I wasn't talking to them. They lived in a completely different time. Copyright was created in response to certain technological changes, like the printing press, that allowed works to be copied with such efficiency like we had never seen. It was easy to be profitable when nobody could physically copy your works.
Don't you realize that property is control, and control is property? What is a property right, if not for the right to control the property? How can you call it property, if you do not control it?
Exactly. If we don't formally designate property/control, then property/control falls to the general public. They get the freedom to do whatever they like with it, they have sole influence over the work's distribution and future, they keep it and possibly even extend it. You may not want to call it property or control, legally or otherwise, but it follows the properties of property/control.
It's no coincidence that the current notion of public domain, where the public is considered to own the work, is identical to the suggestion of a culture without copyright (which I, personally, think is a contradiction in terms).
Right there, you just implicitly assumed that this concept of "IP" exists and was valid.
I don't think so. The IP he talks about is the actual work of art that the creator creates. This (apart from the terminology) is independent of intellectual property rights (or lack thereof). It's a matter of control, which also exists independently of any views about property rights. If the artist doesn't get control, then everyone else does. The point is the you all are part of "everyone else" and you enjoy the control that is afforded to you, but it comes potentially at the artist's expense.
Don't worry, the original idea is still in the only place it ever was, in the brain it was thought up in. My "copy" is a shadow of a shadow which has no consequence on the "idea".
You make it sound like ideas (which aren't copyrightable BTW) need only trivial amounts of time and money to develop and share. Some do, but the more complex ones, like the ones that are used to develop copyrightable art for example, require lots of work to release their potential.
I get upset when people try to assert that I have no right to my expression because it resembles someone else's.
You actually do. You aren't allowed to copy works, but there's nothing saying you can't independently come up with an identical one. Of course, it's unheard of, but who knows, you could be the genuine first!
The right to share other people's stories came when Ugh first told a story about how he tackled a dinosaur.
How does that define a right? Did the first time Ugh pick up a club and bludgeon Ughette to death define our right to murder? Oh wait, do we even have that right?
To be fair, the *AA + gov is making it difficult to remember the positive side of copyright.
OK, let me give you a refresher. Copyright has made art commercially viable. Now we are saturated in culture and artistic inspiration, and we have more choice in artistic tastes than we know what to do with. Naturally, the most popular (and lucrative) make it to the top of the pile in terms of marketing, but just dig slightly below the surface and you'll find a rich array of styles. This rich culture has provided economic benefits, plus also provided incentive to fast-track development of certain technologies, for example, the high-speed internet that people are using so much these days. If you lose sight of the benefits, you forget how you kept all these wonderful benefits, and you eventually lose them.
Copyright has never been about the rights of artists. Since the seventeenth century stationers guild it's been about the right to profit by exploiting the artists and the crowns need to censor and control publication.
Had protecting the rights of authors and artists actually mattered, rather than being used as a thinly disguised excuse to fool the gullible, intellectual 'property' would have been concerned with funneling resources to the actual artists and creators rather than securing monopolies for the holders of the rights.
I disagree. It was always about artists getting a fair deal. Why? Because the voting people who elected the representatives who passed copyright law, and the people who have kept (and enjoyed the fruits of) copyright law, don't give a flying f**k about the rights of the big bad scary publishers. Well, some do, but only as a means to an end.
There are no positive effects of copyrights.
Perhaps I was wrong?
As a whole they damage creativity
How do you damage creativity exactly?
slow down creative derivative works
Buh-bong. They increase distribution, so more people have the opportunity to create derivative works. It also shouldn't slow down the creation of derivative works AT ALL, as (is supposed to be) guaranteed by fair use.
hamper incremental improvement
Fair enough. That it does. But tell me, are we really going to miss all those create works with tiny portions of the work altered? If it were significant enough to make it an artwork of its own, then it would be protected by fair use. If not, well, we probably aren't missing much.
skew the distribution channels towards creative poverty
No, it widens the distribution channel magnificently, and it's capitalism that skews the majority of the distribution to populism. It's nothing to do with copyrights = crap art, it's just that people have different tastes to you, and if artists trying to find a meal ticket want the best chance at a financial break, they will try to please people, not you.
