#Guns are not the problem.

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heady bane
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because the world isnt in the 70's

dim rover
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And again, why would I care about incarceration rates?

heady bane
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everyone in russia has a phone and internet

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and a VPN

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because a high incarceration rate is not a good look on your police force

dim rover
heady bane
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im literally comparing you to a picture of what you consider to be a brutal dictatorship and i show you that your police kill more people than them
and your prisons are more filled than theirs

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Navalny's death btw was not confirmed to be a murder

dim rover
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Where is the incentive to speak freely when doing so gets you murdered in Russia?

dim rover
heady bane
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you forget he was in an arctic prison

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he was on a hunger strike

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conditions were pretty similar to american prisons

dim rover
heady bane
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and you dont?

dim rover
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Not at all.

heady bane
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look at trump what theyre trying to do to him

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chelsea manning

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snowden

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assange

dim rover
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That's a rather clear picture of silencing political opposition.

heady bane
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have you ever heard the name gonzalo lira

dim rover
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I'm pointing out why I don't trust Russia. What point are you trying to make?

heady bane
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russia is not much worse off than america is like it or not

dim rover
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That I shouldn't trust my government and shouldn't trust police? Gosh, I agree. That's why US citizens are well armed.

heady bane
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and yet your police are more brutal than theirs are

dim rover
heady bane
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id like to see a particularly patriotic red neck shrug off a helicopter fired missile

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or a tank round

dim rover
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The point isn't that they'd win or lose. The point is that they can mount a very effective resistance to the point that the government would never consider it worth the cost.

heady bane
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oh but they cant

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out of your entire population

dim rover
heady bane
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less than a fraction will be on your side

dim rover
heady bane
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and even less than that will be a fraction that can mount any significant resistance

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what can they do?

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the US military has been honed by years of counterterrorism

dim rover
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Because last time I checked, when we've had armed standoffs between citizens and police, the police standdown pretty often.

heady bane
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maybe the last time they fought a proper war was vietnam

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but other than that its been counterterrorism

dim rover
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The US military doesn't fight wars against US citizens.

heady bane
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and thats something theyre good at

dim rover
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You'd be fighting military members. You act like civilians don't have military experience. You act like the military would go along with attacking their own country.

heady bane
dim rover
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You really have no idea how incredibly ingrained it is that you don't use the military against US citizens. Military members are well above average in patriotism, and those are the people most likely to not be willing to attack US targets.

heady bane
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge

Ruby Ridge

Ruby Ridge was the site of a siege of a cabin occupied by the Weaver family in Boundary County, Idaho, in August 1992. On August 21, deputies of the United States Marshals Service (USMS) came to arrest Randy Weaver under a bench warrant after his failure to appear on federal firearms charges.
During a surveillance operation, officer Art Roderick...

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that sure helped

heady bane
dim rover
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What are you discussing with that? A time when a standoff didn't go well? And?

heady bane
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the us military went around bombing civilians for decades now, they will have no problem with dehumanising rebels

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every civil war has done that

dim rover
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The US military hasn't dropped any bombs on US civilians.

heady bane
heady bane
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but im saying its nothing new to them

dim rover
dim rover
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There's a difference.

heady bane
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why so?

dim rover
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And it's a very important difference.

heady bane
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every civil war in existence has dehumanised the enemy as "those traitorous rebels"

dim rover
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And every civil war has also split the military. What's your point?

heady bane
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and some localised resistance doesnt count as a civil war

dim rover
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And it wouldn't be bombed.

heady bane
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your military will find no issue bombing US armed civilians if need be

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even unarmed civilians

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whatever they can lay their crosshairs on

dim rover
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Doing that would likely spark an actual civil war and split the military.

heady bane
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look at ukraine

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they had no issue bombing their country men

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they just labeled them as separatists

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you guys have your own fault lines where divisions can be drawn

dim rover
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First of all, Ukraine and Russia have a very different history. What does that have to do with the United States?

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What fault lines are you trying to draw?

molten estuary
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This chat died lol

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Here - allow me to revitalize it because guns are something close to both me and my family, idk what yall said prior to this post

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So my grandpa got murdered , he couldn’t defend himself- even is he used a knife or a bat, what’s an old man gonna do against multiple killers?

That is why I am calling guns the equalizer - they give everyone a chance to protect themselves

A couple of months prior to me making this post here - someone tried to rob me with a gun, they were not successful.

Guns give everyone a chance to protect themselves, any attempt to take away guns would REALISTICALLY give those who seek to do harm an advantage because - any smart criminal could sneak up on someone and get a surprise attack in, or 2 or 3 ppl can almost always overpower any one person

Look at the UK - where guns are next to non-existent, how often do we hear of stabbing?

Also guns are a way of life for many, hunters use/need them just to eat food. Yall can say - use a crossbow or a bow, but imagine you’re super hungry and got ppl to feed and a deer is 100 yards away, good luck with a bow. With a rifle? It’s dinner time. Not to mention bears, God bless that 45 ACP/10mm/12gauge slugs.

That’s what I’ll say for hunting

Now for the part yall probably care about - semi automatic rifles - the ar15, AK’s, bulpup rifles, you know what I mean. Here is my personal stance and I do want someone to also help to revitalize this conversation that died off - guns don’t kill ppl, ppl kill ppl. Take the basic ol ar-15, they were designed for killing ppl ill be honest, designed from a military rifle used in war - the thing is though - that ar-15 has legitimate uses, sure they are fun AF to shoot, I would know 🙂 (AR-10) they are also great for protecting your own property, now say one person is invading your home, a handgun or shotgun would be better, but if multiple ppl are attacking, robbing, etc- well an AR/AK/semi auto rifle is King there. Aside from immediate home protection, one just has to ask ourselves - do we really want to give up one of our most powerful civilian weapons? If you think so - (1)

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2- ask the Jews in Germany before the Holocaust, or ask Cubans before (I forget the persons name) took over and Cuba turned into a dangerous place. Or ask the Armenians during the Armenian genocide, you get my idea.

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These are just my initial thoughts, hoping to revive this convo - agreeing and disagreeing views are gladly welcome 🙂

crude jay
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In response to your argument about stabbing in the UK; in the US there were 20,958 murders using guns in 2021. In the UK in 2021, there were 282 stabbing murders. If we include population to get a statistic per capita, one in 0.000004 British citizens died due to stabbing, while one in 0.00006 Americans died to gun violence. This may not seem significant, but that's a difference of over 10x. Over 10 times as many Americans died to gun violence than British people to stabbings. They can't be compared.

Screenshot_20241215_125400_Chrome.jpg
molten estuary
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@crude jay

I’m glad you brought that up, because while idk about the UK as much, in America, suicides that involve the use of a firearm are counted in the # of ppl that die annually from guns every year, and your own chart would show that far more ppl that use a gun are actually using it for suicidal purposes. So to argue that guns are necessarily an issue when most ppl that use them to kill someone, are killing themselves, is off I think. The number you gave me about 0.00006 would have to be cut in 1/2 b/c basically the # of ppl that actually commit homicide with a firearm is less than 1/2 the total amount of firearm related deaths, as per your own evidence.

So now compare the new info - 0.0003 vs 0.00004

While Yes the U.S.A does still have more, the #s are comparably closer.

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If we really want to go into it - many ppl would look to the # of gun crimes in America, well did you know that if a firearm accidentally goes off then that is also registered as a crime? Or perhaps did you know if someone died(like falling off a ladder) and they had a gun on them, some districts count that as a gun crime (which I personally think is stupid)

crude jay
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I specifically didn't count suicides

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Your point is invalid

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If suicides are included then gun deaths in the US in 2021 are over 47,000 which is way worse

tawdry vale
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I'm pretty sure that when we went into the numbers in detail last time around we worked out that the rate of most violence compares pretty evenly between the US and Europe, with the exception of gun violence. Gun violence in the US doesn't seem to be a substitute for other forms of violence in European countries, because the US already has the same rate of those kinds of violence. More or less the only type of crime the US has significantly less of than European countries, is petty burglary. So if we're making comparisons, the evidence is quite compelling that guns turn encounters that do not need to be deadly, into deadly ones.

gray gale
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Idk if this has been said before, but I'm pretty sure the U.S., aka, the most pro gun country, in developped countries, has the most crimes involving guns.

