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Comment by ericcumbee | Hacker News Reader

Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally? If I were in the above situation I would not draw my gun with out feeling that there was a real threat to my life or property. And in that case I would rather have a gun than not have a gun.

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Recommending gun ownership in response to non-violent protest seems sub-optimal.

Perhaps a gun is a useful tool in that kind of situation, but surely there's a bunch of other conflict de-escalation stuff that can be learnt first.

you assume that the gun is the first option, when in fact its a last resort.

But I see recommendations for guns all the time. I don't see recommendations for de-escalation techniques.

Perhaps this is something that gun companies could do to promote their responsible gun carry image? They could provide training programmes on conflict managemen and de-escalalation along with safe gun use?

Of course, and ericcumbee's point is well made; people who've never put any actual thought into what it's like to go armed are generally very quick to assume that those who do go armed see putting holes in things as a handy means of resolving any situation, from an argument in traffic to a panhandler begging change. (Far be it from me, of course, to speculate on any personal qualities, or lack thereof, which might be inadvertently revealed, by those who make this unwarranted assumption, in the process of doing same.)

That said, if I am effectively trapped in my home by a currently non-violent protest which has as its manifesto the sort of manifest lunacy on display in the linked article, I am going to want to be able to defend family and self with force majeure, should matters proceed beyond noisy and foolish hot-headedness into an outright attack.

> Why is it that you think because someone has a gun they are incapable of acting rationally?

Because they're a real live human fucking being with anger and emotion and desperation and base needs and selfish wants, not a theoretical hyper-rational philosophical strawperson.

Real live human beings are pretty classically incapable of acting rationally, and if you think otherwise, I would suggest that you have only very recently come out from under a rock.

Are you by chance familiar with the axiom that, given an audience without any other information about the parties or principles involved in a given argument, the side which presents its claims in a calm, level-headed fashion is more likely to be taken seriously than the side that's red-faced and flinging spittle?

I can't imagine what's brought that so strongly to mind just now, but I figured I'd mention it all the same. Make of it what you like.

That's not an axiom, it's just an opinion. Personally, I find passion pretty compelling to read/hear, and I won't present my side with a false posture of academic distance if that's not how I feel. Additionally, I'm not really interested in winning over the people who are more concerned with the tone of an argument than the actual facts presented.

Well, exhorting the choir is very satisfying, of course, and I can see the tactical benefit in so doing to the exclusion of any attempt to increase the size of the congregation. This does, of course, imply an abandonment of any desire to find a modus vivendi, but the impression I have is that such abandonment is more or less implicit.

Thank you for descending from the mountaintop to dispense your advice to such a lowly thinker as I, great wise sage.

(That was sarcasm. Opinions are not facts, and condescension does not signal wisdom.)

FYI, there is a certain branch of thought that believes that passion and anger increase validity of argument.

I'm a former partisan of that sort of thinking, so I'm well aware of it -- from the inside, as it were. The trouble with it is that it only works on people who already substantially agree with you. When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing, and at worst it actively impairs your efforts.

Failure to acknowledge this fact is taken as a sign of commitment, I think, in certain quarters, but I've lately come to hold the opinion that such failure evinces a certain basic lack of empathy which augurs ill for the ability of the person so failing to make an argument capable of convincing someone not already in agreement with him.

> When you're talking to people who don't, at best it does nothing

Citation needed. As I said above, and you apparently did not read, I personally find conviction and fire far more compelling than dispassion. You may differ, but do not mistake the subjective for the objective.

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