Actually this is an important point. You claim that copyright skews distribution channels, when actually it creates them. What makes you think that the distribution channels will still exist to any significant degree if there can be no money made from art? You, like seemingly every other anti-copyright lobbyist, seem to be taking our rich culture for granted, which is fine for you now, but it doesn't leave bright prospects for future generations, who will be culturally (and creatively) richer from art nurtured under copyright today. Even if you personally consider the majority to be crap, which not everyone agrees with (obviously, because it sells), it still provides the necessary inspiration to aspire to or to rebel against. Whichever future artists choose, copyright law will be there waiting, lowering the barrier of entry, and increasing the likelihood that a market for their art will exist (no matter how off the wall it is).
More talent and works are marginalized than are aided, helped and spread through the current regime.
Oh boo-hoo. The big labels won't finance that pub-band down the road? Let's destroy those labels! Yeah! That will get the pub band signed! Seriously though, without the labels, everyone gets marginalised.
no government that criminalises millions of its own citizens has done well in the long term.
Sorry to nitpick, but it was actually the citizens who criminalised themselves. The rights of artists to their works came way before the rights of others to trample them.
I guess this is the sometimes slow process of revisionism taking place, ready to wipe out any memory of all the positive effects of copyrights.
A phone is a phone is a phone. Don't fall for it. Buy generic phones, or better yet, just take the free one provided with your wireless providers contract of adhesion.
A phone is a phone, so you might as well buy a cheap one, huh? Wow. Words to live by.
And hey, if you happen to stumble across a phone (like an iPhone) that those other suckers out there believe is more valuable, would you mind exchanging it for my 10-year-old model? Thanks so much.
Unfortunately, the general public seems so eager to become apoplectic that media outlets have essentially created an industry around giving people their daily outrage "fix".
Welcome to Slashdot. Make yourself comfortable and leave your self-restraint at the door.
I swear, the whole "bought and paid for" lobbying thing is about 20% fact and 80% conjecture. It's also probably about 30% true, and 70% just a scapegoat for all the laws that individuals don't personally agree with, so that they don't have to accept that often people want them, or that people benefit from them in unexpected ways.
I have a feeling if the schmoes in the RIAA value their liberty, they won't procure drugs for the musicians. Can you see the RIAA stepping up, and admitting that its their fault? I'm guessing there's more accessories than drug dealers in the RIAA.
We're talking criminal law here, because the use of unlicensed investigators is a criminal matter.
I would have thought it would be civil matter. I mean, come on, just because you hired an unlicensed investigator, doesn't mean you have to go to jail. You're not a menace to society, you're not endangering anyone.
[/subtle parody of typical/. opinion on copyright infringement]
I think you may be confused about the definition of hyperbole. Nowhere in that statement did I exaggerate anything for effect. Unless you have some other way of parsing the statement of choosing not to believe [XXX] out of thick-headed principle, my statement still stands. It contains no exaggeration.
Note: I never actually accused you of being thick-headed. I was referring to the hypothetical case that if you were going to be thick-headed, then I couldn't be bothered arguing it out with you. Oh god, I hate have to explain everything twice!
I think you may be confused about the definition of hyperbole. Nowhere in that statement did I exaggerate anything for effect. Unless you have some other way of parsing the statement of choosing not to believe [XXX] out of thick-headed principle, my statement still stands. It contains no exaggeration.
It did. You completely exaggerated my quote. I don't want to explain it a third time, especially when I did it just last paragraph, but let me assure you that you did exaggerate my quote, so much so that you wrung implication out of it that simply wasn't there. Then again, perhaps strawman would also be appropriate?
