Comparing Rights

[TheFeniX]

Oh fuck off with your nitpicking and anecdotal evidence, asshole.

And I'm the one that's mad.

We are talking about firearms as a historic milestone, which is why I said that gunmakers are constantly looking for lighter materials to make guns out of.

No, YOU were talking about historic milestones. I was pointing out the idea that handling gun recoil is some kind of jedi knight power, when it's obviously not, is just wrong. That many guns are "damn heavy" is stupid. If I were arguing like you, I'd just say "Aw man, Claymores are heavy, so swords aren't that much better than rocks."

Lighter materials really mean dick when it comes to service weapons. The Glock 19, .38 special, Colt 1911, Colt Army SIngle-action: they're all the in 2-3lbs range. They've stuck around that weight for a reason. Lighter materials have not made an individual shot more deadly, they merely allow higher ammo capacity or larger frames for the same weight. Even .44 Magnums are only in the 3.5-4lbs range. Because even hand-cannons cannot be too heavy.

Two-handed swords are around, what, 6-10lbs? Aw man, and rifles are sooooooo much heavier than that. Fuck, even the Repeater Rifle (which won the fucking west) is only 10lbs. I'd bet money flintlocks were around the same weight, likely even lighter considering no ammo capacity. But no man, elephant guns and Barrets exists so "gunz be heavy, yo. Only fit doods need apply."

And the best part about the gun is I'm not swinging/stabbing it around to do damage. I can march all day and my bullets don't become less deadly. If you can lift and steady up to 10lbs, which a metric shitload of the populace can manage, but you seem to think makes them The Hulk, you can fire a gun repeatedly and effectively with little training.

This small girl can handle adult sized guns and has access to more deadly force than numerous trained soldiers with melee weapons, that force applied with little effort. Give her an adult melee weapon, let me know how she does.

I also found a video of a woman in a bikini shooting an AR-15. I... have to watch it a few more times....... for research purposes....

They are not, however, magical death wands that anyone can pick up and immediately use effectively. You might be able to teach someone the fundamentals in a day, but that's because you can serve as a teacher to that person. Without a teacher, someone is just as likely to hurt themselves as use the thing correctly.

Here, let me attempt getting mad: "No one said that you shitspewing moron."

A modern handgun is so easy to use, you could figure it out just by reading the fucking instruction manual. And that's an automatic, the instructions for a revolver is like, "put in bullets, close cylinder, don't point at face, pull trigger." Cartridge loading firearms made guns into an every(wo)man weapon.

Sure, if I stumbled upon a live grenade with no idea what it was, I might be dumb enough to pull the pin and kill myself. But, are grenades hard to use? Hell, no: pull pin, throw grenade. Guns are not hard to use.

I also never mentioned the "huf durg, might hurt muhself" bullshit from you because it's pointless. Yea, shooting yourself with a gun would hurt more than cutting yourself with a sword. You got me there. Take that shit to the store and buy some IDGAF. Way to just completely avoid the point.

And from my own experiences, that one day is not sufficient to become truly accurate or able to use the thing in a violent encounter.

Oh, so now we're moving to "protection" and not use. It's nice you let me know that.

I'm sure a master fencer would dive face-first into death because he has years of training with an oversized toothpick. The ability to handle stressful situations without freaking out is only related to weapon competence because that competence gives you confidence. Mucking about in a renfair with some homemade chainmail and a replica longsword doesn't make you a soldier.

Soldiers and cops don't get over their self-preservation instincts with weapon experience. The get over it with combat/law enforcement experience.

But, in one day of training, a person will be vastly more effective with a firearm than any melee weapon (aside from maybe a spear, but that still requires more strength and stamina to use and we've had them since woolly mammoths were around) or a crossbow (which still takes strength to nock).

[LadyTevar]

Guys, lay off the "weight of weapon" and "weapon training" bits, ok? stay on topic

Mad Doc, you're right, it is Property vs. Person, and I should have used that argument alongside the Civil/Equal Rights points I was using. Don't know if it would have made a difference to the other guy, because he was intent on his Slippery Slope "take away one Right, they're all on the line" fallacy.

[Formless]

None of this invalidates the point that firearms at least give a physically frail and peaceable person a credible ability to pose a threat to a strong person experienced with violence. Whereas a physically fit person with some experience using hand-to-hand weapons for violence will tend to have major advantages over a weak person who lacks such practical experience, even if the victim is trained to a degree.

