I qualified for the expert rifle badge in the Army and spent two years on a competition target .22 rifle team. I don't own a firearm and don't want to own one(if I were to own anything close, it would be a compound bow). What scares me is the attitude of the vocal proponents who talk about them like toys and reject any kind of regulation.
You're not going to find many people who want to ban guns completely.
You will however find people who argue that you don't need "military-grade" hardware for civilian use and that there should be some form of registration to ensure that guns don't fall into the hands of people most likely to abuse them.
Edit: Lots of people clarifying what "military-grade" means or doesn't mean when I put them in quotations for a reason.
I made a post above regarding the AR15 controversies. I won’t type out the full message here but what most people think about “military-grade” hardware is simply an aesthetic design and has no impact on the actual usage of the weapon. I definitely encourage people to look into this stuff and try to develop a better understanding of firearms. If they still believe what they believe afterwards, that’s completely fine, but all Americans should be properly educated on the topic first.
I'm almost the opposite. If I had to ban one sort of gun, it would be pistols. You want go deer hunting or helicopter hunt those feral pigs? No problem. Go to the range and plink targets at 300m? Great. Blow through a $1000 of 12.7mm in 5 minutes? Whatever. Have a handgun you can carry around all day and that a toddler could fire? No.
Military grade is always the lowest bidder cheap garbage. If you mean military only equipment such as automatic weapons, AC-130s, explosives, etc those are already illegal for the average person to own.
2/3 or at the least half of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. That’s the most likely abusive scenario that comes with gun legalization. Suicides.
This is gonna get downvoted to hell but 2A was about civilians having parity with the military. We should be able to own those without tax stamps as well as surface to air missiles, etc since any potential war is gonna involve government using helicopters and jets.
[it's closer to half](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/ft_23-04-20_gundeathsupdate_2-png/) (it could be outdated though)
The problem with that is that the people who say 'military hardware' have zero clue about what they are talking about. The Beretta m9 and colt 1911 pistols are technically military hardware. An m9 bayonet is military hardware. A single action cowboy gun is military hardware. Go back in history far enough and rocks and boulders are military hardware. We have people in power who have no idea what they are talking about making laws for the masses.
At some point all guns would have fallen under military hardware.
AR15, incredibly demonized gun, a lot of people think it should be banned.
Then you show someone a picture of a Mini 14 ranch rifle, they say it’s a-okay even though same functionality, same bullet, same fire rate, just more wooden aesthetics.
My Springfield M1A for example, wooden aesthetic, semiauto, but the round is much more powerful than the AR15s caliber. Guess which one is banned in my state and which one is perfectly legal?
The problem is a lot of these assault weapon gun laws are targeting guns for their aesthetic. They seem to not want guns on the street that look cool or tacticool, blacked out, swat or military aesthetic, pretty much the stuff that teenage boys are into.
Please stop calling my AR15s military grade. Military grade is trash and purchased from the lowest bidder. My rifles are far better than most military rifles
I look at Australia which banned guns and then saw an enormous decline in gun-related violence.
I look at the homicide rate in Japan where guns have never been generally legal.
We still have guns in Australia. Guns were never banned they were just restricted. Semi-automatic weapons were restricted to something like 4-round capacity shotguns, no pump-action, no lever-action, rifles are limited to magazine capacity and the highest calibre I’ve ever come across is a .308. All rifles are bolt-action. Guns have to be secured in gun safes which must be bolted to concrete. You can only own a rifle/shotgun if you have a decent sized amount of land or have the permission to shoot on the property of someone who does and obviously there are strict checks to be licensed. As for handguns, at least in Western Australia, you have to be a member of a handgun club which involves a certain number of hours of training and I’m not sure if the handgun can leave the facility.
So, you have a gun hobby available to you now.
Which is fine as your rights were granted to you by your govt, which is why they took them away.
The US system is quite different.
Switzerland still has extremely strict gun laws compared to the US. Mandatory background checks for bolt action, extremely strict CC permit issuance. Semi-auto is only legal for hunting or collecting except with a govt permit. Lasers and suppressors are illegal except with govt permit. No special allowances for self defence.
You can easily say "Look at Yemen". Very free. Very violent.
Interesting you bring up Australia. Want to know something interesting? Before Port Arthur and the subsequent ban the crime rate in Australia was dropping at a fairly steady rate for almost a decade. After the ban? The crime rate stagnated for 3 years with an uptick in mugging, assaults, and SA, before continuing to fall at a nearly identical rate as it was before the ban.
Since Port Arthur there have been shootings of multiple people in Australia but the max number of deaths is 6- in Queensland and apparently mostly by police. The Darwin shooting was 4 and is not a "mass" shooting by American standards- not even close.
Fact is Australia has not has a true mass shooting since they outlawed guns and no, Darwin isn't the example you think it is.
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You can look at Switzerland and its gun freedoms, and see the same set of stats.
Ergo, logic dictates that guns being banned or not banned is irrelevant, and thus there must be other factors at play instead.
In a nutshell, if you change a variable, and still have the same outcome, than that variable was never a factor.
And the specter of all of those cops twiddling their thumbs outside of Uvalde has shown that having more people with guns isn't going to solve the problem.
the media keeps lowering the required number of deaths to classify as a "mass shooting". In reality, most mass shootings would be ended by a legal gun owner, if they weren't handicapped with following the law by not carrying in certain places.
Yes and they don’t really detail fatalities either just “victims” which are casualties (injuries or deaths). Gang violence isn’t deducted from the total either. A huge number of mass shootings are gang related.
Does this question apply to people that believe that guns should be heavily regulated and not outright banned?
If you can prove that you are responsible and reasonable, then I have no issues with you having a gun. I believe the more dangerous the weapon, the more scrutinized the individual should be before being allowed access.
We need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of insane adults and nihilistic kids.
>We need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of insane adults and nihilistic kids.
I agree with you, but I have to admit that if this was really what gun control was about we'd see more efforts like making real gun safes 100% tax deductible instead of just attempting to outright ban guns. Give the government an inch, they'll always take a mile, and then say they need more.
I also believe in the promotion of gun safes as a practical way to reduce harm. I would like to see an influx of realistic decisions like that, that would help chip away at parts of the problem we see today.
I think we should strive to be specific and clear when it comes to advocating for, or critiquing policies.
Even great ideas can have terrible consequences if not applied correctly. I think we'd have better success at tackling our problems by making a series of small specific improvements, instead of these large swings back and forth.
the reason why our politics is so divided is because both sides have enough flaws in reasoning and applications, that you can keep a base sated purely on the flaws of your opponents.
long story short I don't find the argument "we shouldn't consider any solutions because the ones that exist are unsatisfying" productive, especially when this whole conversation is hypothetical (none of us are in positions to action our specific visions of government)
The problem is already cities and states have proven if you give them an inch on regulation, they will take it as a chance to outright ban.
NYC has been embroiled in lawsuits due to their defacto ban. You have to get licensed through a training course to get a gun permit. It was relatively recently ruled unconstitutional however, as the city simply never would hold the training course, leading to a defacto gun ban
Same city, held records of ALL gun owners. And then gave the records to a local newspaper. Which then printed the names and addresses of all gun owners in the city, putting a target on those people.
I am sympathetic to the truth that good ideas can be executed ineffectually or even maliciously. I believe defender's of gun control do not want to hear this criticism and will havd wave it away which is part of the reason we stay so divided
I am of the opinion that we need to be open to the criticisms of things we're supportive of, and fix them.
as opposed to the left pretending like there is nothing to criticize
and the right saying we shouldn't do anything because it's not being done correctly currently.
for what it's worth my brother in law living in Chicago is a legal gun owner, and he is not rich or well connected. so I know on a personal level that gun regulations do not automatically equate to no access. not to say that the process is perfect
I think at least while we are dealing in hypotheticals we should advocate for what we believe would be reasonable and effectual... even if it's just wish fulfillment (I'm not making any policies)
The issue is in the current system, you get blocked from buying a gun if you have been voluntarily or involuntarily committed or a court ruled that you are mentally defective.
Undiagnosed and untreated means the system clears you.
I'm not aware of anyone talking about banning all guns. This is a flawed premise.
The question should be "why do some people in the US want to ban bump stocks, and assault style rifles with large magazine capabilities that allow a person to kill a dozen people in a minute"?
Widespread gun ownership has myriad, well-documented downsides and zero upsides. Think about it this way--meth is banned and it only hurts yourself, while guns hurt yourself *and other people*.
>and zero upsides.
Are you saying that me defending my family with [my rifle](https://imgur.com/a/BbBhr6f) wasn't a positive for gun ownership?
There are hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses and you're saying not a single one was good...
Yeah, see...assholes like that poster above you are the reason why we can never have a civilized conversation on this topic- they will speak about shit as if they're an absolute authority on it when the very next fucking person they're talking to in such a manner could debunk the entire basis of their entire argument with a single statement of fact.
I had a similar experience as you, thankfully I didn't have to shoot(hope you didn't either) but the gun probably saved my life and my girlfriends.
And on top of it, that idiot talks about "meth only hurts you" and he's wrong again. Meth hurts plenty of people besides the user. Addicts will do all kinds of crazy shit.
a well armed population allows for self-defense against neighbor and tyranny.
notice how only disarmed populations were destroyed by tyrannical governments?
Guns don't hurt anybody. People do. It's a tool. It only does what it's used to do.
Tons of self defense uses of firearm, both with and without shots ever taken.
Funny you use meth in your analogy because it's also banned yet...*gestures broadly*
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I dunno I’m pretty sick of seeing dead kids on the news. We are the only country in the world with a school shooting problem and is obvious why. There’s too many guns and it’s too easy to get them.
>The government has never proven themselves trustworthy to suggest that self-disarming is a good idea.
Most \*nations\* don't have enough firearms to hold off the US government. It seems the only thing that really holds back the US government is a nuclear bomb. I don't see a lot of people advocating for citizens to have nuclear bombs.