Everyone except every person who has ever defended themselves, their family, or anyone else through use or display of a firearm, as well as every other person involved (minus the offenders, of course).
Yeah, taking for granted that those people will exist in equal numbers. See? The whole steering-the-debate thing. It's happening again.
I'd guess that you object to a whole lot more than unlicensed firearms, unless your definition of licensing includes restrictions beyond not being a felon or legally not responsible for your own actions. Correct me if I'm wrong. Licensing laws weren't struck down by this decision, they were simply required to be uniformly issued. DC and other restrictive areas have licensing laws, they just issued licenses almost exclusively to those who had money or political connections, and arbitrarily denied them to others.
Look, fair enough. Guns don't have to be completely banned, and I think it's a fair compromise to license them selectively. I am now also aware, thanks to a bunch of posts way back near the beginning of this thread, that this decision didn't limit licensing, but I would much rather the supreme court, or the executive branch, actually do something proactive about firearms, like make minimum licensing standards for all states.
You say it should be common sense, but what is "common sense" frequently depends on your perspective.
Yah, like the perspective of a doctor, and the perspective of a junkie. Like I said, gun nuts make their own bizarre logic.
That's why concrete data is much more useful for discussing the relative merits of a course of action.
Without any historical context to compare rates within and between countries, the guncontrol.ca page doesn't provide much basis for anything.
I agree that data would be useful, I'm just having some troubles finding statistical data that's of any use. However, the image I showed you makes a lot of sense. Higher saturation of guns, higher number of times they'll be used. Surely, surely, you don't want to contend that? I figured you wouldn't bother with that, and point out instead that it may not be indicative of violent deaths as a whole, but no. It seems I overestimated you.
You say my statement is wrong, but how does a ban (or highly restricted licensing) not keep firearms out of the hands of responsible, law-abiding people?
I said fallacy! FALLACY! Open your freaking ears (or eyes)! Your statement is fallacious because taking them out of the hands of everyone does not ONLY take them out of the hands of so-called "responsible" people
Your example is from a police shooting, and as such has no bearing on the discussion at hand (unless you mean to say that not even police can be trusted not to misuse firearms).
I actually never mentioned police, but now that you bring it up, police are also far more jumpy. Just like everyone else.
You attack my principle as being thick-headed and then go on to make the completely unsubstantiated leap to say that means I believe people are always rational when they are afraid.
No, I was saying that people being irrational when being afraid is an important fact, but it's one I can't make any clearer, and that one I can't be bothered arguing should you contend the opposite. There's only one word for what you just did: hyperbole. Try to stick to what is actually said.
Do you believe likening self-defense advocates to heroin junkies or calling people "gun nuts" is not going to provoke an emotional response from most people (the response being different only based on whether the person agrees or disagrees with your position)?
It depends on what your opinion of those people are. I mention it, not to illicit emotional response, but to break through the fortress of self-justifying circular reasoning that underpins the classic gun-nut arguments. If you do it in any kind of self-effacing manner, you just give the gun nut an opportunity to start dictating the rules of the debate, and then suddenly, before you know it, you're arguing under the premise that guns are necessary tools, when in fact, they are only necessary tools, to the majority of people, because the whole place is saturated with more guns. Personally, I think likening society's gun addiction with heroin addiction is a course of reason, not emotional hyperbole.
"An ocean of blood" is not hyperbole and an emotional appeal?
That was the turnaround I referred to. That indeed was supposed to illicit an emotional response from the douchebag who claimed that anti-gun laws kill people.
Fortunately, US politicians do not have the power to disarm the populace. If they did, it likely would have been done long ago.
Fortunately!? For whom? Everybody loses from guns!
You say my very valid claim of appealing to the emotions of others (whether it was your intent or not is irrelevant) is an attempt to dodge the substance of your argument. Where is any evidence to back up your claim that bans provide positive results? I asked for numbers, and you completely ignored the question.