You'd have to find a reliable source, but you can look at this for the time being : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_homicide_rates

The more guns are accessible, the more chances there are of them being used in bad ways.
It'a as simple as that if you ask me.

Like Dasmman said, they kinda are equalizers, only, and only if you have one. Which means more people get them = increases the chances of them being used the wrong way. If everyone has a gun for "safety", then no one is really safe because the person attacking you most likely has one as well. And so this creates a tension that'a just waiting to be broke. People, can too easily, just decide to kill others effortlessly really quickly with guns...

List of countries by firearm-related homicide rates

This is a list of countries by firearm-related homicide rate per 100,000 population by year
Homicide figures may include justifiable homicides along with criminal homicides, depending upon jurisdiction and reporting standards. Not included are accidental deaths, or justifiable deaths by any means other than by firearm.

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Promoting guns is ultimately selfish imo. I understand you want to be safe and same goes for people around you, but by promoting guns, you're asking for your next encounter with a criminal to be a deadly one, and increasing the frequency of those.

(Sources needed, I'll give you that)

tawdry vale
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I really think there is a big fallacy with the "equalisation" argument. Yes, it puts everyone on the same level of lethality. But in order to do that, it puts everyone a literal hair trigger away from death at all times. It puts everyone on the worst possible footing. That's like having a healthcare system that ensures everyone is equally protected from disease by injecting all known diseases into everyone. Yes, it's equalisation, but it's not beneficial in the slightest. Claiming equalisation as a positive is missing the point altogether, I think.
Guns are not a protective device, they are only an offensive device.

The other arguments are even weaker I think. No citizen is ever going to successfully defend themselves from their own government no matter how many weapons they own. The very notion that you're going to take on the US army with a rifle and a camo vest is ridiculous. No minority is ever going to win an armed conflict with a much better resourced national army. The way to stand up to your own government is to participate in the democratic process; that works much better.

molten estuary
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Wow there are a lot responses here lol

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I don’t mean to dominate any convo for one side or another so I’ll let some ppl respond to some stuff here - but

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The claim that guns are not defensive, only offensive.

Here is my counter - do guns kill ppl or do ppl kill ppl?

Or in other words - does the mere existence of guns directly cause the human violence that uses a gun, or is it simply a tool (albeit an effective tool) that people use to cause human on human violence.

Put a handgun on a table and tell it to shoot someone, it’ll just sit there but if a madman or a killer grabs it and then shoots someone, no one blames the gun- they blame the person who controlled it. I would argue that a gun is neutral, it’s the person behind it who determines how that is to be used.

Let’s say the number of crimes where ppl were beat to death by baseball bats skyrocketed, would that then give cause for bats to be banned? What about baseball? I think you get my point here- a gun, kinda like a bat are neutral things, incapable of causing good or harm when left on their own

crude jay
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The problem is that it's an effective tool for harm. After 9/11, security restrictions on planes got a lot tighter, because it was newly understood how effective it can be as a tool for harm. Ask yourself why you can't privately purchase a working modern tank or, if taken to the absolute extreme, why you can't purchase a nuke. The potential for harm of this tool is obviously catastrophic, so you're not allowed to use it. But I guess guns are special...

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No one claims that nukes can freely decide to blow up cities, but everyone agrees that they shouldn't be available to purchase because of the destructive potential.

orchid thunder
molten estuary
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I mean idk how to reply to everything I’ll be honest, I’m only 1 person 🤷.

But to replace guns for nukes is, a stretch at the minimum for pretty obvious reasons I think.

But fun fact - you can actually legally own a tank (if you have the $$)

orchid thunder
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Put a nuke on a table and tell it to explode someone, it'll just sit there.

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Those nukes everywhere aren't hurting anyone until the president pushes the button.

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Nobody would blame the bomb itself, right?

molten estuary
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A firearm will not go off on its own b/c it requires an external force to have a bullet’s powder supply to be ignited

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I see your logic, it’s decent but has a couple holes

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Here’s a take I think (most) of us can agree on

It would be better that guns never existed and we lived in harmony, BUT since they do exist, and in the US b/c there are so numerous then they have become a necessary evil

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Not to mention we don’t live in harmony, there will always, always be those who try to harm for no other reason that harming

orchid thunder
molten estuary
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Simply blaming bad design is not inherent to anything, including guns

Ofc a bad designed gun can go off but even if it’s a bad designed gun, it could only go off IF a round is in the chamber

Furthermore if say a nuke was designed poorly, the same logic would apply

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Keeping a round in the magazine WOULD stop any accidental misfiring

orchid thunder
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It would, but it's not the case in reality 😋

molten estuary
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Not in the chamber

molten estuary
orchid thunder
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I mean that a gun is more likely to go off own its own than a nuke

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But even if it wasn't, I'm more interested in assessing whether your line of questioning is a valid way of looking at the issue

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From an outside view

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What does the line of questioning imply, and where does it lack context?

orchid thunder
molten estuary
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I think we’ve strayed from the main topic I was discussing

orchid thunder
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And I really do think that has to be taken into account

molten estuary
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Picture this - it’s 2 am, you’re in bed and you hear your front door get busted down. The AVG police response time is like 15 mins I think.

Your options to protect yourself are as follows - a kitchen knife if you can make it to the kitchen, your kids baseball bat, or a shotgun next to the bed

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Realistically most ppl would choose the shotgun b/c it’s life or death

orchid thunder
molten estuary
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I’m guessing you’re European?

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lol

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I was basing this from a U.S. perspective

orchid thunder
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My answer would be, not interfere if they're armed, and the police and insurance can do the rest

molten estuary
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You don’t know they won’t do anything

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Neither did my grandfather

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They broke in, stabbed him about 40 times and left. Didnt rob or take anything

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38 times to be exact and a lot of cuts

orchid thunder
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Sorry for your loss

molten estuary
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It was a while ago but ty

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The ppl who did it ran off, last I know the police couldn’t find th

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*them

orchid thunder
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Let's say, hypothetically, that not having a shotgun makes it more likely that these situations end in a lethal stabbing.

molten estuary
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I think that’s not so much a hypothetical - if ppl are trying to kill you, then having the upper hand does a lot to ensure your own survival

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But I’ll see where your logic goes

orchid thunder
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In a tradeoff that is "worth" this exchange, we would see as many lethal stabbings as gun deaths in those situations, right? (per capita of course)

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If not, there must be some other factor that makes one side other the other more lethal

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Looking at the data, it does seem to be the case that situations with more guns end up in more death. Now I don't claim to know what the exact factors are that make the lack of guns less likely to end fatally, but it seems to me that there is at least a correlation worth taking into account.

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If I were living in the US, I would maybe even consider getting a legal firearm while also acknowledging the data. From my perspective outside of the US, I don't think these two are mutually exclusive, but the topic has been claimed by the opposing political parties in such a way that it's difficult to break free from the black-and-white stances supported by these parties.

molten estuary
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Here

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I have the best way to settle this

smoky yoke
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That's definitely a good boy

oblique jetty
molten estuary
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He might be using a Winchester round, I think he may have pulled the trigger but it didn’t fire, could’ve been a slow burner round

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If it is a Winchester round it is… unfortunately uncommon but not unheard of - like 2-3% of Winchester rounds misfire or don’t fire properly

tawdry vale
# molten estuary The claim that guns are not defensive, only offensive. Here is my counter - do...

do guns kill ppl or do ppl kill ppl?
It's both.

Simply put, what guns do is produce "death" as a result from a whole range of situations that would not be lethal without them. With a gun, all you need is a momentary blip of strong emotion and someone is dead. Without guns, death doesn't happen without a much longer, sustained effort. That difference is the difference between death as a possibility in basically every stressful situation, and death only occurring in the most extreme cases. It's a huge difference, as evidenced by the frankly insane number of extra deaths observed in the US compared to Europe.

tawdry vale
# molten estuary You don’t know they won’t do anything

I think the evidence is pretty conclusive that the best form of self-defence is to not resist.

