,but I am looking for a better answer.

To continue your original analogy you could simply counter by asking "How many people have died in the name of the Bible and the Koran?" It's not DIRECTLY applicable but, i think it makes the point well enough that speech can and does "kill"*

*(by THEIR logic)

By my logic speech doesnt kill people in the same way that guns dont kill people. There always has to be someone pulling the trigger (literally or metaphoricaly). This would be my preffered argument but, i think that your friends may not be able to grasp it.

 

[gunsmith]

thank you everybody

for the great ammo to use in my frequent debates,one women stopped talking to me all together when I told her I said prayer on election eve
asking God to dump daschle and re-elect GW.
I belong to a club that due to it being frisco is almost all lib,some times it a real hoot,one lawyer told me she "knows more about politics then (you) ever will" so I asked her "who is the Vice Pres? she didn't know!!!

 

[Anna G.]

"I'm a free man. Why the hell do I need to justify myself to you?"

If you are in the debate, arent you already in the position to be obliged to justify yourself? Besides we live in a society so unfortunately once in awhile what we do affects others and we need to explain our actions. The point of the particular debate is to prove that the fact that you own firearms wont affect the other people in any negative way.

I wouldnt mention the Second amendment, which usually happens. It was written long time ago, by people who also thought slavery is ok (right?). Your opponent would tell you that and from there you might get stuck into emotional debate over the american founding fathers, which wont lead to anything. You dont have a right to own firearms because exactly the second amendment says so. You own firearms because it is your basic right.

 

[MrMurphy]

I've nearly had to defend myself with the gun I was carrying three times in four years (one turned out to be a false alarm, the other two were quite real).

Yeah. Tell me I don't "Need" one or I'm paranoid... uh huh.


Speech doesn't kill? Osama Bin Laden doesn't seem to think so.

And just remember,without the Second Amendment, the rest disappear.

 

[TechBrute]

The pen, more often than some people think, is mightier than the sword.

Yes, but only when farther than one sword length away.

 

[Tomac]

I tell them one or both of two things:
1) To protect myself & my family from criminals when society can't or won't (the police have no legal obligation to protect individual citizens).
2) Should a govt become tyrannical and unresponsive to the will of the people, do the people have the right to use force *as a last resort* to remove such a govt?
If "yes" then what tools would be used to effect such a removal if not firearms? If "no" then was the American Revolution an illegal act of armed insurrection against our lawful govt requiring our return to subject status in the UK?
Tomac

 

[Wayne D]

Never mind.

 

[shep854]

"Words don't kill?"

If a lib thinks words are harmless, utter two words, then run !

The two words? "Rush Limbaugh"

Guaranteed to send a lib into orbit without a booster.

 

[Mike Hull]

Your right to own firearms just about assures the lib's right to abuse free speech.

The right to free speech was won by a trooper carrying a gun, not a protester shrieking in the street.
Those same rights are maintained by the gun(or threat of it), when it all comes down to it.

 

[junyo]

"why do you need"
I love Ted Nugent's answer: "To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic."

Or Thomas Jefferson's: "I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery."

I'm a free citizen in a free country. Need isn't the issue; choice and freedom are. I choose to take an active role in my self preservation, rather than count on the nanny state to do it for me.

 

[Fletchette]

With regards to the numerous advice that speech actually does kill -

Ask your anti-gun adversary if they support censorship. Chances are, they don't. Most liberals don't. Point out that many "developed" countries have outlawed Mein Kampf (France/Germany), The Communist Manifesto, etc. because "they kill".

Not supporting censorship is "radical Americanism".

America is SUPOSSED to be different than these countries.

If they do support censorship, then ask them who gets to decide what is censored? Bush?

 

[Jim K]

Speech doesn't kill? How can anyone hold that view and also claim that the "pen is mightier than the sword"? Speech and writing don't kill?

The Koran.

Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Mein Kampf.

Das Kapital.

The "Little Red Book".

And, yes, the Bible.

All have instigated, condoned or been used to justify the killing of millions. And many, many more books, not to mention speech by Mohammed, Hitler, Stalin, and thousands of other murderers and fanatics.

Jim

 

[junyo]

Speech doesn't kill? How can anyone hold that view and also claim that the "pen is mightier than the sword"? Speech and writing don't kill?

The Koran.

Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Mein Kampf.

Das Kapital.

The "Little Red Book".

And, yes, the Bible.

All have instigated, condoned or been used to justify the killing of millions. And many, many more books, not to mention speech by Mohammed, Hitler, Stalin, and thousands of other murderers and fanatics.

And love has "instigated, condoned or been used to justify" countless murders. John Hinckley Jr. tried to kill Reagan because of his love for Jodi Foster. Does that mean that love (or for that matter Jodi Foster) kill? I love my girlfriend, yet have managed to somehow restrain myself from killing her. In the same manner, the last time I checked the total number of people slaughtered by my Bible was zero; and pages of my Quoran are also remarkably bloodfree, although perhaps I should start keeping them in a locked cabinet.

Anything can be rationalized by the unbalanced mind to justify any action. Speech is speech; to make it equivalent with actions is to ask that the basic tool of civilization - the ability to communicate thoughts and ideas - be censored or regulated as actions are. Thinking people ingest ideas, evaluate them, incorporate the ones they find useful, and discard the rest. They take personal responsibility for their actions. Cowards blame a book, or TV, or their parents, or someone other than themselves for their actions, any external scapegoat to absolve them of personal responsibility. Idiots think cowards have a point. Tyrants count on it, on the willingness of people to defer responsibility to authority. To surrender this point, and to think this way, yields a crucial point to anti's; namely that individuals cannot be trusted with certain things because individuals cannot be held responsible for all of their actions.