Hey, if you read my comment history, you'll see that I said:
Banning firearms in a single are when penned in on all sides by legal gun trades is nuts. It's like trying to dig a hole in the ocean.
What I object to is unlicensed (or practically unlicensed) guns being allowed in a country as a whole. As for some "figures":
This was just from a brief google search. Scroll down to the graph. You shouldn't need figures, because it really should be common sense.
Given that bans are completely ineffective at removing firearms from the hands of criminals, and are really only truly effective at removing them from the hands of people who are prone to obeying even poorly-conceived laws, the reduction in violent crime and homicides obviously has to be the result of something else.
Ha! This is exactly what I was talking about! You have now ever so subtly altered the viewpoint you are arguing against to someone who supports firearm bans, and not only that, you have used some impressive sleight of hand to slip in a common fallacy into our discussion, almost under the radar. This is exactl
When their life is at stake? e.g. when they are walking down the street, see a suspicious looking black man looking at them funny, and reaching into his pocket for his keys? With guns everywhere, not only do people feel fear (even if some are acclimatised to it), but they actually should feel fear. It's the rational thing to feel. Based on that logic, they should be able to determine who lives and who dies when walking down the street, not overtly threatened by everyone (but covertly threatened by everyone).
People can be idiots. They don't make rational decisions under fear. Look in the news if you want evidence for that. But, if you, out of thick-headed principle, choose not to believe that, and that people deserve unlicensed guns for self-protection, then so be it. I can only hope that one day, US politicians will finally see the sense in disarming their panicky populous.
I apologize. I should have said an "emotional appeal."
I use imagery, not emotional appeal. Again, I invite you to look back at our conversation, and bring me anything that you thought was an emotional appeal. Anything. (There was one thing that I think was an emotional appeal, but it was turnaround from a previous post.)
Isn't it ironic that, despite its purpose of tackling bullshit arguments void of substance, you are using the term "emotional appeal" to actually dodge my substance, rather than having to tackle it head on? LOL.
You still there? I'm waiting for the rouge troll mod to stop targeting me.
Wow, you seem pretty preoccupied with strawmen and emotional arguments. So preoccupied, in fact, you seem to fail to actually comprehend what I'm saying.
Of course guns reduce violent crime. Duh! Would you try to pull a fast one when anyone could end your life at any moment? No. You'd have to be desperate (which, I guess, plenty of people are), or retarded. However, one way or another, violent crime will continue to exist, and when it does, the stakes are much, much higher. Instead of a shop, and indirectly, a small portion of the insurance company's money stockpile, being at stake, there is also the lives of everyone there. Guns elevate the stakes of any situation. Again I ask you (paraphrasing slightly): can you honestly tell me that people in general have earned the right to decide who lives and who dies? It's completely insane. People are scared of other people in the street, and rightly so. Combine a climate of fear, not a lot of responsibility or common sense, with a lot of deadly power, and you have trainwreck happening in slow motion.
And just for the future, an emotional argument is an argument based on emotion. Read back through my comments, and you'll see instead that I use metaphors as a means to get my point across to the extremist libertarian gun nuts that seem to populate slashdot. They are a tool, not my argument. Learn to make the distinction, or lose the "systematic and logical" format. You make it look so weak.
Man can rule himself. It's easy! Just make a decision based on whatever you want, and do it. Whether the ruling is good or not, that's up to you. These issues you mentioned, though, are kinda beyond the scope of individuals. That's where the government is supposed to step in. For example, an individual's policy on immigration might be to pick up a gun and shoot whoever he deems to be out of place. A government's policy on immigration will usually coordinate reasonable restrictions, border patrols, diplomacy with other countries, etc. Get the difference?
I thought this much would be obvious, but I guess not.
Slashdot Mirror
I wasn't talking to them. They lived in a completely different time. Copyright was created in response to certain technological changes, like the printing press, that allowed works to be copied with such efficiency like we had never seen. It was easy to be profitable when nobody could physically copy your works.
God, am I ever sick of that trite little fallacy.
