But if you're a police officer? You get an exemption! Apparently, the state has no regard for your safety as a consumer, and allows you to buy whatever you want...
The reason is because of perceived threat. If very few people are armed, people are more likely to act a fool because they don't fear the consequences from npcs. Risk taking along these lines increases as does the physical delta. But as the probability of random npc folks carrying approaches one, suddenly there is a very real chance that acting a fool carries permanent consequences.
Consider the active shooter in a church that was stopped in Texas by a worshipper concealed carrying. One person stopped a tragedy. https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/man-who-took-out-church-gu...
And now consider other situations that tend to be heated where folks overreact: road rage, etc. Folks may be less likely to escalate things when they believe the other party has the ability to respond with deadly force.
This same hypothesis applies to mugging. While the mugger may get the drop on their victim, others nearby that are armed may be able to appropriately intervene to stop the initial assault.
Allowing the general public to not only be armed but carry the same stopping force as the baddies reduces the imbalance, leveling the playing field.
The supreme irony lies in the fact that this statement is completely reversed from the real state of things: it is a pathologically impolite society that feels it necessary to arm itself, against itself. Unhealthy tolerance and passivity toward mundane, petty assholery and dominance-seeking behavior is going to destroy this country.
For reference, more people kill themselves with guns in the USA than are killed by other people with guns. If gun violence were truly a huge problem, you'd think that suicides would be outnumbered by gun murders, but they're not.
The numbers look big because it's a country of 330 million people, but ultimately the number of people killed with guns is pretty low (and it's something that can actually safely be completely ignored if you remove gang-on-gang and drug trade related violence, which is the vast majority of firearms deaths). For example, Obama killed more children with drones in 8 years than children were killed with guns in the USA in 20 years. (In both cases we are talking about absolute figures <1000.)
The "USA has a gun violence problem" is one of those "everybody knows" memes, however, so good luck convincing anyone to the contrary.
Because that's the thing with guns: they make killing easy. They also make suicide trivial. I know people who have struggled with depression and survived multiple suicide attempts. If they had access to guns, I don't think they'd be alive right now.
The numbers don't just look big because the US is a large country. Corrected for population size, gun violence in the US is still at least an order of magnitude larger than in other countries. I know of no other country where schools practice shooter drills.
> For example, Obama killed more children with drones in 8 years than children were killed with guns in the USA in 20 years. (In both cases we are talking about absolute figures <1000.)
That does not seem to be even remotely true. Not for any part of that claim. Well, maybe the part about children killed by drone strikes being less than 1000, because I can't find figures about that, but the number of civilians killed by drone strikes in the last 20 years seems to be 10k-20k.
According to [0], 31780 children have been killed by guns between 2000 and 2020. According to [1], the number of children dying from firearms is rising and now larger than the number of children dying from cars or cancer.
Your entire suggestion that people killed by guns is not really a problem sounds incredibly callous about human life.
[0] https://www.prb.org/articles/31780-reasons-to-care-about-gun...
[1] https://www.kff.org/mental-health/issue-brief/child-and-teen...
Sorry, but your rhetorical trickery over people's lives is sickening.
I had a retail shop in the community and also lived next to a bar and a property where they would congregate and some would roll into town and stay there. Very tense environment. When I first moved there I had no idea that it was like this.
At that point I armed myself and made the decision I was not going to take any crap off anyone.
Thankfully, no one gave me any shit but I have plenty of more stories from my time there.
The only choice for me was to arm myself. The cops were scared shitless and were unreliable for other reasons. One of the gang members had already opened up on one of the cops with an AK-47 in front of my store. He lived because it jammed.
What advice would you give someone moving to an unfamiliar area to avoid this?
I got robbed several times while I was there and I ended up in jail myself. Most of this stemmed from drama emenanting out of the opioid and heroine epidemic around the early 2000s.
Everybody being armed ups the stakes for everybody, and I'd expect criminals to be more likely to shoot in that situation. And having guns for everybody, but only the best guns for criminals, sounds like the worst idea of all.
Best of all would be to make it harder for criminals specifically to get guns by having every gun and gun transaction registered and verified. Every loophole is going to be abused.
From this framework, people (men, largely) were expected to provide for themselves and their families. Food, shelter, “retirement” (or putting provisions in place for old age), and yes, personal security from threats, both from other individuals and from any future possible oppressive government, as well as being responsible for being personally armed to repel foreign invaders.
In modern times, being armed either in or outside the home (or place of business) gives us a few things. It continues the principle of being responsible for one’s own personal security, rather than relying on societal pressures for bad behavior (!) or dependence on the timely and enthusiastic response of local law enforcement.
I think we would agree that part of the responsibility for firearms ownership is safe storage, mental and legal preparation for an event, and continuous training. With rights come responsibilities. Not everyone will choose to own a firearm, and that’s ok, each person should be allowed to make their own decisions.
Law enforcement efforts are reactionary, not proactive, the negative effects of which are exacerbated by out failed criminal justice system, the full fruits of which have been on display since the 80s, depending on who you believe.
Simple possession of a firearm does not make every (legal) defensive use a quick draw contest or result in a hail of bullets. There is a deterrence affect in locales where lawful weapons carry is legal. FBI statistics, depending on year, will tell us that “civilian” display of a weapon will stop a threat upwards of 93% of the time, without any shots fired. When the “civilian” fires a weapon in self defense, the average number of shots remains less than 3 (although trending upwards..) Law enforcement fires far more rounds per encounter, with the resultant display of (excessive?) force and possibility of downrange consequences.