Yes, there will be a small number of situations where an attacker is actively looking to seriously harm someone as their goal. If your grandfather was in one of these situations then that's incredibly sad. But there are a far greater number of situations where someone breaking in doesn't actually want any kind of physical confrontation, and introducing weapons, or especially guns, into that kind of situation escalates it into a much more serious confrontation than it needs to be.

Even in those situations where someone is definitely looking to kill someone, everyone having guns gives you no better than a 50/50 chance of not being the one to die. It's all about who gets the drop on the other first, and even then the other person might shoot you as well anyway. That might be a better chance than you would otherwise have without guns, but I don't think that a small improvement in one very rare scenario is worth the massive deterioration in like 1000x as many situations. It's not a good enough reason, in my view, to allow all the accidental deaths of children, all the school shootings, all the unnecessary killings during simple robberies, and all the extra crimes of passion. Saving the life of 50 people is not worth causing the deaths of 50,000.

molten estuary
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*wonders if someone’s replied to my previous message

*sees 2 massive messages

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I need to check this more often lol

molten estuary
# tawdry vale > do guns kill ppl or do ppl kill ppl? It's both. Simply put, what guns do is...

So here’s the thing - it is still the individual at the end of the day who chooses to pull the trigger. Blaming it on the gun is a less than ideal argument b/c it is the person pulling the trigger at the end of the day.

Here is the thing tho - the discussion is about whether guns are a problem or not, everything discussed so far involves how ppl act. I’d add more if I’m not at work, I’ll get back in touch soon

tawdry vale
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If you put someone in a situation where they have to make a split second decision, they will invariably make a worse decision than if you give them a minute to think about it. Certainly it's much, much more likely to be an overly aggressive choice, because aggression is an emotion that dies away very quickly after an initial urge. Guns introduce severe consequences for bad decisions made in the split-second, which don't exist without guns.

molten estuary
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The issue is not the firearm 99/100 it is the person owning/using it.

I work as a firearms dealer - and trust me, i deny ppl a gun sale all the time, not just for legal reasons but also because I don’t believe not every needs a gun, even if ppl generally have a “right to one” in the U.S.

tawdry vale
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Guns make 99/100 of all situations worse. That's the bottom line.

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Not just worse. Much worse. The difference between being alive and dead worse.

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The 1/100 times when guns don't make a difference is not a reason to claim that guns don't make things worse overall.

molten estuary
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But you are right ppl will choose certain actions when they are under stress but to assert guns make things worse 99/100 isn’t even statistically accurate - hold up let me grab a source real quick

And sorry for long delays between responses work is pretty busy

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https://www.heritage.org/gun-rights/commentary/12-defensive-gun-uses-show-armed-citizens-make-communities-safer

this specific website shows that there is nearly 2 million DEFENSIVE gun uses every year, which is very clearly nowhere near 1/100

or another source (the heritage foundation study referenced) from the CDC states that it believes there are as many as 3million self defensive uses of firearms every year, which clearly shows ppl are actively needing to defend themselves and there is a legitimate threat

The Heritage Foundation
12 Defensive Gun Uses Show That Armed Citizens Make Communities Safer

As the nation continues to reel from historic violent crime spikes, many gun control activists turn reflexively to the same “bumper sticker slogan” policy “solutions” that fail to address real problems while often undermining the Second Amendment rights of peaceable citizens.

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Also - it turns out that the cities with the MOST crime in (the U.S.) have the strictest gun laws in the states with the strictest gun laws, where you can’t even buy a gun from another state if you’re from that state

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Or from a probably biased source the NRA - they show a study that indicates guns are used for DEFENSIVE purposes over 2 million times. A year

tawdry vale
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Here are some stats:

US murder rate: 5.763 per 100,000
UK murder rate: 1.148 per 100,000
FR murder rate: 1.335
GER murder rate: 0.823

The UK murder rate is 80% less than the US rate. And 83% of US murders involve firearms. Maybe this is a massive coincidence, but then we would need to explain why the US has an insanely higher murder rate without mentioning firearms.

molten estuary
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That study was last updated in July 2024 so it is relevant info

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But it just so happens that (generally) communities with more guns have less crime than those with less guns in the U.S.

A significant portion of the crimes that give the U.S. so many killings are from states with very strict gun laws

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Just a thought

tawdry vale
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Areas in the US having gun laws is a reflection of the areas that have the most gun crime, not the other way round.

tawdry vale
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What you would need do to in order to make that argument, would be to firstly find some stats on the number of situations that occur where the attacker doesn't have a gun and the defender uses a gun to avoid any harm befalling anyone, and then secondly somehow show that the number of those situations is greater than the number of situations where guns produce harm that wouldn't have otherwise happened. Only then can you claim guns have a positive effect.

molten estuary
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If your state bans interstate gun purchases then you can’t just go somewhere else and get a gun

tawdry vale
molten estuary
# tawdry vale If you take widespread gun ownership away, most of the situations mentioned in t...

No it shows why it’s neutral - which has been my point all along - a gun canceled out another gun. It allowed someone to protect themselves

I looked at a study just now from the bureau of justice statistics and it shows that 50% of all violent crimes involving a firearm (where the victim doesn’t have one) results in the victim ending up injured or dead. Think about that

In non violent crimes it varies state by state whether someone gets hurt or not. But study after study shows that gun ownership increases your own chances of survival.

Now you claim that ppl can buy guns interstate there’s some truth BUT what I said - if a state bans interstate guns purchases, means you CANT get a gun anywhere else legally that from within that state, and in some areas your immediate city.

It just so happens that those states that have such stringent laws have the highest crimes with guns. The gun laws simply make it harder for citizens,with no intent to cause harm, to defend themselves by ppl who want to cause harm.

Like my grandpa- he didn’t do anything wrong , he didn’t care for guns. But the people that broke in and stabbed him to death and continued stabbing him…. Well I have 0 doubt my grandpa would’ve atleast gone down fighting.

But look - as a licensed firearms dealer I can furantee you that I cannot sell guns to ppl where states don’t let ppl buy guns outside of them, even more - you can only buy a handgun from the state you live in. Interstate gun purchases are restricted to rifles/shotguns

tawdry vale
tawdry vale
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Guns don't cancel out the effects of other guns in most situations.

molten estuary
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Almost everything n here from the source of mine you’re saying shows decrease

IMG_3841.jpg
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Granted in 3 areas there was an increase in certain crimes BUT the study shows that EVERYWHERE else it was a decrease

tawdry vale
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Scroll to the bottom and read the conclusions:

we find that the existing literature provides supportive evidence that shall-issue laws increase total homicides.
We therefore conclude that there is inconclusive evidence for the effect of permitless-carry laws on total homicides.
we conclude that the existing literature provides supportive evidence that shall-issue laws increase firearm homicides.
we conclude that the best available studies provide limited evidence that shall-issue laws increase robbery rates.
we conclude that the best available studies provide moderate evidence that shall-issue laws increase assaults.
we conclude that the best available studies provide inconclusive evidence for the effect of shall-issue laws on rapes.
we conclude that there is supportive evidence that shall-issue laws increase violent crime.

molten estuary
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Yes the study itself is old but 2 things

1- you have 0 evidence of your own to counter it, simply claiming it’s old doesn’t necessity alter its validity

2- the website is actively maintained and was updated this year with recent info. Given that the studies are still there shows they are still relevant

tawdry vale
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I literally just quoted the evidence, that you yourself linked to.

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It doesn't mention gun ownership at all.

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The article is talking specifically about shall-issue concealed-carry laws, where anyone must be given a permit to carry a concealed weapon if they meet some basic criteria. According to that study, this law increases violent crime.

molten estuary
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You’re quoting a conclusion while the evidence shows there is a DIRECT decrease in most crimes.

While yes homicide… sucks (rip my grandpa) and there was a link in that article that there was an increase in homicdie that was 1 study of the several I showed, many of which said the reverse, that there was a decrease. For another study to prove my point (it’s admittedly older but it’s all I could think of in the 0.3 seconds I’m not helping customers) is the Lott and mustard study which showed carrying concealed weapons directly decreased violent crimes as a whole in almost every city they examined.

