I dunno, going back to the missile comment, I would trust you to have a gun, but I’m much less likely to trust you to carry a big red button. And it’s not even mostly about your potentially pressing the button, it’s the whole line of failure points between the button and the missile silo.

Somewhere in between gun and missile silo there’s a line that I think I’d probably want to enforce.

But I agree. You having a gun is a very low bar for trust. People who use guns or other means to take from others their health, property should be dealt with the right way - but yeah I don’t have a problem with the response being called a principle.

Not sure what you mean by “the only reason people break rules is because they exist”. I would guess that people will keep doing cocaine in places that legalize it, and they will also keep stealing cars post legalization. Maybe there’s an interpretation of the statement as a truism that I understand: rules that don’t exist definitionally aren’t “broken”?