Gunslinger

So that is why USA wants to buy Greenland.....

@minimilk More dakka?

@tofei More Dakka? You can never have to much dakka.

I've never been there, so I don't really know what it's like, but attempting to research it on the Internet this seems wildly misleading. As far as I can tell guns are controlled by the "Act on control and registration of firearms in Greenland", the best English version of which I can find is here: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:T8x0tBHPyCAJ:https://naalakkersuisut.gl/~/media/Nanoq/Files/Attached%2520Files/Engelske-tekster/Legislation/Act%2520on%2520control%2520and%2520registration%2520of%2520firearms%2520in%2520Greenland.doc+&cd=12&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Some key bits:
> It is prohibited, without permission from the Chief Constable of Greenland, to import, manufacture, purchase, carry, own or use [list of guns including small firearms]

This sounds like a license to me whether they call it that or not, especially in light of:

> Licences in accordance with the regulations can only be granted persons of whom no information regarding personal relations and behaviour hitherto cause misgivings in granting the application.

It does seem like reasonably loose regulations, especially with regards to weapons for hunting purposes, but nothing like what the comic suggests.

@Thor84

I lived in Greenland some 10 years ago and it is importent to realise that there is two types of guns in Greenland. Hunting rifles and everything else.

Licens and regulations are for pistols, revolvers, other small firearms, fully- and semiautomatic rifles, including semi-automatic smooth-bored, double-barrelled shotguns, machine pistols and machine guns. There are no rules or regulations for non-automatic rifles and semi-automatic rifles can be exemptioned if they are for hunting purpose.

Practical it means that hunting rifles are sold over the counter in the supermarkets. But as many towns have less than a handful of shops, that is really what can be expected

In the United States gun culture, it is not uncommon for children as young as five years old to be gifted with firearms on birthdays or holidays, although usually just small .22 rifles and such when they are that young. I got my first "hunting rifle" when I was thirteen, although saying it was "mine" is a bit of poetic license. It had been my father's when he was a boy, and later when I got a better rifle it got handed down to my brother.

What this story does not explain is that none of these firearms actually belong to the child. Legally they belong to the adult who purchased them. At least today. Back in the day when my Dad first got his rifle, such things were never registered or anything. There were no records on ownership or transfer of weapons back in the 1950's. But even back then ownership did not vest in a child, but rather in their parents (or possibly, as in my case, Grandparents.)

For that matter, my "better" rifle was a war souvenir that my Grandfather brought back from Germany in the late 1940's and had converted into a hunting rifle. There are no ownership records of it anywhere, except in my book of records and serial numbers.

These days in the United States ownership of firearms is usually a matter of record with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms based on the background check you filled out when you bought it. However, outside of official sales there may not be any record, and in some states there are few records kept even by the stores that sell them. Private sales in some states are regulated and some are not. It's confusing and problematic, and I'm not going to defend our system which I (as a firearms owner) find to be woefully inadequate to protect the public from those who should not have access to firearms.

@Tarmaque I'm not going to make a big long post about specifics, but in general, I do agree with your synopsis.

Finding the solutions is much more difficult, though, and the gun fetishists who insist any rule or law at all is a violation of the constitution makes that extremely difficult.

@VinnyHavoc This is true, and a lot of it has to do with the politicization of the NRA back in the late 1960's and early 1970's. It went from an organization that promoted marksmanship, safety, and shooting sports (It originated after the Civil War when it was realized that many of the conscripts for the Union didn't know how to shoot) to a political organization for promoting conservative policy and candidates.

And it was literally taken over by using scare tactics that black people were arming themselves so white people needed guns to protect themselves. It all happened right after the Black Panthers started bringing shotguns to their political rallies.

The whole history of the NRA since the late 1960's is pretty scary.

More info: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/radiolab-presents-more-perfect-gun-show

@VinnyHavoc Every "gun debate" I've had started with raving about how a very specific type of gun (which is already illegal) needs to be banned!!! (Congrats, it already is!) Once you give up on trying to explain the thing they want to be banned already is... and get some actual details.... it always devolves into "ban ALL shooty things because then no one will ever commit murder ever again!!!" *sigh* The "gun laws debate" in USA never gets anywhere because one side flat out refuses to learn facts that contradict what they "already know".

