What if you become a paedophile ? Your current intentions (regarding cryptography) will be subverted by your own emotional state. Guns and Crypto are dangerous tools and should not be in the hands of the ordinary citizen since citizens can turn dangerous. Think of the children!

Even assuming the ridiculous premise, most paedophiles don't abuse children. (And not all child abusers are paedophiles, either, but that's getting into the really dark side of human psychology.) Support structures are important, as with all such things. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-41213657

Scratches head. I see, good to know that you agree that most (nearly all) gun owners don't shoot people. Actually, I suspect as a percentage lesser gun owners shoot people as compared to paedos abusing kids, but sadly I don't think I can get any sort of citation for that.

What I wrote doesn't imply that. I mean, I also believe that most gun owners don't shoot people, but that's certainly not implied by what I wrote (except in that both are probably-true statements).

Bringing paedophiles into the conversation in the first place was misdirection. And I resent your attempt to use my correction of an implication you introduced in doing so to support your argument.

Becoming suicidal is something that happens to a lot of people. Spontaneously gaining a shitty paraphilia is not. Spontaneously gaining a paraphilia and losing your morals is a completely fictional situation constructed purely to dodge a valid point; that's disingenuous arguing.

I can well believe that people going through a depressive episode, who are contemplating suicide, are more likely to commit suicide if they have easy access to a gun, above and beyond other potential weapons such as knives, blunt objects, water and high places. Guns take minimal planning, and don't involve overriding nearly as many instincts.

If you want to be right, instead of just winning an argument, focus on the weakest parts of your argument and the strongest parts of your opponents' arguments. You dodged from suicides to "shoot[ing] people" via a deft "think of the children", which is not arguing in good faith. You want to think yourself already right; you don't want to become right if you're not already.

For me, protecting people from themselves should never be a policy priority. I have struggled with depression, probably still do, but I genuinely don't think the ideal solution to gun related deaths is to take away the right to own a gun. Even if it's effective. We're hitting a point where we are becoming capable of protecting people despite their own wishes due to technological advances, and we're going to have to make some decisions wrt how far we want to take it.

Personally, I'd rather err on the side of freedom than safety. There are alternatives available to us that don't infringe on freedoms so much, such as universal health care and increased treatment options for mental illness, which I think would be very much preferable. I think this argument extends to encryption such that encryption can be used for nefarious ends, just as guns can be used for nefarious ends. There are definitely parallels. How much freedom do we want to trade, how far do we want to take this thing?

You need to also consider knives, rope, large bodies of water, tall structures, etc. They all can be used for suicide.

If you want perfect safety from suicidal tendencies, consider going under a 24/7 watch and having your hands tied. For some extremely severe cases, this may be warranted.

But there's no reason to subject the rest of the population to the same measures.

All the things you mention serve actual purposes other than killing.

A gun is designed to kill. Anything else you do with it is just practice to kill more effectively with it.

I see. So personal explosives would be fine by you then ? I mean explosives are used for construction, mining, rock-quarrying, excavation, materials research - all deeply vital aspects that keep human civilisation operating.

Every Man Has The Right to Utility Dynamite!

No, not at all, nor is concealed or open carry right by me, because of exactly that reason. If we want to say that the state doesn't get monopoly on violence, I don't see any logical reason to limit that simply to a handgun. IMO every person, in such a world, should be allowed to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. Absurd but I see no difference between that and guns other than scale of destruction (and the scale is still enormous for a gun).

Sure, if a law-abiding citizen was trained and followed the military nuclear safety procedures, could actually afford said nuclear weapon and implementation of all applicable regulations along with appropriate inspections and all applicable oversight and background checks, I honestly wouldn't care if they had a WMD.

At that point, there is little difference between between a military officer having access or a citizen having access.

Well, that's precisely how I feel about guns :)

I happen to have access to a biomedical research lab and medication / chemicals that could kill me with a very high success rate if I decided to go that route, so it's not a relevant concern.