Here is your challenge. …
Where did you require I find a story where someone
criminally boxed someone to death
outside a boxing match with a referee present? How many illegal fights occur outside the ring with a referee present? Finding one example would be like finding a diamond ring in a cereal box.
******
You offer me an excellent opportunity to take on your illogical anti-gun viewpoint that guns are only good for killing and I appreciate that. Thanks Much!
For today‘s debate I will use outside sources. Of course they will not change you mind but that is fine. Perhaps another person reading these posts will learn something or get interested in the sport of shooting. Notice I didn’t say. ,”The sport of killing.”
THE NOBLE USES OF FIREARMS
Plus: Gun hatred and a gun-free world
by Alan Korwin
In the great din of the national firearms debate it's easy to lose sight of the noble and respectable place firearms hold and have always held in American life. While some gun use in America is criminal and despicable, other applications appeal to the highest ideals our society cherishes, and are enshrined in and ensured by the statutes on the books:
- Protecting your family in emergencies
- Personal safety and self defense
- Preventing and deterring crimes
- Detaining criminals for arrest
- Guarding our national borders
- Preserving our interests abroad
- Helping defend our allies
- Overcoming tyranny
- International trade
- Emergency preparedness
- Commerce and employment
- Historical preservation and study
- Obtaining food by hunting
- Olympic competition
- Collecting
- Sporting pursuits
- Target practice
- Recreational shooting[/i]
***snip***
So I ask again, do you hate guns, and wish they would just go away? You may be suffering from hoplophobia, the morbid fear of weapons. This can be treated -- just like fear of water or bugs or anything else -- but first it must be understood. Denying a phobia is one of the signs that you have it.
Read Dr. Sarah Thompson's careful, researched and clear explanation of what's behind gun fear. You may never want to own a gun -- many people do not -- but you owe it to yourself to understand the subject, and not be simply ruled by your fears.
If the purpose of guns were to kill, cops would not be allowed to have them because, in civilized countries contrary to James Bond movies, they don’t have a license to kill. A tool or instrument, observed Friedrich Hayek, cannot be defined outside of human purposes. For example, the definition...
www.econlib.org
The Purpose of a Gun Is Not to Kill/b]
By: Pierre Lemieux
An automobile is, to quote Merriam-Webster again, an “automotive vehicle designed for passenger transportation.” People use it to go from point A to point B. Under this general purpose lie many specific ones. For many, A will be mainly their homes and B, their workplaces. Some, no doubt, will use their car to go and commit a bank robbery, and escape afterwards. For terrorists, the space between point A and point B may be any place where there are pedestrians to crush. Collectors and museums may even dispense with the transportation function, although the original purpose remains part of the attraction.
Now, consider a gun. The most general definition of Merriam-Webster is “a device that throws a projectile.” Some individuals may use the projectile-throwing power to kill—a killer-for-hire or a terrorist, for example. But most will use it for another purpose: to assure their own self-defense or to defend others against criminals, or even to protect their property or their customers’ property. Armored truck personnel carry guns as a disincentive to would-be robbers. When they own or carry a gun, some individuals are buying peace of mind, knowing that they have an efficient means of self-defense in case they ever need it. Collectors do not even use a gun to throw a projectile, but instead to showcase it.
The purpose of a gun is not generally to kill. A handgun is designed for self-defense at short distances. Hitting a target farther than 100 feet or even just 50 feet is difficult: by then, the bullet has lost much of its speed and energy, and dropped significantly. Although a handgun may kill or maim an aggressor, its purpose is to stop him, to stop the threat. Hence the discussion of the “stopping power” of caliber (diameter of the bullet) versus velocity.
Criminals use handguns to commit aggressions, as they can use cars to travel where their victims are. But killing is not the (general) purpose of a car, nor is it really that of a handgun. If one is intent on killing, a long gun (rifle or shotgun) is more convenient. In the state where I live (as I suspect in many other states), one may carry a loaded handgun in a car but not a long gun. The reason is that a long gun is not efficient for self-defense, especially in a confined place, while it would be very effective at ambushing somebody (or indiscriminately shooting people).
Even in the case of long guns, it is at misleading to state that the purpose is to kill—at least to kill another human. For many if not most owners of long guns, the purpose is to hunt animals or for protection against four-legged predators such as brown or white bears. Even if many owners of long guns probably think that they could come handy during civil (or government) disturbances, the main purpose would remain to stop the threat, not necessarily to kill the threatening individuals.
Thus, the purpose of guns is not to kill, except in particular, and often criminal, circumstances. The purpose of a gun is to neutralize threats and deter aggressors. Even if we assume that allowing guns results in more murders than banning them (which I don’t think is supported by available evidence), it does not follow that government should ban them, whether abruptly or stealthily. We encounter here the general problem of cost-benefit analysis: What allows us to say that preventing the possible killing of some unknown Mr. and Mrs. X in the future is worth more than prohibiting a known Miss Y from owning or carrying a gun for self-defense hic et nunc?
www.americanrifleman.org
