Gun control cannot act as accomplice liability for the government. Being an accomplice, as understood by our legal system, requires the agent to act with the purpose or intent to aid or abet the principal. There may be a case for this if gun legislation was explicitly intended to reduce the ability of a group to defend itself (imagine prohibitions on arms for Jews in Nazi Germany).
However, if a legislator is fulfilling its duty to the public by advocating for gun control for self-defense (not so that there can be more vulnerable victims, but fewer armed criminals) then even though the legislator may be a but-for cause in example 2, the legislator cannot be liable as an accomplice if the legislation is made in good faith and with the intent to protect life. Would you say that the legislator may also be praiseworthy for the lives saved by the gun laws? In that case, we can only judge policy through a utilitarian lens by weighing the cost and benefits, including the sum of lives saved and lost, of gun control.
In my thinking, there should be a different level of scrutiny for gun laws that are applied in one's own home (where protection is important and risks to the public are minimal) than ones that are applied when being armed in public, like open carry, where they may be a higher risk of public harm and less of a justification for personal defense.
Far more the issue many would agree is there a right to own an assault rifle? if so, is there a right to own a larger gun, say an howitzer, though few would probably shoot others with it?
I am not sure what you mean by an "assault rifle".
I would say citizens have a right to own military style rifles such as are issued to soldiers in the army. This requires discussing the right to self-defense against the state, not just ordinary criminals.
Military rifles are a tiny portion of guns used in crimes. Handguns are by far the most commonly used weapons, so they would be the focus of someone concerned about crime. However, they are not as scary-looking as some military rifles.
The issue with this is the nature of this defense and the crimes committed with different weapons. You said that by preventing people from defending themselves the government is/ would be complicit in home invasion murders as if they were an accomplice who had seized a homeowner’s weapon. However, assault weapons (say what you will about semantics, but the meaning of “assault weapon” or “assault rifle” is pretty well understood in American political discourse) aren’t the sorts of weapons used in home defense. I understand your point about defense against the state, but most of your consequentialism relies on this example so I felt it was important to address.
Not only does the right to own an assault rifle exist on shakier grounds, the consequences of its misuse are greater. Yes, most firearm deaths are suicides or violence between gang members. But assault weapons are far more likely to be used in the mass-casualty events that gain media attention. There have been more mass shootings so far in 2023 than days. These aren’t gang warfare or suicides, they are murders of innocent people by unstable individuals. A regulatory approach narrowly tailored to assault weapons could significantly reduce these events while having little to no effect on home defense. It wouldn’t even have to be a ban: simply licensing, a mandatory waiting period, and background/ mental health checks could have a massive effect.
Does the slim chance of a revolution in which civilian weapons are required (keep in mind much of the military, who swear to defend our freedom, would join if it had enough cause and momentum) becoming necessary outweigh the actual deaths of thousands of people? If so, why?
Assault rifles are mostly illegal and so are not much of a issue. You can legally have an automatic rifle only in special rare cases. I think you mean that the issue is the right to have scary-looking rifles. Howitzers are not in common use, so that would argue against a right to have them, except perhaps in Ukraine.
The Constitution addresses this with the term militia, aka irregular light infantry. Assault rifles, silencers, sawed-off shotguns, fine. Stingers, gray area. Crew served stuff, no.
"If guns sometimes went off by themselves and shot people, then we’d say that owning one was inherently risky, which might preclude the right to own it."
This argument proves far too much for the same could be said about owning a nuclear weapon (maybe provided it was kept in a vault others couldn't steal it from you).
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to the person who gets killed if they were killed because someone choose to use a dangerous instrument or their pet lion escaped on its own. In both cases what matters is the degree of risk (on average since we don't want to condition rights on our guesses about likelihood of future crimes) imposed on others.
Obviously, this doesn't decide the rights issue one way or another but it does show your argument is too quick. Seems to me what ultimately matters is the question of how much risk gun ownership imposes on others compared to the value of that right. You can't evade that question merely because ppl choose to commit violence with a gun but I'm not taking any position on that hard question here.
The comparison is taken up in sections 4-5. Section 3 is only about whether there is even a prima facie right. The later sections are about whether the right is outweighed by the harms.
In weighing a risk, you have to include the magnitude of the possible harm as well as the probability. The magnitude of the harm from a nuclear bomb is much greater than that resulting from a handgun. Hence, the case for nuclear bomb restrictions is much better than the case for gun restrictions.
