Mastodawn

@johnbrowntypeface You really don't understand the issue folks have?

If firearms were only usable for suicide and didn't work to kill or maim anyone but the owner, then yeah totally "it should be the choice of the individual" would be sound. But the reason people buy guns is almost always to kill someone else (usually someone else TBD, but occasionally an already determined someone else).

You can't see why people other than the one buying the guns have concerns?

i never said i don't see why anyone would have issues with firearms in general. what i'm talking about is folks telling other people what to do and think according to their own biases, beliefs, & experiences

sure, guns are used to injure and kill. which includes State/fascist violence, revolution, hunting, and community defense.

my concerns are not a reason to make other people's decisions for them. do we think that they've never considered that guns are dangerous?

@johnbrowntypeface I mean, we live in a society and that means we (collectively) do sometimes make people's decisions for them.

I can't actually keep enough explosives in my apartment to level the building. "Do you think I've never considered that ammonium nitrate is dangerous?" doesn't cut it as a counter-argument.

And while we've societally decided vehicles with bad sightlines are road-legal, we've decided other vehicles aren't, making some of people's car-buying decisions for them.

@johnbrowntypeface In that framework, if a thing is straight illegal - that's "making people's decisions for them" IMO.

If a thing is legal, arguing that someone should do one legal thing and not another legal thing, is not "making their decisions for them", it's just advocacy. We do that all the time.

Yeah, I'll encourage people to buy vehicles with good sightlines, because it makes us all safer, even if it's legal for them to buy the more dangerous vehicle.

yes, prohibition is making people's decisions for them. it's not a common leftist position and especially not an anti-authoritarian one

advocacy can happen simply through discourse. but advocating for what you want versus against what someone else should be able to do is more constructive and respectful to others' agency

@johnbrowntypeface So where does what I do land for you?

If I decide to wade in with someone I think might listen to me, who is proposing to get a gun for self defence, I'll point to the stats on gun deaths in the US:
58% suicide
38% murder (which doesn't include murder by cops)
4% "other"
where "other" includes all of
- murder by cops
- negligent and accidental discharge
- self defence by cops and non-cops
...

dragonfrog

@johnbrowntypeface
... and I'll argue that no matter how different they think they are from the American average, those are some hard odds to beat, and that the suicide risks go up not just for the owner but everyone in a household with even one gun.

So, is that, for you, disprespectful advocacy against what someone else should be able to do? Or is it respectfully pointing out information that the person may not be very aware of given US culture and media landscape?

@johnbrowntypeface And, for that matter, same with arguing that someone shouldn't buy an F-150 or such with unsafe sight lines - which you may think they should be able to do - because, selfishly, I don't want them to avoidably kill my child, and altruistically I don't want them avoidably killing some other child either.

Am I violating anarchist principles there? (if I am, I guess I'm fine with that because I don't think of myself as an anarchist, despite agreeing with some anarchist theory)

i don't think this tangent about vehicle sight lines has much relevance to this discussion

it involves a personal consumption choice that relates to collective safety. it does not involve anything directly relating to a tactic used by liberatory movements.

i'm not so sure the argument will be useful. i'm talking about a general idea of allowing people autonomy, especially with tactics for organizing/activism

i don't believe that arguing is particularly fruitful in general