That is why the gun registry for the USA is on a paper card catalogue! We haven't managed to update the laws since before computers were invented. -_- Weird when the PRO-gun side is for better regulation and the ANTI-gun side is against any law that "doesn't go far enough".

Everyone should get a gun once they reach age 14

I think Brother America needs a private moment and a cold shower just now.

And yet, the gun murder rate is so much smaller... What does that tell you?

@Cris That bolt-action rifles aren't any more popular with criminals in Greenland than they are in the US. You still need a permit to get a semi-automatic in Greenland.

@Cris that the knife and blunt-instrument homicide rate is higher. Seriously, per wikipedia the overall homicide rate in Greenland and the USA is almost identical, does it really matter that American murderers prefer to shoot their victims instead of stabbing them?

@Cris With a population density of 0.03 people per square kilometer, a Greenlander couldn't find another person to hurt even if they wanted to.

@Cris I've always been of the opinion that society itself is the problem, especially since there actually used to be guns in every school in the US. People are just not taught to respect others any more, at least not on an individual level.

@Cris No brown people.

@Cris That one factor alone isn't enough to make a judgement?

Even if everyone had guns the population density alone would make it less likely that the issues that lead to gang fighting in the US would be as big an issue in Greenland.

And now everyone should suddenly start giving Greenland chocolate bars

this might not be the most relevant place to post this but my attempt to make a forum topic for it did not work for some reason

Anyway, enjoy:


Yes, I am posting a lot of these in a short time. I just started re-reading the comic and wanted to share the best political ones with you all

@SchrodySweden Thanks ^^

I've never understood how the philosophy that "guns don't kill people, people kill people" is supposed to be reassuring. Surely that should be even more worrying to Americans.

@RyanW When it comes to our lawmakers neither is worrying because their bank accounts are mysteriously filling with money from the NR-I mean an unknown benefactor

@RyanW That's because a gun doesn't have legs and can't walk on its own to shoot someone. A gun is only a tool, and its a tool people use to do various things, such as self defense, hunting and target practicing for fun as well as bad things, such as shooting people.

@ShirBlackspots I'm still a little confused about the self defense argument : how do you "use" a gun for self defense if it's not to shoot at people ?

@Isdaril How can you be confused by that? The only way you use a gun is to shoot it, so if someone is attacking you, you shoot them. But I do know there's several EU countries that make it illegal to defend yourself, so that's probably why you're confused.

@ShirBlackspots Well you said, a gun is not necessarily used for bad things such as shooting people, it can be used to do good things like self-defense which is... shooting at people...
See my point now ? Self-defense seems like a good thing but is it really ? In the end what you call "self-defense" is just another way of saying "shooting at somebody". And on those cases of self defense how many really prevent someone to kill more people ? Only on those cases can you pretend that guns really do have a utility value.

@Isdaril "Self-defense seems like a good thing but is it really ?"

Yes. Yes it is. Absolutely and unequivocally.

If someone means to do someone else harm, as the aggressor and credibly a threat to that person's bodily integrity, then shooting them dead right then and there is a morally good thing to do, because you are ending, terminally, an aggressive threat.

You're ignoring intent with your argument and presuming that someone who means to harm or kill someone, unprovoked, has as much value to their life as the person they mean to kill. I say they do not; not during or immediately before the moment of aggression at any rate, when violence is justified to stop them and the only violence you can be sure to be effective at stopping them is terminal.

Give everybody a phaser straight from Star Trek that's capable of magically rendering someone unconscious, 100%, every time, with an acceptably low incidence of fatalities from the resulting fall or triggering cardiac arrest and that might change, but until then? Shooting someone who means to kill someone, whether it's yourself or someone else, is absolutely a good thing.

@ShadowDragon8685 "Shooting them dead right then and there is a morally good thing to do"
Well, I'm not that much into philosophy, but I'm pretty sure you're going to have a hard time finding a renowned philosoph that would say exactly that. If you're a devout man, I'm pretty sure you've got a "you shall not kill people" written somewhere if you read the bible carefully...

