The Right to Bear Arms ... on Campus

They're short range, harder to aim, and you only get one shot at a distance. If you miss with that one, your only remaining option is contact attack using the prongs. And tasers can kill, although people commonly overlook that. They're a good option for certain circumstances, though.

When choosing a weapon for self-protection, it's vital to do the research and figure out what kind would best suit your needs.

>>Sure, but imagine tasers became popular, instead of the media creating all this mystique around guns - then there'd be a lot more focus on making them better.<<

That is possible.

>>On the other paw, I could see robbers using tasers to rob people too. Shoot, grab purse or wallet, run away.<<

This already happens sometimes.

>>So there's still no substitute for effective law enforcement, IMO!<<

Effective law enforcement is important. However, it's a downline solution.

What we really need is a society that teaches people to be socially healthy and responsible, makes it easy to earn a comfortable living in a lawful manner, provides accessible and effective means of redressing grievances, and refrains from creating situations that consistently generate crime. Then we could push down the violence and lawbreaking to the minimum level of mayhem caused by the fact that some people just suck and shit happens. That level is tolerable and rarely ruins people's lives. What we have now is a flaming disaster of social dysfunction.

It's been going downhill for a few decades. For a while, America tended to be toward the front of the moral progression curve.

Fully functional and healthy, though? Er, before the European invasion. America had several widespread and stable societies then -- one of which, the Iroquois, gave prevailing inspiration for the democratic structure of the U.S.A.

No society is perfect. However, some society has managed to do well for each main aspect of civilization, and certain societies score well in a variety of categories. I think it would be prudent to look at the functionality of each society, see where its flaws are, then look at societies who do well in those categories to figure out what improvements could be made. People pretty much HATE that idea.

>>Think it's more accurate to say that people disagree about the goals, and thusly about the means by which those goals should be achieved.<<

I agree that this is a root cause of many problems. Running a society mainly for profit seems to result in a less-than-functional society ... that doesn't even have a good economy. Capitalism is like socialism with fleas.

>>There's an engineering theorem, design things so they work naturally - for example, water flows downhill, so if you want to design pipes, don't put the water reservoir at the bottom of the building, put it at the top and let gravity help you out. In a similar fashion, if you want to design a solution to society's problems, the solutions are best if they create conditions where people will naturally act in a better fashion.<<

Yes! I have heard those rules phrased as:

Find a way to make it do what you want it to do while letting it do what it wants to do. [Engineering]

Make it easy to do the right thing and hard to do the wrong thing. [Animal training]

I'm especially pleased to hear from someone with mixed feelings on this issue, because so many people are really polarized about it.

A good gun and good maintenance are vital. Without the latter, the former becomes even more important. Of course, I generally tend to admire equipment that can take a licking and keep on ticking.