When the government takes away your rights, you need to do something. Doesnt the left throw rocks, burn cars, etc?
Doubtful. Sneaking up on a guy with a baseball bat and braining him. Stun gun. Cattle prod. Sharp knife. Icepick.
I could go on and on. Serious question indeed :rolleyes:
*We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. *
Dead with bullet holes in all cases. Haven’t you hear you never bring a knife to a gun fight?
Only a really incompetent crook would be taken with those.
If you say so. Guess all those people in Canada, England, and Japan are constantly being shot and killed by people who illegally obtain guns. Must be really unsafe to visit those countries :rolleyes:
I bet the Canadians posting here have to do so from their safe rooms, lest they be shot and killed by gun-wielding intruders.
But here’s the thing though after 200+ years of the 2nd Amendment, where every cop knows the door he’s knocking on for a noise complaint could have a gun nut with an assault rifle on the other side, I wouldn’t fancy my chances of the throwing off absolute despotism even if I did have a big gun stash labelled “to provide Guards for future security”.
If I live in a small town in the US, and Trump tomorrow declares himself a despot and he’s coming for you gun, the local government has all the tools it needs to make that happen. Police officers with military equipment and training, even armored vehicles. Also those small town officers have plenty experience in coming for someone holed up in a house with a gun. So yeah I might be able to take one or two them with me, but the government is getting my guns, the NRA, et al (by ensuring the government has to deal with an armed populace) has inadvertently ensured that is going to happen.
If I live in a small town in the UK, and Ms May does the same, sure I am probably not resisting with huge pile of assault rifles, but the government agents that are coming after might be able to scrape together a handgun or two (there is probably a special operations team in the nearest big city with more serious weapons and training, to deal with gang violence and such, but they will have an awful lot of insurrections to put down) and the small town cops coming for me certainly don’t have decades experience of breaking into houses potentially full of armed insurgents. I would definitely prefer my odds against them than against the sheriffs of Buttfucc, IN, even if I don’t have an assault rifle.
I have no idea of what you are babbling about. In Canada, England, and Japan, it would be just as dangerous to face a *gun armed intruder *with a ice pick as in the uSA.
Now, yes, it is less likely to face a gun armed intruder. But certainly criminals do possess many guns in those nations also, and confronting one with a icepick is gonna get you killed in any nation.
I think this is a bit of a strawman argument. I don’t subscribe to needing a gun for home defense, but the US doesn’t compare to those other countries on your list wrt violence. Even without guns, the US has higher per capita murder rates than all of those, so there isn’t much of a comparison. Of those countries you listed, afaik the only one with a real issue wrt home invasion is England (well, the UK, though England is probably where most of them actually happen). I don’t think it’s much of a thing in Japan, and I doubt it’s a major issue in Canada either. All 3 countries are basically less violent. So you are comparing apples to orangutans.
WRT the meta point though, I agree…you don’t need a gun, and even in the violent US the odds of you needing or actually using one to defend yourself are pretty small.
Out of curiosity, why is it less likely to face a gun armed intruder?
Not really. A recurring theme here is “If you take away our guns, only criminals will have guns” Well, those are 3 countries whose population doesn’t usually have guns. Why aren’t all the criminals there armed? There ARE criminals in those countries, right? Why don’t they have guns and use them to make their crime doings easier? Something in those 3 countries that makes it hard for criminals to obtain guns?
Many nations have less guns per capita than the USA.
Because they never had that many guns to start with. The USA has 300 million guns. The UK never had a big gun culture, with the exception of shotguns, and yes, they are used for crime.
And altho the Uk has far, far less handguns than the USA, it still have a violent crime problem, with 618,000 recorded “violence against the person” crimes which caused an injury in 2015. Vs the USA with 1,247,321 violent crimes occurred nationwide. However, England has 1/10th the Population of the USA, but 1/2 the violent crime. So their Violent crime rate is quite high. Crime is actually increasing in the UK, while decreasing here, leading them to ban some types of knives even. Their murder rate is quite low however. So, it’s a mixed bag.
But in any case, if you were faced with a gun armed intruder in England, you still would have little luck using a icepick to defend yourself.
Those numbers are way off for a variety of reasons (not least the population of the UK is 1/5th of the US not 1/10th!) but it actually is by far the strongest argument against gun ownership…
It is probably correct to say the UK has at least as much violent crime as the US, possibly more, but far few murders. The ONLY plausible explanation for that difference in murder rate is that there are more guns in the US than the UK. If the violent crime rate was also much lower you could just claim it was a just a less violent society, but unless you are claiming that citizens of the crown simply have more respect for human life, the only reason can be that less people are killed because there a fewer guns.
So you are saying you happy to have many thousands of very non-hypothetical, living breathing, Americans killed a year, so that if some hypothetical future despot comes for you can have the honor of dying gloriously in a pool of your own blood.
Now, is that “the government” as in “the faceless bureaucracy sometimes known as The Deep State,” or is that “the government” as in “two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures”? There is a difference.
Maybe the left throw cars and burn rocks. Doesn’t the right detonate homemade bombs in vans to destroy federal buildings?
I wasnt quoting the whole UK, those stats are for England and Wales only, not the rest.
