Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkland
But you miss my point... Regardless of the tool or availability of a tool, humans will continue to kill other humans, accidentally or not, with whatever is at hand.
If someone wants you dead they will try it no matter what tool they can find or legally obtain. If there were no guns on the planet or allowed by law people will still kill each other with the next best thing.
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I didn't miss your point at all, but it seems you did miss mine.
Idiocy and malice would not decrease without guns. However, both would be less effective in causing destruction without the leverage that tools provide.
Accidentally killing your fiancee with your bare hands is far harder than accidentally killing her with a gun. Intentionally killing someone with a screwdriver in a fight is harder than intentionally killing someone with a gun in a fight. Going on a shooting spree with an automatic weapon will generally inflict far more casualties than going on a stabbing spree with a knife.
A tool leverages the capacity of a stupid or malicious person to turn his actions into effects. The problem with guns isn't that they walk out by themselves and start shooting people randomly, it's that they provide the stupid and the malicious with the means to inflict damage far more easily than they could otherwise.
The reason we don't want Al Qaeda to get their hands on nukes isn't that we believe they will stop being murderous scum without access to nukes. It's that we know they will be far more effective murderous scum if they do get access to nukes.
Or just look at the story in the first post. The man is an idiot, no doubt about it. Had he been an idiot with a golf club instead of a gun, chances are that his fiancee would be injured instead of dead.