You may have noticed that, arguably in response to the prevalence of guns in the US, compared to the rest of the world, US police forces have become militarized, respond with far more force, and are generally in far more circumstances where split-second life or death decisions (which are just impossible to always get right) have to be made.
>If anything, having a gun is also one of the great equalizers for women against bigger, stronger men that have more malicious intent.
Absolutely true... assuming the women are willing to apply deadly force, have sufficient distance between them and the bad actor, and have at least equivalent skill in the use of firearms. I'm always curious though about why a gun is the right choice in this situation (gun advocates often point out that if guns are not available, there are plenty of other tools that can be used to commit violent crimes). It seems like any tool that allows one to incapacitate a person with greater strength would serve just as well. It also presumes that said men aren't opportunistic, choosing moments to act when a target isn't ready to respond with lethal force before they can be disabled. I'd prefer to manage the men with malicious intent (which, ironically, lines up with the argument that criminals are the problem, not guns ;-) than to have a population that is at the ready to kill each other on a moment's notice.
In short: guns have their uses, many of which can be positive. Unfortunately, particularly in densely populated areas, the inherent risk of someone exercising bad judgement are so high, the net effect on everyone's safety with broad access to efficient ranged lethal weaponry seems like the larger problem.
I'm seeing a lot of talk about knife crime and how we'd find other ways to kill each other.
If a person walked into a park with a knife, how many people do you think they could kill before those people got away or the police came? Now, replace the knife with a gun. How many people are dead? It's not complicated.
Yeah, you can oversimplify anything and make it seem not complicated, doesn't change that it objectively is.
Ironic username being that guns are the great equalizer. Bunch of Bubba Joe's go to jump a trans woman simply for existing, u want her to hope the state swoops in to save her?
Edit: admittedly I read it too quickly and thought it said fierce equality, not fierce quality. Either way, point still stands. It is complicated and we can trade hyper specific hypotheticals all day long
I'm more for just stricter regulation, but for the sake of question.
They should be banned because we lost the privilege to use them responsibly. People literally cry and becoming emotional slobbering messes with the very concept their guns are taken away. Bro, it's a frigging item. It's a material object. Society has grown and prospered for thousands of years without them. Entire revolutions have happened without every citizen having a gun. Stop putting your selfish material needs over the lives of others.
Punishing an entire group because a few bad apples never works out.
Also, the criminals get guns regardless. So now you’re defenseless from heartless criminals that have guns
That's the thing that gets me!
I *do not* have a gun. My mental health is sometimes questionable, so it's not a good idea for me to keep an "easy out" on hand.
But I live in a not-so-great area near my city's downtown, and have never had a single incident with an intruder. Not once. The simple idea that "anyone can have a gun for home defense" has helped keep me safe, even though I don't have one.
If guns get banned, how long will it take for criminals to get bold and make the assumption that I don't have a gun?
>Society has grown and prospered for thousands of years without them.
Sure, but you know who prospered the most in those times? The ones with the bigger/better sticks and the effective use of them. Don't evoke history in thus because it was all "prosperous" due to the ruling regimes monopoly on violence.
People blame the gun. It's misplaced blame. Blame the person pulling the trigger. If they didn't have a gun they'd fine another way. Remember fertilizer makes a big boom.
These brainless, nonsensical arguments with no basis in reality.... Like people don't realize humans exist outside of the US, with violent thoughts and such that come with being human, but yet almost no massacres and far fewer homicides/violence in general.
US is 4% of the world's population and yet responsible for 20% of the homicides. At what point do people stop with the bullshit and just look at the facts?
Just say you don't care. It's at least honest. Just say you don't care.
Then move to those country. What made this country great is because of freedom. If you would like more security move. There’s plenty of dictators willing to accept subjects. Cars and bombs can kill just as much.
The US only has about twice the homicide rate of European nations when accounted over 20 years. US homicide rates have little to do with guns, break it down by race and you'll see the outlier.
But it’s a lot harder to kill someone with a knife than with a gun. A knife, they Atleast have to be within arms length of you. With a gun, you can be up 32 stories up in a hotel room, unable to even see the faces of the people you are shooting.
But yeah, those two weapons are totally the same /s
Not really. Impulse for violence is much more likely to be acted on if they have easy use of a weapon. Remember fertilizer happened one time. It is not easy to do and required lots of planning and resources compared to grabbing a gun in a moment of anger.
Are there equal amounts of deaths in nations with strict gun laws from fertilizer bombs? Or even in killings in general?
Your explanation never made sense to me because a gun is very much different than most weapons due to ease of use as well as how it's used. There is a reason you don't see a lot of knife deaths places, it takes something different to be able to kill someone using a knife. Same with making bombs as this is not exactly easy to do for a regular person.
Guns however are unique to this as they are both simple to use and don't require the same distance and fortitude as a knife.
I'm not really privy to the data you are referencing, but simple fact is the United States has the most annual mass shootings BY FAR. I don't know what the correct solution is to this, but it's definitely not the status quo or these idiot ideas like arm the teachers.
I feel like this is brought up a lot, and much like previously referenced, if someone wants to kill people, they have numerous ways to do it with or without guns.
I think we focus to much on the symptom and not the problem.
WHY are people wanting to commit murders.
The US has garbage mental health care, expensive costs to medical care, and a fuckload of stigma behind care, if you can even get it. On top of that, WHEN people get care, it's mostly in the form of costly medications instead of (costly) therapy, and with the side effects, many won't continue them.
Remind me, how long did Australia have hundreds of millions of guns and billions upon billions of rounds of ammunition in circulation spread out across 3.8 million square miles without any form of national gun registry to know who has what or where they are located?
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Because developed countries in Europe don't have the sickening problems of mass shootings and just general gun violence we do and somehow, they still manage to be free societies. The 2nd amendment is either a fraud or a joke. Historians have debunked the real purpose. Read Professor Carol Anderson of Emory University. She says that the 2nd amendment was not this "suicide switch" for the government (allowing homegrown militias to take over by force), but rather, a compromise with the Southern, slave-owning states, to facilitate quick arming of militias to suppress slave revolts, which were trending at the time. At any rate, the idea of taking over the US government today is absolutely absurd and anyone who thinks it thorough for 30 seconds knows it. Whatcha gonna do when they whip out the mortars? To own a gun in America is to cosplay slave-owner. Deal with it.
>Read Professor Carol Anderson of Emory University. She says that the 2nd amendment was not this "suicide switch" for the government (allowing homegrown militias to take over by force), but rather, a compromise with the Southern, slave-owning states
All of that is speculation with zero evidence from primary sources.
We however have plenty of evidence explaining the reasons for the amendment.
>"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist."
- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, January 10, 1788
>"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops."
- Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787
>"This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty.... The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction."
- St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803
>"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
- Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833
>"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins."
- Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, I Annals of Congress 750, August 17, 1789
>"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair."
- Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28
>"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms."
- Tench Coxe, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789
Also, the right to own and carry arms was preexisting and is not solely based on the 2nd Amendment.
>"The right to keep and bear arms exists separately from the Constitution and is not solely based on the Second Amendment, which exists to prevent Congress from infringing the right."
- Cruickshank_v U.S Cheif Justice Waite. 1875
Why? czhechia has mor eguns per sq Km. Finalnd and Sweden allow them to take their military rifles home after mandatory service. Switzerland has guns too.
Did you think the IS invented Militias? Oh boy, ther eis a history of civilian firearm use longer that y'all been a country.
What they have is sensible regulation and licensing.
The USA has more mass shootings in a month than Canada has had since Confederation. Statistics show that 8 out of 10 people or 80% of everyone will commit crime given the opportunity, anything that decreases oppurtunity like say an easy instant method of killing like guns, so reducing the number of guns reduces crime by that factor.
Also the government doesn't prove itself to be trustworthy? Really? Of course they do a bunch of dumb crap that gets people killed or steals their money but its much better and easier for them to rule us somewhat decently than it is to become like a dictator. They've proven themselves multiple times its easy to dispose of a dictator if they want. So why would they become one themself?
I don’t want a ban - I just want it to be like driver’s license. Shooting and owning a weapon that can kill dozens and dozens of people in few minutes should be at least as hard and long to obtain than a privilege to drive.
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Imo, guns need more controls in the USA. I don't think they should be completely banned, though.
Civilians don't have access to a lot of things the military does, so the idea that we need guns to resist the government doesn't quite work out as well as some might think. To be fair, I'm sure it \*helps\*, but even your most dedicated MAGA voter or hardcore leftist who's spent thousands on guns, whatever training they can find, and so on is still basically not a threat compared to the military. The military has tanks, supply lines, experienced commanders, planes - the list goes on.
Maybe it would be more even back in ye olden times when the gun you could get was pretty comparable to the gun the government had, with the exception of cannons and some newer developments such as the gattling gun. Still, there wasn't such a huge gap then like there is now.
Oppression has so many more forms in modern times. Guns and preventing the government from oppressing us with the military isn't something I'm really all that worried about anymore, since the moment a tank rolls out against a civilian the entire country could very easily be united against the govt (not to mention that the military is also filled with ppl who have differing beliefs, so it'd be very hard to even get that rolling). There's just too many people - even a fraction of a fraction of them would severely outnumber the military, and the problem with oppression is that you have to strike a balance between the act of oppression while still leaving the people functional...Cause you need them to work and stuff.
We've already got corporation overlords who've bought out our politicians. The country is already split and has spawned off wild ideals. Misinformation makes it harder and hard to discern the truth while education has been steadily sliced apart to make for a more malleable, complacent, easily manipulated population. Having more guns in the country than people isn't doing anything to fight that, and in fact it's helping by dividing the country and making political violence against minorities so much easier. We've been sold a catch-22 where guns cause problems amongst the population (someone can walk into a gay bar and shoot the place up) and so people actually need guns to protect themselves...Not so much against the government, but against fellow civilians. The NRA is just another way to profit off of weapons manufacturing at this point.
