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> ...carry a lethal weapon that can end your life. I'm not promoting guns by saying this, but that can describe a whole lot of things that aren't even usually

> ...carry a lethal weapon that can end your life. I'm not promoting guns by saying this, but that can describe a whole lot of things that aren't even usually designated as weapons.

ajross 1y ago
[flagged]
- JimBlackwood 1y ago
  While I mostly agree with you, but knives exist and Europe has a huge knife problem. Carrying knives is becoming common under teenagers.
  - ajross 1y ago
    > Europe has a huge knife problem No, it doesn't, not in the context we're talking about. A quick Google says per capita knife deaths in the UK are 4.9/Mpop, gun deaths in the US are one hundred thirty seven per million. Europe should absolutely solve the "knife problem", sure. But even eliminating it entirely would equate to like a 3% reduction in US deaths. Arguing, as you seem to be, that the US should do nothing because Europe has a comparatively tiny problem seems poorly grounded.
  - wredcoll 1y ago
    As has been said repeatedly, lots of countries have various amount of violence depending on a wide variety of factors. Widespread gun ownership invariably makes the problem much, much, worse.
  - odo1242 1y ago
    When compared to guns (everything is relative), it's really hard to kill people with a knife and easier to defend against.
- llm_nerd 1y ago
  > if you want to assassinate a culture warrior jerkwad at a public event The root post's comparison was to someone beside you at the supermarket, rather than "sniper at a distance". The capacity to kill is almost universally distributed, it's just that the vast majority of us are not murderers. But sure, it's actually one of the justifications for the 2nd amendment. Firearms really are sort of an equalizer, and do more equally distribute the risk to even the most powerful.
  - ajross 1y ago
    You can't make a targeting killing at a supermarket any easier with your car or cleaning products either. Not sure how that changes the calculus. If you want to kill someone with non-gun products, it's very difficult: the evidence being the notably higher number of gun killings over poisonings or deliberate collisions. With guns, it's literally just a button push kind of UI. That this is controversial is just insane to me. Every 2A nut knows that guns are effective killing machines, that's why they like guns. Yet we end up in these threads anyway watching people try to deny it.
    - llm_nerd 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - ajross 1y ago
        [flagged]
        llm_nerd 1y ago
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        ajross 1y ago
        Please try citing numbers if you want to make a numeric argument. The USA has four times as many guns per capita as Finland. And in fact Finland has a much higher gun death rate that the rest of industrial Europe (about 3-4x that of the UK or Germany, for example), which has fewer guns. Finland is, to be sure, safer than the US, with about half the per-capita-per-gun fatality rate. So sure, you can do better than the US without reducing guns. But clearly guns are the obviously most important driving variable here, and to argue otherwise is just silly.

> ...carry a lethal weapon that can end your life. I'm not promoting guns by saying this, but that can describe a whole lot of things that aren't even usually designated as weapons.

ajross 1y ago

[flagged]

JimBlackwood 1y ago
While I mostly agree with you, but knives exist and Europe has a huge knife problem. Carrying knives is becoming common under teenagers.
- ajross 1y ago
  > Europe has a huge knife problem No, it doesn't, not in the context we're talking about. A quick Google says per capita knife deaths in the UK are 4.9/Mpop, gun deaths in the US are one hundred thirty seven per million. Europe should absolutely solve the "knife problem", sure. But even eliminating it entirely would equate to like a 3% reduction in US deaths. Arguing, as you seem to be, that the US should do nothing because Europe has a comparatively tiny problem seems poorly grounded.
- wredcoll 1y ago
  As has been said repeatedly, lots of countries have various amount of violence depending on a wide variety of factors. Widespread gun ownership invariably makes the problem much, much, worse.
- odo1242 1y ago
  When compared to guns (everything is relative), it's really hard to kill people with a knife and easier to defend against.
llm_nerd 1y ago
> if you want to assassinate a culture warrior jerkwad at a public event The root post's comparison was to someone beside you at the supermarket, rather than "sniper at a distance". The capacity to kill is almost universally distributed, it's just that the vast majority of us are not murderers. But sure, it's actually one of the justifications for the 2nd amendment. Firearms really are sort of an equalizer, and do more equally distribute the risk to even the most powerful.
- ajross 1y ago
  You can't make a targeting killing at a supermarket any easier with your car or cleaning products either. Not sure how that changes the calculus. If you want to kill someone with non-gun products, it's very difficult: the evidence being the notably higher number of gun killings over poisonings or deliberate collisions. With guns, it's literally just a button push kind of UI. That this is controversial is just insane to me. Every 2A nut knows that guns are effective killing machines, that's why they like guns. Yet we end up in these threads anyway watching people try to deny it.
  - llm_nerd 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - ajross 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - llm_nerd 1y ago
        [flagged]
        ajross 1y ago
        Please try citing numbers if you want to make a numeric argument. The USA has four times as many guns per capita as Finland. And in fact Finland has a much higher gun death rate that the rest of industrial Europe (about 3-4x that of the UK or Germany, for example), which has fewer guns. Finland is, to be sure, safer than the US, with about half the per-capita-per-gun fatality rate. So sure, you can do better than the US without reducing guns. But clearly guns are the obviously most important driving variable here, and to argue otherwise is just silly.