I don’t like guns or the idea of owning guns for ‘protection’. Gun ownership delivers a Prisoners’ Dilemma where there is a collective loss in legal law-abiding welfare and where ownership increases the stakes in planned criminal acts. Having more than a few punch-ups is socially preferred to having only a few killings. You buy a gun to ‘protect’ yourself and others buy guns because you own a gun. And crazy male psychopaths/libertarians buy guns because they fear that they have excessively small testicles, a problem that (fortunately) doesn’t trouble me. I am a carnivore but I question the intrinsic reasonableness of killing animals for ‘sport’ so I treat hunters as rather ugly people.
Obama was supposed to be anti-gun but the expectation that he might be and the fact that he apparently is not have had serious impacts on gun control in the US. The US states are engaged in a new push for expanded gun rights, even passing measures that have been rejected in the past:
- In Virginia, the General Assembly approved a bill last week allowing people to carry concealed weapons in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol and voted to repeal a 17-year-old ban on buying more than one handgun a month. The actions came less than three years after the shootings at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives and prompted a major national push for increased gun control.
- Arizona and Wyoming lawmakers are considering many pro-gun measures, including one that would allow residents to carry concealed weapons without a permit.
- Lawmakers in Montana and Tennessee passed measures last year — the first of their kind — to exempt their states from federal regulation of firearms and ammunition that are made, sold and used in state. Similar bills have been proposed in at least 3 other states.
- Gun control advocates say, Mr. Obama has failed to deliver on campaign promises to close a loophole that allows unlicensed dealers at gun shows to sell firearms without background checks; to revive the assault weapons ban; and to push states to release data about guns used in crimes. For example, Obama signed bills last year allowing guns to be carried in national parks and in luggage on trains.
- The Indiana legislature passed bills that block private employers from forbidding workers to keep firearms in their vehicles on company property.
In the gun-loving US guns are becoming more popular – Federal background checks for gun purchases rose to 14m in 2009, from 12.7m in 2008 and 11.2 million in 2007. Pity.
There are so many guns and such a culture of having them in the US, I’m not really sure whether any bans or limitations would make much difference there.
Harry, why do you consider it any less reasonable to hunt animals and eat them than it is to raise them in farms and eat them?
From an animal welfare point of view, I’d have to think that an instant death for, say, a roo or rabbit, is if anything more humane than the process of slaughter for a cow or sheep, which involves them being rounded up, crammed together in a herding yard, loaded on a truck, unloaded at the abbatoir, then put in a crush, and only then killed.
Robert, I think we should appreciate the animals we eat and take no joy from killing them. In fact I think animal welfare should be included in the social welfare function. I think it is obvious that animals experience both fear and happiness. As a consequence, where we do kill animals for food, their lives should be as cruelty-free as possible – so, for example, I oppose factory farming – and encorage making their slaughter as painless and free-from-fear as possible.
i think that gun control should always be imposed at all times to reduce violence.*:”
i think that gun control should always be implemented at all times to reduce gun related violence`,;
i think that gun control is a must because more guns means more deaths ,*”