"You're ignoring intent with your argument and presuming that someone who means to harm or kill someone, unprovoked, has as much value to their life as the person they mean to kill"
Yes I am, for 2 reasons. Firstly, because it is how you roll in utilitarianism. You only consider the greater good on a large scale and mostly deny individuality, so a life is a life, and they all have the same value. Be it the life of Hitler or Gandhi. As the self-defense argument is an utilitarian argument, I treat it as such.
Secondly, because thinking that the life of someone that harms people has a lower value is just your point of view and most moral systems disagree with you on that point. Mostly because it is impossible (or very hard) to value life in an objective way, each individual has its own way to value certain lives over others in a subjective way (for example, I would value my friends and family higher than complete strangers, you probably would too, except it is YOUR friends and family and they are not the same people) and you can't reconcile all these subjective valuations into a coherent system.
An other example to illustrate this : someone that robbs you may be stealing the money to provide food for his family, so in your eyes he's a person that harms you and that you probably value poorly, but in the eyes of his family, he takes risks so that they don't starve to death and they value him positively. Both valuations seem pretty legit, but they are inconsistent with each other.

@Isdaril
1.) The commandment is more properly translated as "Thou shall not commit murder." Especially as other parts of the legal code in the book you reference indicate that killing someone in defense of your life is expected.

I can see you're having a problem with this concept of self defense. This means that you and Shadowdragon are speaking fundamentally different languages with different philosophies behind them, from radically different viewpoints. I'm personally on Shadow's side, but that's only because my brain keeps trying to lock up when I try to picture a philosophy where I felt it was not right to defend my life. I'm going to try to explain from basic principles, here, since I can see we don't share many of the same assumptions.

Killing someone in self defense is generally a last resort. Nobody particularly likes the idea of killing someone else unless they are profoundly disturbed. Anyone who tells you otherwise is misrepresenting a good portion of the population. The general definition for such acts falls under "use of lethal force" where "Lethal force" translates to any action that a reasonable person may expect to cause death or grevious bodily harm. In this light, a blunt instrument, a blade, a firearm, a fender on a vehicle, a rock or a stick may all constitute lethal force, as may your bare hands, should need arise.

Generally speaking, in the United States (and your laws will vary from state to state, and ignorance is not an excuse), lethal force is authorized to protect yourself from credible threat of lethal force being used upon you. In short, if you cannot demonstrate that a person is a credible and immediate threat to you, with intent to do harm to you, you are not allowed to cause them harm.

From a logical and moral standpoint, self defense is essentially a variation on the trolley problem. On track 1 is a person who has his hands on the switch that will send the runaway trolley running down track 2, over you and possibly others, for some form of personal gain. On track 2, You are standing with a switch that will send the trolley down track 1, rolling over the person who has put you in this situation where you have to kill or die. The first person to throw the switch gets to decide, and subsequent attempts to activate the switch don't count.

If you decide that you cannot, or will not throw that switch, that is your decision to make. Not mine. In the actual amount of time you have to decide, no one else can decide for you. Similarly, you cannot and should not impose your decision on other people.

We will not discuss the morality of refusing to throw that switch yourself, but being more than happy to call armed agents of the State to throw the switch for you. That is an entirely different can of worms, about which numerous legal precedents, books, court cases, and so on have been written.

@Isdaril > If you're a devout man, I'm pretty sure you've got a "you shall not kill people" written somewhere if you read the bible carefully...

The exact phrase in the Bible is "thou shalt not MURDER." Not "Thou shalt not kill;" it's "thou shalt not MURDER." You'll also find such gems as "thou shall not suffer a witch to live."

But even moreso, the original meaning, "thou shalt not murder," in context, means "do not kill people within your own tribe." Those guys the next valley over, those heathens who worship heathen gods? Yeah, go right ahead and kill the men and take their women and children for slaves and their goats and stuff in raiding, and hell, if you're successful enough, just go head and kill 'em all and take their land! That ain't MURDER, it's not like they're part of YOUR group, after all!