Exactly. If we don't formally designate property/control, then property/control falls to the general public. They get the freedom to do whatever they like with it, they have sole influence over the work's distribution and future, they keep it and possibly even extend it. You may not want to call it property or control, legally or otherwise, but it follows the properties of property/control.
It's no coincidence that the current notion of public domain, where the public is considered to own the work, is identical to the suggestion of a culture without copyright (which I, personally, think is a contradiction in terms).
I don't think so. The IP he talks about is the actual work of art that the creator creates. This (apart from the terminology) is independent of intellectual property rights (or lack thereof). It's a matter of control, which also exists independently of any views about property rights. If the artist doesn't get control, then everyone else does. The point is the you all are part of "everyone else" and you enjoy the control that is afforded to you, but it comes potentially at the artist's expense.
You make it sound like ideas (which aren't copyrightable BTW) need only trivial amounts of time and money to develop and share. Some do, but the more complex ones, like the ones that are used to develop copyrightable art for example, require lots of work to release their potential.
You actually do. You aren't allowed to copy works, but there's nothing saying you can't independently come up with an identical one. Of course, it's unheard of, but who knows, you could be the genuine first!
How does that define a right? Did the first time Ugh pick up a club and bludgeon Ughette to death define our right to murder? Oh wait, do we even have that right?
OK, let me give you a refresher. Copyright has made art commercially viable. Now we are saturated in culture and artistic inspiration, and we have more choice in artistic tastes than we know what to do with. Naturally, the most popular (and lucrative) make it to the top of the pile in terms of marketing, but just dig slightly below the surface and you'll find a rich array of styles. This rich culture has provided economic benefits, plus also provided incentive to fast-track development of certain technologies, for example, the high-speed internet that people are using so much these days. If you lose sight of the benefits, you forget how you kept all these wonderful benefits, and you eventually lose them.
You're right. Although, I would argue that there are benefits to the economy that we wouldn't exactly want to do without.
I disagree. It was always about artists getting a fair deal. Why? Because the voting people who elected the representatives who passed copyright law, and the people who have kept (and enjoyed the fruits of) copyright law, don't give a flying f**k about the rights of the big bad scary publishers. Well, some do, but only as a means to an end.
Perhaps I was wrong?
How do you damage creativity exactly?
Buh-bong. They increase distribution, so more people have the opportunity to create derivative works. It also shouldn't slow down the creation of derivative works AT ALL, as (is supposed to be) guaranteed by fair use.
Fair enough. That it does. But tell me, are we really going to miss all those create works with tiny portions of the work altered? If it were significant enough to make it an artwork of its own, then it would be protected by fair use. If not, well, we probably aren't missing much.
No, it widens the distribution channel magnificently, and it's capitalism that skews the majority of the distribution to populism. It's nothing to do with copyrights = crap art, it's just that people have different tastes to you, and if artists trying to find a meal ticket want the best chance at a financial break, they will try to please people, not you.
Actually this is an important point. You claim that copyright skews distribution channels, when actually it creates them. What makes you think that the distribution channels will still exist to any significant degree if there can be no money made from art? You, like seemingly every other anti-copyright lobbyist, seem to be taking our rich culture for granted, which is fine for you now, but it doesn't leave bright prospects for future generations, who will be culturally (and creatively) richer from art nurtured under copyright today. Even if you personally consider the majority to be crap, which not everyone agrees with (obviously, because it sells), it still provides the necessary inspiration to aspire to or to rebel against. Whichever future artists choose, copyright law will be there waiting, lowering the barrier of entry, and increasing the likelihood that a market for their art will exist (no matter how off the wall it is).
Oh boo-hoo. The big labels won't finance that pub-band down the road? Let's destroy those labels! Yeah! That will get the pub band signed! Seriously though, without the labels, everyone gets marginalised.
Sorry to nitpick, but it was actually the citizens who criminalised themselves. The rights of artists to their works came way before the rights of others to trample them.
