RE: Which Do You Value More: Freedom or the Well-being Freedom Brings?
Unhealthy eating is certainly a concern, but that's not really what this post is about. If this post was about cancer, it would be odd to talk about diabetes, right? I'm not sure I agree that access to healthy food is a right because I see an important difference between negative rights and positive rights. Same with health care services. I don't have the right to force someone else to give me their labor. At the same time, no one has a right to prevent me from meeting my own needs, as long as I'm not taking advantage of anyone else in doing so.
I do believe the right to pursue my own self-defense is valid. I don't think tools which are useful for violent aggression should be considered the first or only option. Guns are not that great for defense unless people are highly trained. I wonder if other tools should be promoted more.
I agree, as you know, the government is a huge problem (see democide). Hopefully we can find better ways to organize society.
The reason why I mentioned bad lifestyle habits is that I felt your post is about reducing or preventing premature death and as with anything in life a cost analysis has to be done when trying to achieve this goal. If a cost analysis determine that educating people about how eating well is a better way to prevent death than better gun regulations then the emphasis should be put on educating people first then maybe better gun regulations.
That's why I've mention health.
There's more preventable death cause by bad lifestyle habits and government created hardship than loose gun regulation and those are more fundamental as they also influence the death rate by gun logically then we should prioritize putting our energies into solving those more fundamental issues.
Doing otherwise feels like trying to steer a sinking ship. It isn't a perfect analogy obviously.
Also I never mentioned or hinted that anyone should be forced to provide healthy food.
Healthy food should be a need that arise from good education and people should be able to come to their own conclusion about its benefits and their "need" to provide it to themselves and love one. It should arise from living a life based on logic.
Right now our society is based on the logic of war. It's still logic yet we're working toward a possibly more logical situation where our society is based on cooperation.
Guns are not always the best self-defense weapon but they can be great and even for someone who never used them ever, they still can and have save live in those situation. That being said, I'd prefer not having to kill my aggressor if possible but if a guy point a gun at me, I'd prefer having a gun than having a pepper spray or taser to defend myself.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be any regulations or change to some already existing regulations. I prefer putting my energies on some other problems that a lot of the time seem more efficient to achieve our goals.
And yes, the democide numbers are simply insane compared to gun violence.
Thanks for clarifying. I agree, if the overall, big picture goal is well-being through preventing unnecessary death, then a focus on increasing nutrition throughout the world is huge.