a well regulated militia

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by jaguar
Maggie you’re in a debate, you have to be able to justify your actions and words on issues that are directly related to the debate. .

Hold on a minute. You're "begging the question", (another one of those argumentation maneuvers you're so fond of).

The debate isn't framed as "prove to my satisfaction why you need a weapon or give it up"...although <b>you'd</b> certainly like to cast it that way, of course. <b>I</b> say, if you want to usurp <b>my</b> right to defend myself in the manner I choose, the burden is on <b>you</b> to demonstrate a compelling reason to do so. Your best move on that score so far is "sometimes people get shot", which is feeble at best.

"The only purpose of a gun is to kill" is another prohibitionist slogan based in a gross oversimplification, the implication being that if a gun isn't used to kill then it has no purpose. If that were true would mean there are lots of cops out there with no reason to have a gun.

One purpose of a gun (ignoring for now the others) is to defend its owner, which it can do <i>witthout ever actually being fired "in anger"</i>. Of course, when this happens it tends to not generate police reports, newspaper articles, or exciting TV drama, so if that's how you learn about the world you might have missed that .

If a gun is never fired in anger, then it may well have <b>succeeded</b> in its purpose.