Furthermore I am not saying they are good or bad, just neutral. A gun requires someone to use it, a hammer is neither good nor useful but if someone kills someone with a hammer then does that call for banning of guns? What about builders? For guns - what about hunters? There are literally millions of hunters in the U.S. that need a firearm just to eat, and if you say - they can just buy food, try buying food when you live in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a blizzard and the roads are frozen but there is deer out there.

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Also another study -

tawdry vale
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The people who wrote the article looked at what you quoted, and determined that those studies weren't reliable. I mean sure, you can quote them if you like, but the improved study that you actually linked to produced the opposite result (which was also not on the topic we are talking about).

molten estuary
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Journal of law and economics by kennesaw - direct decrease in crime rates when gun laws loosened

And the 2007 American journal of public health - a study shows that there are several instances where less gun laws had a direct correlation with crime rates

tawdry vale
# molten estuary No it shows why it’s neutral - which has been my point all along - a gun cancele...

There are a number of different situations to compare.

Case 1) Guns are not widespread. Strong laws exist to prevent gun purchase
Case 2) Guns are not widespread. Weak or no laws exist to restrict gun sales
Case 3) Guns are widespread. Strong laws exist to prevent new gun purchase
Case 4) Guns are widespread. Weak or no laws exist to prevent new gun purchase

You're talking about the difference between cases 3 and 4. I see no reason there would be much difference between those two situations, and that's what the evidence seems to suggest.

I'm talking about the difference between cases 1 and 4.

The whole point of gun laws, for me at least, would be to prevent access to guns. I would not expect simply introducing gun laws into an already gun-owning area to immediately delete all existing guns. (Well ok, it more or less did in the UK, but we aren't as psychologically attached to guns as the US is. It wouldn't work in the US in my point.)

The problem is a situation where guns are easily accessible. That's what causes all the problems.

molten estuary
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Yeah that Rand article I did misread it ngl - I’ll give you that

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A gun is neutral it doesn’t do anything beside sit there, it’s the person who does something with it. Like a hammer- it can only be used for ill intent if someone chooses to use it for such

tawdry vale
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Yes, it's still the person that is doing stuff. But guns mean that a much wider range of stuff that the person does, will result in a death.

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With a gun, if you have a split second burst of rage, then someone is dead. Without a gun, they are not. Not unless the murder is pre-meditated. And the stats say that most murders in the US are not pre-meditated.

molten estuary
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So here is my response -

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As a couple of the studies I referenced showed (IIRC) there is a significant % of cases where the attacker has a firearm and the victim doesn’t and the victim either dies OR is hurt. I think one of the sources said it was a 50% chance of that but I don’t recall which one (ill explain why in a second) so there is a very high lvl of ppl who are defenseless being needlessly killed, now true there are many cases where ppl have ended up dead when there may have been another way out, but we we’re not in their shoes, why should we judge them? I think you said yourself it’s a decision in the moment, you have to ask, how many of those ppl who did choose to protect themselves would be dead themselves instead? Furthermore - it’s a life or death scenario to them, for us to say - oh you should’ve done so or so differently is unfair to say the least 99/100. now are there cases where ppl just overreacted? YES I will be the first to admit that (not from personal experience tho) but the % of those cases is relatively lower compared to when ppl genuinely were in a dangerous situation

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Also why I took a while to respond/couldn’t remember which specific source referenced the 50% - my phone is about to die AND we (the store I work at) just got robbed

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Well they tried to rob - let’s just say don’t rob a gun store (no they weren’t shot they left) but it was a scene lets just say

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Quite literally an IRL case of a gun saving my life and several other ppls

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@tawdry vale thoughts? I’m genuinely intrigued in this convo

tawdry vale
molten estuary
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Not quite

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They had knifes

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Well basically machetes

tawdry vale
tawdry vale
molten estuary
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Oh I see your point

tawdry vale
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Case a) Attacker has a gun. Defender has a gun.
Case b) Attacker has a gun. Defender doesn't have a gun.
Case c) Attacker doesn't have a gun. Defender has a gun.
Case d) Attacker doesn't have a gun. Defender doesn't have a gun.

What I'm saying is that case d is the least dangerous all round.

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A robber stealing your purse or your tv, is a better outcome than you shooting the robber dead.

molten estuary
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Caused by guns, questionable but I see your logic. The crux of your argument is assuming that the criminal chose to be a criminal BECAUSE they have a gun, or in this scenario they chose to rob or attack BECAUSE they have a gun.

Ppl have been robbing each other for millennia, just because someone uses a gun doesn’t mean that that gun caused that person to be a criminal

tawdry vale
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No, that's not quite what I'm saying.

molten estuary
tawdry vale
molten estuary
#

Mmm idk about that - there is evidence for both our points on whether they stay or flee but sure I’ll just give you that point

tawdry vale
molten estuary
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? “With guns involved” “situations without guns”

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Oh nvm

molten estuary
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Here’s the thing about 12GA as well - there are non lethal rounds as well (which is what a lot of ppl use for home defense incase it’s like a drunk friend or someone they know and don’t wanna kill)

tawdry vale
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With guns, all you need is that moment of panic, and someone is dead. Without guns, that panic doesn't kill anyone.

molten estuary
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I see your logic

tawdry vale
#

Same in other situations. You catch your husband cheating on you. You experience a moment of pure rage. With a gun, that pure rage kills your husband and his lover. Without a gun, nobody dies.

molten estuary
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But banning guns only really bans it for law abiding folks, it is easy to mechanically produce a firearm

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A firearm is a pretty simple invention

tawdry vale
#

Guns produce deaths from momentary lapses.

molten estuary
#

That robber could still have a gun even if they’re illegal

tawdry vale
molten estuary
#

Kinda what makes a criminal a criminal

molten estuary
tawdry vale
#

Having guns being widespread makes it much easier for people to obtain guns illegally as well as legally.

molten estuary
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But also thing is - cat is kinda out of the box

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Banning guns at this point would be stupid

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If you were to do it- ya gotta go back a few centuries or a govt would have to directly violate the rights of its citizens (busting down doors in the middle of the night to search for and seize any guns

tawdry vale
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So, this is the difference between the two key points on this issue. Introducing gun laws, I agree, won't change things for the better immediately. What you would need to do would be to remove existing guns.

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In the UK, when we banned handguns, we also removed existing ones. That wasn't a problem, because the public understood it was a good idea. But of course in the US, people think guns are a good thing, so that wouldn't happen yet. You would need to educate people first, about why guns are bad.

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If you did that, and then removed guns, and introduced gun laws prohibiting the widespread sales, you would receive much fewer deaths.

molten estuary
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Not to be that guy or anything but that kinda sounds like indoctrination - the govt coming in and *re-educating its citizens on something that could directly threaten said govt, a govt that was founded by ppl who used their guns to directly resist oppression

tawdry vale
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It's called education. Improving public understanding. That's the job of every good government.

molten estuary
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Immoral to say the least, questionable and controversial at the best

tawdry vale
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It's the reason there are schools, for example.

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Education is an unquestionable good.

molten estuary
#

Schools can teach math history, etc- but teaching ppl it is morally wrong to own something that can be used to save their lives - because someone else could use it badly- is horrific

tawdry vale
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It doesn't have to be a government. There is nothing wrong with the government doing it, the government only acts by the consent of it's citizens anyway so there's no reason to be afraid of government. But the education can be done by anyone.

molten estuary
tawdry vale
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The only objection to banning guns is that it wouldn't work.

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Education would make that work.

tawdry vale
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I mean, objecting to state education is a whole different argument. But I find the idea of objecting to education itself absolutely wild. Like, a lack of education is literally the cause of almost all of the world's problems.

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For the purpose of this topic here, say for the sake of argument Bill Gates did a poster campaign and convinced everyone guns were a bad idea. Gun laws were introduced nationwide, and everyone turned their guns in. The US would be safer by nearly an order of magnitude. 83% safer.

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Well, call it 80%, because the US is a bit more unstable than Europe in other ways besides guns.

molten estuary
# tawdry vale Guns are objectively a bad idea. All of the evidence shows they are a bad idea. ...

