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Do you mean 14 years ? (Or is this MoK's version of Revelation ?)
So how can you tell me america has less of an issue because gun control is free and easy?
Define the "authoritarian boot" you're referring to.
He IS Man Of Kent...
it didnt really punish anyone, because hardly anyone had guns anyway
But what is economic liberty? I'd argue that it relies on state-sanctioned property laws, which by their very nature, restrict the freedom of others in some way. With strong property laws, I can only go on your land if you give me permission to. As such, it restricts my freedom of movement. Yet we generally accept that such state-intervention is necessary for greater economic liberty. Similarly, we can recognise that other state interventions are necessary for greater civil liberty.
Nah, state education dear boy. *facepalm*
Hopefully the heavy editing has not misinterpreted you, as I assumed those two sentences are related.
If so, perhaps it should be pointed out that the English Bill of Rights (very influential on the founding fathers) has not been repealed, just heavily regulated.
Capitalism isn't about personal freedom, it's about economic freedom. Wherever you find a Govt trying to "free" the markets, as fully as Friedmanism (the Chicago Boys) woudl recommend, you will also find an authoritarian approach also being applied - usually with its foot on the throat of the workforce.
Central America, Chile, Indonesia and to a certain extent the UK in the 1980s and the US provide examples of that in place to a lesser or greater extent.
Like I said though, the same is required for Socialism to work too.
Some may be off the charts.
You might be interested in checking out geolibertarianism. Fact of the matter though is that property rights is one of an individual's civil liberties. In you trespassing on someone's property, you are violating their right to their own property. "My freedom ends where the next person's nose begins."
In violating someone else's life, liberty or property, you in turn throw off the entire balance of freedom. I don't quite see how that is authoritarian, in nature.
Please cite examples of what you're referring to.
The point of the 57,000 figure was to highlight that gun ownership was so small as to not be a factor in the vast majority of people's lives. What this means is that it would be extremely disingenuous to claim that an increase in gun crime had any link to 57,000 fewer guns being owned in a country of 60 million people. Please give me the logical link between 57,000 people no longer having guns, and an increase in gun murders. Do you really think that before the ban, that many shootings were stopped in the UK by law-abiding citizens having handguns securely locked away?
No, this is exactly my point above. Guns were so rare in the UK, and no-one had a licence to own one for self-defence, that unless you happen to be robbing a gun club or a farm, the possibility of a victim being armed would not even enter your average criminal's mind before or after the ban. And this is the mistake I always hear when people bring up Britain, because they talk as if everyone had a gun at home before the ban, and afterwards, it was party time for the gun-wielding criminals.
I've done them a few times and always come out left lib, if my latest answers contradict that, well, perhaps they do- I based my answer on the last time I did an internet test with pretty dots on a graph. *chortles to self, even though hasn't written anything funny*
Do you know about the link between Coca-Cola and Paramilitaries in Central America resulting in the kidnapping and murder of union officials?
The UK has been relatively lucky in comparison, unless you were a member of the Miner's, Seaman's or Journalists' Union in the 80s...
And so is freedom of movement. So when these two things are in conflict with each other (as so many of are liberties often are), why do you choose property rights over freedom of movement? If you were to follow this principle to its logical conclusion, I could buy all of the property surrounding your house, and could effectively imprison you. I assume you would fall short of such an absolutist interpretation though.
Okay, so almost no one had one in the UK. Does that mean that they're also useless in other countries? After-all, we're not just debating the effectiveness of your handgun ban, but whether people should have the right to bear arms in general.
Here are some archives of successful gun defenses in the U.S., where there are approximately 80,000,000 legal gun owners. They happen fairly often, for us.
http://www.thearmedcitizen.com/
http://keepandbeararms.com/opsd/
I don't have a particularly strong opinion either way about guns in general. There are specific guns that I would ban, such as anything fully automatic, or capable of killing lots of people very quickly. I assume you also have a line you would draw. I'm guessing you wouldn't extend the right to bear arms to rocket launchers, for example. And if you would, I'm sure I'd eventually hit on a weapon which you wouldn't like to see in general circulation. But I generally think there are far more factors in the number of homicides than gun ownership, and America has more of those factors than Western Europe, which is why it has higher homicides. I think the prevalence of gun ownership may be a factor, but probably a fairly minor one.
But just on the specific examples you gave, I suspect that for every crime that was prevented by a gun, you could point to some sort of civil or domestic dispute that escalated and resulted in a shooting because a gun happened to be accessible, which somewhere like the UK probably would've ended far less seriously. And of course accidental deaths are the one thing that you can categorically state will not happen in a country without guns.
http://istyosty.com/b/?u=Oi8vd3d3LmRhaWx5bWFpbC5jby51ay9uZXdzL2FydGljbGUtMTM0NDg5MC9Vemktc3VibWFjaGluZS1ndW4tZGVhdGgtQ2hhcmxlcy1CaXppbGotdW5hYmxlLXdhdGNoLWp1cnktc2hvd24tdmlkZW8tc29uLUNocmlzdG9waGVycy1kZWF0aC5odG1s&b=0&f=norefer
In Pinochet Chile, they hit it with Jeffrey Sachs-esque "economic shock therapy" and when there was instability, they began to rely on government bailouts. You're talking about a country that just came out of a very bloody campaign (11,000 people killed in Pinochet's first year in power) and decided to completely turn over the system, while not allowing for businesses that weren't doing well under the system to fail.
"He shut down parliament, suffocated political life, banned trade unions, and made Chile his sultanate. His government disappeared 3,000 opponents, arrested 30,000 (torturing thousands of them) ... Pinochet's name will forever be linked to the Desaparecidos, the Caravan of Death, and the institutionalized torture that took place in the Villa Grimaldi complex."
Hardly a paragon of Libertarianism.
As for Milton Friedman... well, I'll let Murrary Rothbard take care of it.
As for Indonesia, I'm not familiar with whatever it is you're referring to. Could you clarify?
And you have that right. You also have the right to swing your fist back and forth. Until that swinging becomes striking someone in the nose. Commen sense, tbh.
And while we're at it lets take the dragon fromt he Never Ending Story over the rainbow into Narnia.
Ignorance is bliss...
May I ask where it is that you live, then? Unless you live in a country where everyone is still hunting with spears (unlikely as you have internet access) then yes, there are likely criminals with access to guns.
I live in a town in England. There aren't guns around here.