If, by not committing an act of violence against a criminal determined to do violence to a third person, your pacifism allows that criminal to harm that third person, are you not indirectly committing an act of violence/doing harm to that third person?

“If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice.” –Rush, from the song Free Will

For those that think that pepper spray and tasers are the answer, consider how many people are unaffected by those less-than-lethal methods of self defense. I wouldn’t want to bet my safety or my family’s safety or the safety of a restaurant or shopping mall or church full of people on the chance that the guy threatening us all with a gun wasn’t so full of adrenaline (at the very least) that he wouldn’t feel a face full of pepper spray or a low-voltage zap to his torso. And why would I want to get close enough to the man with the gun to apply a consumer grade taser in the first place? THAT is just suicide, IMO.

Yeah, obviously some criminals carry guns, which is why they should be banned; therefore, eliminating the threat that guns pose to innocent people, and no one would have to react in self defense using a gun.

There is one very BIG problem with your assertion. Criminals DO NOT OBEY THE LAW!

Chicago and (up until recently) Washington DC have a complete ban on handguns. Yet crimes committed with handguns are the norm. Obviously the only people obeying the law are the very citizens who the crimes are committed against.

How do you explain this?

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I respectfully disagree with your comment, and the points I made in this article and in countless others on this website refute your conclusions.

First, banning guns won’t keep them out of the hands of criminals. They will smuggle them in, use one of the hundreds of millions of guns already in the country, etc. Drugs are illegal, but there are plenty of those around! Nor does it make sense to think that a criminal who is willing to commit murder will somehow obey a gun ban. Re-read the above article and the related articles if you wish to see a more in-depth discussion of why gun bans don’t work – or just look at Chicago’s crime rate.
Even if gun bans were to work, and all guns were to vanish, that would just mean that the weaker members of society would be at a disadvantage, relative to the generally stronger criminals. Surely you don’t think that an 85 year old grandma should have to use her fists to stop a 18 year old home invader, or that a 100 lb. woman should be forced to use her bare hand against a 300 lb. rapist who breaks in during the night? Here are some examples of what will happen when people are armed or unarmed, and confronted by a criminal without a gun:
http://www.learnaboutguns.com/2008/11/03/woman-shoots-rapist-who-came-back-to-rape-her-for-a-second-time/
http://www.learnaboutguns.com/2008/09/22/son-uses-shotgun-to-defend-mother-against-armed-home-invader/
http://www.learnaboutguns.com/2008/07/22/mother-and-baby-seriously-injured-during-oak-park-il-home-invasion/

Second, the above article addresses how self defense is the stopping of a criminal so that that criminal cannot inflict harm, rather than punishment of that criminal. The goal is only to prevent the aggressor from inflicting harm, but that tends to require deadly force, as it is the only reliable way to stop a human bent on committing violence. That is why cops use a gun when their lives are in danger, rather than pepper spray/mace. If you don’t see the distinction between punishment of a criminal and self defense, I would suggest re-reading that portion of the above article to see the full argument I laid out, as well as my article addressing various other self defense tools.

Thirdly, I’m not a hunter, and have no desire to go hunting, however I have no problem with other people exercising their right to do so. I would suggest you read this article if you wish to debate hunting with me. I encourage you to comment there if you disagree with my reasoning.

One final thing I would say is that you may wish to reconsider your word choice in some aspects of your comments. Calling hunter “no better than the criminals who prey on humans” and likening them to “the criminals, raping women, robbing people, etc.” seems to be inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory, rather than part of a reasonable and rational argument. Making such accusations doesn’t advance your viewpoint in the slightest, and is just hyperbole. The same is true for your assertion that my arguments are not well thought out, especially when the text of your comment makes clear that you didn’t read (or at least digest) the entire article I wrote. If you care to read my bio page on this site, you’ll see that I started out as an anti gun guy, and only after a great deal of thought and education did I recognize guns as a social good. (I’ll leave my substantive reply to your anti-hunting statements to any future comments that you leave on the above referenced hunting article.)

Oh, and some other things I am: card carrying member of the ACLU, member of the Democratic party, very liberal, long-haired and well-educated and would never go hunting because I don’t believe in killing things for recreation.

-Glenn O.