@comrade_Comrade Also, I just thought about it a little more and I'm not convinced the self-defense argument is an utilitarian argument. How do you use a gun for self-defense ? Do you use it to kill somebody ? It doesn't really seem like this has good utility value. For example if you kill someone that is robbing you, it seems overall worse than if you just let him robb you. A self-defense tool should allow you to stop the agressor without killing him if you want it to have good utility value, otherwise, you are just trading murder for murder in the best case scenario and crime for murder the rest of the time.
I get that all of that is debatable, like killing a person that kills a lot of people must have some utility value, and I suppose you can prevent a robbery without killing the robber with a gun, but somehow the cases where a gun is actually more helpful than let's say a stun-gun for example seem rather small to grant guns a utility value at self-defense.
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@comrade_Comrade Also, I just thought about it a little more and I'm not convinced the self-defense argument is an utilitarian argument. How do you use a gun for self-defense ? Do you use it to kill somebody ? It doesn't really seem like this has good utility value. For example if you kill someone that is robbing you, it seems overall worse than if you just let him robb you. A self-defense tool should allow you to stop the agressor without killing him if you want it to have good utility value, otherwise, you are just trading murder for murder in the best case scenario and crime for murder the rest of the time.
I get that all of that is debatable, like killing a person that kills a lot of people must have some utility value, and I suppose you can prevent a robbery without killing the robber with a gun, but somehow the cases where a gun is actually more helpful than let's say a stun-gun for example seem rather small to grant guns a utility value at self-defense.