Open Carry: How do you feel about it?

[Mycroft Holmes]

I am for having it be legal based on one point really. And that is that the government should avoid legislating morality as much as it possibly can. People need to be allowed to make their own mistakes and live their own lives. Seeing someone with an openly carried gun does not freak me out, make me afraid, or make me feel safe. And criminals will just get guns anyways because they don't care about laws.

I'm curious about this, maybe the government can legislate about morality (something I totally agree with), but surely it can legislate about safety. You say it yourself, guns are dangerous. And not just to their owners, but to others, particularly children (and yes, I am saying "Oh think of the children!" but it's a valid point when we're putting their lives at risk).

I've never seen gun control as a moral issue (though I'm British, I realise it's treated differently in the US), I've seen it more as a safety issue.

Not attacking you or anything, genuinally interested in why you think this is a moral issue as opposed to a safety issue.

I'm assuming you mean *can't* legislate about morality, which is incorrect as it absolutely does even at its basest level. Eg. laws about murdering and stealing which simply happen to be moral points that everyone except say eugenicists and communists(yes government mandated stealing is still stealing) agree with.

As for your question/point gun control is both a safety and a moral issue. When a government tries to legislate on safety then morality becomes inextricably intertwined in the problem. The reason for this is because governments really only use one way of getting people to do anything. That tool being violence.

They can bring military force to bear and kill you. They can pepper spray you, tear gas you or otherwise cause you bodily harm. They can send their agents to beat you up, arrest you, lock you in a cell for all your life. And it is that threat of force that backs up all their laws. Sure they can more heavily tax you as a deterrent to owning a gun, which outwardly does not seem like a violent action, but if you don't pay those taxes they will send their police to take from you with force. Thus any issue of legislating safety will be backed up how? With force.

The problem with legislating safety then, is the morality of it and the question of where does it stop. Do we have a duty or a moral justification to threaten others with incarceration or with fines backed up by incarceration if they don't act in a safe manner?

And where does it stop? While I agree that guns likely do more harm than good at this point, there are a lot more problems of safety that are statistically much much larger than guns will ever be. Where then should the line be drawn? Consuming tons of hamburgers is unhealthy, dangerous and expensive on a level that guns will never be. Do we outlaw them? Force companies to reduce fat content? Perhaps a yearly hamburger quota?

That may seem like a silly argument, but if we are really concerned about legislating to save lives, that would be one of the first and easiest places to cut back on deaths if we were so inclined. And there are dozens if not hundreds of others that we can legislate that would come in line before necessitating gun control.

In living life one will always risk bodily harm at some point. We will eat crap foods, we will own guns, we will drive too fast on the freeway, many of us will not wear seat belts, people will drink and run their mouths, people will push their bodies to their respective limits diving deep into the ocean or climbing high into mountains even going to far as to sleep dangling thousands of feet into the air held up only by a stake they pounded into the mountainside themselves. At a certain point you have to accept that you just can't control people to make their lives better. You can teach them in hopes of letting them make better choices, but at the end of the day you have to let them live their own lives and make their own mistakes for better or for worse.

 

[WeAreStevo]

For a second, I was hoping this was about being able to have an open container on the street (i.e. street drinking).

I was super stoked because I'm tired of having to hide my beer at various events around town

As for open carry (and for the 2nd ammendment in general) I completely abhor guns, but if you MUST have one, then I'd prefer it be holstered and visible rather than hidden.

However, I think it shouldn't apply to ALL guns. Just like how knives are ok if sheathed, there are still restrictions (blade length, whether or not the sheath allows for the knife to be automatically opened upon removal from the sheath etc.)

Same should apply to guns.

Small caliber hand guns = ok.

Assault rifles = no.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

From a Canadian perspective, I'd feel a little intimidated being around a city full of people open-carrying firearms like they were pocket pens or something, honestly. Up in Canada, the only guns I have ever seen in my life are either an antique that my grandfather still has from his service in the navy decades back.. or on the belt of the occasional cop I come across. We really don't have a firearms culture like the U.S. does, so the appeal of guns in the media and as a hobby isn't really as notable at all, either. More of a "Meh" thing (at least, from what I've witnessed during my stays and tours of Vancouver Island, B.C. and Alberta).