That statement had a few premises -

*guns ARE (assumes the word “always”)

*all of the evidence

*it’s not wrong

So here is the problem with each of those from a purely logical standpoint - starting off with the first part about guns are only bad idea - the existence of ppl who hunt to survive already disproves that, furthermore a single instance of someone’s life being saved also disproves that, both which there is tons of

2ndary - all of the evidence shows they’re wrong - we’ve been debating back and forth and I’ve given MUlTIPLE studies that show the opposite, which already disproves your point.

3rd - it’s not wrong to teach ppl guns are bad. That’s questionable at best, guns are simply objects - they are neither good nor bad - they can’t do anything on their own literally. Just some ppl use them in a bad way, while the overwhelming vast majority of people don’t. Why should we ban something when only a relatively few # of ppl are doing something objectively wrong.

To reference the bill gates story, correct me if wrong but that was done in a very liberal state where guns are already looked down upon, which shows some procedural bias almost definitively.

Furthermore you reference statistics but I do not see any source backing them up, I do not believe I made any statistcal claims without any evidence to directly prove said statistic, if you’re referencing the bill gates one - that specific scenario is an anecdotal piece of evidence, compared to studies on the other hand that I have presented. Not to bash what you have shown but the evidence you have shown has generally speaking been less thsn credible in the most generous way speaking. Plz don’t take offense to it but you are making claims like “govt re-education” and saying it’s not indoctrination when that’s not only the same language used by legit almost every govt before they committed genocide or another atrocity, furthermore- gun ownership is voluntary, if ppl believed they shouldn’t have one-

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They don’t have to get one

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I don’t have a charger and phone is about to die

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lol

tawdry vale
tawdry vale
# molten estuary That statement had a few premises - *guns ARE (assumes the word “always”) *al...

  1. When I'm saying guns are a bad idea I'm always meaning that "widespread guns" are a bad idea. Not the existence of all guns, just guns being widespread in civilian populations.
    As I said before, one person being saved due to guns being everywhere doesn't negate another 10 who die because of it. That's still an overall bad idea.

  2. You haven't shown any studies that contradict the idea that widespread gun ownership is a bad idea. The closest has been a couple of suggestions talking only about the effect of introducing gun laws on areas that already have widespread guns, which is a contested result anyway and besides the point.
    I have provided stats on murder rates in different countries , and quoted the percentage of murders attributed to guns in the US that more recent figures updated to 82% from the 83% I quoted. Both are pretty easy to look up on google. (With hindsight, yes, I probably should have linked the sources for you earlier. That was my bad, purely because we're going over old ground.) Both of those seem to indicate that widespread gun ownership is a massive problem. Nobody, in this conversation at least, has suggested any other explanation for those numbers. (They did in other conversations on this topic we've had on this server, but when we looked up more numbers there wasn't the evidence to account for the discrepancy another way)

List of countries by intentional homicide rate

The list of countries by homicide rate is derived from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) data, and is expressed in number of deaths per 100,000 population per year. For example, a homicide rate of 30 out of 100,000 is presented in the table as "30", and corresponds to 0.03% of the population dying by homicide. The reliability of u...

Statista
Homicides by murder weapon in the U.S. 2023 | Statista

Handguns are by far the most common murder weapon used in the United States, accounting for 7,159 homicides in 2023.

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  1. This conversation about guns always seems to come down to "Well ok guns are bad but we have to live with them now because they're already here." If that's literally the only objection to banning guns, that it wouldn't work to remove existing guns, then if we found a way to remove existing guns then there wouldn't be any objection at all remaining.
    Deciding whether having widespread guns is a good idea or not doesn't depend on the ratio of good use occasions to bad use occasions. It depends on the ratio of benefit to harm. One extra death is worse than 10 TVs not stolen. From the numbers it seems very clear that the existence of widespread guns is causing a lot of extra people to die, far more than the number who are saved from situations not involving guns.

There is no need for most people to have guns. They fulfil no useful purpose for the vast majority of people. So there's no reason for them to be widespread.

The BIll Gates situation was just something I made up out of thin air, as a hypothetical scenario, just to make the point that if people in the US agreed that widespread guns were a bad idea, and they were gotten rid of, then it seems all objections are negated. Any similarity to a real situation is purely coincidental.

Every civilised nation on the planet has an education system, and almost all of them are nationally supported in some way. Some of the best education systems in the world have a national curriculum that determines what is taught by a central body. I don't think it is at all controversial to say that national education systems are demonstrably fine. They are considered the best way by many nations, my own included. But this is entirely besides the point with regards to the main topic here.

oblique jetty
#

Any negligent discharge should be grounds for getting your 2nd amendment rights revoked.
Meaning the legal definiton of negegent discharge, which excludes accidents and malfunctions

polar nest
# molten estuary The claim that guns are not defensive, only offensive. Here is my counter - do...

Here is my counter - do guns kill ppl or do ppl kill ppl?

Obviously, guns kill people. People make the decision to shoot, but without a gun, that would not result in any lethal consequences. If you give a person a yard stick instead of a gun, people can still decide to hit the other party, but they will not be able to kill them (as easily).

In nearly all lethal shooting situations, if you take the gun out of the equation, the killing doesn't happen. Ergo, it is the gun that does the killing and the shooter that makes the decision to kill.

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If there exists only a single scenario where taking the gun out of the equation and replacing it with something else results in one less death, than the answer is obvious: guns kill people.

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I don't see how you can defend a position where you claim that guns are not the problem, if in a situation where you replace the gun and all other variables are equal, less deaths will be the result.

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That means that the only variable the death can be ascribed to is the gun in question

vast axle
# polar nest > Here is my counter - do guns kill ppl or do ppl kill ppl? Obviously, guns ki...

i dont disagree with these statements, but throughout history there has always been death and murder and wars due to disagreements, power, wealth. there are just so many other variables and ways to hurt each other over the years. it isnt the gun thats nesacarily the problem, sure there would be way less deaths without guns. but in my opinion its the people who are cruel enough to use the guns in ways that harm others that are the problem.

elder blaze
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i lowk don't understand this viewpoint at all like even if the problem are the violent people/crims guns enable whatever they're doing

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like it's not possible to do a school shooting without a gun??

molten estuary
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lol I stopped responding to this conversation because I realized that no matter what I said or showed ppl would still disagree with me - which is cool n all

tawdry vale
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It's not that people won't listen to counter-arguments. Most people who are against guns aren't ideologically or emotionally attached to the idea of not having guns, in the same way that gun lovers are emotionally attached to their guns. It's just that the counter-arguments here suck. The arguments that are presented in favour of guns are just not as good as the arguments against them.

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There is just never a direct response to statements like "Guns cause deaths because they lower the effort bar for killing", presumably because we all know it's true.

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And there's never a decent alternative explanation for why the US has such an outlandishly high homicide rate, other than the widespread nature of guns there. Similar countries without the same gun availability have much lower rates.

molten estuary
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If you were to look at my prior comments I was debating with someone and providing several studies to prove my points. I am not saying that counter arguments or arguments for them are in any way flawed, just that people on both sides are set in their mindsets

vast axle
tawdry vale
# molten estuary If you were to look at my prior comments I was debating with someone and providi...

You were debating with me, and the pages you linked to didn't back up your points, as I pointed out at the time. One link actually showed that allowing concealed guns increased homicides, and the other was anecdotes about people using guns to defend themselves from attackers with guns, which only supports the idea that guns do indeed cause most of the problems in the first place.

You can't claim anyone is set in their ways if they are clearly just going on what the evidence says. There's no reason, that has been provided in this discussion at least, for anyone to suddenly decide that guns are actually not a problem. All the data here seem to indicate that they are.

molten estuary
# tawdry vale You were debating with me, and the pages you linked to didn't back up your point...

Not trying to restart any of the old discussions we went through, but of the 5 or 6 studies I showed, yeah one of them defeated my own arguments, which I should’ve read through it more but whatever.

One was anecdotal yes, but of the other 3 or 4 there were legitimate studies that showed areas with higher gun control has more gun crimes and areas where there were more firearms or less gun control saw less gun violence on average.

