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On the other hand, nobody argues electricity is an essential human right because you need it to fight electrocution. Guns might serve some purposes in some sit

On the other hand, nobody argues electricity is an essential human right because you need it to fight electrocution. Guns might serve some purposes in some situations. It's just an incredibly lousy tool for "defending ourselves", with negative utility on average.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
> On the other hand, nobody argues electricity is an essential human right because you need it to fight electrocution. Sorry, I didn't know you required an absolutely perfect analogy to understand the point.
zepto 7y ago
“With negative utility on average” - perhaps, but not based on anything stated here. If you have a source, it would help.
- Retric 7y ago
  “Living in a house with a gun increases your odds of death“ https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000520/gun-risk-death https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000520/gun-risk-death Gun ownership has benefits, but safety is not one of them. Much like how most home robberies take place in the day, the perception of safety from gun ownership is at odds with reality. Hell, you are 25% more likely to be robbed in Alaska than New York State.
  - temporaryvector 7y ago
    I think you're confusing safety with self-defense. The argument isn't that guns make you safer, it's that they give you the ability to defend yourself if you are already in an unsafe situation. On average, most people will never be in a situation where they need to defend themselves, thus getting a gun will increase their risk of a self-inflicted wound. Accidents of all kind (not just guns) are much more frequent than violent altercations. But the crux of the matter is not that, the question that needs answering is "If you are already in a situation where your life is at risk from another human being, does having a gun make it better or worse?" We don't actually know the answer to that question, since statistics on defensive usage of guns are pretty bad. Another point to make is that there's an undercurrent of personal responsibility. The danger presented by having a gun in your home is something that can be managed if you are a responsible gun owner, but the risk of violence against your self is not something you can easily control. This is the important part, owning a gun for self defense is not about making you safer, it's about transferring the risk from something you have no control over to something you have some measure of control over. Thus, arguing that owning guns increase your risk of dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wounds holds no weight with people who want to own guns, since it's a fundamental misunderstanding of why one would want to own a gun for self defense.
    - Retric 7y ago
      Looking only at a subset of situations is why people play the lottery and generally make sub optimal choices. It’s easy to ignore the odds and support any argument, but it’s a bad habit to get into. That said, feeling more secure is by far the most likely situation. While it’s far safer to leave your house in the event of a home invasion than to confront the robbers. Feeling like you can defend yourself is empowering.
  - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
    Correlation is not causation, that entire article is based on a common fallacy. To name a few counterexamples: 1) Switzerland. Gun ownership is similar to the US but there’s way less crime. 2) Kennesaw, Georgia. Gun ownership is mandatory for every home and crime rates are far lower than in the surrounding counties.
    - Retric 7y ago
      That does not mean it’s safer to have a gun in the home in Switzerland or not. Clearly gun ownership is only one factor at the country level, but we are comparing gun ownership not countries. Gun accidents kill people, where guns extremely rarely save lives.
      - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
        Even if having a gun in your home in Switzerland raised your chances of gun related death, that still doesn’t mean it’s caused by having a gun. Again, correlation is not causation. Also, you cannot really measure how often a gun saves a life. On the other hand, you can measure the number of gun accidents and according to Wikipedia they’re less than 1% of gun related deaths which puts them at about 130 per year. IIRC staircases kill about 350 people per year (US numbers). I would advocate some kind of mandatory safety training for gun owners, but it’s really not the big point here. Measures like banning guns altogehter, I think, miss the point as well. Some places seem to do well with high gun ownership rates, so there must be something else at play that causes the US’s high rates of gun violence. More effort should be put into examining and fixing that in place of steamroller tactics and fearmongering like in that Vox article.
      - zepto 7y ago
        We don’t know how often Guns save lives. It’s false to say it’s extremely rare. Partly this is because there is little reporting and data collection that can capture situations where a gun is presented but not fired, but also because of the deterrent effect.
briffle 7y ago
Nobody argues owning a gun is an essential human right. They argue it's a constitutional right.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  To the contrary, the constitution doesn't grant rights. It protects essential human rights. There's a reason arms are right up there with free speech and privacy.
- zeveb 7y ago
  > Nobody argues owning a gun is an essential human right. I do — it's a constitutional right because it is a fundamental ('essential') human right. A free citizen (i.e., not a child or prisoner) has a right to wield violence in defense of himself, others and property; to restrict that right (as opposed to restricting unjust exercises of violence) is IMHO fundamentally unjust.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago

> On the other hand, nobody argues electricity is an essential human right because you need it to fight electrocution. Sorry, I didn't know you required an absolutely perfect analogy to understand the point.

zepto 7y ago

“With negative utility on average” - perhaps, but not based on anything stated here. If you have a source, it would help.