Although to speak hypothetically here, I would prefer open-carry to concealed when push comes to shove. It's less nerve-wracking to know the person sitting across from you has a gun, rather than having to spend a moment guessing if they are packing three different kinds of heat under their shirt, pants or coat..

 

[TorqueConverter]

I dislike both concealed carry and open carry of handguns. Handguns are terrible weapons. Their precision is dismal at best and only serve as a visual deterrent when brandished. Did I mention brandishing can get you killed or landed in prison unless your life is clearly threatened? I believe in the right to defend your home from invasion with lethal force weather it be a shotgun or handgun, but common sense says "use the shotgun." I dislike handguns. Any legislation to limit and restrict the use of handguns, especially in a public setting, I support.

 

[orangeban]

snip

I'm assuming you mean *can't* legislate about morality, which is incorrect as it absolutely does even at its basest level. Eg. laws about murdering and stealing which simply happen to be moral points that everyone except say eugenicists and communists(yes government mandated stealing is still stealing) agree with.

As for your question/point gun control is both a safety and a moral issue. When a government tries to legislate on safety then morality becomes inextricably intertwined in the problem. The reason for this is because governments really only use one way of getting people to do anything. That tool being violence.

They can bring military force to bear and kill you. They can pepper spray you, tear gas you or otherwise cause you bodily harm. They can send their agents to beat you up, arrest you, lock you in a cell for all your life. And it is that threat of force that backs up all their laws. Sure they can more heavily tax you as a deterrent to owning a gun, which outwardly does not seem like a violent action, but if you don't pay those taxes they will send their police to take from you with force. Thus any issue of legislating safety will be backed up how? With force.

The problem with legislating safety then, is the morality of it and the question of where does it stop. Do we have a duty or a moral justification to threaten others with incarceration or with fines backed up by incarceration if they don't act in a safe manner?

And where does it stop? While I agree that guns likely do more harm than good at this point, there are a lot more problems of safety that are statistically much much larger than guns will ever be. Where then should the line be drawn? Consuming tons of hamburgers is unhealthy, dangerous and expensive on a level that guns will never be. Do we outlaw them? Force companies to reduce fat content? Perhaps a yearly hamburger quota?

That may seem like a silly argument, but if we are really concerned about legislating to save lives, that would be one of the first and easiest places to cut back on deaths if we were so inclined. And there are dozens if not hundreds of others that we can legislate that would come in line before necessitating gun control.

In living life one will always risk bodily harm at some point. We will eat crap foods, we will own guns, we will drive too fast on the freeway, many of us will not wear seat belts, people will drink and run their mouths, people will push their bodies to their respective limits diving deep into the ocean or climbing high into mountains even going to far as to sleep dangling thousands of feet into the air held up only by a stake they pounded into the mountainside themselves. At a certain point you have to accept that you just can't control people to make their lives better. You can teach them in hopes of letting them make better choices, but at the end of the day you have to let them live their own lives and make their own mistakes for better or for worse.

Hmm, interesting. So interesting I'll even forgive the jab against communists

The difference between owning a gun and eating a hamburger, is that owning the gun poses a threat to others and to the government/police. You only harm yourself when you eat a hamburger. In Britain we've put the lives of many, over the rights of one, with our strict gun control.

The other difference is a matter of the benefits of guns. If we look how Britain manages it, we're allowed to own a shotgun or a rifle, but nothing else. We've also got to have a reason for owning it, and protecting against burglars isn't a reason. Pretty much the only acceptable reasons are that you're a farmer and you need to kill pests (like foxes or rabbits), or if you're a hunter. Shooting ranges are allowed more guns, but they have to stay on the shooting range.