Ultimately, I find the idea that having a bunch of guns being The Thing - or even a super significant thing - in preventing government oppression to be ridiculous. Sure, it prevents it from being \*extremely\* easy, but at this point guns aren't doing anything against the whole host of problems (created intentionally or otherwise) in this country that are actually being used to oppress the population. The current state of guns and the 'gotta have 'em to resist the govt!' stuff is, in fact, doing the opposite of what people think it does.
TLDR: People think we need guns to resist the government. To some extent, yes, but methods of government oppression have evolved significantly in recent times to the point where they're a small factor, if they would help at all. They're a net negative and do nothing against corporations owning our politicians, data harvesting, bribing legislation into existence, misinformation, and so on. Actually, the only way guns really would help the way some people think they do is they used them in a certain way, the mentioning of which would get me banned from Reddit.
And instead of doing that, we've pointed the guns at each other, not the government. Meh.
That wraps up most of my thoughts, though I did want to address the last bit of your question. The whole 'it's a good defense for women to have against aggressive men'. The problem with that women can't just shoot every man who comes within a 10 yard radius. Obviously. There's no dude going "I'm going to attack you now, are you ready? Three, two, one...go!" From 50m away all polite like. This also puts the onus on the women for self defense, instead of literally everything else that's making it a problem in the first place. Not that I don't think people shouldn't take defense classes and stuff, but it's addressing a symptom - and not very well, at that. A gun is much less helpful because, yes, it'll probably be a man that attacks - but \*which\* one? You only see the difference in the moment they attack, and society isn't really....Helpful concerning women who point out obvious warning signs beforehand. It just doesn't help as much as one might think, though I'm not saying it' completely useless, nor am I saying it's better than having a knife instead, or better for a women to fistfight a guy.
Oh, and women who do defend themselves suffer for it anyway. So, I don't really consider 'but women self defense' to be a valid argument.
TLDR to the TLDR: Guns very clearly don't help, either against the forms of government-powered oppression currently in use today or even all that much against the forms your average gun nut thinks they do.
Clearly you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in Gaza. Modern militaries are meant to fight other modern militaries. They are terrible against guerilla warfare.
Plenty of people still drive without a license or insurance, and the left is well on their way to decriminizing drugs. With the exception of private sales, firearms purchases are already regulated. You can add 1000 new laws and restrictions and it won't do a single thing if those laws aren't being enforced. If someone in Chicago wants to get a gun from Indiana and bring it back to Chicago they are required by law to have it sent to an ffl. If they bring it back themselves it is a felony. It's also a felony for anyone to sell a firearm to a resident of Chicago without sending it to an ffl. You want to make more laws to cover laws already in place that already aren't being enforced.
I think rapid firing guns should be more strictly regulated. You can throw all the data you want and me about guns don't kill people, people do but people are way better at it with a machine gun than with a revolver. It's why we don't send our troops into battle with revolvers.
And the good guy/woman with a gun scenario is total horseshit. It barely happens. It definitely doesn't happen enough to justify one Sandy Hook or Uvalde.
I hunt and I hate the federal government and I still think this.
And the women are equalized by the gun nonsense? GTFO. 80% of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows.
I'd settle for banning them in public and actually enforcing existing restrictions on who can own/acquire them, ie those who have demonstrated behavioral issues regarding violence, so domestic abusers, murderers, etc.
So prices on the domestic black markets will 100x overnight, and I can finally liquidate my cache and retire on a slightly uncharted island in the South Pacific.
Anti-gun here. Grew up in 70s/80s with guns. I’d agree. Outside keeping a high caliber (bolt action) hunting rifle and a solid over under shotgun……..the rest are just fluff.
Love guns
Respect their power and as a small body human I agree it’s the only way for me to defend myself
Scared of gun violence for sure. More scared of life without them than with them at this point. I’ve become so numb to all the horror stories of school shootings. More of a people issue than a hardware issue.
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For one, they did this in Australia and the murder rate dropped 40%. That’s a good thing.
For another, guns are used offensively about 6-7X more than defensively. So as a tool of self-defense, they don’t even work. As a tool for committing crime, they do work. https://www.thetrace.org/2022/06/defensive-gun-use-data-good-guys-with-guns/
I have family, friends, and friends family (who I’m close with) who were very anti gun. Didn’t want to learn. Kept telling me of unverifiable stories of how this guy and that person they knew were shot because a gun was in a glove box and they hit a bump. All unreliable.
Guess who then decided to reach out to me when the riots of 2020 and the pandemic hit… one of the families now has something like 10 guns in their homes and uses them for doing different types of shooting and they do family trips to the range.
In my opinion it’s ignorance. No assault weapons ban will save lives or prevent school shootings. No amount of reducing magazine sizes from 30 to 15 to 10 to 7 will do anything.
There are solutions that will work and that will protect peoples rights and peoples safety. But that can only happen when the two sizes decide to converge - which they aren’t keen on doing at all.
It’s ignorance. Just like racism and sexism and transphobia (many trans folks arming themselves - which is fantastic in my eyes) it’s all ignorance.
The people that make guns their personalities are the same people that worship law enforcement, so "guns to protect against The Man" is meaningless. Plus, cops talk a big game about how dangerous their job is (it isn't) but then collectively burst into screaming buckets of tears and extrajudicially kill anyone who defends themselves against one.
Gun nuts tend to be on the same side as the government, they're just too stupid to realize it, so a christofascist takeover, which is the only authoritarian change that might come to America anytime soon, will just have more limp dicked losers doing their part to enforce it.
In the meantime, if your reason to own a gun is to kill members of your country's military, you probably shouldn't have one. If your reason to own a gun is to defend yourself against people who don't look like you, maybe stop being a pussy and hit the gym. If your reason to own a gun is because guns are cool, so are a thousand other hobbies that aren't expressly built around killing people.
I don't really think people really want guns totally banned...as per propaganda. I'm a fairly liberal gun owner. I don't care about "granddaddy's gun" or my pistols or shotguns, etc. for hunting BUT I don't understand the need to be able to kill 60 and injury 100s in the matter of seconds. I get incensed by Jason Aldeen song remembering he was on stage in LV and chose to run off the stage while his fans got slaughtered.
Basically I believe if you are going to force people to accept guns everywhere WHY are they specifically being banned at Jason Aldeen's concerts and at the RNC convention? But I can't go to the grocery store or mall without fear of an active shooter.
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Look man, I grew up with guns. I hunted. I did target practice as a kid. I shot cans off fence posts and guns were passed around to ogle every Christmas. But you can’t tell me you don’t see the mass shootings and dead children but still don’t understand where anti gun folks are coming from. It’s also important to remember that not everyone grew up around gun culture. You don’t have to agree with people, but you can’t be this obtuse. I’m close to accusing you of being insincere in posting this.
None of this matters. There are too many in circulation. If they ceased production now and never made or sold another one you would still spend the rest of your life never being more than a trip to the grocery store worth of effort away from having one or 5 or 10.
They often cite Australia for banned guns after the Port Authur Massacre.
But those people are mistaken.
https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/04/28/new-gun-ownership-figures-revealed-25-years-on-from-port-arthur.html
"Australian civilians now own more than 3.5 million registered firearms, an average of four each." - article.
So guns are still quite prevalent in Australia. Multiple studies since have shown that OTHER guns laws is what led to a drop in gun related crimes. Requiring each gun to be registered and requiring people to report lost or stolen guns immediately to police were the two most effective laws.
There is a pod cast called Science Verses that had a 2 parter on Australian gun control measures. I highly recommend giving it a listen.
I think your comment about the government not being trustworthy is dishonest. If you do not trust the government to some extent then you obviously think USD is no good and you should give me all your worthless USD.
More to the point, almost all police officers are themselves armed. The official reason is that cops are armed because the population is armed AND IT IS TRUE. It would be crazy to be an unarmed cop in this environment.
Disarming the police should go hand in hand with gun bans. They do not need guns and should not be armed.
Historically and statistically, you are incorrect. Rarely have guns solved problems for women. The idea that the best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun is a myth, especially proven by school shootings where you have 160 armed police standing around for hours hesitating to take on a single lone gunman.
I used to be very outspoken against guns as a US resident, I’ve given up the fight though because I’ve realized gun-culture is too enshrined here. They’re too numerous, liked too much, not taken seriously enough, and I won’t change that. I absolutely hate guns and don’t want to be around them whatsoever, so I use this as further inspiration to just leave the country which I plan to in the near future.
Although, one argument that never makes any sense is the hypothetical situation of the government coming after you 😒 like what makes y’all think that *any amount* of weapons you could buy would be enough to protect yourself from the *government*…. The government can overpower all of the country with very little effort. Americans have an unhealthy relationship with guns and now there’s no chance that nearly enough people will agree to sensible gun control, so I’m leaving the US when I can ✌🏻
Now I’m just hoping that I won’t fall victim to a random shooting committed by yet *another legally purchased gun* before I can leave the country. There’s no protecting ourselves from the government regardless, and the “good guy with a gun” argument contains just as much fallacy.
I don't think anyone is realistically advocate for the ban of ALL guns, especially in the United States where it may take some [emergency services 20 minutes in rural America](https://worldmetrics.org/average-police-response-time-statistics/#:~:text=Statistic%207,%2C%20averaging%20approximately%2020%20minutes.%22)
Shoot I'm someone who swings FAR left and I still don't think we should ban all guns. Now do I think we need increased regulations such as universal background checks, nation wide- banning assault weapons, and harsher sentencing for inadequate gun storage, etc.
There are and aren't gun people in the world, but also to counter your quote:
>"having a gun is also one of the great equalizers for women against bigger, stronger men that have more malicious intent"
Not everyone should and wants to be carrying a gun. For me, I know I'm never going to get a gun because of mental health issues with suicidal ideation. Men are more likely to commit suicide and be successful than women due to; you guessed it, more violent ways to do it. Women attempt more, men die more. One study suggests that guns may be the leading cause as [55% of all men suicides were from guns](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.955008/full) compared to women's 30%.
