Phatmasser Gun Leanings

[Anomaly]

It's tough to be polite when I don't feel you're honestly open to the answers I and others are giving you and you aren't even attempting to understand there is validity to an opinion different than your assumptions. 

[Amppax]

On 8/8/2016 at 0:19 AM, Peace said:

They are a tool to kill or to threaten violence. They only have any real viable use in a fallen world. We should lament the fact that they are necessary. But the sense I get with many gun rights advocates is that they have a sense of pride or joy in owning them. I think that guns foster violence or a violent mindset. I wouldn't just call them mere tools like a hammar or screwdriver.

My experience with guns is mostly with hunters and sport shooters, and that is a very different context than self defense or military use. Unless you want to equate shooting an animal, or shooting a target, with shooting a person. 

I disagree that guns necessarily foster a violent mindset. Perhaps some of the ways in which they are celebrated tends towards that, but I think that's a generalization that isn't universally the case. 

[Peace]

41 minutes ago, Amppax said:

My experience with guns is mostly with hunters and sport shooters, and that is a very different context than self defense or military use. Unless you want to equate shooting an animal, or shooting a target, with shooting a person. 

I disagree that guns necessarily foster a violent mindset. Perhaps some of the ways in which they are celebrated tends towards that, but I think that's a generalization that isn't universally the case. 

I don't equate shooting either with shooting a person. But that does not make guns good.

As for shooting targets, go for it. I don't think that guns are made primarily for that purpose, but if that is all a person desires to do with it, that is cool by me I guess.

As for hunting for sport (as opposed to a legitimate need for food, etc.) I do have issues with that. I don't see any reason to go around killing beautiful parts of God's creation just for kicks.

So, I agree that they don't necessarily foster a violent mindset for every person. But I think that their presence (along with all other types of weapons whose primary purpose is to kill) is indicative of the violent society that we have produced in our fallen state. They are something to be lamented rather than lauded.

Do you think that people are going to walk around strapped with revolvers or rifles, shooting animals and other things for fun after Jesus returns? I don't know, but somehow I doubt it. I don't think that guns and other weapons are in line with God's ideal creation.

[Socrates]

On 8/7/2016 at 11:19 PM, Peace said:

They are a tool to kill or to threaten violence. They only have any real viable use in a fallen world. We should lament the fact that they are necessary. But the sense I get with many gun rights advocates is that they have a sense of pride or joy in owning them. I think that guns foster violence or a violent mindset. I wouldn't just call them mere tools like a hammar or screwdriver.

Guns are merely a tool in the hands of the human user, which can be used for either good or ill.  My point is that guns do not themselves cause violence.  They do not, through some dark Stephen King-ish force, magically turn peaceful, sane, law-abiding persons into murderous psychos.  The vast majority of gun owners in this country are not murderers, and never kill anyone with their guns.  Most use them for the legitimate purposes of hunting, sport/target shooting, or even keeping as collector's items.  (And I don't believe there is anything wrong with most hunting, at least not as it's lawfully practiced in the US, though I guess that's another debate.)  There are members of my extended family who are pretty hardcore "gun nuts," but they are not particularly violent, and have not killed anyone.

The murder rates in cities like Chicago are high because of a culture of gangs, crime and violence, and the whole vicious cycle of fatherless families, poverty, crime, etc. - not because it's easy to get guns there, and the guns led people to turn to crime and murder.  Criminal gangs will find ways to get guns regardless of the law.  There are many parts of the country (particularly in rural areas) where the rates of gun ownership are very high, yet rates of crime are very low.

I also don't believe there is anything wrong with taking pride and joy in one's weapons, so long as it's not inordinate (as with any other legitimate belongings).  We should all hope and pray to never have to use them against another human being, but there's no need to be ashamed of or hate the weapons themselves.