7 ms·

Coming from a country where people don't have guns, I don't really see the problem with no guns. They're an awful public health risk. They have basically no adv

Coming from a country where people don't have guns, I don't really see the problem with no guns. They're an awful public health risk. They have basically no advantages. Even for their use in suicide alone, they would be just as reasonable to ban as any commodity you could name - for instance, heroin, or dynamite, or crystal meth.

matte_black 9y ago
Come spend some time with gun owners here in the states, and you won’t see a problem with people owning guns either.
- pasabagi 9y ago
  I'm sure there are many nice, reasonable gun owners. If I lived in the states, I'd probably buy a gun myself - I think they're cool. On the other hand, as a reasonable, intelligent adult who reads and understands statistics, I can say without any doubt they are awful for the USA as a whole. So, just like I'd ban leaded gas, selling alcohol to ten year-olds, and driving drunk, I'd ban guns. There are many, many less harmful things to go full-libertarian on than machines designed to kill people.
malvosenior 9y ago
They absolutely have the advantage of putting a check on government power. The US is a very heterogeneous country (probably much more so than the country you’re referencing). Not all groups have a great relationship with the government and very sensibly feel that giving the government a monopoly on firearms is not in their best interest.
- pasabagi 9y ago
  This argument is absurd. Most of the time, Americans can't organize enough to start a union, or even join one. The idea of Americans organizing an insurgency is ridiculous. The idea of Americans winning an insurgency, against the largest army in the world - an army that has more counter-insurgency experience than anybody except perhaps the IDF, is still more ridiculous. Guns will never check anything because the only thing that checks power is another powerful organization - a protest movement, or a union. Guns are what happen when a protest movement fails, and if you're relying on civilian-grade stuff at this point, your protest movement is screwed anyway.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    There’s more to the government than the army. Go talk to some people from an ethnic group over represented in prison and ask them if the idea of police being armed while citizens are forcibly unarmed sits well...
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    This argument is absurd. Any "reasonable, intelligent person" who's read basically any history book ever written would know that the United States would not descend into civil war with its military intact.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    I guess Iraq and Vietnam didn't get the message on this. "Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal. The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it. For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war. This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government. Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains. They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes. Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult. The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost". It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.
  - jackaroe78 9y ago
    Guessing you've never been to Idaho
- ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
  Do they really curb the power though? What is one reasonable scenario of a thing the government may want to do, that we could stop because we have a firearm. I have a gun, and I don't think the government really has a right to tax me for an unjust undeclared war. If I don't pay my taxes, I don't think the United States military or law enforcement cares that I may be armed.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    I think the police would be even more aggressive if they knew citizens were unarmed.
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      I think the police are more aggresssive because they know any citizen can be armed
      - malvosenior 9y ago
        When there’s a power imbalance, it’s sadly human nature to exploit it and become aggressive. For instance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
        seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        There are so many guns, police have to assume everyone is armed in dangerous. So accidental shootings by police of innocent civilians is significant and, unfortunately in our society, seen as mostly unavoidable. This is completely unrelated to the Stanford experiment.
- CodeMage 9y ago
