I hate weapons.

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A weapon is an extension of the wielder's will to act, nothing more; nothing less.

I live in the USA, and I would not willingly give up the right to own a gun. This is important to me even though I have never owned a gun. Most of us in the USA aren’t violent and many of us aren’t armed (and the two aren’t necessarily related).

If I could press a button on my computer and kill someone what would happen? I’d use a different computer. Certainly it is easier to kill from a distance with a weapon than ‘up close’, but having a weapon, any weapon, doesn’t make a person into a murderer. Weapons facilitate violence only for people who are intent on committing violence.

Most Aspies seem to have experienced some brutality in their lives and perhaps as a result seem to me to be a nonviolent group (with some noteworthy exceptions). Maybe only Aspies should be allowed to own guns? I'm joking.

In primitive society weapons are made to hunt or to predate on neighboring tribes: I won’t discuss this here.

In modern society weapons are made to be used by people organized in bureaucratic structures according to orders which, in nearly all historical cases, from Caesar’s legionnaires to Napoleon’s armies, to soldiers of WW1, to Vietnam’s war, were wrong and atrociously immoral and cruel. Even when defence (against Hitler) was justified, specific orders (like that of bombing Dresden and Nagasaki) were very questionable. Anyhow all people who obey are not entitled to give judgment on orders and this is the tragedy of modern warfare. Soldiers must only conform to the so called “rules of engagement”, they are automata in a big machinery on which they have no control. This may appear abstract but I think it’s undeniable that the major number of weapons employed (not as intimidation, but really) are used in these contexts of obeisance and where people with their hands on triggers, are themselves not moral actors but tools, cogs of an infernal machine. Extreme, radical, peacenik minded? May be, but it is as I see it. You can absolve people who obey orders, but weapons should not be romanticized or transformed in fetishes, object of a private cult.

I agree with a lot of paolo's sentiments. I think aggressiveness is very ugly and intimidating. I hate it. There seems to be a need in some people to be outwardly aggressive and intimidating for no apparent reason. However I am a meat eater and I do martial arts. I think there is a need for meat. But I think it is good that we are one of the few animals that are able to make that choice. Martial arts came about because of the frustration and anger building up inside of me. I didn't really know much of a problem it was my shrink really helped me address that. So I do martial art partly to channel that but also try and improve my confidence. I wouldn't use it to be outwardly aggressive that's not the point.

I find this constitutional right thing a bit puzzling. One it is a statement of the obvious, secondly on the whole most constitutions are very old. I think manifesto politics is the least intelligent, using blunt instruments of the past that are at best outdated. Actually the right to bare arms in the UK is much older than the US it came in under Henry II but we realised that that was outdated and that is why we have tight regulations today. But even before the tightest regulations came in for the most part we always viewed caring arms as a privilege rather than a right. If you read US second amendment:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

If you consider what they are talking about and in the context that it was written it is completely different to the situation there is today. By all means make your own decisions as a consensus even if that means the majority still says bare arms or whichever. But do so in the context of today rather than the past, and never place any change beyond limits just because it happens to be 'constitutional' for that is backward and against freedom.

I happen to think there is a knock on effect of baring arms which can make things worse and this psychology has been well documented in some groups. Like the knife/gun culture in London’s boroughs. There is a perception that leads these people to believe that they have to carry a knife/gun to be safe. Even though those that carry them are statistically more likely to get stabbed or shot but the metropolitan police's own figures. Also it is a bad situation when the police are out gunned by the public, it becomes more difficult to keep law and order and make their job even more dangerous than it is.

I know how to shoot guns, but for sheer aesthetics I'm more partial to swords.

Archaic, I know. lol

Aggressiveness is for territory, predation is for food. They are two very different instincts: The former is within the species the second is among species. Very rarely (among chimps) there is predation within the species. And of course among humans even if not in the form of cannibalism.
Human predation within the species has happened in all wars of conquest. The boot looked for was not the flesh of enemies, but their resources, in the Congo of Stanley ivory, generally in Africa mineral riches or slaves. In America the boot was the soil on the Indians. Predation is coldblooded, and technological superiority in weaponry is decisive. In aggressiveness, which to a certain extent is good, superiority in weaponry should be meaningless. All crime in modern societies is normally for predation and boot and needs weapons. Holdups are predation, fights for girls among boys are forms of aggressiveness. Aggressiveness is usually preceded by threatening acts, holdups are based on surprise and hiding. There are many situations where the two things get mixed up in humans. Among animals this does not happen as a rule.

Two chimps of humans or stags fight each other for mating. This is aggressive behavior.
Felines or other carnivores hunt for zebras or deer or other animals: this is predation. It’s made furtively.

Chimps or stags or lions who fight each other for territory, face their adversaries head on, they don’t kill or eat their adversaries usually. No cannibalism within the same species except some case among chimps and, of course humans, who besides killing and eating their victims capture their possessions.

After a fight between stags and lions for territory a dominance order is established and defeated animals must yield before victors about mating (females) and food but they do not become food themselves. They only must help themselves after the so called alphas are no more hungry.

Fights for territory are emotionally very different from predation.
In humans predation within the species is diffuse as in no other living species and is facilitated by the existence of axes, spears, swords and, of course guns and other modern weaponry.

And then there is this:

"I want to kill somebody today," Washbourne said, according to the three other men in the vehicle, who later recalled it as an offhand remark. Before the day was over, however, the guards had been involved in three shooting incidents. In one, Washbourne allegedly fired into the windshield of a taxi for amusement, according to interviews and statements from the three other guards.

From the Washington Post of today, about contractors operating in Iraq. This is shooting for fun, neither territory nor food. But hunters, normally shoot for fun, not really food. This is all very human.

I understand what you’re saying but there is underling relationship between territory, food and numbers. Human nature is even more complex than this still. It is very difficult to say what motivates someone when they kill it can vary vastly. Animals also hunt for fun sometimes. What I think is the problem for humans is having these primal desires but not necessarily the same type of necessity in modern society. There is a constant struggle between primalism and intellectualism. Primalism is often underestimated and brushed off as something else but it remains and influence. I don’t believe in free will only in a relative sense. Anything and everything bares an influence on what we do.

Since GB has made private ownership of firearms nearly impossible as opposed to just very difficult, violent crime has increased.

an armed society is a polite society.

You can't have my weapons. They're mine.

About aggressivity and predation. I have got, and not yet read, Temples Grandin's Animals in Translation. There is a 50 pages long discussion of the difference between aggression e predation (which she calls predatory aggressivity). She also says the two things are completely different the former motivated by anger and the latter motivated by hunger and cold, rational. In a holdup the motivation is, if not hunger, greed and the execution is cold and rational. I will come back when I am over the bok if the thred is still alive. I can also refer to Lorenz's Aggression a very readable book whose German title is The so called evil, meaning with this that anger is not evil in itself, nor predation is evil for meateating animals. Evil are both things in particular unnatural contexts, like when predation and anger are magnified by weaponry.

Apologies for my didacticism.