So forgive me if I DON'T take THAT book for a guide to morality.

> Secondly, because thinking that the life of someone that harms people has a lower value is just your point of view and most moral systems disagree with you on that point.

I'm only attaching lesser value to their lives in that, as the aggressor, they forfiet the right to NOT be stopped with the most immediate and effective means available. Today that means firearms. Should phasers out of Star Trek, with EFFECTIVE and RELIABLE less-lethal "knock this guy right the hell out" settings become widespread, I would advocate for widespread phaser ownership, especially of models which were only equipped with stun settings - unless the means to render oneself immune to stun settings (such as combat drugs or personal force fields) became commonplace. In that case, I'd want a phaser when drawn to default to a heavy stun setting, but for it to be trivial to set it to "vaporize holes in someone."

> An other example to illustrate this : someone that robbs you may be stealing the money to provide food for his family, so in your eyes he's a person that harms you and that you probably value poorly, but in the eyes of his family, he takes risks so that they don't starve to death and they value him positively. Both valuations seem pretty legit, but they are inconsistent with each other.

If he's prepared to do violence, then he must be stopped with violence. Too bad for him, but I don't know if he's robbing me, or if he wants to cut me up for thrills, or if he only WANTS the money without meaning me any personal harm, but he's willing to kill me to prevent me from testifying as to his identity. I don't know, I can't know, and frankly I don't care; he has initiated violence, therefore all methods of stopping his predation, immediately, which do not lead to unacceptable risk of collateral damage are automatically authorized.

@ShadowDragon8685 But even moreso, the original meaning, "thou shalt not murder," in context, means "do not kill people within your own tribe." => Now, i'm not a religious man myself, but I believe christians would tell you that you're just making assumptions about the holy meaning of the somewhat vague writings that are in the bible. But let's agree that these books are filled with contradictions.

So forgive me if I DON'T take THAT book for a guide to morality. => Now, i suppose what you meant to say was : "I don't take that book as a guide to morality seriously". Because that book is indeed a guide to morality, a poorly written one if you ask me (mostly because it had many authors, and most of them didn't agree about a lot of things in the first place), but one nonetheless. Religion is not only about morality, but it is a huge aspect of it.

he has initiated violence, therefore all methods of stopping his predation [...] are automatically authorized => Those are some strong words... Would you have the same judgement if that agressor were you ? Let's put the situation into context : You are poor and have 2 children to feed. You live next to a rich guy who owns a beautiful villa and throws away food everyday. But for some reason (probably because he doesn't care), he mixes his garbage with all sorts of chemicals which makes his garbage inedible. For the sake of the argument (this is a thought experiment), let's assume all the other people leaving in the neighborhood are either poor as you are or can't spare anything. You already asked the rich man to stop putting chemicals with his garbage but he told you that he didn't care and that you should leave him alone or he would call the cops on you. One night (you and your family haven't eaten anything in days, one of your kid is sick and he probably won't live another day if you don't find him something to eat) you see that he left the window of the kitchen open so you break in and try to find some leftover food, but for some reason he awakens (you probably made some noise) get his gun and shoot you dead.
Now here comes the question : Do you really believe you deserved to die ?
As a bonus here is another one : who used violence first ?

@Isdaril

> Do you really believe you deserved to die ?

Yes. He had no idea whether I was there to steal food, or take revenge upon him and his for whatever slights I felt, but I was intruding IN HIS HOME, in the dead of night. In a home invasion, shoot first, be judged by twelve instead of risking being carried by six.

> who used violence first ?

I did. I gained unlawful, forcible entry to his home (regardless of how poorly-secured it is, unlawful entry is forcible entry) for purposes which were unlawful, and thus absolutely irrelevant. I did not have the force of law behind me in intruding upon his home, therefore he was fully justified in shooting.

@Isdaril Optimally there shouldn't be a need for a force multiplier like a gun in self defense. Sometimes it just can't be avoided; many of us are lucky not to be live or work in areas where such need can exist.

