Kyle Rittenhouse Trial

[hollodero]

(11-05-2021, 09:26 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Eh, I would debate this if I was feeling more up to it. Police as we know them today is not a very old concept. Law enforcement has existed since laws existed, sure, but the way in which we grant the state the authority to use force in the manner we do, now, isn't as old. There are also democratic discussions over whether or not the idea of the police in general is in line with democratic ideals. That's also a more philosophical and deeper question.

It sure is - but for starters, I would say yes, policing is in line with democratic ideals. Every government needs tools to enforce their laws and a pretty please often won't do it. Imho, the opposite of an authoritarian regime is not a regime without any authority, but a system where authorities are guided and kept in check by the law and not by the will of a democratically illegitimate leader.

(11-05-2021, 09:26 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Even restrictions cause this inequality, though. Let's take the Hughes Amendment as an example. The Hughes Amendment was added to a bill in 1986 that prohibited the manufacture or importation of newly made machine guns after the date of the bills enactment. So this is a general restriction that prevents machine guns from being in civilian hands but allows for those already in civilian hands to remain. Seems fair. What has happened is that it has created a hugely inflated market in which a machine gun has exponentially increased in price making it only affordable to the upper classes.

For one, this might have been a bad policy, but bad specific policies do not totally refute the idea behind them. Put in other words, there could be other policies with less adversary effects.
Speaking of this one, if the tradeoff consists of less people being able to own machine guns, then I can live with that. For most of the reasons to be armed, like protecting your home and your family, can also be achieved with a simpler gun. I have a hard time imagining a situation where someone's family got killed because there was only a handgun in the house, but if there had been a machine gun the family would have been saved.
For similar reason, this whole inequality argument imho is a bit artificial. Rich people can always afford more than poor people, machine guns don't need to be the exception. I also have a hard time to see the actual oppression there. I don't think the folks with the machine guns are actually oppressing those who don't have them merely based on their increased fire power.

The 2A, imho, does not give every citizen the right to purchase whatever arms they please to a conveniently cheap price.

(11-05-2021, 09:26 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Why wouldn't it still apply? As for the lack of will enforcement, as I said, it doesn't necessarily mean it will happen, but it isn't coincidence that disarming the populous is one of the first steps for an oppressor to take.

That doesn't mean that said disarming (which I am not advocating anyway, for pragmatic reasons) always happens in the interest of an oppressor.
As to why wouldn't it still apply, my general answer would be that times have changed drastically and this is not the 18th century any more. A point I'd guess you can understand, since when it comes to things like voting rights or the EC, you seem to deploy a similar logic. The founders could not have foreseen modern society, or the modern united states reaching from coast to coast, or what the term "arms" means nowadays for that matter.

(11-05-2021, 09:26 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: The problem is that there are many countries with far fewer guns in civilian hands, but much higher violent crime rates. There are a lot of things that go into it, though, it isn't a simple solution.

I find it hard to prove or disprove that sentiment. But sure, in less developed countries with much more hunger, misery and unrest the rates naturally will be higher. I guess a fair comparison would be countries that are similarly developed compared to the US, like Europe, Japan and then some. And even though data seems to be hard to come by to answer that question conclusively, it appears that the US beats all these countries quite convincingly still when it comes to violent crime rates, as it does (I think that's more definitive) regarding gun deaths. But I can be convinced that isn't so, I just did not find it.

(11-05-2021, 09:26 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: The main thing, though, is that because there is not evidence of gun control policies reducing crime in this country, it shouldn't meet the test for limiting civil liberties. We do know one thing that decreases violent crime, though, with evidence to back it up. Considering the US has the highest Gini coefficient out of the G7+1, I think it's a great place to start.

I can't disagree on that one.

(11-05-2021, 09:26 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: They should, but policy should always be evidence based, especially when it involves limiting civil liberties.

This I partially disagree with. Policies are most often a combination of facts and evidence and of ideology. Whether the evidence supports a certain policy is always dependent on what the goal is, and these goals are not always fact-based. Eg. we both think a society is best served when everyone's most basic needs are met and 40 hours of work a week should be sufficient to get by in life, and so on and so on. But others might question these goals, claim that this is socialism that makes people complacent and lazy and that being closer to a "survival of the fittest" approach with little to no entitlements is better for the country. And that is an ideological question, not one that can be conclusively answered or decided with facts and figures alone.

With guns, I do see evidence points that less guns lead to less gun deaths (etc). Others like you claim that less guns leads to oppressive systems (etc). Can't be answered by evidence alone, both stances have some ideological considerations in them.