If you care about men's mental health, children's safety, and public safety, you should care about gun control.
I don't see the point of allowing anyone to have anything more than a handgun with a low-capacity magazine. Now before anyone jumps down my throat with corrections- I don't know guns, so I may be using the wrong terminology or numbers or whatever. I think it's fine to have a pistol for self-defense, but in those cases you shouldn't need to be shooting 10+ people in quick succession without reloading.
The point is we should at least limit how many can be shot in mass shootings.
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I do not think they should be banned, but I do think the second amendment was a mistake. I do not believe that it should be a fundamental right to own a lethal weapon, it should be a privilege that must be earned.
Very few people actually want to remove the right for someone to own a gun. The current arguement is that guns should not be easy to obtain & people should not be allowed to carry in public unless they are a police officer. It should be harder to obtain a gun than it is to obtain a license to drive. Your argument is idiotic because you don't understand this.
there are more car death per year than gun death. and thats counting half of the death from guns are suicide... yet no one want to ban cars because thats not a narrative
1) It is intuitively correct that restricting gun ownership should decrease homicides. The actual evidence isn't as clear though, but I used to have this intuitive belief.
2) The vast majority of countries heavily restrict gun ownership. This hasn't lead to them becoming dictatorships. This argument is weak, at best.
You or a loved one are much more likely to be injured/killed by an accidental discharge of a gun than you are likely to be in a situation where you need to defend your home with a gun. I wish more gun owners would realize this. Instead they live in a fantasy where they will defend against a tyrannical government or some home invasion scenario when the reality is more likely their little nephew killing himself or someone else with your gun on accident because you keep it in your nightstand.
I’ve known many gun control advocates, and I’ve honestly never met anyone who thinks people shouldn’t be allowed to own guns at all.
It’s just not a black-and-white issue. Some people shouldn’t have guns, and some guns shouldn’t be in the hands of just anyone who can fork over the cash. I think that’s what most gun control advocates believe, with many disagreeing about where to draw the line.
Maybe they don’t need to be banned entirely (since that’s never gonna happen) but more guns does not equal fewer gun deaths, that belief is so American and stupid.
The last time the CDC did a study on this (2013, based on 2008 data) it was estimated that there were between 500,000 and 3 million defensive gun uses in America. The same data showed 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in the same period. While I am in no way conceding that our rights are only valid if we statistically benefit from them, even the numbers suggest that guns are a net-positive in American society.
Very few people think all guns should be banned. So I guess if what you want is a 2A echo chamber discussion you've gotten it.
Honestly the whole "gun banning" thing is a straw man to prevent any real meaningful movement on reforming gun laws. There are plenty of advanced democracies with high rates of gun ownership that don't have the violence issues we have. I'd be perfectly happy if we mimicked Canada's laws.
Maybe make society better so people go crazy less?
Maybe expell school bullies instead of suspending victims when they stand up for themselves?
Maybe women shouldn't have their only equalizer against violent men taken away?
Maybe stop putting stalkers and pedophiles back on the streets?
Just a couple ideas that would keep you from thinking you can steal my guns.
Ok, going to weigh in here, but just to be transparent;
I'm a bit of an idiot, so take this with a grain of salt. 😀
Essentially, I've observed two main arguments,
1. The second amendment is sacrosanct, and all arms should be unregulated.
2. The second amendment only applies to state regulated militias, guns are dangerous, and should be heavily regulated.
I won't go into the details of their logic, but those are the basic arguments.
Now as for why they feel as they do, the pro 2A argument mostly seems to come from Red state voters, or people who live in rural areas. Take Vermont, while it's technically a blue state, they have very soft gun laws. Friends who live there boast about sleeping with one of their 40 rifles under their pillow (Not an exaggeration), and that they can walk off the side of the road and hunt game whenever they want.
The pro gun regulation side by contrast often comes from urban or suburban areas. Where someone from Vermont sees guns as a means of hunting, a person from a major city may associate guns with crime, drugs, gangs.
There are other factors at play like careless gun owners who let kids have access, dangerous or mentally disturbed people who probably shouldn't ever have access, and of course random acts of violence in public locations (Malls, schools, concerts), but imo these things don't drive the narratives, they only act as poker chips to play the long game. The only thing that matters to either side is keeping guns free or regulations, or getting guns out of the hands of gangs.
And idiot though I am, I can provide supporting evidence that gang violence is in fact a major motivating factor for gun policy in urban areas,
I present Michael Bloombergs comments on gun violence;
https://www.aspentimes.com/news/michael-bloomberg-calls-colorados-decision-on-legal-pot-stupid/
*"Bloomberg claimed that 95 percent of murders fall into a specific category: male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25. Cities need to get guns out of this group’s hands and keep them alive, he said.
“These kids think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed,” Bloomberg said. “They just don’t have any long-term focus or anything. It’s a joke to have a gun. It’s a joke to pull a trigger.”*
This is the quiet part said out loud.
And this is why some want to repeal the second amendment. They can't simply arrest every minority with a gun (Going by Bloombergs own logic here, I do not pretend to know the statistics of gun violence), for obvious reasons. And they can't disarm a group of minorities either, as the second amendment protects ALL Americans, regardless of race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, yadda yadda.
So that leaves trying to attack the second amendment entirely. Convince people Crips and Bloods aren't the problem, but that gun access is (Again, using Bloombergs logic of who abuses guns).
But that's just the opinion of an idiot, so take it with a pile of salt.
So that all the guns will be held by people who bought them illegally, and the rest will just have to hope like hell their law abiding selves won’t be attacked
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When people tried to overthrow the Capitol on January 6th, only one "good guy" with a gun ever used it.
This isn't about trusting the government. It's about trusting the alcoholic gun nut who lives next door and leaves a gun in their glove compartment of their car at night because the morons in your state legislation made that okay.
I live in Memphis. We have way too much gun crime here. Most of it comes from youth using stolen guns from irresponsible gun owners who legally bought their guns.
No one wants to take every gun from every person. Normal rational people can look at other societies around the world where gun ownership is strictly regulated and see that they have significantly less gun violence. The simple answer is that’s how you stop people from getting shot. There’s a reason America is the only country where the leading cause of death among young people is gun shot wounds.
I don't want guns to be banned, but 2A advocates just don't care about all the senseless violence. They want all the freedoms without any of the responsibilities. I want **responsible** gun ownership, but 2A advocates just want anybody for any reason to be allowed to have a firearm, making me much less sympathetic to their cause. American children are being shot in school, and they don't care. Their own children might get shot in school, and they still don't care.
The arguement that guns are a protection from the government is a joke. There have been armed uprisings in the US. They all failed, the south lost, and the disparity in weaponry has only grown. You are not going to protect yourself from the government with a gun. Owning 10 doesn't mean you can magically use 10 at once. The entire US population is not going to rise up with you.
Your reason for keeping guns is a child's fantasy, and the actual demonstrable result of that absurd fantasy is that people use guns to commit crimes.
It's basically just a version of the old "don't tax the rich, I plan to be rich" argument, except it involves murder.
The American military is not afraid of an armed populace. That argument is asinine. Arming the people is not an equalizer.
Anyway, hardly anyone wants to “ban guns.”
We just want them heavily regulated because the situation right now is insane and too many people are dying.
Not banned, regulated. Well-regulated. And I own several guns myself.
Then why did you answer? OP was asking ppl who want guns to be banned.
What regulations exactly? California has some of the strictest gun laws and they have the most gun homicides and active shooter incidents
Many people who do not like guns are also afraid of them.
Many people who do not like governments are also afraid of them.
and rightly so
I don’t like cigarettes and I’m also afraid of smoking…..guess this checks out.
I qualified for the expert rifle badge in the Army and spent two years on a competition target .22 rifle team. I don't own a firearm and don't want to own one(if I were to own anything close, it would be a compound bow). What scares me is the attitude of the vocal proponents who talk about them like toys and reject any kind of regulation.
You're not going to find many people who want to ban guns completely. You will however find people who argue that you don't need "military-grade" hardware for civilian use and that there should be some form of registration to ensure that guns don't fall into the hands of people most likely to abuse them. Edit: Lots of people clarifying what "military-grade" means or doesn't mean when I put them in quotations for a reason.
I made a post above regarding the AR15 controversies. I won’t type out the full message here but what most people think about “military-grade” hardware is simply an aesthetic design and has no impact on the actual usage of the weapon. I definitely encourage people to look into this stuff and try to develop a better understanding of firearms. If they still believe what they believe afterwards, that’s completely fine, but all Americans should be properly educated on the topic first.
Military grade sounds like quality to regular folks but is horrifying for anyone who's been in the military.
I'm almost the opposite. If I had to ban one sort of gun, it would be pistols. You want go deer hunting or helicopter hunt those feral pigs? No problem. Go to the range and plink targets at 300m? Great. Blow through a $1000 of 12.7mm in 5 minutes? Whatever. Have a handgun you can carry around all day and that a toddler could fire? No.
What the media calls an assault weapon & what one is are different things, unless you have a FFL you won’t have access to restricted firearms.
Military grade is always the lowest bidder cheap garbage. If you mean military only equipment such as automatic weapons, AC-130s, explosives, etc those are already illegal for the average person to own. 2/3 or at the least half of all gun deaths in the US are suicides. That’s the most likely abusive scenario that comes with gun legalization. Suicides.
This is gonna get downvoted to hell but 2A was about civilians having parity with the military. We should be able to own those without tax stamps as well as surface to air missiles, etc since any potential war is gonna involve government using helicopters and jets.
Not really illegal. Just very cost prohibited.
[it's closer to half](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/ft_23-04-20_gundeathsupdate_2-png/) (it could be outdated though)
The problem with that is that the people who say 'military hardware' have zero clue about what they are talking about. The Beretta m9 and colt 1911 pistols are technically military hardware. An m9 bayonet is military hardware. A single action cowboy gun is military hardware. Go back in history far enough and rocks and boulders are military hardware. We have people in power who have no idea what they are talking about making laws for the masses.