No, but historical context does invalidate the point. Historically, people defended their homes in a variety of ways that also took physical strength or age out of the equation. In Spain and many of its colonies, people built their homes like miniature castles. That is, they liked to surround their houses with tall stone walls, so no one could break in. You not only can find historic architecture like this in Spain itself, but you still see this approach in, for instance, the Philippines where people also supplement the walls with barbed wire or crushed glass so that intruders cannot climb them. In many other places where they either didn't use this kind of architecture or didn't trust it to work all by itself, they also used attack dogs that were trained to bite intruders and bark at intruding animals. Obviously, some people still own dogs for this purpose. In an environment without effective guns, a dog is an equalizer and an alarm system all in one. And lastly, you have to remember that most people until the 20'th century lived with their family, so Granny was never in danger of being alone with an intruder at all: in many cultures she would have at least one of her sons around who could hold the fort with a sword or a spear or whatever else they had on hand.

Besides, back in the day criminals (especially organized criminals like pirates, brigands, and the original Mafia) tended to be concentrated on the frontier or outside of cities and towns, the exact opposite context of our modern crime problem. Clearly, the anti-burglar strategies they used at the time worked pretty well.

Let's not nitpick things to death.

I don't think its a nitpick to point out that guns are NOT the first weapon or self defense strategy ever invented to take strength out of the equation or alternatively minimize it. The "Colt made them equal" thing I think is a mythology that needs to be put into context rather than enshrined as Truth. To me it suggests a bias towards modern ways of thinking about weapons or at least ignorance of historic ways of living. There are things we can take away from those earlier attitudes, like realizing that there are alternative ways of defending house and home even at an old age.

[Simon_Jester]

Formless, you're making a fool of yourself.

Someone else pointed out that firearms make physical strength largely irrelevant, make weak people a highly credible threat to strong people, and that this is an unusual thing about firearms compared to other weapons, which makes them a way for weak people to secure their persons against the bullying, harassment, and domination of strong ones.

You've been dancing around for almost a day trying to somehow refute or subvert this claim with a pile of silliness, exaggerations, and pedantry. Also by trying to make this all about highly specific sub-types of the overall question of "person armed with weapon encounters a threat." For example, arguing that a weapon that makes physical strength irrelevant isn't different an other weapons thbecause in real life old people used to live in the same homes as stronger, younger people is nothing but an exercise in moving the goalposts.

[Formless]

Oh fuck you too. I haven't been dancing around anyone's points; I've been strawmanned and nitpicked to death. What I have done is asserted multiple times that yes, guns are a force multiplier and a better force multiplier than any that has come before. So stop banging on about a strawman of what I am actually trying to argue! Tevar already asked for that damn tangent to end so I didn't keep engaging with TheFeniX about this bullshit. If you are talking about guns in a self defense context, then it isn't actually the first tool ever invented to make strength irrelevant in a fight. I have already cited multiple examples of this. You can concede those examples, or can it. I'm not interested in your delusion that two people represent a majority opinion.

[TheFeniX]

Guys, lay off the "weight of weapon" and "weapon training" bits, ok? stay on topic

Fair enough.

Mad Doc, you're right, it is Property vs. Person, and I should have used that argument alongside the Civil/Equal Rights points I was using. Don't know if it would have made a difference to the other guy, because he was intent on his Slippery Slope "take away one Right, they're all on the line" fallacy.

That or the idea that, no matter the argument, an AR-15 is a weapon. And weapons do require a method of restriction. Rights are restricted all the time for safety reasons.

Some of the laws are idiotic, such as the frenzy about "switch-blades" and them being illegal for years and so called "tactical folders" that are like... super scary for some reason. Some of those laws work quite well (background checks). Restricting rights under the tenet of safety/protection is a long standing ideal.

However, you'd have to dig pretty damn deep to come up with a reason (much less a defensible one) to restrict where a person sits based solely on their ethnicity. Those restrictions came out of racism alone.

So saying all rights are equal... I guess you could otherwise you're fighting a battle of "who has it worse?". But saying all restrictions of rights are equal is dumb. I think shit like the Brady Bill was a huge waste of time and money, but I'm not about to say it's effects were worse than Jim Crow, which targeted people for skin color alone and was in no way related to safety (unless you wanted to protect white people from being forced to acknowledge black people exist).