I guess this is the sometimes slow process of revisionism taking place, ready to wipe out any memory of all the positive effects of copyrights.
Not always. You can patent things like UI improvements that have tenuous connections to maths at best.
Maybe also web-browsing and the enormous screen also gives him a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Maybe just shooting down the latest shiny gadget by conveniently ignoring half its functionality gives you a warm and fuzzy feeling.
A phone is a phone, so you might as well buy a cheap one, huh? Wow. Words to live by.
And hey, if you happen to stumble across a phone (like an iPhone) that those other suckers out there believe is more valuable, would you mind exchanging it for my 10-year-old model? Thanks so much.
Welcome to Slashdot. Make yourself comfortable and leave your self-restraint at the door.
I swear, the whole "bought and paid for" lobbying thing is about 20% fact and 80% conjecture. It's also probably about 30% true, and 70% just a scapegoat for all the laws that individuals don't personally agree with, so that they don't have to accept that often people want them, or that people benefit from them in unexpected ways.
I have a feeling if the schmoes in the RIAA value their liberty, they won't procure drugs for the musicians. Can you see the RIAA stepping up, and admitting that its their fault? I'm guessing there's more accessories than drug dealers in the RIAA.
I don't know about you, but I find it sad when questioning pure conjecture is considered "spin".
I would have thought it would be civil matter. I mean, come on, just because you hired an unlicensed investigator, doesn't mean you have to go to jail. You're not a menace to society, you're not endangering anyone.
[/subtle parody of typical /. opinion on copyright infringement]
... that they came from somewhere as bad as the mafia or a drug cartel? Oh no, you don't mean that, of course.
Wait, wait, wait. We don't exactly have proof that the OP RTFA...
Note: I never actually accused you of being thick-headed. I was referring to the hypothetical case that if you were going to be thick-headed, then I couldn't be bothered arguing it out with you. Oh god, I hate have to explain everything twice!
It did. You completely exaggerated my quote. I don't want to explain it a third time, especially when I did it just last paragraph, but let me assure you that you did exaggerate my quote, so much so that you wrung implication out of it that simply wasn't there. Then again, perhaps strawman would also be appropriate?
Yeah, taking for granted that those people will exist in equal numbers. See? The whole steering-the-debate thing. It's happening again.
Look, fair enough. Guns don't have to be completely banned, and I think it's a fair compromise to license them selectively. I am now also aware, thanks to a bunch of posts way back near the beginning of this thread, that this decision didn't limit licensing, but I would much rather the supreme court, or the executive branch, actually do something proactive about firearms, like make minimum licensing standards for all states.
Yah, like the perspective of a doctor, and the perspective of a junkie. Like I said, gun nuts make their own bizarre logic.
I agree that data would be useful, I'm just having some troubles finding statistical data that's of any use. However, the image I showed you makes a lot of sense. Higher saturation of guns, higher number of times they'll be used. Surely, surely, you don't want to contend that? I figured you wouldn't bother with that, and point out instead that it may not be indicative of violent deaths as a whole, but no. It seems I overestimated you.
I said fallacy! FALLACY! Open your freaking ears (or eyes)! Your statement is fallacious because taking them out of the hands of everyone does not ONLY take them out of the hands of so-called "responsible" people
I actually never mentioned police, but now that you bring it up, police are also far more jumpy. Just like everyone else.
No, I was saying that people being irrational when being afraid is an important fact, but it's one I can't make any clearer, and that one I can't be bothered arguing should you contend the opposite. There's only one word for what you just did: hyperbole. Try to stick to what is actually said.
It depends on what your opinion of those people are. I mention it, not to illicit emotional response, but to break through the fortress of self-justifying circular reasoning that underpins the classic gun-nut arguments. If you do it in any kind of self-effacing manner, you just give the gun nut an opportunity to start dictating the rules of the debate, and then suddenly, before you know it, you're arguing under the premise that guns are necessary tools, when in fact, they are only necessary tools, to the majority of people, because the whole place is saturated with more guns. Personally, I think likening society's gun addiction with heroin addiction is a course of reason, not emotional hyperbole.