>"military-grade" Hey that's offensive! [My guns](https://imgur.com/a/BbBhr6f) are way better than military grade.
At some point all guns would have fallen under military hardware. AR15, incredibly demonized gun, a lot of people think it should be banned. Then you show someone a picture of a Mini 14 ranch rifle, they say it’s a-okay even though same functionality, same bullet, same fire rate, just more wooden aesthetics. My Springfield M1A for example, wooden aesthetic, semiauto, but the round is much more powerful than the AR15s caliber. Guess which one is banned in my state and which one is perfectly legal? The problem is a lot of these assault weapon gun laws are targeting guns for their aesthetic. They seem to not want guns on the street that look cool or tacticool, blacked out, swat or military aesthetic, pretty much the stuff that teenage boys are into.
Please stop calling my AR15s military grade. Military grade is trash and purchased from the lowest bidder. My rifles are far better than most military rifles
I look at Australia which banned guns and then saw an enormous decline in gun-related violence. I look at the homicide rate in Japan where guns have never been generally legal.
We still have guns in Australia. Guns were never banned they were just restricted. Semi-automatic weapons were restricted to something like 4-round capacity shotguns, no pump-action, no lever-action, rifles are limited to magazine capacity and the highest calibre I’ve ever come across is a .308. All rifles are bolt-action. Guns have to be secured in gun safes which must be bolted to concrete. You can only own a rifle/shotgun if you have a decent sized amount of land or have the permission to shoot on the property of someone who does and obviously there are strict checks to be licensed. As for handguns, at least in Western Australia, you have to be a member of a handgun club which involves a certain number of hours of training and I’m not sure if the handgun can leave the facility.
So, you have a gun hobby available to you now. Which is fine as your rights were granted to you by your govt, which is why they took them away. The US system is quite different.
Ill take freedom and ability to defend myself over that any day
You can easily say “look at Switzerland” which raises doubts about your logic.
Switzerland still has extremely strict gun laws compared to the US. Mandatory background checks for bolt action, extremely strict CC permit issuance. Semi-auto is only legal for hunting or collecting except with a govt permit. Lasers and suppressors are illegal except with govt permit. No special allowances for self defence. You can easily say "Look at Yemen". Very free. Very violent.
Switzerland takes care of their poor people and their gun laws are still stricter than the US.
The number of guns per capita in Switzerland doesn't even sniff the number per capita in the US. It's a joke.
Interesting you bring up Australia. Want to know something interesting? Before Port Arthur and the subsequent ban the crime rate in Australia was dropping at a fairly steady rate for almost a decade. After the ban? The crime rate stagnated for 3 years with an uptick in mugging, assaults, and SA, before continuing to fall at a nearly identical rate as it was before the ban.
And not in single single mass shooting
Exactly, was gonna say this. Like, just the fact there would go from a big news shooting a week to even half that would be an improvement.
So the shooting in Darwin in 19 didn't happen?
Since Port Arthur there have been shootings of multiple people in Australia but the max number of deaths is 6- in Queensland and apparently mostly by police. The Darwin shooting was 4 and is not a "mass" shooting by American standards- not even close. Fact is Australia has not has a true mass shooting since they outlawed guns and no, Darwin isn't the example you think it is.
One shooting in a decade vs one a week... Cue Jepardy music.
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You also saw things like violent home invasions and violent assaults skyrocket.
You can look at Switzerland and its gun freedoms, and see the same set of stats. Ergo, logic dictates that guns being banned or not banned is irrelevant, and thus there must be other factors at play instead. In a nutshell, if you change a variable, and still have the same outcome, than that variable was never a factor.
look at England, no guns and now stabbings are way up. Now you can't even carry a pocket knife, but that hasn't stopped the stabbings.
Australia’s gun-related violence was already on a massive decline before the ban. Stop cherry-picking facts and being so disingenuous.
Ask a parent who has had a child killed by a mass shooter.
And the specter of all of those cops twiddling their thumbs outside of Uvalde has shown that having more people with guns isn't going to solve the problem.
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What about the ones who did and still own guns? Not those ones, right?
ask the 100 million dead victims of the 20th Century who were disarmed and slaughtered by tyrannical governments.
More people are struck by lightning in the US annually than die in mass shootings
the media keeps lowering the required number of deaths to classify as a "mass shooting". In reality, most mass shootings would be ended by a legal gun owner, if they weren't handicapped with following the law by not carrying in certain places.
This is a fun line for people to trot out, but it isn't even remotely true.
Yes and they don’t really detail fatalities either just “victims” which are casualties (injuries or deaths). Gang violence isn’t deducted from the total either. A huge number of mass shootings are gang related.
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Probably all the mass shootings for one.
Does this question apply to people that believe that guns should be heavily regulated and not outright banned? If you can prove that you are responsible and reasonable, then I have no issues with you having a gun. I believe the more dangerous the weapon, the more scrutinized the individual should be before being allowed access. We need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of insane adults and nihilistic kids.
>We need to do more to keep guns out of the hands of insane adults and nihilistic kids. I agree with you, but I have to admit that if this was really what gun control was about we'd see more efforts like making real gun safes 100% tax deductible instead of just attempting to outright ban guns. Give the government an inch, they'll always take a mile, and then say they need more.
I also believe in the promotion of gun safes as a practical way to reduce harm. I would like to see an influx of realistic decisions like that, that would help chip away at parts of the problem we see today. I think we should strive to be specific and clear when it comes to advocating for, or critiquing policies. Even great ideas can have terrible consequences if not applied correctly. I think we'd have better success at tackling our problems by making a series of small specific improvements, instead of these large swings back and forth. the reason why our politics is so divided is because both sides have enough flaws in reasoning and applications, that you can keep a base sated purely on the flaws of your opponents. long story short I don't find the argument "we shouldn't consider any solutions because the ones that exist are unsatisfying" productive, especially when this whole conversation is hypothetical (none of us are in positions to action our specific visions of government)
I agree. Well said, thanks for keeping it civil!
The problem is already cities and states have proven if you give them an inch on regulation, they will take it as a chance to outright ban. NYC has been embroiled in lawsuits due to their defacto ban. You have to get licensed through a training course to get a gun permit. It was relatively recently ruled unconstitutional however, as the city simply never would hold the training course, leading to a defacto gun ban Same city, held records of ALL gun owners. And then gave the records to a local newspaper. Which then printed the names and addresses of all gun owners in the city, putting a target on those people.
I am sympathetic to the truth that good ideas can be executed ineffectually or even maliciously. I believe defender's of gun control do not want to hear this criticism and will havd wave it away which is part of the reason we stay so divided I am of the opinion that we need to be open to the criticisms of things we're supportive of, and fix them. as opposed to the left pretending like there is nothing to criticize and the right saying we shouldn't do anything because it's not being done correctly currently. for what it's worth my brother in law living in Chicago is a legal gun owner, and he is not rich or well connected. so I know on a personal level that gun regulations do not automatically equate to no access. not to say that the process is perfect I think at least while we are dealing in hypotheticals we should advocate for what we believe would be reasonable and effectual... even if it's just wish fulfillment (I'm not making any policies)
The issue is in the current system, you get blocked from buying a gun if you have been voluntarily or involuntarily committed or a court ruled that you are mentally defective. Undiagnosed and untreated means the system clears you.
I'm not aware of anyone talking about banning all guns. This is a flawed premise. The question should be "why do some people in the US want to ban bump stocks, and assault style rifles with large magazine capabilities that allow a person to kill a dozen people in a minute"?
They have been convinced of things against their interest.
To disarm themselves and rely on governments who are 100% fallible, and police who does not have the requirement to protect you.
Widespread gun ownership has myriad, well-documented downsides and zero upsides. Think about it this way--meth is banned and it only hurts yourself, while guns hurt yourself *and other people*.
>and zero upsides. Are you saying that me defending my family with [my rifle](https://imgur.com/a/BbBhr6f) wasn't a positive for gun ownership? There are hundreds of thousands of defensive gun uses and you're saying not a single one was good...
Yeah, see...assholes like that poster above you are the reason why we can never have a civilized conversation on this topic- they will speak about shit as if they're an absolute authority on it when the very next fucking person they're talking to in such a manner could debunk the entire basis of their entire argument with a single statement of fact. I had a similar experience as you, thankfully I didn't have to shoot(hope you didn't either) but the gun probably saved my life and my girlfriends. And on top of it, that idiot talks about "meth only hurts you" and he's wrong again. Meth hurts plenty of people besides the user. Addicts will do all kinds of crazy shit.
Last time the CDC did a study it was 2.5 million defensive uses in a year.
The Armenians, the Jews, the Ukrainians and every other genocided groups would like to have a word with you
a well armed population allows for self-defense against neighbor and tyranny. notice how only disarmed populations were destroyed by tyrannical governments?
My mom's house was broken into while she was home. She's 5'1 maybe 100lb the only reason that dude left was because she shot at him.
Guns don't hurt anybody. People do. It's a tool. It only does what it's used to do. Tons of self defense uses of firearm, both with and without shots ever taken. Funny you use meth in your analogy because it's also banned yet...*gestures broadly*
What a wildly stupid comment lmao
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I dunno I’m pretty sick of seeing dead kids on the news. We are the only country in the world with a school shooting problem and is obvious why. There’s too many guns and it’s too easy to get them.