Basically the British government has looked at guns and said, "Alright, if you can justify endangering others, you can keep it". It was a similar argument when they made it law to wear a seatbelt, "Is there any reason to not wear a seatbelt?" (remember that a sudden death of someone (through car crash for example) has serious effects on family and friends). They eventually said no, there wasn't.

We're allowed to eat hamburgers for two reasons, they taste nice and they don't harm anyone other than ourselves.

But I do see your point, well made.

 

[Mycroft Holmes]

The difference between owning a gun and eating a hamburger, is that owning the gun poses a threat to others and to the government/police. You only harm yourself when you eat a hamburger. In Britain we've put the lives of many, over the rights of one, with our strict gun control.

We'll as I believe I said(without going back through my post) the reason for guns being legal in the US is so that we can protect ourselves from our government and our police who do not always have our best interests in mind.

Basically the British government has looked at guns and said, "Alright, if you can justify endangering others, you can keep it". It was a similar argument when they made it law to wear a seatbelt, "Is there any reason to not wear a seatbelt?" (remember that a sudden death of someone (through car crash for example) has serious effects on family and friends). They eventually said no, there wasn't.

I don't really believe the emotional damage argument holds much water. My parents often distressed over my low performance in school and my lackadaisical attitude towards failing classes, to the point where my mother would openly cry. While I have personally resolved that problem(I endeavored to get better grades, I didn't surgically close her tear ducts,) my point is that you cant control the emotions of others. You can't control what makes them sad and you can't legislate to ensure no one is emotionally hurt any more than you can legislate to ensure that no one is offended by the opinions/statements of others. It simply takes too much time, too much money, and requires people making the laws to somehow be unbiased and benign on a level that almost no one in the entire history of mankind has ever been. And it requires that those in charge stay that way, because all that need change to make the system tyrannical is a few new bad politicians.

The point of seat belts though, is less to prevent the individual from dying as it is to make one singular blanket law(so that is more easily enforced) that will protect others in a very basic and easily solvable way. The problem is that when a car crash occurs, someone who isn't wearing their seat belt becomes a human projectile. The transfer of force turns them into a 100-200 pound cannon ball traveling at high speed that is more than capable of killing multiple people in the car even if those people were wearing seat-belts. So anyone reading this, please make everyone in your car wear seat-belts, its for your safety as much as theirs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzvzqaicMz0&feature=related

We're allowed to eat hamburgers for two reasons, they taste nice and they don't harm anyone other than ourselves.

I can think of two examples right off the top of my head where it harms others directly and indirectly. Did you pop out of the womb with the situational awareness and maturity to feed yourself? Perhaps you're some kind of nutrition savant, but I doubt anyone is capable of making informed decisions on what they should eat until they are at least in middle school. And personally I still have a horrible diet at 23. But my point is that the parents feed the child their every meal for at least a decade(likely longer) of that child's development.

Even worse, a mothers diet, will effect the child on a very basic level while the child is still in utero. I have seen plenty of awful parents feed their children McDonalds day in and day out; and at least in the US, childhood obesity is on the rise. And with that point you have to consider all the other dangerous ways a parent can effect child development. Do we legislate all of those to prevent one person from harming another? Do we create a nutrition panel and any woman who has a bad diet during pregnancy is jailed for the harm she caused to the fetus?

And what about the harm it causes to the health care system. Under a purely capitalistic health care system it increases the number of people coming into hospitals and thus increases the cost of any procedure and of any stay in the hospital for anyone requiring medical help for other problems, thus directly reducing the care of others while increasing the costs of anyone who needs medical help. Under a socialist system the increased burden on the system would not only once again reduce the care for all patients, but also increase taxes(or divert funds from other government expenditures) in order to pay for it. Which then creates increased economic difficulties for everyone so that the people who can't figure out how to take care of their bodies can have the healthcare they 'deserve(?)'.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

i think i would prefer a noticable gun to a hidden one as at least then its deffinatly for detering attacks rather than killing someone in a fight

One would tink so, but tere was a case in te news recently about someone getting robbed because tey were carrying openly

I don't see te reason or advertising tat you ave a gun, ten te criminal knows wo to avoid or target irst