That was the turnaround I referred to. That indeed was supposed to illicit an emotional response from the douchebag who claimed that anti-gun laws kill people.
Fortunately!? For whom? Everybody loses from guns!
Hey, if you read my comment history, you'll see that I said:
What I object to is unlicensed (or practically unlicensed) guns being allowed in a country as a whole. As for some "figures":
http://www.guncontrol.ca/Content/TheCaseForGunControl.html
This was just from a brief google search. Scroll down to the graph. You shouldn't need figures, because it really should be common sense.
Ha! This is exactly what I was talking about! You have now ever so subtly altered the viewpoint you are arguing against to someone who supports firearm bans, and not only that, you have used some impressive sleight of hand to slip in a common fallacy into our discussion, almost under the radar. This is exactl
When their life is at stake? e.g. when they are walking down the street, see a suspicious looking black man looking at them funny, and reaching into his pocket for his keys? With guns everywhere, not only do people feel fear (even if some are acclimatised to it), but they actually should feel fear. It's the rational thing to feel. Based on that logic, they should be able to determine who lives and who dies when walking down the street, not overtly threatened by everyone (but covertly threatened by everyone).
People can be idiots. They don't make rational decisions under fear. Look in the news if you want evidence for that. But, if you, out of thick-headed principle, choose not to believe that, and that people deserve unlicensed guns for self-protection, then so be it. I can only hope that one day, US politicians will finally see the sense in disarming their panicky populous.
I use imagery, not emotional appeal. Again, I invite you to look back at our conversation, and bring me anything that you thought was an emotional appeal. Anything. (There was one thing that I think was an emotional appeal, but it was turnaround from a previous post.)
Isn't it ironic that, despite its purpose of tackling bullshit arguments void of substance, you are using the term "emotional appeal" to actually dodge my substance, rather than having to tackle it head on? LOL.
You still there? I'm waiting for the rouge troll mod to stop targeting me.
Wow, you seem pretty preoccupied with strawmen and emotional arguments. So preoccupied, in fact, you seem to fail to actually comprehend what I'm saying.
Of course guns reduce violent crime. Duh! Would you try to pull a fast one when anyone could end your life at any moment? No. You'd have to be desperate (which, I guess, plenty of people are), or retarded. However, one way or another, violent crime will continue to exist, and when it does, the stakes are much, much higher. Instead of a shop, and indirectly, a small portion of the insurance company's money stockpile, being at stake, there is also the lives of everyone there. Guns elevate the stakes of any situation. Again I ask you (paraphrasing slightly): can you honestly tell me that people in general have earned the right to decide who lives and who dies? It's completely insane. People are scared of other people in the street, and rightly so. Combine a climate of fear, not a lot of responsibility or common sense, with a lot of deadly power, and you have trainwreck happening in slow motion.
And just for the future, an emotional argument is an argument based on emotion. Read back through my comments, and you'll see instead that I use metaphors as a means to get my point across to the extremist libertarian gun nuts that seem to populate slashdot. They are a tool, not my argument. Learn to make the distinction, or lose the "systematic and logical" format. You make it look so weak.
Wouldn't that create a lot of divisions by zero?
Man can rule himself. It's easy! Just make a decision based on whatever you want, and do it. Whether the ruling is good or not, that's up to you. These issues you mentioned, though, are kinda beyond the scope of individuals. That's where the government is supposed to step in. For example, an individual's policy on immigration might be to pick up a gun and shoot whoever he deems to be out of place. A government's policy on immigration will usually coordinate reasonable restrictions, border patrols, diplomacy with other countries, etc. Get the difference?
I thought this much would be obvious, but I guess not.
Yeah, but I hear that even congressmen are bidding for themselves these days...