Are Weapons Morally Neutral?

[selfAdjoint]

It's also immoral to allow someone else to be killed when you could
prevent it - with a weapon or otherwise.

I say therefore NOT owning and knowing how to use a weapon is
quite likely to lead to immoral inaction by default.

I like the way you think. Certainly if there is a gun in the house, then NOT training the children of the house in safe gun usage is morally indefensible.

And yes, since firearms greatly enhance a peaceful citizen's ability to defend themself, it is at the very least captious to resist obtaining one and learning to use it. Particularly if one lives in a large city where home attacks are more frequent.

 

[yourdadonapogostick]

weapons are not inherently immoral. i own a few sword, daggars, shuriken, knives, and such and see nothing wrong with them. they don't hurt anybody...they are just really cool pieces of metal.

 

[GaryCGibson]

Morality is a description of what ethical relations people actually have; it is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

It is interesting to consider various utopia's and distopia's formulated to rectify social troubles that are never actualized. It isn't reasonable to hold society up to moral scenarios that haven't ever been used anyplace.

Some of the 'mentors' dislike philosophical or even axiological discussions that touch upon moral issues such as are raised by people such as Jesus of Nazareth that were crucified for their ethical beliefs. Jesus of course represented what in philosophophy is known as divine command theory personified.

There are rule and act based utilitarian systems from which one might decide that weapons are immoral, yet of course even oceans are potential weapons...as the hydrogen and oxygen are explosive elements, and even the atmosphere was once conjectured to be an environment for a cobalt bomb to vaporize...anything can be weaponized, so the basic problems are more those of the social and environmental criterion in which weapons can be used adverse to general social interests.

In this era in the United States mucvh of the populace has been conditioned toward a behavorial form of sociopathy through the mass media, and have developed traits of the much maligned and misunderstood lemmings tendency toward suv'ing over the edge...one must hope they don't learn to take 12 gauges with their cases of Miller High Life on the way.

 

[hypnagogue]

Morality is a description of what ethical relations people actually have; it is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

If this were so, we wouldn't be able to evaluate the morality of a person's actions as 'right' or 'wrong.' For instance, it is a descriptive fact that some people murder others. It is a prescriptive ideal that we should not kill that causes us to label murder as an immoral act.

 

[hitssquad]

Morality is a description of what ethical relations people actually have; it is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

If this were so, we wouldn't be able to evaluate the morality of a person's actions as 'right' or 'wrong.'

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

 

[hypnagogue]

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

If you want to be pedantic, I never specified that they were mutually exclusive in the first place.

 

[hitssquad]

Morality is a description of what ethical relations people actually have; it is descriptive rather than prescriptive.

If this were so, we wouldn't be able to evaluate the morality of a person's actions as 'right' or 'wrong.'

That seems to be a mild rephrasing of what you just quoted from GaryCGibson. What was your point?

 

[Nomy-the wanderer]

People are immoral sometimes!

 

[hexhunter]

this topic hurts my brain, so I'm just going to say that i can't see how an item can be imoral...

also, on the humans or deer thing, why should killing a human be any less moral than killing a farm animal, i think infact that it is more moral to kill a human, as the farm animal is bred to die, it can't run, whatever you say about pain or 'intelligence', it is not needed, i never eat meat, i never have eaten meat, I'm still alive, and there are many people out there like me who live on a vegetarian diet without worry, there is no need anymore to take lives for food...

i remember not long ago when fox hunting was sort of banned here in the UK, a 1st class guy said something like "why ban fox hunting when millions more animals, who possesses no danger to the way's of our natural habitat's, are killed for sheer pleasure and endulgence"...

vanity is an obvious part of modern society in this respect, and it's about time we got some damn respect too...

 

[CaptainQuaser]

Two thoughts
First: Weapons are a tool of humans, I don't have claws or particularily sharp teeth. If I want meat, (moose, deer) I am going to have to use some form of weapon (gun, bow, ect) Of course there will be the crazy vegitarians out there that believe killing is wrong, that we should be in harmony with animals. Well, they are blind to the real world, animals kill each other, right now there is a million animals killing a million other animals, its the way it works. Life cannot be sustained without death, it is an intrinsic balance. I think it is far better to have respect for your prey then to have no prey.