Retric 7y ago
“Living in a house with a gun increases your odds of death“ https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000520/gun-risk-death https://www.vox.com/2015/10/1/18000520/gun-risk-death Gun ownership has benefits, but safety is not one of them. Much like how most home robberies take place in the day, the perception of safety from gun ownership is at odds with reality. Hell, you are 25% more likely to be robbed in Alaska than New York State.
- temporaryvector 7y ago
  I think you're confusing safety with self-defense. The argument isn't that guns make you safer, it's that they give you the ability to defend yourself if you are already in an unsafe situation. On average, most people will never be in a situation where they need to defend themselves, thus getting a gun will increase their risk of a self-inflicted wound. Accidents of all kind (not just guns) are much more frequent than violent altercations. But the crux of the matter is not that, the question that needs answering is "If you are already in a situation where your life is at risk from another human being, does having a gun make it better or worse?" We don't actually know the answer to that question, since statistics on defensive usage of guns are pretty bad. Another point to make is that there's an undercurrent of personal responsibility. The danger presented by having a gun in your home is something that can be managed if you are a responsible gun owner, but the risk of violence against your self is not something you can easily control. This is the important part, owning a gun for self defense is not about making you safer, it's about transferring the risk from something you have no control over to something you have some measure of control over. Thus, arguing that owning guns increase your risk of dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wounds holds no weight with people who want to own guns, since it's a fundamental misunderstanding of why one would want to own a gun for self defense.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Looking only at a subset of situations is why people play the lottery and generally make sub optimal choices. It’s easy to ignore the odds and support any argument, but it’s a bad habit to get into. That said, feeling more secure is by far the most likely situation. While it’s far safer to leave your house in the event of a home invasion than to confront the robbers. Feeling like you can defend yourself is empowering.
- read_if_gay_ 7y ago
  Correlation is not causation, that entire article is based on a common fallacy. To name a few counterexamples: 1) Switzerland. Gun ownership is similar to the US but there’s way less crime. 2) Kennesaw, Georgia. Gun ownership is mandatory for every home and crime rates are far lower than in the surrounding counties.
  - Retric 7y ago
    That does not mean it’s safer to have a gun in the home in Switzerland or not. Clearly gun ownership is only one factor at the country level, but we are comparing gun ownership not countries. Gun accidents kill people, where guns extremely rarely save lives.
    - read_if_gay_ 7y ago
      Even if having a gun in your home in Switzerland raised your chances of gun related death, that still doesn’t mean it’s caused by having a gun. Again, correlation is not causation. Also, you cannot really measure how often a gun saves a life. On the other hand, you can measure the number of gun accidents and according to Wikipedia they’re less than 1% of gun related deaths which puts them at about 130 per year. IIRC staircases kill about 350 people per year (US numbers). I would advocate some kind of mandatory safety training for gun owners, but it’s really not the big point here. Measures like banning guns altogehter, I think, miss the point as well. Some places seem to do well with high gun ownership rates, so there must be something else at play that causes the US’s high rates of gun violence. More effort should be put into examining and fixing that in place of steamroller tactics and fearmongering like in that Vox article.
    - zepto 7y ago
      We don’t know how often Guns save lives. It’s false to say it’s extremely rare. Partly this is because there is little reporting and data collection that can capture situations where a gun is presented but not fired, but also because of the deterrent effect.

briffle 7y ago

Nobody argues owning a gun is an essential human right. They argue it's a constitutional right.

homonculus1 7y ago
To the contrary, the constitution doesn't grant rights. It protects essential human rights. There's a reason arms are right up there with free speech and privacy.
zeveb 7y ago
> Nobody argues owning a gun is an essential human right. I do — it's a constitutional right because it is a fundamental ('essential') human right. A free citizen (i.e., not a child or prisoner) has a right to wield violence in defense of himself, others and property; to restrict that right (as opposed to restricting unjust exercises of violence) is IMHO fundamentally unjust.