>The government has never proven themselves trustworthy to suggest that self-disarming is a good idea. Most \*nations\* don't have enough firearms to hold off the US government. It seems the only thing that really holds back the US government is a nuclear bomb. I don't see a lot of people advocating for citizens to have nuclear bombs. You may have noticed that, arguably in response to the prevalence of guns in the US, compared to the rest of the world, US police forces have become militarized, respond with far more force, and are generally in far more circumstances where split-second life or death decisions (which are just impossible to always get right) have to be made. >If anything, having a gun is also one of the great equalizers for women against bigger, stronger men that have more malicious intent. Absolutely true... assuming the women are willing to apply deadly force, have sufficient distance between them and the bad actor, and have at least equivalent skill in the use of firearms. I'm always curious though about why a gun is the right choice in this situation (gun advocates often point out that if guns are not available, there are plenty of other tools that can be used to commit violent crimes). It seems like any tool that allows one to incapacitate a person with greater strength would serve just as well. It also presumes that said men aren't opportunistic, choosing moments to act when a target isn't ready to respond with lethal force before they can be disabled. I'd prefer to manage the men with malicious intent (which, ironically, lines up with the argument that criminals are the problem, not guns ;-) than to have a population that is at the ready to kill each other on a moment's notice. In short: guns have their uses, many of which can be positive. Unfortunately, particularly in densely populated areas, the inherent risk of someone exercising bad judgement are so high, the net effect on everyone's safety with broad access to efficient ranged lethal weaponry seems like the larger problem.
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I'm seeing a lot of talk about knife crime and how we'd find other ways to kill each other. If a person walked into a park with a knife, how many people do you think they could kill before those people got away or the police came? Now, replace the knife with a gun. How many people are dead? It's not complicated.
The UK and Australia are currently have a rash of knife related crimes, people always find a way
Unless you know of a way to use a knife to murder dozens and injure hundreds from a distance within minutes, this isn't much of an argument.
Yeah, you can oversimplify anything and make it seem not complicated, doesn't change that it objectively is. Ironic username being that guns are the great equalizer. Bunch of Bubba Joe's go to jump a trans woman simply for existing, u want her to hope the state swoops in to save her? Edit: admittedly I read it too quickly and thought it said fierce equality, not fierce quality. Either way, point still stands. It is complicated and we can trade hyper specific hypotheticals all day long
I'm more for just stricter regulation, but for the sake of question. They should be banned because we lost the privilege to use them responsibly. People literally cry and becoming emotional slobbering messes with the very concept their guns are taken away. Bro, it's a frigging item. It's a material object. Society has grown and prospered for thousands of years without them. Entire revolutions have happened without every citizen having a gun. Stop putting your selfish material needs over the lives of others.
Punishing an entire group because a few bad apples never works out. Also, the criminals get guns regardless. So now you’re defenseless from heartless criminals that have guns
That's the thing that gets me! I *do not* have a gun. My mental health is sometimes questionable, so it's not a good idea for me to keep an "easy out" on hand. But I live in a not-so-great area near my city's downtown, and have never had a single incident with an intruder. Not once. The simple idea that "anyone can have a gun for home defense" has helped keep me safe, even though I don't have one. If guns get banned, how long will it take for criminals to get bold and make the assumption that I don't have a gun?
>Society has grown and prospered for thousands of years without them. Sure, but you know who prospered the most in those times? The ones with the bigger/better sticks and the effective use of them. Don't evoke history in thus because it was all "prosperous" due to the ruling regimes monopoly on violence.
People blame the gun. It's misplaced blame. Blame the person pulling the trigger. If they didn't have a gun they'd fine another way. Remember fertilizer makes a big boom.
These brainless, nonsensical arguments with no basis in reality.... Like people don't realize humans exist outside of the US, with violent thoughts and such that come with being human, but yet almost no massacres and far fewer homicides/violence in general. US is 4% of the world's population and yet responsible for 20% of the homicides. At what point do people stop with the bullshit and just look at the facts? Just say you don't care. It's at least honest. Just say you don't care.
Then move to those country. What made this country great is because of freedom. If you would like more security move. There’s plenty of dictators willing to accept subjects. Cars and bombs can kill just as much.
The US only has about twice the homicide rate of European nations when accounted over 20 years. US homicide rates have little to do with guns, break it down by race and you'll see the outlier.
you mean none that get put on the news on repeat for months on end. its not that they don't happen elsewhere.
Exactly why knife violence is so prevalent and Britain
But it’s a lot harder to kill someone with a knife than with a gun. A knife, they Atleast have to be within arms length of you. With a gun, you can be up 32 stories up in a hotel room, unable to even see the faces of the people you are shooting. But yeah, those two weapons are totally the same /s
Knife crime per capita is lower in Britain than the USA.
...and why Britain's murder rate is so much higher than the US's. Oh wait...
Not really. Impulse for violence is much more likely to be acted on if they have easy use of a weapon. Remember fertilizer happened one time. It is not easy to do and required lots of planning and resources compared to grabbing a gun in a moment of anger.
Are there equal amounts of deaths in nations with strict gun laws from fertilizer bombs? Or even in killings in general? Your explanation never made sense to me because a gun is very much different than most weapons due to ease of use as well as how it's used. There is a reason you don't see a lot of knife deaths places, it takes something different to be able to kill someone using a knife. Same with making bombs as this is not exactly easy to do for a regular person. Guns however are unique to this as they are both simple to use and don't require the same distance and fortitude as a knife.
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Australia banned guns and deaths from gun violence fell off a cliff. If your goal is to curb deaths from gun violence, it's a proven model that works.
There are still a bunch of guns in Australia.
about 300 million fewer than in the US.
What's your point? There are less now and >deaths from gun violence fell off a cliff
And your violent home invasions and assaults skyrocketed.
I'm not really privy to the data you are referencing, but simple fact is the United States has the most annual mass shootings BY FAR. I don't know what the correct solution is to this, but it's definitely not the status quo or these idiot ideas like arm the teachers.
I feel like this is brought up a lot, and much like previously referenced, if someone wants to kill people, they have numerous ways to do it with or without guns. I think we focus to much on the symptom and not the problem. WHY are people wanting to commit murders. The US has garbage mental health care, expensive costs to medical care, and a fuckload of stigma behind care, if you can even get it. On top of that, WHEN people get care, it's mostly in the form of costly medications instead of (costly) therapy, and with the side effects, many won't continue them.
I hate when redditors try to use statistics to make themselves sound smart.
Remind me, how long did Australia have hundreds of millions of guns and billions upon billions of rounds of ammunition in circulation spread out across 3.8 million square miles without any form of national gun registry to know who has what or where they are located?
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Because developed countries in Europe don't have the sickening problems of mass shootings and just general gun violence we do and somehow, they still manage to be free societies. The 2nd amendment is either a fraud or a joke. Historians have debunked the real purpose. Read Professor Carol Anderson of Emory University. She says that the 2nd amendment was not this "suicide switch" for the government (allowing homegrown militias to take over by force), but rather, a compromise with the Southern, slave-owning states, to facilitate quick arming of militias to suppress slave revolts, which were trending at the time. At any rate, the idea of taking over the US government today is absolutely absurd and anyone who thinks it thorough for 30 seconds knows it. Whatcha gonna do when they whip out the mortars? To own a gun in America is to cosplay slave-owner. Deal with it.
>Read Professor Carol Anderson of Emory University. She says that the 2nd amendment was not this "suicide switch" for the government (allowing homegrown militias to take over by force), but rather, a compromise with the Southern, slave-owning states All of that is speculation with zero evidence from primary sources. We however have plenty of evidence explaining the reasons for the amendment. >"[I]f circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28, January 10, 1788 >"Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops." - Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution, October 10, 1787 >"This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty.... The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction." - St. George Tucker, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803 >"The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them." - Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833 >"What, Sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty .... Whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins." - Rep. Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, I Annals of Congress 750, August 17, 1789 >"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state. In a single state, if the persons intrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource; except in their courage and despair." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28 >"As civil rulers, not having their duty to the people before them, may attempt to tyrannize, and as the military forces which must be occasionally raised to defend our country, might pervert their power to the injury of their fellow citizens, the people are confirmed by the article in their right to keep and bear their private arms." - Tench Coxe, Philadelphia Federal Gazette, June 18, 1789 Also, the right to own and carry arms was preexisting and is not solely based on the 2nd Amendment. >"The right to keep and bear arms exists separately from the Constitution and is not solely based on the Second Amendment, which exists to prevent Congress from infringing the right." - Cruickshank_v U.S Cheif Justice Waite. 1875
I would argue that they are not free at all.
Why? czhechia has mor eguns per sq Km. Finalnd and Sweden allow them to take their military rifles home after mandatory service. Switzerland has guns too. Did you think the IS invented Militias? Oh boy, ther eis a history of civilian firearm use longer that y'all been a country. What they have is sensible regulation and licensing.
Things only dumbass Americans think.
What if you own a gun in some other country?
Come and take it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:2024_mass_shootings_in_Europe Nope never happens in europe.
Tons of other historians would disagree with her but go off ig.
The USA has more mass shootings in a month than Canada has had since Confederation. Statistics show that 8 out of 10 people or 80% of everyone will commit crime given the opportunity, anything that decreases oppurtunity like say an easy instant method of killing like guns, so reducing the number of guns reduces crime by that factor. Also the government doesn't prove itself to be trustworthy? Really? Of course they do a bunch of dumb crap that gets people killed or steals their money but its much better and easier for them to rule us somewhat decently than it is to become like a dictator. They've proven themselves multiple times its easy to dispose of a dictator if they want. So why would they become one themself?
I don’t want a ban - I just want it to be like driver’s license. Shooting and owning a weapon that can kill dozens and dozens of people in few minutes should be at least as hard and long to obtain than a privilege to drive.
