The problem with your view, Rau, is that it really isn’t your view, unless your view includes government. IOW, humans who happen to be in government are not by that position moral in any degree greater than the population at large. in fact, the opposite is often the case. Hence, allowing government alone to have guns is by far the greater immorality.
If this is your judgement about the balance of consequences, so be it. You’ve done your best to properly evaluate morality. And with no reference to “rights”.
True, but simply rejecting a methodology doesn’t make it flawed.
A methodology that is undefined is flawed. Why else would you have conceded a 40% reduction instead of simply specifying the methodology and sticking to your claim?
And again, I didn’t say “overwhelming”. I said sufficient firepower to create a serious threat to the government. Anything less would be ineffective in the event of a tyranny that needed to be opposed. And that capability has simply not existed in peace in the last 100 years in any developed nation anywhere on the planet.
I’m not going to go back and find the link, but I found the methodology quite sound.
Nobody is talking about “promotion”. We are talking about the freedom to pursue the ownership of the means to defend one’s God-given life.
What sort of artificial restriction can be placed on preserving one’s life from unjust taking? How can any method dealing with the specific threat be immoral?
OK, we can dismiss those stats as unsubstantiated.
That’s why I said “developed countries is the last 100 years”
For the third time, I didn’t say that. I said a serious threat to the government. How can you oppose a tyrannical government unless you can pose a serious threat to that government? They will just laugh at you.
Have you read the entire thread of over 1300 posts? The morality or immorality of promoting widespread gun ownership has been much discussed.
Whether it exists is immaterial in deciding whether it is moral or immoral to pursue it.
Nonsense. The link is posted earlier in the thread. It is there, and the data is solid.
The British did, in fact, laugh at the colonists.
Its existence as a right has its roots in natural law, the right to life, the right to defend that right to life. None of these are immoral. The right to keep and bear arms is not immoral, and since it is an individual right, my personal ownership, exercising that inherent right, is not immoral.
The question I’ve put is whether it is moral to promote the widespread ownership of guns in modern society. The answer has nothing to do with individual rights - perceived or actual.
It has nothing to do with promoting or not promoting. The answer has everything to do with individual rights. In the US, the right exists, and is protected. Individuals freely choose whether or not to exercise the right. Either choice is moral. Attempting to prevent one from exercising the right, or requiring one to exercise the right against their will is immoral.
The answer to the question I put has nothing to do with individual rights existing in the US as I have explained. It hangs totally on anticipated outcomes.
No, it doesn’t. But even if it did, the anticipated outcome, the actual outcome, of the very vast majority of legal, law abiding gun owners owning firearms is moral, or at least not immoral. It is the illegal gun owners whose ACTIONS are immoral. Guns and gun ownership are not immoral.
It is the collective outcome (what might we anticipate from widespread gun ownership in modern society) for all persons that we need to judge and which determines the morality of promoting widespread gun ownership.
The collective outcome is irrelevant when regards individual rights. EACH person has the same rights. Someone who uses their rights morally should not have his/her right taken simply because another takes license and abuses the rights of others . To do so is, in itself immoral, and if it is done by government, tyrannical.
In Catholic moral theology the consequences which influence the morality of human acts are the consequences for ALL…