Guns will protect you from tsunamis.

[Hippikos]

The same way drugs make a country more healthy.

Totally incomparable. In fact it's a grotesk absurdity. Guns do not heal, do not reconcile, do not transport people, do not educate poeple, they are exclusively to kill living creatures, not a single other purpose, no matter what other fancy Kant quote you use.

it's the motivations and intents of the people using them.

That's in fact where the problem lies. It's not about guns itself. A vicious circle, where only violence can solve the problems, as it seems. People buy guns, because others have guns and may use it against you.

Again, do you think guns made the US safer?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Hippikos

Totally incomparable. In fact it's a grotesk absurdity. Guns do not heal, do not reconcile, do not transport people, do not educate poeple, they are exclusively to kill living creatures, not a single other purpose...

No, that's not true, because a gun doesn't have to be fired to be used. In fact most legal firearms usage for self-defense does not involve discharging the weapon. (Even in the rare instances when they are used to kill, the killing isn't necessarily implicitly evil.) I use my weapons every day, and yet I've never hurt anyone with them, nor even tried to. With luck, I never shall. And yet being prepared and willing to use deadly force in true self-defense is a requrement for the weapon to be truly useful.

Your reasoning--and your question--is "grotesquely" simplistic...just like "do drugs make people healthy". Because they don't necessarily, it depends completely on how they are used. Focusing on and demonizing the *thing* is misguided. Do stoves make food taste good? Well, they *can*, but it's not guaranteed. You can make raw food tasty, or you can burn it into inedibility.

Do you not accept the use of deadly force in self-defense?