Once again - not trying to restart any arguments or anything but yeah

tawdry vale
# molten estuary Not trying to restart any of the old discussions we went through, but of the 5 o...

but of the other 3 or 4 there were legitimate studies that showed areas with higher gun control has more gun crimes and areas where there were more firearms or less gun control saw less gun violence on average.
Sorry to correct you, but that never happened. You haven't shown any other studies in this discussion. You referred to exactly two other studies, besides the two that actively harm your case, but didn't provide links and I can't find them from the limited information you provided.

elder bay
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American gun policies made guns more accessible, which might be a reason why things like school shootings happen A LOT more often than here in Europe

novel elm
elder bay
little vortex
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only hunters can legally buy a gun as far as i'm concerned. and even that is not ideal
guns are trivial to make

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these days 3d printers can make ~90% of a functional firearm, the rest isn't difficult either if you're determined

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black powder is also easy and can be made with ingredients available from a grocery store

#

smokeless powder is significantly more different to make, but black powder is really trivial

#

the entire "are guns the problem?" debate is completely moot. These days any determined enough actor can build a fully functioning firearm with a 3d printer, and mostly readily available parts from a hardware store

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it's an especially useless debate to have in the context of the United States

#

there are 1.3 guns per person in the US, and there's absolutely nothing anybody can do about it. Ever.

little vortex
# little vortex the entire "are guns the problem?" debate is completely moot. These days any det...

hell, the 3D print guys are making music videos about their 3D printed guns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kucefQ6sYbo

YouTube
PSR
Print Shoot Repeat - The HK Slap (Official Music Video)

STREAM THE HK SLAP: https://open.spotify.com/track/1TWOklya2K7MyOX89PxbvM?si=x67S4ljpRB2oMvZgbcDAvQ

https://music.apple.com/us/album/the-hk-slap/1633193558?i=1633193561

Big thank you to Thiago Dezan @thiagodezan who helped shoot this video.

My Printer: https://amzn.to/3uU0FHA

Link to all the gear I use: https://kit.co/PrintShootRepeat

Fila...

▶ Play video
#

also, practical shooting might become an olympic sport soon too, which would inevitably drastically increase proliferation of arms in civilian hands

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so in my opinion, all the debate on whether more guns increase or lower crime, what happens if civilians get easier or tougher access to guns is completely meaningless and irrelevant, because all the governments have lost the ability to effectively control the proliferation of arms

#

some might not realize it, but it's over, just like with the war on drugs. Drugs have clearly won, and drugs being illegal clearly causes more death and suffering. It's just over.

#

and don't think the EU is immune from firearm prolliferation in the wrong hands

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with Bulgaria and Romania now in the EU, it's going to get significantly easier to obtain black market yugo AKs in the EU, as there are now 2 extra borders they can be smuggled over

#

and there are millions of those in civilian hands in the former Yugoslavia

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only difference being that those are almost exclusively exported to the EU by criminals, for criminals

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so the debate that's worth having would go more like this:

"Assume everyone, everywhere has or can easily manufacture a firearm and ammunition. Now what?"

elder bay
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i looked this up: according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, homicide rates per 100,000 inhabitants: US 5.763; UK 1.148; Switzerland 0.597; Spain 0.691; Japan 0.233; Germany 0.823; Canada 2.273. All of those countries are also western countries, all of those countries have stricter gun laws, the US clearly has the highest homicide rate and it's not even close. so no matter how, stricter gun laws do help

little vortex
elder bay
little vortex
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but it doesn't matter - guns cannot be controlled anymore

elder bay
elder bay
little vortex
little vortex
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also, tons and tons of gang violence

elder bay
little vortex
#

the average US citizen is as unlikely to experience any gun violence as the average european one

elder bay
elder bay
little vortex
#

the US stats don't matter when a massive chunk of that is black-on-black violence, and another chunk perfectly legal homicides

little vortex
elder bay
little vortex
#

I couldn't care less about gangsters shooting each other

elder bay
little vortex
#

gangsters kill and seriously injure people everwyhere

elder bay
little vortex
#

if it's another gangster they injure or kill - I don't care, and in most cases neither does law enforcement

elder bay
little vortex
elder bay
#

i feel like you didn't give enough reasoning for that sentiment

little vortex
#

you simply can't control that anymore

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taking legally owned guns from civilian hands does nothing to address that fact

elder bay
little vortex
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or something like that

little vortex
# elder bay so how would i get my hands on a gun right now here in germany? without too much...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGC-9 in fact this one was invented by a german

FGC-9

The FGC-9 is a 3D-printable, semi-automatic, pistol-caliber carbine. The firearm was first designed and manufactured between 2018 and 2020 by Jacob Duygu, a Kurdish German gun designer known by the pseudonym "JStark1809". In April 2021, a "MkII" revision was released. As of 2024, the FGC-9 is "by far" the world's most common 3-D printed gun, use...

#

basically all the parts except the barrel and bolt carrier are 3D printable

elder bay
little vortex
#

and I'm sure as the 3D printing technology gets better, the metal parts will also be basically 3D printable

elder bay
little vortex
#

obviously

elder bay
#

man we soundin too sus

little vortex
#

I actually have a sports shooting license in Latvia

#

I have a Glock 17, AR-15 and an M1911

#

in Latvia it's easy to get a sports shooting license if you have no criminal record, are a citizen, speak latvian and pass a bunch of tests

#

it's actually easier for me to buy a new gun in Latvia than it's in the US, no background check if I already have a permit, I can just walk into a gun store with my license, buy a new gun, and head off to a police station to register it

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in fact there was a massive spike in civilian interest in firearms permits in Latvia when Russia invaded Ukraine

trail lantern
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obviously guns have problems with them. their power is easily misused. but thats what guns are...power.
power in the wrong hands is deadly, power in the right hands brings forth peace

the problem of guns is the problems that come with power.

now its easy to understand how power can be misused especially with guns. bad people can shoot innocent people with guns.
but its not as easy to see how guns can bring peace. but they surely can. we can make a psychological argument for this.
when people interact with each other there is an underlying threat of something that keeps discussion civil. (not so much the case with online interaction) for example if two men are at a disagreement there is an underlying threat of force that keeps the well minded men from acting in a way that will get them punched in the face. and since neither want to get punched they will both more often than not stay civil. with women its the same thing but the threat is more often the destruction of reputation rather that physical violence. but the average person has the power to punch. or destroy reputations. that power is used to keep peace and order between people even if you dont notice it happening. and when people do step out of line and do something stupid then they might just get punched in the face for it. thats why drunk people have a higher risk of getting into fights. and that same power that punishes violence and criminality lays withing the person that holds a gun.

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i do think that it might be better if guns never existed. but i think since they do exist that people need to have them. because the people of power will always have them. no matter how much you try to get rid of them from the general population.

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i think getting rid of them from the general population only gives with people with the power to take them away more power, because there is nobody to take there guns away. they will keep them. and use them as they wish

molten estuary
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I mean historically - when govts have stripped the civilians of their “arms” whether guns in the modern era or other weapons in eras bygone - there usually has been some kind of genocide or tyranny (6ish million dead Jews)

Hitler with the Jews and the Holocaust and the other horrible things

The Soviet Union under Stalin with the purges, forced collectivization and others (tens of millions dead)

Maoist China - more purges of “undesirables” (10s of millions dead)

Cambodia from 1975-1979 - mass displacement of people and 2million dead people that we know of

The Ottoman Empire - before the Armenian genocide the ottomans disarmed the public like the other countries named and killed about 1.5 million “undesirables”

Uganda in the 70s

  • about 300k ppl that were “undesirables” were killed

Guatemala from the 60s-90s during the civil war tons of ppl were forcibly relocated and over 200k were killed or they disappeared

Rwanda in the 90s - the govt went around and killed 800k ppl in a 100 days that were “undesirable”

North Korea - this one is obvious

The republic of turkey in the 20s and 30s killed tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians

Ethiopia from 1974-1991 the “red terror” as mass purges occurred and tens of thousands of ppl were killed

Do I need to keep going?

