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The telos of a great many very useful inventions that are today essential to a civilized world was first to kill people.
Satellite navigation was invented for the explicit purpose of missile guidance during nuclear sneak attacks.
The internet was invented as a command and control loop to enable retaliation in the event of a nuclear sneak attack.
Precision measurement and machining was invented by the gun industry, to make guns, which kill people.
Pesticides that enable the feeding of 8 billion people and freedom from devastating famines are just repurposed chemical weapons.
Modern central planning and crisis response centers are organizational descendents of the Prussian General Staff, which was invented to enable the Prussian army to be a great deal more efficient at killing people.
Essentially any breed of horse not explicitly a draft animal is the result of breeding for war.
That the common European value system ignores these basic truths is not a recommendation in its favor. Rather it serves to illustrate how divorced from reality it is (just in case its current suicidal impulses weren’t obvious enough). Homo Sapiens did not evolve to sit atop this world by being pacifists. We exist because our ancestors (and some currently alive) embraced the necessity of potential violence.
A fair point, but it doesn't follow that because nuclear weapons led to the development of the internet, the average citizen should be permitted to possess nuclear weapons.
The telos of a nuclear bomb, is still death (or at least massive destruction). The telos of the internet has evolved.
Agreed only on practical grounds, and only for the moment.
It is impossible with current technology to not use a nuclear bomb and adversely affect basically everyone on Earth. Millions of people use guns every day without affecting anyone who doesnt choose to be affected (usually on the gun range wearing ear pro). When humanity spreads among the stars, if you want to make pretty flashes on airless chunks of rock utterly devoid of life, you should be able to.
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Having a purpose that in turn is mostly a means to an end that is killing is not the same as being directly, immediately, specifically only good for killing (and various activities wherein the fun is contingent on imagining them as practice for killing people under the right circumstances).
I don't think it ignores any "basic truths" that there are in what you wrote, and evidently this argument is not persuasive to those that subscribe to it. As it stands, there is a negligible amount of the older American ethos making inroads in the rest of the world, but the anti-gun value system is capturing large swathes of the US population - if you care for gun rights, it would be more reasonable to try and find new arguments rather than digging in your heels about the old apologetic tradition and dismiss competing views as "divorced from reality".
Disagree entirely. While i do not agree with them politically, many of my leftoid friends have suddenly discovered the purpose behind the second ammendment, and are wondering why our state has so many idiotic gun laws.
Guns may be fun, and they may provide a constructive outlet, but their purpose is potential violence. Thats the point. Pretending otherwise is dishonest and pointless.
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