  Whenever I hear that brought up as an argument, I recommend listening to what Jim Jefferies had to say about gun control. Despite Jim Jefferies being a comedian and phrasing his arguments in a comical, comedic way, I've yet to see anyone give a convincing counter-argument, especially to the "you're bringing a gun to a drone fight" part. Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0 Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4
- rocqua 9y ago
  I personally think this part of the second amendment is outdated. The check on violent government overreach are the moral compasses of individual soldiers, peaceful protests and a free media. If we get past all of these things, no "well regulated Militia" is going to stop the U.S. Army. The best chance would be state national guards. My point here is that fully automatic fire, tanks, artillery and air support make any resistance useless. Perhaps a guerrilla war could be fought, but to someone seeking complete control fighting guerrillas is an annoyance, not an obstacle. This is mostly because the FDA tightly restricts ownership of 'destructive devices', which are the weapons needed to fight an effective war.
  - malvosenior 9y ago
    Just this week I saw footage of police murdering an unarmed man in Baton Rouge. Had that person actually been armed, maybe he could have defended himself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/30/baton-rouge-police-will-fire-officer-who-shot-and-killed-alton-sterling/?utm_term=.2f5f72651b84 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/3...
    - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
      Had that man been armed, they wouldn’t have even bothered with an investigation after shooting him. Hey, he was armed, waved a gun at a cop, must have been a bad guy. Likewise, given an active shooter at a school and armed teachers, how do police tell the difference between the perpetrator and the armed teachers defending the kids? Ya, they don’t.
    - rocqua 9y ago
      Adding more guns to a situations where police are using guns unjustly is not going to end well.
rocqua 9y ago
I also come from a near gun-less country, and think a similar system in America would work. However, there are some arguments in favor of guns that are not trivially ignored. - Simply, guns are fun. Marksmanship is a serious sport of discipline and self-control. - Hunting is also great recreation, is sometimes good for population control, and hunting is another reason for preserving and protecting nature. - Self-defense. Sometimes, you need to use violence for self defense. Guns are a great way to apply violence. - Independence. Partly, this ties in with self-defense above. Partly, this is about the government applying 'collective punishment' on all gun owners for the action of a very select few. Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government (i.e. the militia mentioned in the second amendment) Now, all of these points have counter arguments. I think non of them hold up to the point of "we should keep semi-automatic weapons with 30 round magazines". But the arguments exist, and ignoring them isn't gonna help convince those that want to keep their guns.
- pasabagi 9y ago
  I'm not American - so I'm not particularly out to convince anybody. I think gun-ownership is really embedded into the deep and often weird tangle of american identity, and it's basically immune to rational argument at this point. On a purely technical level, I think the problem with the arguments you've mentioned are they don't generally stand on an even footing with the arguments against gun-ownership, except perhaps the one about self defense. Gun violence is a problem that costs lives, tears apart communities, and destroys families. For gun ownership to make sense, it needs to serve a similarly grave purpose. In that vein, only self-defense would fit the bill. At which point, we break out the statistics - and it turns out that guns are kind of terrible for self defense. I think Americans would be better off just paying more taxes (with the money they would have spent on guns), and spending the money on police or social programs. That said, many iconic possessions of western society are pretty horrible from a cost-benefit perspective. So I guess guns are just the most egregious.
  - rocqua 9y ago
    Yes, the overarching counter argument is that these aren't good enough reasons given the bad results of legally owned guns. I also missed the argument "gun-ownership is part of my identity" it is not an argument that comes up, because people don't expect it to convince gun-opponents. But I think it is the main reason opposition to gun-control is so strong. Thank you for pointing that out.