#

Note - in a couple of those cases the disarming of the ppl was for certain groups of ppl vs the population as a whole but the argument still stands

trail lantern
#

yeah

restive shadow
tawdry vale
# molten estuary I mean historically - when govts have stripped the civilians of their “arms” whe...

I mean historically - when govts have stripped the civilians of their “arms” whether guns in the modern era or other weapons in eras bygone - there usually has been some kind of genocide or tyranny (6ish million dead Jews)
That's simply not true. There is absolutely no correlation between stricter gun laws and tyrannical governments. Some of the least tyrannical governments in the world, such as European ones, also have strict gun controls.

In none of those examples you gave was the possession of guns relevant. Owning a gun provides a civilian with absolutely zero protection against their own government, because the government will always be better armed and easily able to defeat them if they choose to. This is a well recognised fallacy.

Has any US state government or the federal government ever chosen not to impose its law on its citizens because they owned guns? No. They do it all the time, and threats of violence against their agents simply result in increased violence in return. All that happens is that the government ends up using increasingly violent methods to do it to overcome the violent resistance. The widespread possession of guns in the US simply makes everything more dangerous.

Most successful disarming attempts produce more peaceful areas with lower rates of violence involving weapons. That's what the evidence from countries that have done that indicates. You can look at the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Canada etc. The harder you make it for someone to be violent with a weapon, the more violence with weapons reduces. Reducing violence with weapons is a very good thing.

tawdry vale
# trail lantern obviously guns have problems with them. their power is easily misused. but thats...

"Power corrupts"

There is no good consequence to concentrating power in the hands of anyone. It doesn't matter who it is. Giving that much power to someone makes them act worse. The problem isn't with who has the power, the problem is with anyone having that much power.

Threat of retaliation never does a particularly good job of stopping violence, especially when guns are involved. The person that gets the first strike in has a significant chance of winning, and so all that threat does is incentivise first strikes, leading to situations accelerating to violence more quickly. Laws that legalise lethal force in any form are hugely problematic because they further encourage sudden escalations.

Or it encourages people to conduct their violence in secret, to avoid being caught. Let's look at the biggest example. Did the threat of violence in retaliation stop the Cold War from being violent? No, not in the slightest. There were millions upon millions of deaths. They were simply done by proxy, in secret, in underhand ways.

The way to stop violence is mutual respect. But if you can't do that because your entire social structure is broken, then at least make violence more difficult by removing the means, and removing the incentives.

Does the widespread availability of guns in the US decrease violence? No, there's no evidence that it does. The US has a much higher rate of violence that comparable countries.
Does owning or carrying a gun protect you from violence in any way? No, it does not. The evidence says that it actually puts you and your family more at risk.
That's the bottom line. The pro-guns approach is a myth and does not work.

restive shadow
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I agree, let's take all guns away from all governments world wide

tawdry vale
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They are the last people we should disarm.

restive shadow
tawdry vale
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A government is a system or group of people who control and make decisions for a country, state, or community. They are responsible for things like creating and enforcing laws, providing public services, and protecting citizens

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If a group is given that role by the population, then you know the population will be paying attention to how they are doing it. There is therefore accountability because they are acting in public. That's not the case with private individuals.

restive shadow
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So governments can only be good and are to be trusted with weapons and citizens are not?

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And how are they suppose to held accountable when they say "we are the government and we are right", and then stick and gun in your face?

trail lantern
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but power in the hands of the right people. people with confidence and competence in their ability to use it and to use it in a way that benefits not just them but the people that depend on them and the people around them. people like this are why our societies are mostly functional

restive shadow
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I enjoy how this is tying into, might makes right, democracy, and morality now. Very good conversation.

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And more.

tawdry vale
tawdry vale
tawdry vale
# trail lantern but power in the hands of the right people. people with confidence and competenc...

people with confidence and competence in their ability to use it and to use it in a way that benefits not just them but the people that depend on them and the people around them
There are no people in that category who are immune to the corruptive nature of concentrations of power. This is why our societies become less and less functional over time when they rely on concentrated power, despite all our best efforts to ensure good people get given that power.

trail lantern
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i mean. id argue that society is more functional now than it was 10 years ago. or even 100 years ago. statistically

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rephrase

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1 sec

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im not arguing that power should be concentrated by the way

tawdry vale
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I am pretty certain that our society is less functional now than it was 10 years ago. I have seen the erosion of the basic functions of government everywhere I've looked in both the UK and US. The law is less consistently applied, the gap between the rich and the poor is larger, taxes are more unequal, lies are more commonly told by those in positions of power, government functions are less and less transparent, governments are less and less effective at meeting the needs of the population and so the health of the population is declining.

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It's been largely going downhill since the 80s and the rise of neo-liberalism and the increasing role of private companies and individuals in public services.

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The problem with the UK and US governments is not that they are public bodies, it's the opposite, that they are now beholden to secretive private individuals.

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We have effectively privatised our governments, and thus have no say at all in how our countries are run.

trail lantern
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yes not everything is better of course. i agree with what you have said here. but in general more good than bad i think. or maybe im optimistic. for example poverty is significantly less of a problem globally than it ever has been in human history.
but lets get back to the topic of power

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there clearly shouldn't be super concentrated areas of power i think we agree on that.
il ask this question
where do you think the power should be?

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i think that we need some concentration of power but that the different levels of concentrations of power should be dependent on each other in some way so that privatized governments can be avoided. but maybe that doest work?

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im not to sure. im ignorant but im here for the discussion

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i dont think government should only have guns. that gives them power. and if they have that power what stops them from privatizing?

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if the government has power the people have to have power too

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thats why i think people needs guns

molten estuary
# tawdry vale > I mean historically - when govts have stripped the civilians of their “arms” w...

Look, you're missing the point.

It's not about whether civilians with rifles can beat tanks or fighter jets. It's about why governments disarm their people in the first place—and it's almost always to eliminate resistance before doing something oppressive. You're saying owning guns offers "zero protection," but history tells a different story. In many of the examples I gave—Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Maoist China, etc.—disarmament was one of the first steps in stripping people of their autonomy and ability to resist. They didn’t need to carpet bomb cities because by then, no one could fight back.

Even if armed resistance wouldn’t win against a full-blown military, the fact that a population can resist changes the calculus. Think of the American Revolution, or even modern insurgencies like in Afghanistan or Iraq. These conflicts proved that well-armed civilians or militias can impose massive costs on far more powerful governments. Armed populations create deterrents—not because they’re stronger, but because the government knows using violence against them won't be clean or easy.

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You're also cherry-picking peaceful democracies like the UK or Canada. But you ignore places like Venezuela, where disarmament laws were passed “for public safety” and then used to crack down on dissent. Or Hong Kong, where citizens have no real way to physically resist the encroaching power of the CCP.

You say the U.S. government hasn't been deterred by guns, but that proves nothing. What happens if the government ever does turn authoritarian? We don't need guns for today—we need them as a safeguard in case things go bad. That's the whole point of the Second Amendment: not hunting, not even personal defense, but the right of the people to resist tyranny.

You say, “most successful disarmament attempts reduce violence”—but define “successful.” Sure, maybe there are fewer shootings, but what about freedom? What about the ability to say no to power? Disarmament may make things more peaceful in the short term, but it also makes the people more dependent and more vulnerable to state overreach.

So no—I'm not okay with giving up the only real leverage civilians have. History doesn’t just suggest that disarmament often precedes tyranny—it shows it repeatedly. You might trust the government as you mentioned in a few posts after your response to the one Im responding too. I don’t. And that’s exactly why this debate matters.

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dang that took a hot minute to send

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I believe theres a quote somewhere "behind every blade of grass" which basically shows that if any foreign power was to inavde the US, there would 2 militaries, the GOVT one and then millions of armed citizens resisting invasion. The same can be said for a US govt crackdown- IF the US govt was to ever have a major crackdown on civil liberties, become oppresive, or become unwanted- ppl have the potential to overthrow it. I mean- the US GOVT was directly threatend when unarmed protestors walked into the capital a few years ago- if unarmed ppl can "cause a crisis" then imagine what millions of armed people could do IF there was ever a genuine need for it.

