Where do you guys live that you are in such constant dire danger of a kill or be killed situation…
Actually, I think that private carry for self defense (if you are properly trained) is a perfectly cromulent choice to make, but I am skeptical of any right being exempted from reasonable “time, place and manner” rules. OTOH neither am I a fan of rules so draconian that they mean you can’t do it at all.
As to “if I see someone unarmed getting his ass kicked I will not intervene”, that is just using common caution, as most of us do not have the training to handle that, armed or not. HOWEVER to my ears the thought “if he has chosen not to be armed he has put his trust in others” steps into the realm of victim-blaming. Living in civilized society means NOT being in survival mode 24/7.
It’s not that hard a question to answer…unless the answer you might give is one you don’t want to hear. It’s really very simple-if there were no public access to firearms for a year do murders and/or suicide rates go up, stay the same or go down? What do you think?
*All *guns? That would be a very weird year. Remember, now the Police don’t have guns, nor security guards. Initially, a sharp decrease. But crooks would quickly adapt with knives, zip guns, machetes and baseball bats, etc. The number would creep back up, but I dont think in a span of a year it would reach current levels. It may never reach current levels, but after a few years it’d get close.
But now that you have your magic wand out, let use try two other things:
Eliminate poverty. The major cause of violent crime. I think that would keep murders and suicide down forever.
or
2. Vanish all the violent felons from the earth. I think we’d have a decade or more of extremely low violent crime.
Suicide rates wouldn’t change. There are better ways to kill yourself with no risk of pain. Guns are a just a big “fuck you” to the people left behind.
Murders by criminals would go up because everybody becomes a soft target and the gun is replaced by something else.
Hey, finally, a platform we can all be for… though it would take a *long *time to come about minus magic wand. But true, taking out the guns is addressing the symptom and not the root disease, but sometimes that’s all you can.
Alas, you can’t even get people to agree on how to eliminate poverty w/o getting bent out of shape about how that also interferes with their *FrreeEEEduUHMMM! *so instead we get the crime all the same, and then arguments as to whether guns help fight it or make it worse.
Yeah, yeah, the ravening hordes are out there about to pounce on us all if not for the guns. Please.
In any case except for specific places of high incidence (e.g. Chicago, Baltimore) in the USA in general murder is way down from historic peaks. What we have now instead is the phenomenon of the mass shooting occupying the public mind – which is why so much attention is given to a weapon class that makes up a minority of total crimes: because the crimes when it *does *show up are so prominent.
We’ve always had guns. Nothing has changed in that respect. The question to ask is what has changed in regards to social behavior?
You can debate that all you want. What you can’t debate is the inability of police to protect people in a timely manner. Can’t be done. Then the debate is whether or not citizens are accorded the same right to defend themselves as the police.
But I do know that states with very strict gun laws don’t necessarily have the lowest murder rates nor do states with very lax gun laws necessarily have the highest murder rates
There would be an adjustment period where society re-engineers itself - two or more generations at least, I guess. Sacrifices would have to be made. But sacrifices are made in wartime too.
I’m not saying it’s worth it or even desireable. Just saying that it is possible if you (as a people) wanted it done.
I’m not sure that’s been formalized in law, but it seems wrong to me. If a stranger is in your home, you might reasonably presume them to be an intruder. If a stranger approaches you on the sidewalk, you may not (absent other evidence) reasonably presume them to be an assailant, even if they get physically closer to you than the presumed home intruder.
As it stands, I could actually buy a gun from the black market for about 25% of the cost of buying it from the gun shop. I would probably be dealing with a stolen gun, or maybe it was pawned off for drugs or something else. As a criminal, I could have easier access to guns than as a law abiding citizen, and that is specifically because of how easy it is for a law abiding citizen to get a gun, and how little responsibility they are asked to keep of it.
Should it be harder for law abiding citizens to get a gun, and should they act in a way that reduces the chances that they accidently misplace it, then it will be harder for guns to get onto the black market, driving up the price.
With guns being as cheap an easy as they are to get, a criminal will get one. You restrict the flow of guns into the black market, and gun prices will rise. Instead of every petty criminal who wants to hold up a store having access to a gun, and suddenly, you are being asked thousands of dollars for a black market gun, do you think that that will have any effect on the chances of criminals using guns to commit crimes?
We have NEVER had the type of stringent gun control I speak across the whole of the US. For the last time, stringent gun control in a single state of course will do no good.
Where did the idea come from that the 2nd amendment and others was handed down on a tablet to Moses? So what if an amendment is gutted? We can add 'em, and we can take 'em away. I know, I know, in theory.