matte_black 9y ago

Come spend some time with gun owners here in the states, and you won’t see a problem with people owning guns either.

pasabagi 9y ago
I'm sure there are many nice, reasonable gun owners. If I lived in the states, I'd probably buy a gun myself - I think they're cool. On the other hand, as a reasonable, intelligent adult who reads and understands statistics, I can say without any doubt they are awful for the USA as a whole. So, just like I'd ban leaded gas, selling alcohol to ten year-olds, and driving drunk, I'd ban guns. There are many, many less harmful things to go full-libertarian on than machines designed to kill people.

malvosenior 9y ago

They absolutely have the advantage of putting a check on government power. The US is a very heterogeneous country (probably much more so than the country you’re referencing). Not all groups have a great relationship with the government and very sensibly feel that giving the government a monopoly on firearms is not in their best interest.

pasabagi 9y ago
This argument is absurd. Most of the time, Americans can't organize enough to start a union, or even join one. The idea of Americans organizing an insurgency is ridiculous. The idea of Americans winning an insurgency, against the largest army in the world - an army that has more counter-insurgency experience than anybody except perhaps the IDF, is still more ridiculous. Guns will never check anything because the only thing that checks power is another powerful organization - a protest movement, or a union. Guns are what happen when a protest movement fails, and if you're relying on civilian-grade stuff at this point, your protest movement is screwed anyway.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  There’s more to the government than the army. Go talk to some people from an ethnic group over represented in prison and ask them if the idea of police being armed while citizens are forcibly unarmed sits well...
- fapjacks 9y ago
  This argument is absurd. Any "reasonable, intelligent person" who's read basically any history book ever written would know that the United States would not descend into civil war with its military intact.
- stale2002 9y ago
  I guess Iraq and Vietnam didn't get the message on this. "Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal. The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it. For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war. This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government. Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains. They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes. Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult. The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost". It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.
- jackaroe78 9y ago
  Guessing you've never been to Idaho
ghostbrainalpha 9y ago
Do they really curb the power though? What is one reasonable scenario of a thing the government may want to do, that we could stop because we have a firearm. I have a gun, and I don't think the government really has a right to tax me for an unjust undeclared war. If I don't pay my taxes, I don't think the United States military or law enforcement cares that I may be armed.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  I think the police would be even more aggressive if they knew citizens were unarmed.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    I think the police are more aggresssive because they know any citizen can be armed
    - malvosenior 9y ago
      When there’s a power imbalance, it’s sadly human nature to exploit it and become aggressive. For instance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
      - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
        There are so many guns, police have to assume everyone is armed in dangerous. So accidental shootings by police of innocent civilians is significant and, unfortunately in our society, seen as mostly unavoidable. This is completely unrelated to the Stanford experiment.
CodeMage 9y ago
Whenever I hear that brought up as an argument, I recommend listening to what Jim Jefferies had to say about gun control. Despite Jim Jefferies being a comedian and phrasing his arguments in a comical, comedic way, I've yet to see anyone give a convincing counter-argument, especially to the "you're bringing a gun to a drone fight" part. Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0 Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4
rocqua 9y ago
I personally think this part of the second amendment is outdated. The check on violent government overreach are the moral compasses of individual soldiers, peaceful protests and a free media. If we get past all of these things, no "well regulated Militia" is going to stop the U.S. Army. The best chance would be state national guards. My point here is that fully automatic fire, tanks, artillery and air support make any resistance useless. Perhaps a guerrilla war could be fought, but to someone seeking complete control fighting guerrillas is an annoyance, not an obstacle. This is mostly because the FDA tightly restricts ownership of 'destructive devices', which are the weapons needed to fight an effective war.
- malvosenior 9y ago
  Just this week I saw footage of police murdering an unarmed man in Baton Rouge. Had that person actually been armed, maybe he could have defended himself. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/30/baton-rouge-police-will-fire-officer-who-shot-and-killed-alton-sterling/?utm_term=.2f5f72651b84 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/3...
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Had that man been armed, they wouldn’t have even bothered with an investigation after shooting him. Hey, he was armed, waved a gun at a cop, must have been a bad guy. Likewise, given an active shooter at a school and armed teachers, how do police tell the difference between the perpetrator and the armed teachers defending the kids? Ya, they don’t.
  - rocqua 9y ago
    Adding more guns to a situations where police are using guns unjustly is not going to end well.

rocqua 9y ago

I also come from a near gun-less country, and think a similar system in America would work. However, there are some arguments in favor of guns that are not trivially ignored. - Simply, guns are fun. Marksmanship is a serious sport of discipline and self-control. - Hunting is also great recreation, is sometimes good for population control, and hunting is another reason for preserving and protecting nature. - Self-defense. Sometimes, you need to use violence for self defense. Guns are a great way to apply violence. - Independence. Partly, this ties in with self-defense above. Partly, this is about the government applying 'collective punishment' on all gun owners for the action of a very select few. Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government (i.e. the militia mentioned in the second amendment) Now, all of these points have counter arguments. I think non of them hold up to the point of "we should keep semi-automatic weapons with 30 round magazines". But the arguments exist, and ignoring them isn't gonna help convince those that want to keep their guns.

pasabagi 9y ago
I'm not American - so I'm not particularly out to convince anybody. I think gun-ownership is really embedded into the deep and often weird tangle of american identity, and it's basically immune to rational argument at this point. On a purely technical level, I think the problem with the arguments you've mentioned are they don't generally stand on an even footing with the arguments against gun-ownership, except perhaps the one about self defense. Gun violence is a problem that costs lives, tears apart communities, and destroys families. For gun ownership to make sense, it needs to serve a similarly grave purpose. In that vein, only self-defense would fit the bill. At which point, we break out the statistics - and it turns out that guns are kind of terrible for self defense. I think Americans would be better off just paying more taxes (with the money they would have spent on guns), and spending the money on police or social programs. That said, many iconic possessions of western society are pretty horrible from a cost-benefit perspective. So I guess guns are just the most egregious.
- rocqua 9y ago
  Yes, the overarching counter argument is that these aren't good enough reasons given the bad results of legally owned guns. I also missed the argument "gun-ownership is part of my identity" it is not an argument that comes up, because people don't expect it to convince gun-opponents. But I think it is the main reason opposition to gun-control is so strong. Thank you for pointing that out.