When there is such situation, getting the opposition to realize that they are not facing a lonely elderly man with arthritis but one with a weapon, they might reconsider. If not, they are taking the risk that they might be receiving uncomfortably large piercings in places where they shouldn't be; it is up to them to decide to take the risk and the defendant to provide the service. Justice system can later decide if the defensive actions were justified. ("Better to be tried by twelve than carried by six", as they say in US)

But yes, display of credible means of defending oneself successfully is the first step of using a weapon for self defense, used on national level of defense every day everywhere in the world. Mutually assured destruction being the extreme case to date.

@stabcutdrink Well I suggest you to read my answer to ShadowDragon above, as I don't want to paraphrase myself. But the whole point is that sure for the individual it is better to be alive rather than dead, but on an utilitarian PoV it doesn't really matter that the victim of the burglary or the agressor dies as they both carry the same utilitarian value.
Also, as every advocate of self-defense you are just envisioning the best case scenario which is dissuasion, but I don't think it always works that way. For example, let's assume that criminality is systemic and not due to some random nutjobs (which seem to be the case). In that case, crimes are bound to happen even if you are arming the victims. What's going to happen then is that as the victims get more and more dangerous to the criminals, those criminals are going to arm themselves more and more and you're going to end up with more violence than previously (so more death in total, in particular, I suspect the victim death toll wouldn't increase that much, but the offender death toll would increase tremendously). The number of crimes wouldn't increase, but each and every one of them is bound to be more violent because each party expect the other to be more violent and, as such, feel more entitled to use lethal force.
To be clear, until you can prove that such an inverse correlation between crime rate and posession of guns exist, it feels that your whole case is kinda empty (sure it works on a perfect theoritical case, but I'm not so sure in practice). Sadly, I looked that up and didn't find much about it. Most people focus on gun ownership vs violent crime rate correlations (which seem to be quite unconclusive btw) but not many people seem interested in proving that gun ownership is a deterrent to crime (which means people don't really think about the issue rationaly as this is the main argument of pro-gun stance).

@Isdaril Utilitarian view doesn't matter much when it is about you and your will to see the next day. My point was about having the ability, showing to have it and not needing to use it for that reason. Kind of same thing you don't mess with bear cubs - you could, but they are packing bear moms.

@stabcutdrink Well except crime doesn't seem to operate that way on a global scale. Sure on an individual level you would probably choose to commit crimes on people that don't have the ways to defend themselves, but if everybody has those ways, it seems crimes will happen anyway. And it doesn't even seem that there is a way to prove that gun ownership do end up detering crime on a large scale (if anything, the USA example seem to prove an inverse relation).
To go back to your illustration, if you're starving and can only find bear cubs, you will end up attacking them, even if they are all packing bear moms; you'll just make sure you have a big rifle beforehand.

Also utilitarian view matters because politics are not interested in individual preferences but about the well-being of the society as a whole. And what benefits the sum of the few does not necessarily align with what benefits the group (classic example being the prisonner's dilemma).

@Isdaril You really see a lot of effort to disagree. Have fun with your hobby.

@ShirBlackspots, so why not remove the legs from gun owners, cuz legs is what kills

@RyanW Because people who are going to kill will find a way... and therefore we must make it as easy as possible for them to do it, apparently.

What I want to know is why we don’t extend that logic to people determined to better themselves through college, or fight cancer or other illnesses they have.

@TuxedoCartman Because that would be socialist. And doing anything socialist like making college as affordable as it was back in the 60s or providing people with cheap healthcare that didn't require them to work for a company that treated them like dirt would turn the country into a communist dictatorship.

@ShoggothOnTheRoof ^^
And here I thought I lived in a liberal capitalistic country... Foolish me, it was a communist dictatorship all along ! :p
That must be why our current president wants to abolish all that nonsense... Who needs education and healthcare anyway ?

@RyanW If someone wants to kill me and he has a gun, that's a problem for me. If he wants to kill me and we both have guns, that's a problem for him because I might get the drop on him. If he wants to kill me and I have a gun and he doesn't, that's a BIG problem for him. If he wants to kill me and he does not KNOW whether or not I have a gun, that's an enormous problem for him because now he has to worry about the unknown. If he wants to kill me and my neighbor has a gun and sees him coming, that's a problem for him.