"Prima facie" sounds more compelling because you know it's Latin like a whole bunch of terms that stand above the common vernacular. But all it means is first impression. I could have a prima facie experience quite the opposite. Prima facie there is no obvious right to own a gun.
But his argument for a prima facie right to own a gun isn't the Latin term. It's the thought experiment where someone's gun is taken from them and they are stabbed to death.
Oh, I misread the comment. Anti-gun activists aren't trying to personally take guns away from people. They're telling the government that it should take guns away from people.
But the government is justified in stopping them from taking the guns, because taking the guns would be a rights violation. You can forcibly stop someone from committing a rights violation, even if their rights violation would have prevented another rights violation.
This differs from the Accomplice in the OP, because the Accomplice isn't stopping someone from committing a rights violation.
First, you assume O wants to murder someone with his gun and that A wishes to take his gun away. This would mean that A knows ahead of time who wants to use his gun to murder people. You have not demonstrated how A came to possess this knowledge. In the real world A could not possess this knowledge, and therefore cannot correctly take away the gun from the O that wishes to commit murder verses the O that means to use his gun for some other purpose.
Second you state that G corrosively prevents A from taking the guns. The actual situation in this scenario is that A wishes for G to use coercive force to take the guns from O, and that G declines A's wishes. G uses the argument that it does not have the right to take the guns from O since O has a right, both implicit moral right (see the article above) as well as a contractual right (see Amendment 2 to the U.S Constitution if this scenario is for the US), not to take O's guns without cause. G does have a method that A can use to amend the contract between G and O but does not have the ability to make implement these changes.
Yeah, the most likely aggressors are people who have committed serious crimes in the past, who are naturally not allowed to have guns (as Drethelin says).
However, declaring that someone is "not allowed" to have a gun does not make that person not have a gun. Since we're talking about criminals, it's highly likely that they would still get a gun anyway.
We already have a bunch of laws that are structured to do this, most obviously shooting someone in self-defense is pretty solidly legal in most states.
We also ban felons from owning guns, severely punish using guns in the commission of crimes (eg with categories like armed robbery), and even have social punishment laws in order to encourage criminals to police their and their gang's use of guns (felony murder law).
Gun control cannot act as accomplice liability for the government. Being an accomplice, as understood by our legal system, requires the agent to act with the purpose or intent to aid or abet the principal. There may be a case for this if gun legislation was explicitly intended to reduce the ability of a group to defend itself (imagine prohibitions on arms for Jews in Nazi Germany).
However, if a legislator is fulfilling its duty to the public by advocating for gun control for self-defense (not so that there can be more vulnerable victims, but fewer armed criminals) then even though the legislator may be a but-for cause in example 2, the legislator cannot be liable as an accomplice if the legislation is made in good faith and with the intent to protect life. Would you say that the legislator may also be praiseworthy for the lives saved by the gun laws? In that case, we can only judge policy through a utilitarian lens by weighing the cost and benefits, including the sum of lives saved and lost, of gun control.
In my thinking, there should be a different level of scrutiny for gun laws that are applied in one's own home (where protection is important and risks to the public are minimal) than ones that are applied when being armed in public, like open carry, where they may be a higher risk of public harm and less of a justification for personal defense.
Far more the issue many would agree is there a right to own an assault rifle? if so, is there a right to own a larger gun, say an howitzer, though few would probably shoot others with it?
I am not sure what you mean by an "assault rifle".
I would say citizens have a right to own military style rifles such as are issued to soldiers in the army. This requires discussing the right to self-defense against the state, not just ordinary criminals.
Military rifles are a tiny portion of guns used in crimes. Handguns are by far the most commonly used weapons, so they would be the focus of someone concerned about crime. However, they are not as scary-looking as some military rifles.
The issue with this is the nature of this defense and the crimes committed with different weapons. You said that by preventing people from defending themselves the government is/ would be complicit in home invasion murders as if they were an accomplice who had seized a homeowner’s weapon. However, assault weapons (say what you will about semantics, but the meaning of “assault weapon” or “assault rifle” is pretty well understood in American political discourse) aren’t the sorts of weapons used in home defense. I understand your point about defense against the state, but most of your consequentialism relies on this example so I felt it was important to address.