Second: Seriously ask yourself, why is it immoral to kill people? Don't get me wrong, I would not kill another person, but I think it is important, (mostly for non-religious people, because religious people have an easy answer) but for the atheisists out there, why is it wrong to kill another person? If we just went around killing the weak, our population would be under control and the human race would be stronger as a whole. So where is the inherant evil in killing another man? (A question I had to think about in a class I took, Evil in World Religions)

 

[russ_watters]

Second: Seriously ask yourself, why is it immoral to kill people? Don't get me wrong, I would not kill another person, but I think it is important, (mostly for non-religious people, because religious people have an easy answer) but for the atheisists out there, why is it wrong to kill another person? If we just went around killing the weak, our population would be under control and the human race would be stronger as a whole. So where is the inherant evil in killing another man? (A question I had to think about in a class I took, Evil in World Religions)

The evil comes from the arbitrary-ness of deciding who gets the right to life and who doesn't.

 

[Brady]

It's not immoral to have a desire to protect yourself, your family, and your property. It is immoral (obviously), however, to buy weapons for the purpose of bullying and destruction. The morality of weapons lies entirely within the morality and sanity of the owner, not the potential destructiveness.

If I buy a handgun to protect myself, that's not immoral. If I buy a handgun to murder my neighbor, then that's immoral. If I buy an AK-47 for protection, that's not immoral, etc.

Morality in terms of weapons isn't defined as the destructive power of the weapon, it changes with the reasons of the owner for owning that weapon.

Obviously, this is all common sense, (which is growing rarer by every passing moment). There's really no need to question whether guns are moral or not. They're not alive, and it's up to us to use them responsibly.

 

[Brady]

Two thoughts
First: Weapons are a tool of humans, I don't have claws or particularily sharp teeth. If I want meat, (moose, deer) I am going to have to use some form of weapon (gun, bow, ect) Of course there will be the crazy vegitarians out there that believe killing is wrong, that we should be in harmony with animals. Well, they are blind to the real world, animals kill each other, right now there is a million animals killing a million other animals, its the way it works. Life cannot be sustained without death, it is an intrinsic balance. I think it is far better to have respect for your prey then to have no prey.

Second: Seriously ask yourself, why is it immoral to kill people? Don't get me wrong, I would not kill another person, but I think it is important, (mostly for non-religious people, because religious people have an easy answer) but for the atheisists out there, why is it wrong to kill another person? If we just went around killing the weak, our population would be under control and the human race would be stronger as a whole. So where is the inherant evil in killing another man? (A question I had to think about in a class I took, Evil in World Religions)

I'm a Christian, but I think you're being unreasonable toward athiests. Athiests aren't immoral or moral by nature. They have morals, just like everyone else, and they obviously feel like it is immoral to kill another (it's a common sense thing, come on). We need to stop questioning morality and do what common sense dictates. Who thinks it's right to kill someone else? Only the most ruthless, which are a vanishingly small part of the population.

Basically, everyone has a right to be alive, and killing that person violates their rights.

 

[Antiphon]

.
If I buy a handgun to protect myself, that's not immoral. If I buy a handgun to murder my neighbor, then that's immoral. If I buy an AK-47 for protection, that's not immoral, etc.

Clarity here- Buying the gun was not immoral even if you do it
to kill your neighbor. It's killing your neighbor that's immoral.

 

[0TheSwerve0]

Just wondering why the purpose of a weapon should matter. It's still meant to kill someone or something, wether or not you approve of why doesn't really matter I would think.

If the government passed a law to allow women the power to beat men without repurcussions, is that law the same as a weapon? Can you not construct laws as weapons? If so, since we might say that law is immoral than it is a weapon that is immoral.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

No, simply because weapons aren't evil, they are not made for bad use (though most of the time they end up like that).

For instance a weapon can be used to save a life in a moral way (like shooting some rope to save someone or shooting a door to escape?)