But if he's a crook, I know he has a gun. He knows he has a gun. If I'm a law-abiding person and I don't have any guns, he knows I don't have a gun. So it's happy time for him.

And, before anyone starts "but what if they got ALL the guns, like in England," well, there's two problems with that:

Samuel Colt called the firearm The Great Equalizer because most humans could operate one, whether it was an aged granny old enough to have seen British Redcoats burn the White House in 1812, or a youth of twelve.

If NOBODY has guns, folk can still kill other folk, they just need other force-multipliers, like knives. Why do you think we keep hearing about knife crime in England? So now if he wants to kill me but I might have a knife, etc, etc. Only now you're introducing a greater element of physical prowess to the equation. Small and weak humans with firearms have successfully defended themselves against large and powerful aggressive ones without them - or with them, in fact. Put the scenario back to old-school muscle-powered aggression and the chances of that go WAY down.

@ShadowDragon8685 Perhaps I wasn't clear.

There are many, many more murders in the US than in Europe, most of them with guns. Wouldn't that make "guns don't kill people, people kill people" a pretty horrifying condemnation of the American people?

@RyanW Yes. I never said that wasn't so. A massive cluster of racial and economic inequality (that often combo hard to really stick it to the poor minorities) makes America not-so-great. Then the "tattered social safety net" card is played, combo'd with "near-to-nonexistant public healthcare including especially mental healthcare" and what you have is a county of several hundred MILLION people, with a great many more stressors in their lives, many of whom will have little to no economic bright spots to look forward to.

Taking away the people's guns, like, by waving a magic wand or something, won't solve the underlying issue. It'll just mean that knife and blunt object murders skyrocket. And since those people are the kinds who are more likely to be physically fit, they'll be MORE LIKELY to prevail in a violent situation.

A firearm is a tool. So is a knife, or a baseball bat, or a tire iron. The person who wields it with intent is what makes it a weapon raised against another human being.

@RyanW
You got it wrong, it's not reassurance. It's correcting what is being shown as the problem. The anti-gun groups and the media make it look like the gun just up and shot someone. As if the mere presence of a gun causes nearby people to want to kill. Many only need to be taken to a range to shoot a gun in order to convince them their perceptions are very flawed. As far as I'm concerned, you have no right to make a judgement on guns until you shoot one. I kid you not, shooting a gun has changed the opinion of hardcore anti-gun people. I suggest anyone who gets the chance to shoot a gun, to take it.

In the news, we usually hear nothing about the shooter's motivations or what lead to doing it. If we do, it's in the background or a small article at a later date. They blame the weapon and no one actually wonders why mass shootings are becoming more common because apparently having weapons available causes them. They even overshadow the victims - completely taking over the story for their anti-gun message. One kid did everything to show that he'd attack the school (again) and even wrote a poem saying he would. They left the kid to the school councilor who wasn't trained to handle such problems and no further help was given. The system failed the kid and I doubt anything was changed to help the next kid who might end up in the same spot. So their rants about guns on the news ends up in nothing being done about fixing the lack of psychiatric help people are getting here. People kill people, we should be focuses on that, not on the tool. In the absence of guns, they will just resort to other weapons... bombs, gas, knives, blunt objects, arrows, vehicles, poison... there are many ways to harm people after all.

Only recently has there been an issue with guns. Only recently have mental illnesses been so ignored. We dismantlement our entire system after deeming asylums inhumane. Now we throw the mentally ill in jail after they've become a danger to others, otherwise they are on their own. We even have a social stigma for those seeing a psychiatrist to top it off. The denser our population gets, the more these issues will crop up. As long as guns are the narrative, the rest will go unaddressed.

@RyanW
I know it's not what you're asking, but my friend's dad owns guns and a surprising number of people refuse to go to anywhere near his gun safe because they're worried that unloaded guns will magically jump out of the safe, load themselves, aim, and fire. I do agree with your comment, but some people are inherently scared of guns even when they're in a situation where the gun poses no threat to any one.

Low population density and polar bears make a difference, I'm sure.