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Do firearms empower people?

Do firearms empower people?


  • Total voters
    52
Can't vote. What's my leaning have to do with anything? I am an individual.
Do firearms empower people? Yes.
They empower people to think they are stronger, tougher and more bad ass, and with that, they may get themselves into situations they shouldn't be in had they used their brains.
Do I believe in the right to keep and bear arms? Absolutely. But first and foremost, I believe in personal responsibility. Too many people fall short on that.
 
No. You dont GET to be intellectually lazy and use that weak excuse. Over 100 million people died show some respect and stop hiding behind your compensatory mechanisms.
I am certainly allowed to doubt the veracity of a claim that apparently is found to be highly skeptical according to the many other wikipedia readers and editors.
EVERYONE MENTIONED IN THOSE LINKS WERE MARXISTS. Own it.
They were authoritarian dictators. You seem to be unclear on the concept of how a four point political compass works. There are separate axis for authoritarian and economic views.

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The similarity between Stalin and Hitler is that they're both heavily authoritarian and citizens can suffer under authoritarian rule. That's the common denominator, not economic distribution. Socialism doesn't require an authoritarian dictatorship.

Ghandi is closer to where I'd argue that socialism is supposed to land on the compass than Stalin.
 
Did the fact that George Zimmerman had a gun empower him to engage Trayvon Martin?

Or the fact that, as a neighborhood watch, empower him to engage Trayvon Martin. Bad example IMO.
 
Or the fact that, as a neighborhood watch, empower him to engage Trayvon Martin. Bad example IMO.
Neighborhood watch people are not supposed engage people they are supposed to alert the authorities, which what Zimmerman did. He should have dropped it right there, but he didn't because he had "heat" to protect him.
 
Guns kill more people every year in America than marxists.


Worldwide, Marxists have killed something over a 100 million people.... far more than all American privately-owned firearms in all of history.
 
Anyway you slice it, it comes down to a fundamental truth....


If someone with a gun wishes to abuse you (for whatever reason, or under whatever color of abused authority), you have a much better chance to resist him if you are also armed, than if you are not.


This is the fundamental truth, whether you love guns or hate them.


Some people react to this truth by arming themselves. Some react by trying to disarm everyone. Neither reaction is 100% effective, but I prefer the former to the latter... since the latter tends only to disarm the law-abiding citizen, and not the thug or the oppressor.
 
Exercising one's rights. A means to prevent tyranny. Self defense. The means to hunt.


Do firearms empower people? Note that this is not pertaining specifically to the US or the 2nd amendment, but rather a general question.
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I'm annoyed by poll questions that leave no options between either "yes" or "no". Most matters aren't that simple.

Such as this, IMO. Do guns empower people? It really depends on the situation. Those who get a gun pointed at their head are usually not empowered, for example.

Someone said above that it empowers people, and depending if these people are up for something good or bad, the result is either good or bad. That's well put, IMO.

This "preventing tyranny" rhetoric is total BS. ISIS has guns, does it prevent tyranny? Al Qaida has guns, does that prevent tyranny? The East-Ukrainian separatists have guns, does that prevent tyranny? No, exactly the opposite, actually. Guns only prevent tyranny when those who are follow liberal/enlightened ideology have guns. When people with a different ideology have guns, guns support tyranny.

In Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-1933), a major problem was that the government was much more freedom loving than a majority of the people. The numerous monarchists had guns, the commies had guns, the Nazis had guns, and they all shot each other on the streets and all shot on the republicans and democrats. And the republican, freedom-loving government was too weak to crack down on the freedom-hating people.
 
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People dying in marxist countries =/= marxism killing them. That much should be obvious

As of 2011, academic consensus has not been achieved on causes of large scale killings by states, including by states governed by communists. In particular, the number of comparative studies suggesting causes is limited. The highest death tolls that have been documented in communist states occurred in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, in the People's Republic of China under Mao Zedong, and in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. The estimates of the number of non-combatants killed by these three regimes alone range from a low of 21 million to a high of 70 million.[2] There have also been killings on a smaller scale in North Korea, Vietnam, and some Eastern European and African countries.

