People do not resort to organized violence unless they are violence-prone to start with or are extremely oppressed. The American people are coming under increasing attack from the kleptocrats, but remain well-fed and can still afford smart-phones. Even at the height of the Great Depression, most of the killing in the Harlan County War was perpetrated by capitalists, and their hired and government thugs, not by the oppressed mine workers. Americans who do not already own guns wouldn’t be disposed to use them anyway.
The civil strife scenario I envision is already happening to some extent. A tyrannical violence-happy leader thwarted by Constitutional controls may encourage his followers to use violence in support of the leader. If civil disobedience rises in response to Trumpist malfeasance, expect the short-fingered sociopath to call on his supporters to arm themselves and “restore order.”
A gun is a tool for killing people. A shovel is a tool for digging holes and an axe is a tool for cutting down trees. Do you see the difference?
Personally I have no issue with Americans and their guns. Shooting each other in self defence is the national hobby! The problem is that Americans are uncivilised at home and then they take it abroad.
By all means kill each other in the name of self defence and entertainment, but keep your mindless violence at home.
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But in fact a gun is not a tool for killing pople. Very very few guns, like one in 10000 ever kill a person. Many guns are designed for killing animals. Many guns are designed for target shooting (and would be quite poor at killing a person, some target pistols use the .22 short, which is hardly deadly), many guns are designed for skeet or trap shooting. Many guns are sold specicially for collectors aand are rarely shot.
I find all of the arguments about whether a gun is a “tool” or what it was “designed for” to be red herrings.
The primary purpose of firearms is to enable a human to project physical force from a distance, full stop. They are the result of thousands of years of the evolution of humans’ ability to do this, ever since the first caveman realized that it was safer for him to throw a rock at his opponent from a distance than to engage him in hand-to-hand combat. Other results of this evolution are artillery and missiles. Firearms are the smallest and most portable of such devices, and so are the ideal choice for individual people to use, for the purpose of projecting physical force from a distance.
Someday there will eventually be a better device. Maybe there will be something that can remotely stun a person from a distance and physically incapacitate them for a temporary period of time with no possibility whatsoever of harmful effects, is reliable close to 100% of the time, and can be fired quickly multiple times just as an automatic rifle can. Police and private citizens will use it to defend themselves from attackers; some bad people will use it to stun victims so they can bludgeon them or drag them off somewhere and rape them or whatever…and some people will continue to use old-fashioned firearms even when such a device exists. It’s all part of the evolution of technology and the human ability to manipulate the environment and each other.
Any sports involving shooting at targets are an incidental offshoot of the concept of firearms, regardless of whether certain models of individual firearms may be specifically designed for target shooting.
What the gun debate boils down to is simply, “to what degree should individual people be entrusted with the ability to project lethal physical force?” I personally believe that certain people should be and others shouldn’t be. I don’t believe that the ability should be limited to law enforcement officers and the military, hence I believe in the right of individuals to possess firearms. I also believe such individuals need to be vetted properly, and that the penalties for illegal possession of firearms should be extremely strict. But it has nothing to do with what the firearms are “designed for.”
Hey look, I’m not against Americans and their gun worship. Every time an American shoots another citizen that is one less American. That can only be a good thing.
The problem with Americans being uncivilised is that violence at home leads to violence abroad. There is nothing wrong with you all shooting each other, just leave your violence at home.
It’s reasonable and Constitutional to license qualified individuals to own weapons of any kind for which they have a demonstrated need. There are currently similar processes in place for explosives.
For a hunting rifle, you first get a hunting license then a permit for a suitable hunting rifle. Same for competition weapons. Of course you need to demonstrate that you can safely store and transport the weapons. This would be inconvenient for those who want to hunt doves with an antique Gatling gun, but that’s not a show stopper.
In addition there needs to be legislation establishing the responsibility of the owner and perhaps the manufacturer. The owner is ultimately responsible for the weapons’ use - even if it is “stolen”.
The Constitution does not allow any and all people to walk around with any and all kinds of weapons. If you have a need for a weapon and can own it responsibly, you should be able to obtain one. This is possible well within the bounds of the constitution.
To answer the OP - there’s no real reason why guns should be legal, and plenty of countries ban them and get along just fine. But as long as gun ownership is in the Constitution, it’s in the Constitution, and should be upheld until or unless someone repeals it.
Are American values that much different to Nazi Germany? A demagogue has risen to power on the promise to beat up and diminish minorities. Free speech is under constant attack while the white house is represented by Goebbels like figures, Huckerbee Sander and KellyAnne Conway. The US has long been a police state with regards law and order as it is.
Trump voters know Trump is a conman and a thief. They voted for him because they wanted him to rape and pillage the rest of the world on their behalf.
Trump is too stupid to have any aspirations in the way Hitler did. His instinct is to rape and plunder. Whether he and Hitler had the same motivations doesn’t really matter. What they wanted to do is the same.
No sniping just pointing out that your “accepted fact” that when “a person attempts suicide and fails they tend not to try again”
So do you have a cite or not?
You would probably be extrapolating wrong. Firearms are a popular form of suicide in the USA because they are reliable and available. Our suicide rate is pretty average for wealthy industrialized countries. Those countries have an incredibly low gun suicide rate because, well not as many guns floating around. But they jump off of buildings and hang themselves and poison themselves, etc. enough to make up for their lack of access to guns.
The US has the highest suicide rate of any developed nation with the exception of Japan and France (roughly the same). Obviously to call the US a developed nation is being loose with the truth.
The US murder rate is 15 times that of Australia (a civilised nation).
Depending on your definition of “developed” you could also include various former Eastern European states: Romania: 11.7; Czechia, 13.7; Poland, 22.3; and so on. The Baltic States seem especially gloomy: Estonia: 18.9; Latvia: 21.7; Lithuania: 32.7.