 

[Archie]

The "You don't need..." lie

This statement makes three assumptions, all of which are false.

1. The speaker assumes he or she can decide what anyone else 'needs'. Ask, and keep asking until you get a real answer, "What authority do you have to determine the 'needs' of other free citizens?"

2. The speaker assumes laws should be written based on 'no need'. What other items should be prohibited on the basis of 'no need'. Do not accept any change of argument, like 'guns kill'; the speaker has claimed the propriety of legal prohibition based on 'no need".

3. Factually, the speaker is wrong. Citizens need guns. Don't offer any reasoning, just demand they prove you are wrong.

 

[Ky Larry]

Because all the nasty people aren't in jail.

 

[sm]

I had a anti for English Lit , yes the one I have mentioned before.

Anyway ran into her at a Live Theatre performance and she "was afraid" to walk out to her car...someone might "get her" after the performance . Now she asked if I and those with me would walk her out. I said no and suggested she get the Theatre to provide security for her, perhaps have her cell phone in hand with 911 on speed dial. I was polite , but firm.

We had been round and round about how her native UK was more "civilized" with gun control and she felt ( preached) how the US could / should learn from the UK.

Real obvious my thoughts on that - I made sure if it.

She obviously made it because she was on campus Monday morning.

I felt an object lesson in real life would do more good than words.

 

[jefnvk]

I just thought up an off the wall one. Ask the liberals what they are going to do in four years when W. refuses to leave office, if they don't have guns

 

[rms/pa]

had to go to the courthouse to get a copy of my marriage license.

while checking my carry piece the deputy asked "why do i need to carry?"

my answer " because bad things happen to good people in nice places."

no more comment.

rms/pa

 

[kfranz]

Many good points made so far. I find, at least when I'm in a less civil mood, I usually answer "because despite the millions of freedom minded folks in this country, there are some just like you." Works even better when they ask me why I "need" to buy ammo by the k.....

 

[RavenVT100]

they ask me why I "need" to buy ammo by the k.....

Because it's cheaper that way.

 

[Nickotym]

Doesn't John Ross have an article about rephrasing the argumanet to use against gunbanners? I was looking for it on his website, but have not looked through his posts here yet. Anyone know offhand where to find it?

Thanks

 

[Sam Adams]

"why do you need" & "speech doesn't kill"

I, like all of you, have had some anti- ask me that question and/or heard that inane statement. My answer depends upon who is asking the question.

1. If it is someone who shares my Jewish heritage, I simply remind them about the Holocaust, and let them know that even if I'm going to die, I'm going to take as many of my murderers with me as possible. Further, I like to quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who said:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! "If. . . if . . . We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! . . . We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."

(Note 5, page 13, Vol. 1, The Gulag Archipelago).

I then refer these people to #2-#4, below:

2. If it is someone else, I remind them that bad people cannot be legislated or genetically engineered out of existence, nor are they all locked up. They have the ability to get anywhere at any time, just as I do, and the police cannot be everywhere at once to protect all people. Further, I wouldn't want to live in a society where there were so many police that such a thing was possible. Further yet, the morality of giving up the means of defending yourself and expecting someone who has been hired to do so to put their life on the line for "your sorry @ss" is, at best, highly questionable.

3. The simple fact is that our most precious gift from the Creator is life, and any failure to protect that gift is not only stupid (you only have one life), but is an affront to/sin against the Creator.

4. Finally, I remind them that the reason we have a 2nd Amendment is to protect us against all enemies, foreign AND domestic - and that this specifically means the government. Human nature hasn't changed since the beginning of recorded history, and won't for the forseeable future. Given that, we as a society of free individuals MUST keep the means of resistance to tyranny in our hands, first to deter the imposition of a tyranny and second, if necessary, to defeat one that was imposed despite the existence of those arms in civilian hands.

The bottom line is that citizens have arms, slaves do not.

BY THE WAY, one neat comeback to the libs when they say that "words don't kill" is to say, "OK, then, let's get rid of all of the 'hate speech' laws - if, after all, words don't kill, then they cannot injure, either (since every injury has the potential to kill), and then there is no point to them. It doesn't fully address the issue, but it is a good way to take lots of the wind out of their sails.

 

[Top_Notch]

Liberals sometimes have a way in asking a question in which there is no clear cut answer, and even the best answer results in a no win situation. A typical question, such as "Have you yet to stop beating your wife?" Answer yes, well, that implies you have beat her in the past. Answer no, and guess what!

IMO, the same logic applies to "Why do you need a gun?" Firearm ownership has nothing to do with that question. A more appropriate reply is "Why do you need to infringe upon my rights granted to me under the Second Amendment?" I have a right to own it, given to me under the Bill Of Rights. That should be enough cause for me to own one. If the liberal is not satisfied with that, then perhaps they should educate themselves in the other rights we have. Or, perhaps, reply that the SA exists in case the others are taken from us.

 

[zaijian]

They say: "why do you need guns?" (or A gun, if they don't know me )

I say: "why do you have insurance?"

Others say: "why not a 9mm?"

I say: "I choose to have more coverage"



A gun is just applied physics, chemistry, and metallurgy - much like the internal combustion engine. It is the efficient application of force. To those who wish to "unmake" all guns, I say they can do without the wheel as well.

To say that a gun is more inherently responsible for a violent act than the will of the perpetrator is to believe in ghosts.