There are people who would rather draw their weapon to defend themselves and / or their family than depend on the rationality of a person threatening them, who is statistically likely to be in an altered state of mind, mentally ill, or has been released from the criminal justice system un-rehabilitated (or any combination of these).
In a country that can’t even keep drugs out of prisons, as well as other failures to enforce public safety, trying to restrict firearms from being possessed by anyone is not a reality.
As the public failures to enforce existing laws continue to be documented and published, most citizens develop a jaundiced view of the law in general. I think it was societal and family expectations that reinforced morality, not laws, and substituting laws for morality is folly also, given who writes and influences the laws, as well as the tyranny possible by governments selectively enforcing laws.
As you say, everyone being armed does up the stakes, but it ups the stakes for the right group of people - those people who would prey on others.
Americans seem to not believe me when I say my fear of being shot is zero, but it's literally true. I don't even recall if I've ever even heard a gunshot outside the vicinity of a firing range.
There are some criminals with guns, but they almost exclusively use them against other criminals. I have zero concern that someone breaking into my house will have a gun, and everyone I know who has ever actually spotted someone breaking in to a place has had the criminal run away immediately rather than initiate any kind of violence.
You can always just give the muggers everything, including your gun.
You can't barter back your (or your family's) life, and putting the massive asymmetry in the benefit of the doubt of a known assailant is maddeningly naive to a point of near literal cuckoldry.
> asymmetry in the benefit of the doubt of a known assailant is maddeningly naive to a point of near literal cuckoldry
Don't try to impress people with words, impress with ideas.
Having a weapon on yourself in preparing for the worst case scenario. "Hope for the best and plan for the worst", you know.
Of course given that muggers expect you might be armed, you might as well be. But I'm still not convinced they actually make you safer; lots of Americans get killed by their own gun.
That's just your perspective and talking point. Parent was clearly trying to say that there may be a situation where you DO need it to protect yourself or family from being killed/raped/etc.
Here is California's Attorney General explaining it:
https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont...
> “California’s commonsense gun safety laws save lives, and the Unsafe Handgun Act is no exception,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Accidental shootings are preventable. The fact that children under five are the most likely victims makes these accidental gun deaths even more tragic and inexcusable. As weapons become faster, more powerful, and more deadly, this risk only increases. Flooding the marketplace with unsafe semiautomatic pistols that do not meet necessary safety requirements poses a serious threat to public health and safety, especially for children and young adults.”
> The UHA was originally enacted over two decades ago in response to the proliferation of low-cost, cheaply made handguns that posed consumer safety risks. Under the UHA, the California Department of Justice (DOJ) compiles and maintains a Roster of Certified Handguns that meet certain public safety requirements. Generally, a handgun must appear on the roster to be sold by a California firearm dealer.
> When the UHA was first enacted, revolvers and pistols were required to have safety devices and pass drop safety and firing tests at independent laboratories in order to be added to the roster. [...] The UHA has since been amended, adding additional safety requirements for semiautomatic pistols including that a new semiautomatic pistol must have:
> A chamber load indicator that indicates if the pistol is loaded; A magazine disconnect mechanism that prevents the pistol from firing when the magazine is not inserted; and Microstamping capabilities that allow law enforcement to trace a shell casing to the pistol that fired it.
So this law is ostensibly intended to protect people who buy handguns and those around them. But cops are exempt, because... cops never drop their guns?
I think there's a real case to be made that the Californian law is duplicitous and is actually intended to reduce the availability of handguns in California, but that's not the point being raised here. The point is that for some reason Californian cops are exempt from from the law. That's like exempting cops from the lawn dart ban, it makes no sense.
1) the really problematic people won’t care
2) the ‘normal’ people will just be left defenseless and be preyed upon with fewer worries by the #1 cases.
3) which incentivizes the crazies to arm up more so they’ll have leverage.
Notably, this is exactly what happened with nuclear proliferation bans, if we’re being honest.
Assuming it’s not actually possible to control the area physically anyway. Singapore or NZ? Hey maybe. 99% of the rest of the planet? Good luck!
In fact, are there any countries that have implemented gun controls that have had this problem?
For countries with major issues who do have strict gun control? Off the top of my head, Mexico, Brazil, South Africa. Plenty more if I looked, I’m sure.
You have had your head in the sand for the last few years.
unarmed teenagers being hit with pepper spray for violating a prude curfew by gun-wielding tyrants is an issue to a more civilized, reasonable person.
I've never met or seen a Neo Nazi in my entire life, wondering how one ends up getting attacked by one.
The other incident with a real gun I was referring to was a man pointing his revolver at me while I was picking up his daughter for a date, talking about how a man has to protect his daughter. At that point, I wasn't even scared so much as I was concerned what I was getting into. But since he didn't directly threaten me I was told that it was "negligent use of firearms" at worst, and didn't want to push it.
At least having the option to defend myself would make me more comfortable standing in front of my friends trying to take a bullet for them. Made it easier to recover getting sexually assaulted knowing I could forcefully stop him if it truly escalated to a point where I had to.
And I’m not asking what would make you feel better, I’m asking if you truly believe that producing a gun in the situations you described would have made you safer?
I agree that drop tests and other ND tests are appropriate. Although I would prefer a market based solution here instead of regulation.
Some things can be below your personal risk tolerance, but be well above the acceptable risk tolerance at a social level.
If enough people buy unsafe firearms and then are subsequently jailed for negligence, or the companies are sued out of existence, I would imagine the safe version would organically emerge.
You should also consider looking in to the data about what actually happens to your chances of being shot once you buy a gun. It’s pretty stunning.
Although there are other laws that do illustrate what you are saying.