Nope, sorry, but statistics are bullshit because they reduce each individual life to the status of a cypher in the state's calculus of "the needs of the many." That's immoral because the right to life, and the right to effectively defend that life, accrues to each and every individual in full. Each individual enjoys an absolute and unalienable right to use whatever force is necessary, using any tools available, to defend their life against those who would take it from them. It cannot be parceled out in dribs and drabs by government by saying "you only have a small statistical chance of being murdered, so we are going to deny you any effective means whatsoever with which to defend yourself because our statistical analysis and need to control everything is more important than your individual life."Blind groper wrote:Seth
I cannot agree with your rejection of statistics. Remember Spock in Star Trek : "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few."
Where the removal of hand guns, as has happened already in other western civilised nations, results in homicides dropping substantially, and thousands of lives being saved, then that cannot be discounted by some gobbledegook about a few individuals needing hand guns.
Fuck that.
Star Trek is a fantasy series and has no application when it comes to actual individual lives and what those individuals have a right to demand their government refrain from doing, like reducing them to a mere number.
No man's life is a pawn to be used in some politician's quest for votes or some bureaucrat's desire for power and control. Each and every individual life is entitled to absolute respect for that person's right to effective self-defense. If some people abuse that right, they they get punished, but it's pure immoral insanity to even argue that you, or anybody else, can strip away my right to protect myself against criminal assault because you, in your paranoid fear of guns, feel unsafe with guns in society. You don't like the idea of guns in society, then fuck off and live somewhere else, because my rights are not subject to your ideological biases or fear.
And you don't have to agree. What you have to do is to try to take my handguns away from me if you wish to enforce your ideas. That will be a fatal mistake for you or anyone else who tries it because I will not surrender my arms to anyone. Trite as it may sound, you may pry them from my cold, dead hands...if you can wade through all the bodies that I'll pile up around me first. If you've got the sand to give it a bash, then come get some. Make out your will first however, you're widow's going to need it.
) here: The key point in that 'principle' is that it is self-sacrifice for the good of the many. Would it be moral to sacrifice the good of the few to benefit the many? If so how many of the 'few' are sacrificed before it becomes immoral? Is it moral to suppress the rights of 'the few' for 'the good' of the many? If so, how many of 'the few' are suppressed before it becomes immoral?
