There does not seem to be much discussion of gun rights anywhere on this board. (sarcasm smiley here)
There does seem to be a wide variety of opinions across the spectrum.
Here is a hypothetical scenario, based in the United States.
The ideal situation for a small number of gun rights advocates seems to be no regulations on firearms whatsoever. They resist any form of regulation, believing that this is simply a ploy to move to the eventual restriction/confiscation of guns.
So let’s posit that there are no restrictions on handguns whatsoever, anywhere, at anytime. There are no regulations about open carry, concealed carry, training, purchasing, owning or storing. Individual rights are paramount. Further, there are no restrictions on who can possess or use any kind of automatic, semi-automatic rifle weapon of any kind. ( For this example, lets say that children under the age of 14 are not allowed to actually purchase a firearm without parent’s permission.)
Further, lets say that EVERYone in the United states owns and carries a firearm of some sort (probably mostly handguns). They carry a firearm in public places at all times, at all occasions, or keep it close to hand while at home.
Question; What would be the eventual outcome of such an “ideal” society? Some would say that “an armed society is a polite society”. Would the incidence of violent crime plummet, now that everyone is armed? Would people naturally become more careful, therefore accidental shootings would decrease?
If you think that this ideal society might have problems, what restrictions should be placed on people’s absolute and complete right to bear arms?
My WAG is that some crimes, like armed robbery and rape would decrease- especially rape. But fistfights and road rage would more commonly devolve into a deadly gunfight.
Overall, it might be a wash violent-crime-stats-wise, but since two angry morons shooting each other vs a rape is a “win” in my book, morally it could be a improvement.
However, with all the people we have now, there’d be to many innocent bystanders getting hit.
Robert Heinlein wrote a interesting book about this.
Lots of additional crimes result from people shooting each other over misunderstandings. Some criminals may be dissuaded from criminal acts but the rest will become more violent, shooting anyone that resists. The police will be overloaded investigating shootings. It will be a lot easier to shoot anyone you don’t like because you say they tried to shoot you, they’re armed, just pull out their gun without leaving prints and leave it nearby their dead body. There will be a sharp reduction in the number of housepets and critters like squirrels. Lot’s more holes in road signs. School taxes will drop because of the increasing number of dead children who find their parent’s and older sibling’s guns.
My WAG is that it wouldn’t be that much different than it is today, assuming you put all this stuff into play now…I think you’d have about the same level of violence we already have, since I don’t think that criminal types have any issues getting guns and that people who want the things generally have them.
If you are positing that all of this was always in play and there were never any gun restrictions, then I’m not sure…most likely there would always be local constraints, as there were in the old west where your guns would be kept for you as long as you were in town and returned only when you left (at least, I THINK there were towns like this…though perhaps I’m remembering a movie where that happened and conflating it with realty :p).
I would restrict access to guns by people who are most likely to commit crimes with guns. Most of this is covered by the current concept of prohibited person.
If we had no further restriction on gun ownership and there was a high rate of gun ownership, I suspect there will be an increase in road rage type killings but it is not at all clear that we would have significantly more of these. There are plenty of jurisdictions where anyone who is not a prohibited person can (and frequently do) own guns and these places do not have especially high incidences of road rage killings (they might be higher but it is nothing like the bloodbath that some people seem to be predicting).
In my hypothetical, everyone has a firearm and carries it daily. This would be the only way to ensure complete protection of the person at all times.
Also, in my hypothetical, there could be no local restrictions on guns at all, because this would be in violation of the constitution (as it is interpreted)
In this hypothetical, this would not be possible - if you attempted to do this, you would be in violation of the constitution, and it could simply not occur. This would be seen as a slippery slope on the way to complete confiscation. You would be called a “gun grabber” and would be ignored in this hypothetical.
In this hypothetical, the NRA would be considered to be gun hating hippies then.
And people would not be forced to carry firearms under a law… but it would be expected of them. Society would frown upon anyone who did not have a gun with them at all times. You’d likely not be served in a store, or may even be spat upon by nice (armed) old ladies if you were not carrying.
However, those who are properly diagnosed and medicated would certainly be able to join the rest of my (hypothetical) society, and carry firearms with them everywhere they go. To do otherwise would be to invite a discrimination lawsuit.
The suicide attempt success rate is unlikely to change very much at all.
Guns are not unique in being an effective means of suicide. Hanging yourself and jumping in front of a train are pretty effective too. Our country is awash in guns and yet our suicide rate is pretty mediocre. If guns were causal in any way, you would think we would have the highest suicide rate in the western world and yet we are dead fucking average.
It sounds like you think we will have a tenfold increase in our suicide rate (which would give us the highest suicide rate in the world by a long shot) if guns become widely available. There are currently jurisdictions where guns are everywhere. Why isn’t the suicide rate in those jurisdictions ten times higher than the rest of the country?
How many accidental gun deaths do you think occur in this country every year? Its ~300 (and there is at least some evidence that many of these are actually suicides). If one third of the country owns guns and we tripled the number of gun owners to 100% then I guess we can expect triple the number of gun accidents to about 1000 gun deaths per year. So I suppose a tripling of accidents is a dramatic increase. More guns = more gun accidents.
Why the fuck would criminals do what you propose? Carjacking is attractive only because overpowering a weaker person is an easy way to steal a car. Killing someone and looting the corpse is not the preferred method of robbery in even the most well armed jurisdictions. Using a slim Jim and hotwiring a car is much easier than killing someone to take their car. Seriously, WTF?
Significantly? Its not like we are in a gun free society. All the criminals already have access to guns. Why would giving more law abiding citizens more access to guns cause significantly higher death rates?
Then really it could be whatever you want it to be, since it would be so fundamentally different than the US as it is (or any country) that basically you could speculate any direction you want and be equally valid. Could be more violent, could be less depending on whatever assumptions you want to make. A society that would spit on or not serve someone who isn’t carrying a gun, however, probably has serious issues and going to have a lot of built up anger and fear. One that expects every citizen to have a gun at all times is also going to have some emotional and fear issues that go beyond anything I can think of.