It’s doubtless one part, however there are nations with tough gun laws and murder rates much higher than the USA. England never had much of a murder problem, even before gun laws. (Note that Watson and Holmes carried pistols anytime they felt like it)
Not happy, no. Are you happy that many thousands die each year due to the rest of our Bill of Rights? Murderers let free due to 5th ad issues? Copycat killers due to press? In fact one sociologist wrote a treatise that said that our media “glorifying” mass killers have caused more to sprout.* That the Anarchist cookbook is available to anyone? Freedom of gangs and terrorists and enemies of America to post propaganda? So the first ad has arguably been the cause of all those horrible school shootings. Is that Ok by you? Or should we muzzle the media?
With freedoms- come problems. *
Benjamin Franklin *“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” *
*https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1031&context=engl_176
When mass shooters receive large amounts of media attention, it can turn them into role
models for other impressionable high-risk individuals. As a result, these individuals may be more
likely to commit mass shootings of their own. Although imitators are not always fame-seekers,
there may be some persons who empathize with the original attackers’ claims that violence is a
justifiable response to their feelings of mistreatment and marginalization. Thus they believe have
validation to imitate a similar attack. Others may be attracted to the sensationalized, dramatic, or
powerful ways the original attackers were portrayed by media outlets, and therefore commit
attacks of their own.
Some researchers have found that active shootings, school shootings, and other mass
killings are now so “contagious” that a single incident can increase the risk of future attacks for
the next two weeks, while others have documented even longer term copycat effects. For
example, it was found that the Columbine school shooters inspired at least 21 copycat shootings
and 53 prevented plots in the United States over a 15-year period (Follman & Andrews, 2015). It
was also found that at least 32 attackers identified the Columbine shooters as role models, and atleast 8 attackers who considered the Virginia Tech shooter to be a role model (Langman, 2017).
As a result, it can be seen that many copycat killers are not just copying criminal behavior from
previous offenders, they are following the actions of famous criminals that they may see as
celebrities. The fame and glamorization of these criminals is given to them by the media.
“Two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures” would certainly carry a lot of weight, politically and morally. Certainly if we want to do something like, for example, ban private guns, that’s the way to go. But an important point of the amendment process is that you couldn’t possibly get such legislative super-majorities without a broad consensus on whatever the issue at hand is.
I think the fear of supporters of the right to keep and bear arms is not of “two-thirds of both Houses of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures”; rather, it’s the constant claims from the anti-gun side that, really, there is no “right to keep and bear arms”; that it’s just some stupid thing Antonin Scalia made up, and that if the Democrats could just get five votes on the Supreme Court, then they could overturn that pesky Heller decision. Then the “blue states” could ban guns all they want; but gosh darn it, that “iron pipeline” from the “gun-nut” states that haven’t banned guns means Congress needs to step in and Do Something, and since there really is no “right to keep and bear arms” (see above)…
It’s not merely a “mixed bag”; there’s a direct connection. Attack someone with a knife and they’re much more likely to survive than if you attack them with a gun. So an attack that in the US would end up in the “murder” column ends up in the “violence against the person” one in the UK instead. To pick a notable comparison: shortly after the Dunblane school massacre in which an intruder with a gun killed sixteen people, another crazy person with a machete attacked a school in Wolverhampton. He wounded seven but killed zero.
True, but it is much, much less likely to happen, mostly because 1) guns are much harder to obtain; and 2) as homeowners aren’t armed, the cost and effort of obtaining guns - and the increased penalties if caught - are not worth the benefit to having them for the criminals (and there is some evidence to suggest that, just as homeowners in the US arm themselves as protection from criminals, the opposite is also true). In fact, criminals in the UK are most likely to have guns to protect themselves from (sometimes in a “proactive manner”) other criminals with guns, which is why most shootings tend to be gang-related (although innocents are sometimes caught in drive-bys). Muggers and burglars will have knives in most cases. If you like, it’s a bit like Chris Rock’s joke about making bullets really expensive - the cost of getting and having a gun is so prohibitive that you have to really need one to make it worthwhile.
Speaking of which, the recent increase in knife crime has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with massive cutbacks by the Conservatives in the police budget, leading to losses of over 20,000 officers since 2010. Prior to that the police had been making great inroads into reducing knife crime in the UK. But I guess we have to make some sacrifices in order to be able to afford to bribe the DUP to keep the Tories in power.
I am curious about the “many thousands” that “die each year due to the rest of our Bill of Rights”. When you’re equating “killed directly by guns” with “had access to a book”, you’re already stretching equivalence way past breaking point. But I’m sure any data you would care to present in support of your opinion will be diverting.
I was basically countering the “government taking away your rights” meme by saying that there is a process where the Constitution could change and that the “cold dead hands” crowd would be legally and perhaps morally in the wrong to start firing away at LEOs who are trying to do their sworn duty. I did not mean to say that this scenario was at all likely in the current political climate.
Well, yes…really. The thing is, the US has more non-gun related murders than those countries as well. I suppose you could ask, don’t they have sharp knives in those countries? Aren’t their criminals able to use them? But it’s kind of a silly question in that context. You are pointing to a symptom and ignoring the cause…the US is just more violent than the 3 countries you named. Full stop. Why? Lot’s of theories on that, but the point is even if you take away the guns we STILL have more murders than many of the European or other advanced industrial powers wrt per capita. I’m not convinced that if you magically took away all the guns we’d ONLY have those (more than other countries) death by non-guns we have today, as I think that the root issue is the violence in our system compared to their system, and that guns are merely tools for that violence that makes it easier to happen but isn’t the cause. It would certainly make a difference, but it wouldn’t magically transport us into the same sorts of murders per capita that the UK or Japan has…we’d still be an outlier.