Yeah, but they are convenient whipping boys. You felt compelled to slam them for being conservative and religious. Lots of them are white, too, so all things considered they are a group it is safe to demonize and attack here because few will defend them.
It’s also true that around 503 million people (population of the EU) mostly get through their lives peacefully, nearly of of them without guns by their side. Most of them are also white and officially religious.
Statistically, the lack of guns mean that if you choose to go through your whole life armed, in the USA, or unarmed in the EU, your odds of not getting shot are significantly better (by a factor of 10) in the EU.
That’s the crux of it. I don’t see how any amount of arguing can change basic reality. To take the side of the gun owners is ignorance, “it’s taking longer than we thought” to fight it.
I understand the desire for a gun. I have friends that are gun owners. I’ve thought about picking up one myself. I know I’d *feel *safer. But it doesn’t mean I’d *be *safer.
OK, the top ten Nations for Gun Ownership are:
USA, Serbia (EU very soon), Yemen, Switzerland, Cyprus (EU), Iraq, Hungary, Sweden (EU) Norway (EU).
The USA has a murder rate of 3.8, ranking it 121st among 218 nations, or dead in the middle. No EU nation has a murder rate 1/10th that, in fact the only major nation to have that low a Murder rate is Japan (which has a quite high suicide rate, however). As a whole Europe has a murder rate of 3.0, less that the USA, sure, but only slightly.
So, not by a factor of 10 or even close to it.
I stand by my statement. Suicides do count, as a gun gives the potentially suicidal feeling person an instant and certain means to commit suicide. Many of these individuals in fact would not have died at all had they had to go to greater lengths to kill themselves. (same thing with murders : sure there are lesser weapons than guns, but they are harder to use and not as certain)
This is why the UK has considered banning sharp tipped kitchen knives over 4 inches. With guns not readily at hand, people fighting in arguments that escalate to violence often grab kitchen knives to kill each other with. With “knife control”, people would only have 4 inch sharp tipped knives and blunt tipped longer knives and would have a greater difficulty killing each other.
This actually is the crux of it. From a factual, public health level, it is the correct decision to remove sharp knives, guns, tall bridges without nets, and other easily used methods of death, both suicide and homicide. When you make interventions like this, common sense might suggest people would just find other means to kill each other and themselves at the same rate, but this is not what happens in the real world.
“common sense” tells Americans who vote they need a gun to protect themselves from a whole range of threats (robbers, the government, terrorists, serial killers, etc) but it is not what actual factual evidence says happens on a large scale.
That’s the problem, and why America has so many guns. People believe they need em, and their elected representatives respect that wish. People are being collectively ignorant, many of the posters in this thread among them.
Those numbers are mostly imaginary. No International Agency tracks “Gun deaths”. They do track Homicides.
And, the fact the UK is gonna ban s"harp tipped kitchen knives over 4 inches":rolleyes: **is exactly why gun control doesnt work. **
Does that ban on guns include all the celebrities who have armed personal bodyguards?
No, of course not, because those useless airheads are somehow “important.”
No, the poll suggests otherwise.
You’re conflating two ideas. You’re pretending that an unwillingness to obey laws in some extreme situations confirms your suspicion that those people were part of the criminal class all along - that they’re the people causing crime and violence in society now. Which is ridiculous.
To use an analogy, if I asked people if the first amendment were repealed and religion was outlawed, would you give up your religion? And overwhelmingly they’d so no. At which point, if I were you, I would say “I’ve always suspected religious people were criminals all along”
Having one unjust law that people are willing to violate if it comes to that does not make them part of the criminal class of people who damage society, as you mean to imply.
Well, now that you mention it …
It’s a crap biased poll with loaded answers.
If the 2nd Amendment was repealed, would you willingly give up your guns?
The 2nd ad being repealed would not, by itself- be any reason to give up a single gun. There would have to be enabling legislation- in every state- and also a SCOTUS dec that took away our right to security.
So, there’d be absolutely no reason at all for a single gun to be turned in just by the repeal of the 2nd Ad. And many posters made that clear, they said NO because of that.
Poorly written loaded poll.
AGAIN with this? Most posters can see the spirit of the poll, even if I phrased it poorly.
If the 2nd Amendment was repealed, AND a federal law outlawed private ownership of guns was passed, would that change your answer? I’m guessing not.
Here is the simplest answer. If the second amendment was repealed and the government demanded all firearms be turned in than it would be an indication that the government was becoming exactly the sort of tyrant the constitution and in particular the bill of rights was created to protect against.
So the question you’re asking is should we give up our ability to defend our freedom, our peace, and our children from Stalin and Mussolini, from Mao and from Pol Pot because they manage to pass a law.
You know those guys died years ago, right? I doubt they form much of a threat to your children today.
They were not the first nor will they be the last. There will always be men who would be willing to sacrifice your freedom for their own ambitions. To pretend otherwise is to ignore the lessons of history.
:rolleyes:
You live in Bangkok and roll your eyes at the idea that there are power-hungry men who have no regard for your freedom?
Human Rights Watch report on Thailand.
You may or may not agree that personally owned weapons are part of the solution, but scoffing as you just did betrays an appalling ignorance of reality.
:rolleyes:
Okay, I see what you are doing.
It would, but you didnt pose your poll like that, and many people said exactly that.
And this answer again proves your goal and bias in posting this poll.