Not only does the right to own an assault rifle exist on shakier grounds, the consequences of its misuse are greater. Yes, most firearm deaths are suicides or violence between gang members. But assault weapons are far more likely to be used in the mass-casualty events that gain media attention. There have been more mass shootings so far in 2023 than days. These aren’t gang warfare or suicides, they are murders of innocent people by unstable individuals. A regulatory approach narrowly tailored to assault weapons could significantly reduce these events while having little to no effect on home defense. It wouldn’t even have to be a ban: simply licensing, a mandatory waiting period, and background/ mental health checks could have a massive effect.
Does the slim chance of a revolution in which civilian weapons are required (keep in mind much of the military, who swear to defend our freedom, would join if it had enough cause and momentum) becoming necessary outweigh the actual deaths of thousands of people? If so, why?
Assault rifles are mostly illegal and so are not much of a issue. You can legally have an automatic rifle only in special rare cases. I think you mean that the issue is the right to have scary-looking rifles. Howitzers are not in common use, so that would argue against a right to have them, except perhaps in Ukraine.
The Constitution addresses this with the term militia, aka irregular light infantry. Assault rifles, silencers, sawed-off shotguns, fine. Stingers, gray area. Crew served stuff, no.
"If guns sometimes went off by themselves and shot people, then we’d say that owning one was inherently risky, which might preclude the right to own it."
This argument proves far too much for the same could be said about owning a nuclear weapon (maybe provided it was kept in a vault others couldn't steal it from you).
Ultimately, it doesn't really matter to the person who gets killed if they were killed because someone choose to use a dangerous instrument or their pet lion escaped on its own. In both cases what matters is the degree of risk (on average since we don't want to condition rights on our guesses about likelihood of future crimes) imposed on others.
Obviously, this doesn't decide the rights issue one way or another but it does show your argument is too quick. Seems to me what ultimately matters is the question of how much risk gun ownership imposes on others compared to the value of that right. You can't evade that question merely because ppl choose to commit violence with a gun but I'm not taking any position on that hard question here.
The comparison is taken up in sections 4-5. Section 3 is only about whether there is even a prima facie right. The later sections are about whether the right is outweighed by the harms.
In weighing a risk, you have to include the magnitude of the possible harm as well as the probability. The magnitude of the harm from a nuclear bomb is much greater than that resulting from a handgun. Hence, the case for nuclear bomb restrictions is much better than the case for gun restrictions.
"Prima facie" sounds more compelling because you know it's Latin like a whole bunch of terms that stand above the common vernacular. But all it means is first impression. I could have a prima facie experience quite the opposite. Prima facie there is no obvious right to own a gun.
But his argument for a prima facie right to own a gun isn't the Latin term. It's the thought experiment where someone's gun is taken from them and they are stabbed to death.
How are anti-gun activists coercing the government?
Oh, I misread the comment. Anti-gun activists aren't trying to personally take guns away from people. They're telling the government that it should take guns away from people.
But the government is justified in stopping them from taking the guns, because taking the guns would be a rights violation. You can forcibly stop someone from committing a rights violation, even if their rights violation would have prevented another rights violation.
This differs from the Accomplice in the OP, because the Accomplice isn't stopping someone from committing a rights violation.
The scenario you present contains a few flaws.
First, you assume O wants to murder someone with his gun and that A wishes to take his gun away. This would mean that A knows ahead of time who wants to use his gun to murder people. You have not demonstrated how A came to possess this knowledge. In the real world A could not possess this knowledge, and therefore cannot correctly take away the gun from the O that wishes to commit murder verses the O that means to use his gun for some other purpose.
Second you state that G corrosively prevents A from taking the guns. The actual situation in this scenario is that A wishes for G to use coercive force to take the guns from O, and that G declines A's wishes. G uses the argument that it does not have the right to take the guns from O since O has a right, both implicit moral right (see the article above) as well as a contractual right (see Amendment 2 to the U.S Constitution if this scenario is for the US), not to take O's guns without cause. G does have a method that A can use to amend the contract between G and O but does not have the ability to make implement these changes.
Yeah, the most likely aggressors are people who have committed serious crimes in the past, who are naturally not allowed to have guns (as Drethelin says).
However, declaring that someone is "not allowed" to have a gun does not make that person not have a gun. Since we're talking about criminals, it's highly likely that they would still get a gun anyway.
We already have a bunch of laws that are structured to do this, most obviously shooting someone in self-defense is pretty solidly legal in most states.
We also ban felons from owning guns, severely punish using guns in the commission of crimes (eg with categories like armed robbery), and even have social punishment laws in order to encourage criminals to police their and their gang's use of guns (felony murder law).