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Now I dont want to make any assumptions about your opinions/beliefs but just from my POV- you are very much anti-gun which it is okay to have that opinnoin- thats what democracy is all about. But say a GOVT had that opinnion and wanted to take the guns away from the ppl. EVEN if they didnt intend to "remove undesirables" but the intentions were to create a safer society, what do you do with the people that dont want to lose their ability to resist govt overreach- or protect themselves if neccesary? I mean I personally own a solid handful of guns- and am looking to expand my collection.

Now on another note - In a couple of the aforementioned countries IIRC- when many of the folks didnt want to lose their guns, they were executed by the state. Now one of the examples i mentioned- Cambodia- citizens were disarmed immediately and completely and any resistance was met with swift and often lethal violence. Just because they did not give in to the whims of the state

tawdry vale
# trail lantern there clearly shouldn't be super concentrated areas of power i think we agree on...

where do you think the power should be?
Power should remain with the people, and it should be as easy as possible for them to exercise that power. They should be able to appoint people to carry out tasks for them, but there should be no limits as to their ability to oversee the work of that person or revoke or change that appointment. So for example, we shouldn't have unelected small groups deciding on candidates for positions, we shouldn't require candidates to be rich, we should be able to remove any candidate from their position instantaneously if desired, all meetings and financial transactions the representatives are involved in should be public, etc.

i dont think government should only have guns. that gives them power. and if they have that power what stops them from privatizing?
The point is that we can control who the government is, and so if guns are limited to the government then we always retain control over who has access to guns. The government is the only group that we can control the membership of, and so this is the only way to control who has access to guns.
The power of the people over the government doesn't rely on access to guns, and never has.

tawdry vale
# molten estuary Look, you're missing the point. It's not about whether civilians with rifles ca...

I'm not missing the point. I understand the point you're making, but the claim you have made is a false one. It is simply not true that most attempts to disarm civilians are made with the intent to oppress them. I have given you plenty of examples of countries that have introduced measures to disarm civilians, and in none of those cases was it done with the intent to oppress. You're the one cherry picking to claim that the examples that disprove your assertion for some reason don't count. But they do count, and do disprove your assertion.

Your point is also irrelevant. We're explicitly having a conversation about disarming civilians for the express purpose of reducing the amount of weapon-related violence, not for oppression. You can't just turn around and say that if someone uses disarmament as a means to reduce violence then they are automatically seeking to oppress those people.

As I pointed out in my comment above, people don't need guns to exert power over the government. What they actually need is numbers, widespread support. When there is a majority in support of something, it doesn't matter how many guns a government has, they won't be able to implement it. Guns can't make someone do something if they refuse to.

If guns actually prevented governments oppressing a group then the government wouldn't be able to disarm them in the first place. But in every one of your examples, it's not the possession of guns or lack thereof that gave a government power over a small group, it was the fact that they were a minority group without widespread support from the population as a whole. Governments don't act in a vacuum, they only have the power that they are given by the people. In all of those cases you mentioned, it wasn't government oppression, it was ethnic oppression, the oppression of a minority group by a majority group that extended far beyond just government.
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Any force that could defeat the US military could easily defeat the US civilians. Civilians having weapons is pointless.

tawdry vale
# molten estuary Now I dont want to make any assumptions about your opinions/beliefs but just fro...

A government cannot remove guns from people without the consent of the people. It would never be, and could never be, just the government itself disarming the entire rest of the population. It would and could only ever be the most powerful group of the population itself using the government to disarm those less powerful. I think you need to stop thinking of 'government' or 'the state' as some kind of distinct entity or group. The government is simply a tool being used by the most powerful group of people in that country.

Governments exist because the people want them to exist. They do a job for the people. They keep order, enforce the laws the people have chosen, and protect the people from dangers. They are intrinsically a good idea, far better than the alternative of not having anyone to protect people.

There is certainly a discussion to be had about how power is distributed among the people to begin with, in order to decide who the government is actually representing. But right now, wealth is the determining factor, not guns. You cannot protect yourself from oppression with guns, that's an intentional misdirect by the people in power. You need wealth in order to protect yourself.

molten estuary
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@tawdry vale While it’s true that modern governments possess vastly superior military power compared to civilians, dismissing the relevance of civilian firearm ownership entirely oversimplifies both historical and political realities I would argue

Civilian resistance doesn’t have to mean defeating a government in open combat. Throughout history, armed populations have served as deterrents or checks on government overreach—not because they could overpower the state, but because their ability to resist changed the calculus of power. Think of the American Revolution, the Yugoslav Partisans in WWII, or even the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In each case, the ability of ordinary people to resist—even if ultimately unsuccessful—disrupted authoritarian goals and became a symbol of freedom. I could also list some other scenarios if needed as well The Second Amendment in the U.S. wasn’t intended to guarantee that citizens could defeat their own government militarily—it was intended to preserve the principle that power should reside with the people, not the state. The idea that the state should be the only group allowed to wield force is dangerous if taken too far. Even democratic governments can drift toward authoritarianism without safeguards. Civilian armament is one such—albeit imperfect—safeguard.
As for the claim that no U.S. government has ever hesitated to enforce laws due to armed citizens, that's also not entirely accurate. Events like the Bundy Ranch standoff, the armed protests in Michigan, or even Waco show that the government has altered its approach when forceful resistance was present—sometimes backing off to avoid bloodshed, and sometimes escalating. These incidents don’t prove civilian arms are a perfect solution, but they do show that armed resistance can create pause and negotiation, not just chaos.

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The principle of a free society is that peace is not achieved through coercion but through mutual respect and consent. A government that forcibly disarms its people without consent and due process risks becoming the very thing its citizens fear: unchecked authority. Which lets face it- if guns were to be removed from society- it would have to be done forcefully. Yes, countries like the UK and Australia have reduced gun deaths through strict gun laws—but those societies also have very different cultural, legal, and historical frameworks, with a pretty big emphasis on cultural differences The U.S. has a unique relationship with firearms, rooted in a mistrust of centralized power and a legacy of civil liberties. Now moving on to another argument you made - I appreciate the distinction you're trying to make between disarmament as a public safety measure and disarmament as a tool of oppression. It's important not to assume that every attempt to regulate firearms is rooted in tyranny. That said, I think your argument overlooks some key historical realities and simplifies the debate too much for it to honestly be a realisitic one.

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while it may be true that modern democracies like the UK, Australia, or Canada have enacted gun restrictions without falling into authoritarianism, that doesn’t mean the broader concern about disarmament enabling oppression is without merit. Now also all involved deliberate disarming of “undesirable” groups as a prelude to atrocities, referncing ofc the statistics I showe earlier. Saying those examples “don’t count” or are not representative of realitty because they weren’t about reducing violence misses the point: even if the intent is noble, the potential for abuse still exists when only the state retains force. Now im sure we can agree to disagree on this but responding to another point you made -you argued that governments only have the power that people give them. Ideally, yes. But in practice, especially in authoritarian or majoritarian regimes, minority populations often have little recourse when government power is turned against them—especially if they lack the means to resist. Which is becoming more and more common I think we can see. It wasn't just “ethnic oppression” in those cases I mentioned earlier, it was government-directed ethnic oppression, often executed with lethal force. Saying guns "can't make someone do something if they refuse" underestimates the role coercion and fear play in real political systems. On top of all of that- your trust in the GOVT is well, interesting to say the least. The notion that all disarmament policies are benevolent assumes a high level of trust in current and future governments. That may be realistic in some societies—but in others, that same trust has been misplaced with tragic consequences. It’s not fear-mongering to say that rights lost today might not be easy to get back tomorrow.

molten estuary
# tawdry vale A government cannot remove guns from people without the consent of the people. I...

I agree that governments can do a lot of good and that wealth plays a major role in power. But saying a government can’t take away guns without consent just isn’t backed by history. There are many cases—both in democracies and dictatorships—where governments have disarmed people whether they agreed or not. That list of a dozen or so countries I provided earlier sets precedent for that, and if neccesary I can expand on that list. Also, while it's true that the government is often influenced by powerful groups, that’s exactly why some people worry about disarmament. If a small group gains control of the government, and only they have weapons, they can easily silence opposition—even if most folks agree with it.