Gun use can be morally necessary

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My solution is to restrict gun ownership and to make gun ownership a privilege of good citizenship and not a right for anyone. I believe that it is far too easy to get a gun in America.

And with so many mass shootings, the gun was purchased legally and the person holding the gun didn’t become a criminal until they actually used the gun.

I also find the fetishization of guns and gun violence by some on this website, who claim to be Catholics, and by Americans at large to be disturbing. It normalizes gun violence and makes people think that gun violence is an unavoidable aspect of life. I mean, the military is worshiped as an idol by many in the US, a good amount of the blockbuster movies glorify gun violence, video games seek to normalize and regularize gun violence, the 2nd amendment is worshiped as a god by some in the US and is seen as being sacrosanct.
 
PhiriTalk said:
How am I moving the goal posts? I didn’t bring up the legal concept of rationality in the first place.
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I assumed that we were all talking about private citizens using firearms, not LEOs. This thread is “Gun use can be morally necessary”, is it not? Am I’m to understand that police and military (when acting in such capacities) are included in this question? If so, then the question is more absurd than I first surmised.
I don’t think a rational person would shoot an unarmed person and I don’t think a rational person would walk around assuming everyone had a gun with them either. That’s all.
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You’re confusing a few things:
  1. I said “rational fear” not “rational person”,
  2. The rational basis of one’s fear is not predicated on the final outcome of threat. In other words, I don’t need to actually know for certain that you have a firearm in order to rationally fear that you have one and that you have every intention of using it to kill me, before I can justifiably kill you with my own firearm.
  3. The assumption you’ve ascribed to LEOs in general is unfounded, unless you’d like to make an argument.
 
PhiriTalk said:
Teaching kids that gun violence is okay. America in 2019.
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Teaching children how to recognize, navigate, operate, and troubleshoot a firearm is no more “teaching [them] gun violence” than it would be if I were to do the same with a can opener, a meat slicer, or a stove.
 
The term “rational” in US law has a very specific meaning and the standard is applied to police officers accused of murder all the time. And police get off because of this standard all the time.

I find is disturbing that a person can legally kill an unarmed person with a gun and still be considered “rational”. That makes no sense to me.

Why are cops so afraid of everyone? Is a cop more likely to be shot than to shoot an unarmed person? Less than a third of Americans own guns, let alone carry them around with them all the time.

I don’t think a rational person, armed with a gun, would shoot an unarmed person.
 
It’s teaching them gun violence is to be a normal part of their lives. I will not expose my children to guns. They are children, not soldiers.

Are the primary purposes of can openers, meat slicers and stoves to kill people? If a gun doesn’t kill, then what is it? A broken gun?
 
PhiriTalk said:
My solution is to restrict gun ownership and to make gun ownership a privilege of good citizenship and not a right for anyone. I believe that it is far too easy to get a gun in America.
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This could be very worthwhile. I myself won’t join you in your Quixotic tilting toward windmills, but if you ever do manage to get a SCOTUS to dramatically reinterpret the 2nd Amendment against 100+ years of jurisprudence, or even better, get three fourths of the states to agree to ditch it entirely, I’ll be there to applaud you and eat my hat in disbelief!
And with so many mass shootings, the gun was purchased legally and the person holding the gun didn’t become a criminal until they actually used the gun.
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So what do you propose? Should we make people criminals before they actually commit criminal acts? Are there any other behaviors/paraphilia that should be preemptively tried this way, or just firearm related ones?
 
I don’t think the 2nd amendment will go away anytime soon. I just don’t think that gun violence will end as long as it’s on books. Either we accept gun violence as normal, or we do the obvious thing which can be done to prevent it.

No, a person who wants to own a gun should have a clearly demonstrable reason for wanting to own a gun. This is how it works in the UK and Australia (both of which have very low rates of gun violence). I also think that being a felon should disqualify someone from being able to own a gun for the rest of their lives (whether they committed a violent crime or not). Felons have shown that they will not follow the law and they shouldn’t be afforded the privilege of a law abiding citizen to own a gun. I also believe this should stand even if the felon is pardoned. There is no reason why a person with a history of not abiding by the law should be able to own a gun.

I also think that the US government should more aggressively go after terrorist groups like the white nationalist militias, neo-confederates, neo-nazis and other separatists groups. Cut the head off the snake before it can even get to you.
 
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I’m serving Mass tomorrow bright and early, so I have to head to bed. Thanks for the convo!

I’m not sure how derailed the thread was already before I entered but I notice we’re pretty much exclusively speaking to utility at this point and not ethics anymore (Worse we made the thread Americanocentric). Not sure if we should take it to another thread or swivel back toward ethics.

I’ll say good night this way:

It is moral to use a gun toward the end of self defense and the defense of another (though not necessarily necessary) 😛

Night, err’body.
 
If you actually read the linked article instead of dismissing information that doesn’t neatly fit into your mal-formed perspective, you would see that there is a citation of statistics from the CDC:
According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), gang homicides accounted for roughly 8,900 of 11,100 gun murders in both 2010 and 2011. That means that there were just 2,200 non gang-related firearm murders in both years in a country of over 300 million people and 250 million guns.
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PhiriTalk -
To study the moral quality of a human act, three elements or sources of moral value must be considered:
Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 1750: “The morality of human acts depends on:
– the object chosen;
– the end in view or the intention;
– the circumstances of the action.
The object, the intention, and the circumstances make up the ‘sources,’ or constitutive elements, of the morality of human acts.”

Compendium of the Catechism, #367: “The morality of human acts depends on three sources: the object chosen, either a true or apparent good; the intention of the subject who acts, that is, the purpose for which the subject performs the act; and the circumstances of the act, which include its consequences.”
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Compendium #368. When is an act morally good?
An act is morally good when it assumes simultaneously the goodness of the object, of the end, and of the circumstances. A chosen object can by itself vitiate an act in its entirety, even if the intention is good. It is not licit to do evil so that good may result from it. An evil end corrupts the action, even if the object is good in itself. On the other hand, a good end does not make an act good if the object of that act is evil, since the end does not justify the means. Circumstances can increase or diminish the responsibility of the one who is acting but they cannot change the moral quality of the acts themselves. They never make good an act which is in itself evil.
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Thus, the “object” - the moral object toward which the act is ordered;
the “intention” - the subjective reason, or purpose, driving the action;
the “circumstances” - the actual situation with all relevant circumstances, including all reasonably foreseen consequences of the act.

The goodness of all three (object, intention, circumstances) must accord to the standard of due love of God, due love of neighbor as self, and due love of self in the light of love of God with one’s whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and neighbor as self in God.
 
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It certainly is. No more or less “moral” than archery or axe throwing.
 
upant said:
it isn’t always what you own but as St JP II says the family you are responsible for protecting.
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I was not including family in that statement. Protecting your family does not necessarily mean to come out fighting, personally I believe removing yourself from the situation it usually the better choice.
 
Yes. Mortal danger, with no possibility of retreat, justifies responding with lethal force.
In the case of the Georgia mother, she retreated as far as she could, to the crawl space. When the perp invaded there, cornering her and her children, she shot him. Before he could rape and murder her and her children.
 
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