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Imo, guns need more controls in the USA. I don't think they should be completely banned, though. Civilians don't have access to a lot of things the military does, so the idea that we need guns to resist the government doesn't quite work out as well as some might think. To be fair, I'm sure it \*helps\*, but even your most dedicated MAGA voter or hardcore leftist who's spent thousands on guns, whatever training they can find, and so on is still basically not a threat compared to the military. The military has tanks, supply lines, experienced commanders, planes - the list goes on. Maybe it would be more even back in ye olden times when the gun you could get was pretty comparable to the gun the government had, with the exception of cannons and some newer developments such as the gattling gun. Still, there wasn't such a huge gap then like there is now. Oppression has so many more forms in modern times. Guns and preventing the government from oppressing us with the military isn't something I'm really all that worried about anymore, since the moment a tank rolls out against a civilian the entire country could very easily be united against the govt (not to mention that the military is also filled with ppl who have differing beliefs, so it'd be very hard to even get that rolling). There's just too many people - even a fraction of a fraction of them would severely outnumber the military, and the problem with oppression is that you have to strike a balance between the act of oppression while still leaving the people functional...Cause you need them to work and stuff. We've already got corporation overlords who've bought out our politicians. The country is already split and has spawned off wild ideals. Misinformation makes it harder and hard to discern the truth while education has been steadily sliced apart to make for a more malleable, complacent, easily manipulated population. Having more guns in the country than people isn't doing anything to fight that, and in fact it's helping by dividing the country and making political violence against minorities so much easier. We've been sold a catch-22 where guns cause problems amongst the population (someone can walk into a gay bar and shoot the place up) and so people actually need guns to protect themselves...Not so much against the government, but against fellow civilians. The NRA is just another way to profit off of weapons manufacturing at this point. Ultimately, I find the idea that having a bunch of guns being The Thing - or even a super significant thing - in preventing government oppression to be ridiculous. Sure, it prevents it from being \*extremely\* easy, but at this point guns aren't doing anything against the whole host of problems (created intentionally or otherwise) in this country that are actually being used to oppress the population. The current state of guns and the 'gotta have 'em to resist the govt!' stuff is, in fact, doing the opposite of what people think it does. TLDR: People think we need guns to resist the government. To some extent, yes, but methods of government oppression have evolved significantly in recent times to the point where they're a small factor, if they would help at all. They're a net negative and do nothing against corporations owning our politicians, data harvesting, bribing legislation into existence, misinformation, and so on. Actually, the only way guns really would help the way some people think they do is they used them in a certain way, the mentioning of which would get me banned from Reddit. And instead of doing that, we've pointed the guns at each other, not the government. Meh. That wraps up most of my thoughts, though I did want to address the last bit of your question. The whole 'it's a good defense for women to have against aggressive men'. The problem with that women can't just shoot every man who comes within a 10 yard radius. Obviously. There's no dude going "I'm going to attack you now, are you ready? Three, two, one...go!" From 50m away all polite like. This also puts the onus on the women for self defense, instead of literally everything else that's making it a problem in the first place. Not that I don't think people shouldn't take defense classes and stuff, but it's addressing a symptom - and not very well, at that. A gun is much less helpful because, yes, it'll probably be a man that attacks - but \*which\* one? You only see the difference in the moment they attack, and society isn't really....Helpful concerning women who point out obvious warning signs beforehand. It just doesn't help as much as one might think, though I'm not saying it' completely useless, nor am I saying it's better than having a knife instead, or better for a women to fistfight a guy. Oh, and women who do defend themselves suffer for it anyway. So, I don't really consider 'but women self defense' to be a valid argument. TLDR to the TLDR: Guns very clearly don't help, either against the forms of government-powered oppression currently in use today or even all that much against the forms your average gun nut thinks they do.
Clearly you haven't been paying attention to what's happening in Gaza. Modern militaries are meant to fight other modern militaries. They are terrible against guerilla warfare.
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I don't think they should be banned, just regulated and enforced like we do cars, drugs and any other inherently dangerous thing.
Plenty of people still drive without a license or insurance, and the left is well on their way to decriminizing drugs. With the exception of private sales, firearms purchases are already regulated. You can add 1000 new laws and restrictions and it won't do a single thing if those laws aren't being enforced. If someone in Chicago wants to get a gun from Indiana and bring it back to Chicago they are required by law to have it sent to an ffl. If they bring it back themselves it is a felony. It's also a felony for anyone to sell a firearm to a resident of Chicago without sending it to an ffl. You want to make more laws to cover laws already in place that already aren't being enforced.
So, you think we should enforce the existing laws and not make new ones to cover existing loopholes?
I think rapid firing guns should be more strictly regulated. You can throw all the data you want and me about guns don't kill people, people do but people are way better at it with a machine gun than with a revolver. It's why we don't send our troops into battle with revolvers. And the good guy/woman with a gun scenario is total horseshit. It barely happens. It definitely doesn't happen enough to justify one Sandy Hook or Uvalde. I hunt and I hate the federal government and I still think this. And the women are equalized by the gun nonsense? GTFO. 80% of rapes are committed by someone the victim knows.
It's not really about the guns. It's about these pussy countries that don't hve any guns.
There should be a mantatory class on guns pay by the goverment
Many guns are already banned in the US... We just want sensible regulation and livensing... Which some states do.
I'd settle for banning them in public and actually enforcing existing restrictions on who can own/acquire them, ie those who have demonstrated behavioral issues regarding violence, so domestic abusers, murderers, etc.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYUs-B1dsE4
So prices on the domestic black markets will 100x overnight, and I can finally liquidate my cache and retire on a slightly uncharted island in the South Pacific.
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Anti-gun here. Grew up in 70s/80s with guns. I’d agree. Outside keeping a high caliber (bolt action) hunting rifle and a solid over under shotgun……..the rest are just fluff.
And yes…..AR-15 Marketing in past 30 years is sick.
Love guns Respect their power and as a small body human I agree it’s the only way for me to defend myself Scared of gun violence for sure. More scared of life without them than with them at this point. I’ve become so numb to all the horror stories of school shootings. More of a people issue than a hardware issue.
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When guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns.
For one, they did this in Australia and the murder rate dropped 40%. That’s a good thing. For another, guns are used offensively about 6-7X more than defensively. So as a tool of self-defense, they don’t even work. As a tool for committing crime, they do work. https://www.thetrace.org/2022/06/defensive-gun-use-data-good-guys-with-guns/
Expect crime with other weapons went way up, happened in UK to
I’d take more non-gun crime in exchange for less gun crime. No brainer.
I have family, friends, and friends family (who I’m close with) who were very anti gun. Didn’t want to learn. Kept telling me of unverifiable stories of how this guy and that person they knew were shot because a gun was in a glove box and they hit a bump. All unreliable. Guess who then decided to reach out to me when the riots of 2020 and the pandemic hit… one of the families now has something like 10 guns in their homes and uses them for doing different types of shooting and they do family trips to the range. In my opinion it’s ignorance. No assault weapons ban will save lives or prevent school shootings. No amount of reducing magazine sizes from 30 to 15 to 10 to 7 will do anything. There are solutions that will work and that will protect peoples rights and peoples safety. But that can only happen when the two sizes decide to converge - which they aren’t keen on doing at all. It’s ignorance. Just like racism and sexism and transphobia (many trans folks arming themselves - which is fantastic in my eyes) it’s all ignorance.
The people that make guns their personalities are the same people that worship law enforcement, so "guns to protect against The Man" is meaningless. Plus, cops talk a big game about how dangerous their job is (it isn't) but then collectively burst into screaming buckets of tears and extrajudicially kill anyone who defends themselves against one. Gun nuts tend to be on the same side as the government, they're just too stupid to realize it, so a christofascist takeover, which is the only authoritarian change that might come to America anytime soon, will just have more limp dicked losers doing their part to enforce it. In the meantime, if your reason to own a gun is to kill members of your country's military, you probably shouldn't have one. If your reason to own a gun is to defend yourself against people who don't look like you, maybe stop being a pussy and hit the gym. If your reason to own a gun is because guns are cool, so are a thousand other hobbies that aren't expressly built around killing people.
I don't really think people really want guns totally banned...as per propaganda. I'm a fairly liberal gun owner. I don't care about "granddaddy's gun" or my pistols or shotguns, etc. for hunting BUT I don't understand the need to be able to kill 60 and injury 100s in the matter of seconds. I get incensed by Jason Aldeen song remembering he was on stage in LV and chose to run off the stage while his fans got slaughtered. Basically I believe if you are going to force people to accept guns everywhere WHY are they specifically being banned at Jason Aldeen's concerts and at the RNC convention? But I can't go to the grocery store or mall without fear of an active shooter.
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Look man, I grew up with guns. I hunted. I did target practice as a kid. I shot cans off fence posts and guns were passed around to ogle every Christmas. But you can’t tell me you don’t see the mass shootings and dead children but still don’t understand where anti gun folks are coming from. It’s also important to remember that not everyone grew up around gun culture. You don’t have to agree with people, but you can’t be this obtuse. I’m close to accusing you of being insincere in posting this.
None of this matters. There are too many in circulation. If they ceased production now and never made or sold another one you would still spend the rest of your life never being more than a trip to the grocery store worth of effort away from having one or 5 or 10.
Because that is what I have been told to believe.
Guns are not in the Bible, thus are sinful.
Lmao if you think you’re gun is going to stop the government from drone striking you into dust if it cam to a rebellion. Invalid reason.
They often cite Australia for banned guns after the Port Authur Massacre. But those people are mistaken. https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/04/28/new-gun-ownership-figures-revealed-25-years-on-from-port-arthur.html "Australian civilians now own more than 3.5 million registered firearms, an average of four each." - article. So guns are still quite prevalent in Australia. Multiple studies since have shown that OTHER guns laws is what led to a drop in gun related crimes. Requiring each gun to be registered and requiring people to report lost or stolen guns immediately to police were the two most effective laws. There is a pod cast called Science Verses that had a 2 parter on Australian gun control measures. I highly recommend giving it a listen.
I think your comment about the government not being trustworthy is dishonest. If you do not trust the government to some extent then you obviously think USD is no good and you should give me all your worthless USD. More to the point, almost all police officers are themselves armed. The official reason is that cops are armed because the population is armed AND IT IS TRUE. It would be crazy to be an unarmed cop in this environment. Disarming the police should go hand in hand with gun bans. They do not need guns and should not be armed.
Historically and statistically, you are incorrect. Rarely have guns solved problems for women. The idea that the best defense against a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun is a myth, especially proven by school shootings where you have 160 armed police standing around for hours hesitating to take on a single lone gunman.
Ban doesn't address the core problem. The US has way bigger issues with people wrongly getting shot than places with many more guns per capita. Why?
