2nd Amendment

[lerite]

I'd know what I thought if I hadn't read so much history. An unarmed populace is a populace subject to oppression--although what matters are modern weapons like bombs and (especially!) planes, not handguns or hunting rifles. I want impossible solutions. All my ideas depend on people being decent, when the whole premise is, of course, needing to

Comments

[drethelin]

Vulnerable to gangs and posses. We don't make a lot of posses these days but there are a shit-ton of gangs.

[lerite]

Having read about the violent repression of black economic movements, I'm a lot more okay with that than usual.

[voey]

Thing is, this sort of arrangement is vulnerable to mob mentality

[lerite]

Rural vs. urban gun ownership is really interesting! I hadn't thought about the cougars and grizzlies angle.

Groups, even "awful" ones, tend to have legitimate concerns. I've spent enough time studying social movements to be highly skeptical of the existence of a mob mentality.

[voey]

For the record, for self-defense purposes I prefer tasers.

My dad was a certified taser instructor for a while. I generally prefer the use of nonlethal force when it's practical, and tasers can and will put an angry bull on the ground, and almost no one gets up after you hit 'em with one...and it's pretty easy to just zap 'em again if their behavior continues to be problematic.

While I believe in the right of a person to do so under extreme circumstances, I have really really severe problems with ending a human life, and I prefer protective options that don't prevent the potential rehabilitation of the attacker.

[peojkl]

A thoughtful comment. I'm trying to think through cases & historical examples