In short: Killing with a gun is too easy while the effort it takes with other tools is an important factor in preventing terminal harm? If so, then I aggree.

If you need to be a p***y and shoot something, at least learn how to handle a bow, it's enough for hunting and defending oneself against animals in the country side for sure and way better for the environment (something that nobody here has mentioned already, I guess).

Greetings from your average friendly neighborhood swordsman.

Thanks, but you kind of missed my point where I was going with that. I never doubted you are consistent across the suicide / homicide axis.

When you say: "What's more important is that easy access to a gun dramatically raises the chances of a person going through with it and succeeding during a vulnerable moment instead of reconsidering." You're not just saying you'd like less suicides, which no one disagrees with. You're also implying preempting deaths is more important than preventing them, which I do disagree with, because preemption is always more coercive than prevention, therefore preemption will tend to be a net negative.

For a ridiculous example, why not an eugenics program to remove impulsiveness from the population instead of gun control? Hopefully you find that offensive and likely to have unintended consequences even in an utopian "zap, we magically changed your personality" scenario. Should be helpful example to bring into contrast we likely disagree because of that dislike of weapons of yours - because weapons are designed for killing and you just don't see anything good in killing. I assume even in self-defense you are conflicted about it - which I would agree with actually.

I kind of expected both your answers you see. They mostly confirm my guesses, despite some nuances. You value life enough you find impulsive suicides something that should be preempted, but not highly enough that ponderate euthanasia, (and I have to assume ponderate suicides - despite your comment on experts' decision) should themselves be preempted. I mean, if you hindered / coerced people into not having ease of access to guns, why not hinder them in other ways if the outcome is net positive of keeping them alive longer? Force them to live in specially built safe bubbles perhaps. :) Anyway, the impulsiveness distinction is logically valid, if not really a super clear guideline for public policy as I'm sure you'll agree... and those euthanasia panels must be a really fun line of work, not at all likely to attract sadists...

On the preemption angle is where the larger contradiction comes into contrast and that was the main aspect I was getting at from a politico-moral perspective. The correlations between specific characteristics (you assumed racial, so I'll run with it despite larger taboos - medical insurance would be less controversial...) and crime statistics are common knowledge and factual. Deeper reasons don't really matter, if just like in the gun suicide topic you don't care about why of the suicides, just how - via guns - to advocate gun control. Ergo the correlation is enough - therefore for crime statistically dominated by / via race X, preemption rationales are logical and allow legal discrimination - for the common good of less crime.

Notice I didn't even clarify how profiling would be preemptive - minority report like maybe. Yet you pretty much noticed / agreed how abusive of individual liberty generic profiling would be unless with specific contexts: airport location, nervousness, surveillance of some kind. Note also no such contextual distinctions were attempted by you for gun ownership...

To turn this away from the ugly topic of subculture crime, an actual example of racial profiling leading to preemptive action was the legal confinement of US citizens of Japanese ancestry during WW2. An ugly thing, but I expect for you making sure guns are not available is much less an infringement on liberty than confinement. Sure, you might preempt some espionage by the abuse of liberty, just like I'm sure you might preempt some deaths with gun control. But we're being coercive and deciding on behalf of others what they can't do, because we presume to know the future better.

Should be obvious I disagree, and in a consistent fashion. We may very well base prevention measures on the objective facts - for example direct anti-suicide campaigns to focus on gun owners, increase the chances of random control checks based on racial crime statistics, assign counter espionage resources more to a specific population group than other. But preemption is pretty much always coercive and therefore abusive. I think you don't really consider preemption immoral in a consistent fashion, and very likely you find weapons nasty, hence why with gun control you are ok with just proving guns enable suicides - which to be clear was never in dispute.

Anyway, that's the critical moral difference I see, and I'll let you have the final word I guess - it was a long ant and somewhat incoherent I'm sure. Bottom line: The decision to risk a presumed higher likelihood of suicide should lie with the individual buying the gun, not with you or me. You should not coerce anyone out of owning weapons, just like I should not coerce anyone to own weapons.