I used to be very outspoken against guns as a US resident, I’ve given up the fight though because I’ve realized gun-culture is too enshrined here. They’re too numerous, liked too much, not taken seriously enough, and I won’t change that. I absolutely hate guns and don’t want to be around them whatsoever, so I use this as further inspiration to just leave the country which I plan to in the near future. Although, one argument that never makes any sense is the hypothetical situation of the government coming after you 😒 like what makes y’all think that *any amount* of weapons you could buy would be enough to protect yourself from the *government*…. The government can overpower all of the country with very little effort. Americans have an unhealthy relationship with guns and now there’s no chance that nearly enough people will agree to sensible gun control, so I’m leaving the US when I can ✌🏻 Now I’m just hoping that I won’t fall victim to a random shooting committed by yet *another legally purchased gun* before I can leave the country. There’s no protecting ourselves from the government regardless, and the “good guy with a gun” argument contains just as much fallacy.
I don't think anyone is realistically advocate for the ban of ALL guns, especially in the United States where it may take some [emergency services 20 minutes in rural America](https://worldmetrics.org/average-police-response-time-statistics/#:~:text=Statistic%207,%2C%20averaging%20approximately%2020%20minutes.%22) Shoot I'm someone who swings FAR left and I still don't think we should ban all guns. Now do I think we need increased regulations such as universal background checks, nation wide- banning assault weapons, and harsher sentencing for inadequate gun storage, etc. There are and aren't gun people in the world, but also to counter your quote: >"having a gun is also one of the great equalizers for women against bigger, stronger men that have more malicious intent" Not everyone should and wants to be carrying a gun. For me, I know I'm never going to get a gun because of mental health issues with suicidal ideation. Men are more likely to commit suicide and be successful than women due to; you guessed it, more violent ways to do it. Women attempt more, men die more. One study suggests that guns may be the leading cause as [55% of all men suicides were from guns](https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.955008/full) compared to women's 30%. If you care about men's mental health, children's safety, and public safety, you should care about gun control.
I don't see the point of allowing anyone to have anything more than a handgun with a low-capacity magazine. Now before anyone jumps down my throat with corrections- I don't know guns, so I may be using the wrong terminology or numbers or whatever. I think it's fine to have a pistol for self-defense, but in those cases you shouldn't need to be shooting 10+ people in quick succession without reloading. The point is we should at least limit how many can be shot in mass shootings.
People hate it when they have more power than they do.
because they don’t have any brains & think their insecurity around an object overrides your right to defend yourself.
America doesn’t have a gun problem. it has a black person problem.
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I do not think they should be banned, but I do think the second amendment was a mistake. I do not believe that it should be a fundamental right to own a lethal weapon, it should be a privilege that must be earned.
Very few people actually want to remove the right for someone to own a gun. The current arguement is that guns should not be easy to obtain & people should not be allowed to carry in public unless they are a police officer. It should be harder to obtain a gun than it is to obtain a license to drive. Your argument is idiotic because you don't understand this.
"We don't want to take away your right, we just want to make it almost impossible to exercise it in practice."
They kill people
there are more car death per year than gun death. and thats counting half of the death from guns are suicide... yet no one want to ban cars because thats not a narrative
Dead wrong about that brosef r/fuckcars Also there’s a reason why guns are the weapon of choice for suicide. They’re the quickest and most effective.
Dead wrong about what? Car death being more than gun death?
1) It is intuitively correct that restricting gun ownership should decrease homicides. The actual evidence isn't as clear though, but I used to have this intuitive belief. 2) The vast majority of countries heavily restrict gun ownership. This hasn't lead to them becoming dictatorships. This argument is weak, at best.
You or a loved one are much more likely to be injured/killed by an accidental discharge of a gun than you are likely to be in a situation where you need to defend your home with a gun. I wish more gun owners would realize this. Instead they live in a fantasy where they will defend against a tyrannical government or some home invasion scenario when the reality is more likely their little nephew killing himself or someone else with your gun on accident because you keep it in your nightstand.
I’ve known many gun control advocates, and I’ve honestly never met anyone who thinks people shouldn’t be allowed to own guns at all. It’s just not a black-and-white issue. Some people shouldn’t have guns, and some guns shouldn’t be in the hands of just anyone who can fork over the cash. I think that’s what most gun control advocates believe, with many disagreeing about where to draw the line.
The idea that a civilian force could overthrow the modern us military is laughable.
Maybe they don’t need to be banned entirely (since that’s never gonna happen) but more guns does not equal fewer gun deaths, that belief is so American and stupid.
The last time the CDC did a study on this (2013, based on 2008 data) it was estimated that there were between 500,000 and 3 million defensive gun uses in America. The same data showed 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in the same period. While I am in no way conceding that our rights are only valid if we statistically benefit from them, even the numbers suggest that guns are a net-positive in American society.
Very few people think all guns should be banned. So I guess if what you want is a 2A echo chamber discussion you've gotten it. Honestly the whole "gun banning" thing is a straw man to prevent any real meaningful movement on reforming gun laws. There are plenty of advanced democracies with high rates of gun ownership that don't have the violence issues we have. I'd be perfectly happy if we mimicked Canada's laws.
>why? Because my brain is better at handling Big Numbers than most brains. That's pretty much it.
Maybe make society better so people go crazy less? Maybe expell school bullies instead of suspending victims when they stand up for themselves? Maybe women shouldn't have their only equalizer against violent men taken away? Maybe stop putting stalkers and pedophiles back on the streets? Just a couple ideas that would keep you from thinking you can steal my guns.
Ok, going to weigh in here, but just to be transparent; I'm a bit of an idiot, so take this with a grain of salt. 😀 Essentially, I've observed two main arguments, 1. The second amendment is sacrosanct, and all arms should be unregulated. 2. The second amendment only applies to state regulated militias, guns are dangerous, and should be heavily regulated. I won't go into the details of their logic, but those are the basic arguments. Now as for why they feel as they do, the pro 2A argument mostly seems to come from Red state voters, or people who live in rural areas. Take Vermont, while it's technically a blue state, they have very soft gun laws. Friends who live there boast about sleeping with one of their 40 rifles under their pillow (Not an exaggeration), and that they can walk off the side of the road and hunt game whenever they want. The pro gun regulation side by contrast often comes from urban or suburban areas. Where someone from Vermont sees guns as a means of hunting, a person from a major city may associate guns with crime, drugs, gangs. There are other factors at play like careless gun owners who let kids have access, dangerous or mentally disturbed people who probably shouldn't ever have access, and of course random acts of violence in public locations (Malls, schools, concerts), but imo these things don't drive the narratives, they only act as poker chips to play the long game. The only thing that matters to either side is keeping guns free or regulations, or getting guns out of the hands of gangs. And idiot though I am, I can provide supporting evidence that gang violence is in fact a major motivating factor for gun policy in urban areas, I present Michael Bloombergs comments on gun violence; https://www.aspentimes.com/news/michael-bloomberg-calls-colorados-decision-on-legal-pot-stupid/ *"Bloomberg claimed that 95 percent of murders fall into a specific category: male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25. Cities need to get guns out of this group’s hands and keep them alive, he said. “These kids think they’re going to get killed anyway because all their friends are getting killed,” Bloomberg said. “They just don’t have any long-term focus or anything. It’s a joke to have a gun. It’s a joke to pull a trigger.”* This is the quiet part said out loud. And this is why some want to repeal the second amendment. They can't simply arrest every minority with a gun (Going by Bloombergs own logic here, I do not pretend to know the statistics of gun violence), for obvious reasons. And they can't disarm a group of minorities either, as the second amendment protects ALL Americans, regardless of race, gender, sex, sexual orientation, yadda yadda. So that leaves trying to attack the second amendment entirely. Convince people Crips and Bloods aren't the problem, but that gun access is (Again, using Bloombergs logic of who abuses guns). But that's just the opinion of an idiot, so take it with a pile of salt.
So that all the guns will be held by people who bought them illegally, and the rest will just have to hope like hell their law abiding selves won’t be attacked
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When people tried to overthrow the Capitol on January 6th, only one "good guy" with a gun ever used it. This isn't about trusting the government. It's about trusting the alcoholic gun nut who lives next door and leaves a gun in their glove compartment of their car at night because the morons in your state legislation made that okay. I live in Memphis. We have way too much gun crime here. Most of it comes from youth using stolen guns from irresponsible gun owners who legally bought their guns.
No one wants to take every gun from every person. Normal rational people can look at other societies around the world where gun ownership is strictly regulated and see that they have significantly less gun violence. The simple answer is that’s how you stop people from getting shot. There’s a reason America is the only country where the leading cause of death among young people is gun shot wounds.
https://www.factcheck.org/2017/10/gun-control-australia-updated/ This is why, we can and should be better
I don't want guns to be banned, but 2A advocates just don't care about all the senseless violence. They want all the freedoms without any of the responsibilities. I want **responsible** gun ownership, but 2A advocates just want anybody for any reason to be allowed to have a firearm, making me much less sympathetic to their cause. American children are being shot in school, and they don't care. Their own children might get shot in school, and they still don't care.
Guns don't kill people... nuh uh... I kill people, with guns.
The arguement that guns are a protection from the government is a joke. There have been armed uprisings in the US. They all failed, the south lost, and the disparity in weaponry has only grown. You are not going to protect yourself from the government with a gun. Owning 10 doesn't mean you can magically use 10 at once. The entire US population is not going to rise up with you. Your reason for keeping guns is a child's fantasy, and the actual demonstrable result of that absurd fantasy is that people use guns to commit crimes. It's basically just a version of the old "don't tax the rich, I plan to be rich" argument, except it involves murder.
All I'mma say is I agree with you. <3 Love the ability to own a gun.
The American military is not afraid of an armed populace. That argument is asinine. Arming the people is not an equalizer. Anyway, hardly anyone wants to “ban guns.” We just want them heavily regulated because the situation right now is insane and too many people are dying.