> I have no intention of ever pointing it at a living thing
What if you become suicidal? Your current intentions will be subverted by your own emotional state.
What if you become suicidal? Your current intentions will be subverted by your own emotional state.
Bringing paedophiles into the conversation in the first place was misdirection. And I resent your attempt to use my correction of an implication you introduced in doing so to support your argument.
Becoming suicidal is something that happens to a lot of people. Spontaneously gaining a shitty paraphilia is not. Spontaneously gaining a paraphilia and losing your morals is a completely fictional situation constructed purely to dodge a valid point; that's disingenuous arguing.
I can well believe that people going through a depressive episode, who are contemplating suicide, are more likely to commit suicide if they have easy access to a gun, above and beyond other potential weapons such as knives, blunt objects, water and high places. Guns take minimal planning, and don't involve overriding nearly as many instincts.
If you want to be right, instead of just winning an argument, focus on the weakest parts of your argument and the strongest parts of your opponents' arguments. You dodged from suicides to "shoot[ing] people" via a deft "think of the children", which is not arguing in good faith. You want to think yourself already right; you don't want to become right if you're not already.
Personally, I'd rather err on the side of freedom than safety. There are alternatives available to us that don't infringe on freedoms so much, such as universal health care and increased treatment options for mental illness, which I think would be very much preferable. I think this argument extends to encryption such that encryption can be used for nefarious ends, just as guns can be used for nefarious ends. There are definitely parallels. How much freedom do we want to trade, how far do we want to take this thing?
If you want perfect safety from suicidal tendencies, consider going under a 24/7 watch and having your hands tied. For some extremely severe cases, this may be warranted.
But there's no reason to subject the rest of the population to the same measures.
A gun is designed to kill. Anything else you do with it is just practice to kill more effectively with it.
Every Man Has The Right to Utility Dynamite!
At that point, there is little difference between between a military officer having access or a citizen having access.