I take a serious stance on gun control, I think the solution to gun violence in not less guns but MORE! guns. if everyone has a gun at 18, and CARRIES IT!. A person walking into a school with an assault rifle, or a theater. Could have been dealt with before people got killed. Our government wants us to trust that "THEY" can protect us and that is not true. Terrorists seem to not be hindered when the go blowing up shopping malls and such.We need to be responsible for our safety and way of life. The government wants us to be reliant on them and make us victims. Well I think we need to make our safety our responsibility! The schools could teach gun safety courses from K through 12 grades. My kids took a "B,B gun shooting course when they were 8. the course was "GUN SAFETY ". and target shooting under supervision it was safe gun shooting for the family!

So you think that there shouldn't be any police, military or courts at all?
I haven't seen an anarchist in a long time.

Gun control for suicide issues is a complete distraction.
Like the point I made in this post , bb guns are now going to need a licence the same as proper guns in Scotland which effectively bans them for most people and will most likely move on to the rest of the UK.

That's why the states should start removing gun control measures instead of going further down the slippery slope. If people don't like that they can always go and live in Britain. If all the illegal immigrants can do it so can you.

The point was that there is plenty of technology, in which we already use, that both can and likely does exceed gun murders. Guns are not a big deal.

The entire green movement is a cult, meant to mirror religion, by design.

Left and right on the American scale is just big govt vs small, with anarchy on the right and absolute govt on the left.

The Republican/Democrat party are both leftwing at this point, and have been a united single party for a while.

People that create technology tend to swing to the right and are classical liberals. Silicon valley is full of libertarians.

I believe we need government. rules do keep us safe. I just believe we can't always trust the government! or can rely on them. Innocent people and children are shot and killed every day! I think if we the people start shooting back at the Gangs and start shooting back at the crazy killers then we the people will become safer.

There is a massive but not uncommon flaw in this theory:
There is no "law abiding citizen" vs. "criminal". Apart from some gang wars near your southern border where a single gun isn't worth a damn, most crimes are commited by random people down the street and I'm happy that those don't have guns around here.

I often hear people saying "we are the good guys and the others are criminals/terrorists".
Well the world isn't so easily divided in "us or them" and those that try to do this are usually the aggressors.

A lot of ways in which society keeps itself running could be seen as coercive. Speed limits could be seen as coercive, yet they exist and not many people would want to get rid of them. Taxes are coercive and most people would gladly get rid of them, only to reconsider the moment they realize just how many things are financed by them. You seem to be consistent in your opinion that preemption, no matter the degree of coercion involved, is always worse than prevention, no matter the practicality of the latter. I acknowledge that, though I disagree.

I generally try to weigh preemption and prevention against one another and in case of guns I simply side on the side of preemption since it involves devices created for the purpose of causing severe injury or death, meaning the stakes are slightly higher. Sorry, but if a person walks into a room carrying an assault rifle and you happen to be armed, unless you very frequently undergo intense military training, there's no way you'll be able to react fast enough to deal with the shooter before people get shot, or before you yourself get shot, or before the shooter has already emptied his first clip. The element of surprise, coupled with the way the human brain deals with sudden unexpected panic/prospect of sudden death and the effect it has one one's motor functions all combine to make one bitch of a disadvantage. Except for some reason the far right is perfectly fine with banning anticonception, sex education and biology courses mentioning evolution. It's not quite as black and white as you say. Depends on where you live. In a large part of the remaining western world, Republican/Democratic party are considered ultra right/right wing respectively. Suppose you suddenly hear shots, so you draw your gun, head towards the sound and notice a guy with a drawn gun of his own. Do you shoot him? He might have been the "crazy killer" or he might have been another armed civilian who had the same idea as you. How can you tell who's who in the heat of the moment? Not all "crazy killers" dress up like the joker. Most don't, in fact.

Always a pleasure to have such civil back and forth even if neither of us change our minds and we both... ahem... stick to our guns - pun obviously intended ;)

I think we both got a clear enough view of the depth of the other's reasons which in itself is already positive. Talk more some other time.