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"The blade itself incites to deeds of violence" - Joe Abercrombie paraphrasing Homer.
When I cross the border to the states, there's often a moment of shock upon seeing someone with a gun on their hip going about their day in a gas station, or restaurant, or shopping mall. It is, as you say, "dangerous and unnecessary", as dangerous and unnecessary as if they had brought a leashed tiger, or a running chainsaw. My brain can't ignore it. Pay attention to that! That could KILL you! it shrieks, and won't let me forget. It's the same forced attention I get around high cliffs, or heavy machinery, or a busy highway. I might know that the leashed tiger is tame. I might be aware that the running chainsaw has a safety guard, but I can't put it out of mind.
The possibility of a gun being used weighs on me, and I think on the bearer, even if they think it doesn't. It's there, physically weighing on them, tugging at their belt or ankle, or purse, reminding them every time they move that it is an option, a choice in the dialogue tree. And because it's an option, it changes every interaction into a (potential) life or death confrontation. Yes, there are circumstances under which I am prepared to kill you. They've already had that conversation with themselves, already decided that such circumstances exist and could arise today, at this Applebee's Neighborhood Grill.
I don't want to come off as too anti-gun. I like guns well enough. They're neat. I've shot them. It's just that I think we do it better in Canada (modulo silly model bans), where you can't be carrying weapons on that side of the pomerium.
This is a wild comparison; the gun is inert and has no volition of its own. Nor is it always in a state of active danger like the running chainsaw. Firing a gun is not something that is done by failing to pay sufficient attention to the gun - it requires volition and active intent across several particular bodily motions to draw, aim, turn off a safety, and fire a gun, just like it would to grab someone by the head and try to break their neck, or try to stab someone with a knife or pen, etc.
Come on, be charitable. It's not a perfect analogy. The point I'm trying to make is that it's a dangerous thing to be carrying around in public. It does require volition, but volition may be influenced by rage, or alcohol, or psychosis, or mental illness, or one bad day.
Humans are fallible. They can just be mistaken about whether they should use a gun in self-defense and end up killing someone anyway. The difference between justified and unjustified can be seconds.
and humans are stupid. They do incredibly dumb shit (warning, death) like shoot each other over literal garbage.
The victim was named McGlockton and was killed by a ... you know the answer. Incredibly unfortunate nominative determinism.
But that's a significant difference! You've moved the goalposts from "that's something that can kill if you don't concentrate on it sufficiently" (untrue, but would strongly favor your position a la "ultrahazardous activities") to the true argument of "but people are sometimes idiots, impaired, or negligent" which is a major shift with significant consequences!
Is there so much of a difference between a pet tiger that could maul you if you accidentally trigger its prey drive, and a volatile drugged-up gangster who thinks you were chatting up his girl?
But you weren't objecting to volatile drugged-up gangsters. You were objecting to guns. And of course, there is a major difference between a pet tiger and a gun in terms of whether you need to watch them carefully for danger.
And yes, I realize that part of your argument has been the inability to know whether any given gun-owner is unstable. But the unstable people are always a threat to you. The volatile gangster can quite easily stab you or beat the shit out of you, even were he to not have a gun. I don't think that him having a gun meaningfully increases the amount of danger you are in, so seeing a gun should not (imo) make you any more nervous than you would be around any crowd of people.
The gun massively increases your danger, surely? Firstly because it so hugely reduces the amount of effort he needs to put into damaging you, and secondly because it makes it so hugely more likely that the damage will be lethal.
I can't say I agree with that. Someone who is so violent and unhinged that they might shoot you if you look at their girlfriend wrong is not meaningfully more dangerous with a gun, in my opinion. They're going to get the job done no matter what, even if they just have their bare hands.
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