Re: Would you like to see the govt confiscate legally obtained/owned "assault" weapon
The right to form well-regulated militias is very important, as is the right of an individual to own guns, but can various regulations being put into place which restrict which kinds of guns that can be owned really be said to restrict the actual right? People would still have the right to own guns, after all.
1) Forming a well regulated militia is a Power of
government; it is NOT an individual right.
2a) By the principal of IDENTITY: An infringement of a right is an infringement of a right.
2b) By the principal of PROPORTIONALITY: An infringement of a right is proportional to the degree that restrictions are applied against that right.
When people resort to slippery slope arguments, they deal in absolutes and argue, not from the position of what is actually advocated, but where it might lead. As such, they are indulging in fallacious reasoning, since they are dealing in hypotheticals. Indeed, one could just as easily argue that lack of such regulation will lead to people having the right to walk around with suitcase nukes. After all, if we are to argue the extreme end product at one end, why not the other?
3) The slippery slope fallacy is an informal fallacy and thus is subject to some interpretation. There is a difference between an argument that if we allow some restriction on a right would then make it easier for further restrictions on the right (which is a reasonable expectation) than to ague that if we allow abortions to continue would mean that in the future that murderers would be given lighter sentences due to the lowered value on life (which would be a slippery slope arguments since the one doesn't have much to do about the other as opposed the the first argument).
4) Almost no one who supports the 2nd Amendment is arguing from a absolute position (and thus is a straw man argument). Almost no one argues that individuals should own nuclear weapons. Very few would argue for small artillery or grenades though that could change if the more extreme members of Congress keep shooting off their mouths about what mandates and restrictions they want to inflict on the general populace.
5) With respect of focusing on what a law might lead to, that is the point, having made a law they can make further restrictions since the law would be seen as a precedent and is only reasonable that this might happen. Furthermore, it is only reasonable to discuss of possible outcomes when such laws are enacted. A lot of bad law are made when a failure to foresee the outcomes that occurs.
6) Hypotheticals are bread and butter when it comes to the application of laws and where they
really apply. Ask any lawyer here.
7) Your comment about the lack of laws would imply allowing to carry suitcase nukes is your straw man's argument about the slippery slope fallacy.
8) The issue is not about arguing extremes but arguing what is a reasonable expectation of what some people in Congress would do in the future after such laws would be made and indeed what they say publicly is the goals in making the laws in the first place.
Instead of dealing in the absolutes of slippery slope fallacies, though, why not deal with the issue in terms of where along a continuum we wish to place the ownership of weapons? We already restrict which kinds of weapons can be owned by which kinds of people, and so perhaps an honest recognition of this fact might go a long way towards avoiding many of the fallacies being offered by those favoring less restriction rather than more. It isn't an all or nothing proposition. It never has been and it never will.
9) The problem with the idea it is never a all or none issue is that there are people in Congress who want it to be none or almost none. No one in Congress is saying that individuals should own baby nukes or even own small artillery. The only extremes are those who want to restrict and one cannot have an honest argument about where to restrict when one of sides have extremists leading one side.