Mass killings under Communist regimes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Of course guns give people power they don't have without them. Thousands of people who have been murdered would not have suffered that fate, if they or some friendly person nearby had been armed.

I always think of the policewoman who survived an attack in which her parents were killed. She'd decided to leave her gun in the car when they went into a McDonald's for breakfast. A man came in, pulled out a gun, and began walking around shooting people. He would casually reload, and then shoot some more. As she could see from her hiding place under a table, he offered an armed person many opportunities to shoot him--but she could do nothing but watch.
 
Of course guns empower people. The real question is does it embolden people.
 

You know a lot of people who died starved and died from things they may have recovered from if not for being starved

I'm not here to be an apologist for Stalin. I'm not a Stalin fan. The thing is people want to simplify what happened so they can point out communists and say "hey look how evil they are let's kill them" while they completely ignore what capitalism and neoliberalism have done to at least a similar (if not higher) amount of people
 
You know a lot of people who died starved and died from things they may have recovered from if not for being starved

I'm not here to be an apologist for Stalin. I'm not a Stalin fan. The thing is people want to simplify what happened so they can point out communists and say "hey look how evil they are let's kill them" while they completely ignore what capitalism and neoliberalism have done to at least a similar (if not higher) amount of people


I don't know how, exactly, this thread got into some sort of argument about how many people communism killed vs capitalism or whatever... and I'm regretting encouraging the de-rail by replying to any of that.


But if it's an issue you want to argue start a thread about it, personally I'm getting back to the actual topic.
 
Neighborhood watch people are not supposed engage people they are supposed to alert the authorities, which what Zimmerman did. He should have dropped it right there, but he didn't because he had "heat" to protect him.

How many SOP's of Neighborhood Watch groups have you read to determine that? Anyway still lame to bring in Z/T.
 
Those are communist regimes in name only. They were authoritarian regimes. There's never been an actual communist regime. Not possible.



True. Especially the last two words. :)
 
True. Especially the last two words. :)

Communism is nice in theory... idiotic in practice. It goes against human nature and stifles individual creativity and growth.
 
Communism is nice in theory... idiotic in practice. It goes against human nature and stifles individual creativity and growth.



Yup. Apparently it also provides too much opportunity, in the revolutionary and formative stages, for dictators or oligarchies to seize power... and then just keep it, since that is what always happens.
 
Yup. Apparently it also provides too much opportunity, in the revolutionary and formative stages, for dictators or oligarchies to seize power... and then just keep it, since that is what always happens.

Precisely. I understand that Marx believed that a communist "government" wasn't something that formed but something that other governments morphed into. Thing is, if he was right, why have we never seen that? They've always morphed into authoritarian dictatorships.
 
Precisely. I understand that Marx believed that a communist "government" wasn't something that formed but something that other governments morphed into. Thing is, if he was right, why have we never seen that? They've always morphed into authoritarian dictatorships.



Very good point. Possibly because Marx was yet another in a long line of people who had a really cool idea that turned out to be absolutely wrong. :)
 
Guns are a machine for killing. They make killing easier and less personal. Like any good machine, it empowers the operator.

Do you think that it empowers all operators? If so why. And if not, why not?
 
Very good point. Possibly because Marx was yet another in a long line of people who had a really cool idea that turned out to be absolutely wrong. :)

What do you like about Marx's idea? and how do you think it should have been applied? bad carryouts notwithstanding.
 
Precisely. I understand that Marx believed that a communist "government" wasn't something that formed but something that other governments morphed into. Thing is, if he was right, why have we never seen that? They've always morphed into authoritarian dictatorships.

Bread and circuses win out most of the time over quality long term goals.
 
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