5 ms·

With or without the gun culture of the US?

close04 7y ago
Looking at still ongoing insurgencies where both sides are heavily armed you'd be hard pressed to find one where the dictator gave up even when the insurgents were backed by strong armies like the US. So yeah, the assumption is great but too simplistic. It's the same when people say "if we have guns we can stop mass shooters". Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel.
- Clubber 7y ago
  Typically military people at a US base are not armed. MP's are but not regular military.
  - close04 7y ago
    The point I was making is that we aren't just talking about people with guns (the ones who had them) but people with guns and training. But judging from the downvotes most people assume the only thing they need to effectively stop a mass shooter or fight a war is a gun.
    - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
      No, the problem with your comment was that it is based upon a faulty assumption regarding the presence of armed and trained personnel being abundant on a military base. The comment in response to your point was correcting you on that incorrect assumption: an overwhelming majority of base personnel were not armed, because they weren't MPs.
      - close04 7y ago
        You chose to ignore both the fact that the rest of the arguments are perfectly valid and that the clarification I made right below still stands. The aggressive tone you chose to use is both unnecessary and unwelcome.
        Clubber 7y ago
        >you'd be hard pressed to find one where the dictator gave up even when the insurgents were backed by strong armies like the US. Here's a list of coups. Many were successful. I'm not sure why you are trying to argue that coups don't work. The Arab Spring is a recent example of this very thing, isn't it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27état_and_coup_attempts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27état_and_cou... >Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel. The first part of your second assertion that "very few shootings were ever prevented by a citizen," is also easily invalidated by a google search. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/in-missouri-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-stepped-up-so-can-you/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/in-missouri-a-good-gu... https://www.conservapedia.com/Mass_shootings_prevented_by_armed_citizens https://www.conservapedia.com/Mass_shootings_prevented_by_ar... Where did you get that information from?
        close04 7y ago
        I hope you don't mind if I respond to your conservapedia link with a wikipedia link. This is the list of mass shootings in the US in 2019 (9 months): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_... According to it 385 people were killed and 1338 injured so far. 8 of the mass shootings were in schools. Now you're saying that if faced with the choice of having fewer or no mass shootings, and being able to stop a small fraction of them (or worse, stop a large fraction but even the small one still causes thousands of victims) while the rest cause hundreds of deaths and thousands injured you'd pick the second? As for the coups, I never said they don't work so please don't move the goalposts. I said that the dictator rarely gave up just because his opponents had guns or even the backing of the US military. When I replied to OP's comment it said dictators would back off if faced with armed population. But if the point you're (contrivedly) trying to make is that guns are not the problem I can only strongly agree. Guns, games, etc. seem to not be a problem in the rest of the western world. So the problem must be something or somewhere else.

Looking at still ongoing insurgencies where both sides are heavily armed you'd be hard pressed to find one where the dictator gave up even when the insurgents were backed by strong armies like the US. So yeah, the assumption is great but too simplistic. It's the same when people say "if we have guns we can stop mass shooters". Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel.

Clubber 7y ago
Typically military people at a US base are not armed. MP's are but not regular military.
- close04 7y ago
  The point I was making is that we aren't just talking about people with guns (the ones who had them) but people with guns and training. But judging from the downvotes most people assume the only thing they need to effectively stop a mass shooter or fight a war is a gun.
  - CompanionCuuube 7y ago
    No, the problem with your comment was that it is based upon a faulty assumption regarding the presence of armed and trained personnel being abundant on a military base. The comment in response to your point was correcting you on that incorrect assumption: an overwhelming majority of base personnel were not armed, because they weren't MPs.
    - close04 7y ago
      You chose to ignore both the fact that the rest of the arguments are perfectly valid and that the clarification I made right below still stands. The aggressive tone you chose to use is both unnecessary and unwelcome.
      - Clubber 7y ago
        >you'd be hard pressed to find one where the dictator gave up even when the insurgents were backed by strong armies like the US. Here's a list of coups. Many were successful. I'm not sure why you are trying to argue that coups don't work. The Arab Spring is a recent example of this very thing, isn't it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27état_and_coup_attempts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27état_and_cou... >Very few (if any) shootings were ever really prevented by a citizen and their gun even when the shootings happened (repeatedly) inside military bases where the shooter was literally surrounded by trained and armed military personnel. The first part of your second assertion that "very few shootings were ever prevented by a citizen," is also easily invalidated by a google search. https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/in-missouri-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-stepped-up-so-can-you/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/in-missouri-a-good-gu... https://www.conservapedia.com/Mass_shootings_prevented_by_armed_citizens https://www.conservapedia.com/Mass_shootings_prevented_by_ar... Where did you get that information from?
        close04 7y ago
        I hope you don't mind if I respond to your conservapedia link with a wikipedia link. This is the list of mass shootings in the US in 2019 (9 months): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_... According to it 385 people were killed and 1338 injured so far. 8 of the mass shootings were in schools. Now you're saying that if faced with the choice of having fewer or no mass shootings, and being able to stop a small fraction of them (or worse, stop a large fraction but even the small one still causes thousands of victims) while the rest cause hundreds of deaths and thousands injured you'd pick the second? As for the coups, I never said they don't work so please don't move the goalposts. I said that the dictator rarely gave up just because his opponents had guns or even the backing of the US military. When I replied to OP's comment it said dictators would back off if faced with armed population. But if the point you're (contrivedly) trying to make is that guns are not the problem I can only strongly agree. Guns, games, etc. seem to not be a problem in the rest of the western world. So the problem must be something or somewhere else.