AP Report
A murder in Baton Rouge was committed with a gun stolen from a New Orleans' cop's car last year.
This is why keeping a gun in the car is unsafe.
People who allow their guns to be stolen should be held responsible for that.
The argument I keep hearing is this is blaming the victim or that only the thief is responsible.
Wrong on both counts.
The cop in this case was guilty of not properly storing his firearm. The thief was responsible for the theft. It took both of them to ack badly for this to happen, and a year later people died.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
Lawful owners may store their property however they see fit. We can debate the case of an owner who has children, but anyone who breaks into a car to steal property is solely responsible for what happens.
ReplyDeleteIf one finds themself to be the lawful owner of a specimen strain of the Marburg Virus, or other dangerous materials (such as spent fuel rods, enriched uranium, or construction equipment near a primary school) is one (being the responsible party) required to take reasonable precaution against unauthorised use or misuse of ones property?
DeleteIf one is to partake in the pseudo-Kantian practice of extension to the logical extreme, your argument falls apart.
Otherwise individuals have the sole and inalienable right to make use of their property as they please.
I've said before that viruses like that and uranium and so forth are a different category altogether.
DeleteIn MikeB's perfect world, cops don't have guns locked in their vehicle in case they're needed. Instead, they all walk around decked out with shotguns and M-16's all day in case they need such firepower.
ReplyDeleteThat, or they get gunned down like in the old pistol vs. rifle shootouts that caused them to start having long guns in the vehicles.
If we live in a world in which the authorites are liable to inadvertently introduce weapons into criminal hands, wouldn't a reasonable person take the precaution of arming themselfes?
DeleteIt is peculiar that someone as well-versed in the macabre effects of armed criminals as Mikeb wouldn't see this as the most rational option. I wonder what he thinks......
No, because a reasonable person would know that guns do more harm than good.
DeleteYou respond to the individual need to arm oneself in response to the phenomenon of gun violence, with the (invalid) assertion that firearms present more harm than good to society, which fails to address your individual need (as opposed to society's need) to arm oneself. The fact that you hold the macabre potential of firearms to be so profound that the very existence of firearms causes socail harm (and thus the collective state, acting on the behalf of society, bears the duty to strictly control or prohibit these death dealing devices) thus serves as evidence of my assertation that for each of us to take up arms for our own defense is the most individually rational response to the ever present threat of gun violence. Your argument disproves itself. It is irrational to apply the same metric of judgement to individuals as one would in the case of an entire society.
DeleteI'm a reasonable person, and I don't know that, Mikeb.
DeleteSo Mike,
ReplyDeleteIn your opinion, what constitutes proper storage. You seem to find fault when someone stores firearms in their homes, in their cars, and even gun stores. Keep in mind, that a house, or a police car, or a gun store are all the same thing. Big locked boxes, not the locked. Some even have alarms, yet when a criminal breaks into these boxes, for some reason the owner bears responsibility for anything that happens afterwards.
Who is responsible when a firearm is stolen from the government, as happened here and causes injury or death? Even the ATF has had problems in this area:
"Of the 76 missing weapons, 35 were stolen from agents' homes, hotel rooms or vehicles, the report said. Some of the others were left in public places or lost in shipping -- or their losses were still unexplained."
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/17/atf.missing.guns/index.html
A gun must be either on your person or in a gun safe.
DeleteToo bad for you and so very good for the rest of the world that you're not in charge, Mikeb.
Delete