> every country should have nukes if they want to be safe
This seems analogous to the idea that every household should have guns if they want to be safe.
This seems analogous to the idea that every household should have guns if they want to be safe.
Going with your analogy, this would be the same as if police basically ignored all home invasion/trespassing laws such that the only houses that criminals entered were in fact those of undefended home owners. In this scenario, it would be demonstrated, by this policy, that yes home owners need to own guns to be safe.
To your point, if you don't want a world where it's safer for home owners to own guns, than you need to ensure there are policies in place to create a world where that was true. The lesson of Ukraine and Iran is that, if you don't have nuclear weapons, your sovereignty is always at the mercy of nations that do.
A world where every country needs nuclear weapons to remain sovereign is similarly undesirable (on a larger scale) to a country where every home needs to have guns to be safe. However we're on a path with nuclear weapons where that is unfortunately not the reality we are creating.
Relations between sovereign states are fundamentally anarchic. There are no world police. The UN and other international institutions have little or no real power, and the Non-Proliferation Treaty is only enforceable through kinetic action by other countries when it suits their interests.
Second strike weapons are in some ways a holdover from Cold War strategic thinking which it's sort of acknowledged probably overestimated the penchant of any side to engage in a first strike.
The practical reality of nuclear war planning has generally been that no one will accept even a single city-buster landing - and no first strike option is really reliable enough to guarantee you didn't miss one.
So achieving monopoly on violence first. Which requires forcefully disarming all opposition just like what is happening right now. Is the Sovereign hypocritical because they arrest and potential kill people they don't like but they do not others to do so? According to many mainstream political theories, not neccessairly so.
The matter of fact is that if a major power really wants to destroy a smaller power, there's nothing a smaller power can do even if they develop a handful of nukes, especially at the cost of their economy. Much better just to work diplomatically with said major powers so that interests are aligned rather than demanding a absolute respect for sovereignity which does not exist in reality. So then the question is, why can the Shah or the Gulf States work with Israel and America, but not the Islamic Regime? Even worse so, it's one to turn a cold shoulder that America or Israel wouldn't care much, but to actively fund proxies that destabilize other allies is just warranting a response.
And why a divorced guy living in his house be an issue with your friends or neighbors?
Why is “divorced” relevant. Maybe he should be the one worried about NIMBYs.
I made a profile of a person that fits the profile of somebody that might be a little angry at society. Clearly I've struck a nerve here, and maybe thats something worth interrogating.
For what its worth, there are plenty of guys I know who are divorced, and it was probably the right decision, and they're great people. Most marriages end that way, in fact. It doesn't mean the "divorced jaded man who lost his social place in the world, struggles to find kindness or peers, and lashes out" is a stock character that will go away. It's a real problem
Oh god… please fix me.
Anyways it read to me like an obvious generalization. My bad if you weren’t. After all, some of your best friends are “x”.
And furthermore most gun crime is committed by people who do not legally own the firearm being used. [2] I'm loathe to link to that site, but this is an issue that is poorly reported and so it requires exploring a web of data sources, which they actually competently do, on this issue at least.
You can also kind of sniff test this claim by considering that homicide rates are much higher in urban than rural areas, yet urban areas have dramatically lower gun ownership rates.
[1] - https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crim...
[2] - https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2018/mar/12/john-faso/...
You should take a refresher on statistics and the difference between correlated and causative
Problem is it is impossible to combine: - responsible storage of firearms - immediate availability of firearms anywhere at home when faced with hostility
Also most gun violence is domestic so having firearms at home do not solve a problem but creates it.
Curiosity is the number one problem with kids and guns, and that's because we hide them behind a mystique and don't make them understand. But talk to any redneck kid, and guns aren't a big deal, because they've had the mystique removed through education and familiarity.
Also people can be responsible for years until they aren't. As much as you believe you couldn't hurt someone you love, there is no way you (pr anyone else) can be 100% sure that reality will never change. If there was a way to know, people would be stopped or would surrender their weapons before they commit crimes.
That said: lock up your guns. Your mid will probably survive a stove burn.
In most case, it is the same countries that give adequate training to their cops, a not-so-surprising correlation.
When it's rare, then it's easy and reasonable to take a highly idealistic approach. When it's frequent you have to deal with uncomfortable practical issues like whether an officer should prioritize your survival, or their own. There's a line where heroics turn into suicidality, and that's largely driven by frequency.
We’ve seen the footage of the police brutalizing peaceful protestors beating them with clubs, riding over them repeatedly with horses.
The police in this country are woefully undertrained compared to the rest of the industrialized nations.
It takes more time and training to be certified as a hairdresser in most parts of the US than it does a cop.
Turns out, making yourself a more dangerous target works to an extent.
> All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
You know because it’s hard to make a case about being a country of rights, due process, law and order if you don’t extend that to the people within it’s borders.
The blue cities are enforcing the Constitution as sanctuary cities are legal laws of those states. The red states and federal government are violating it.
There’s a supremacy clause, and it’s quite clear.
That's a lie. They broke the law when they entered the country illegally. Then some of them committed more crimes.
Just like you don't need a judge to determine if someone drives without a driver's license.
The states don’t have any sovereignty to make their own decisions about immigration.
Putting aside ICE tactics, if their immigration status is not legal, then by definition they are not law abiding citizens.
Unless you are privy the status of any planned or ongoing ICE operations against criminals, you have no idea what they are doing in that regard.
Law enforcement at all levels needs checks along with better direction in carrying out their duties. However, allowing people to continue living in an immigration limbo is not a solution. Sanctuary cities leave illegal immigrants unprotected.
There are plenty of guns in LA, and any ICE agent or cop would be dumb to assume those they are arresting are unarmed because “it’s against the law”.
The red cities don’t have sanctuary city rules in place, so local law enforcement helps ICE and the arrests don’t make the news.
But if law enforcement is not only not doing their job but actively threatening you: well, I guess 2A won this time.
What is "the police" on the level of countries? There is no majority that agrees that, e. g., the NATO can serve as the police. It feels like on this level, we live in an anarchy with only very few actors who don't really want to live together. So maybe nukes are an option, although I don't like it.
You're naive. The police (or whatever you call it) is meant for inward force projection of the state. Your security is not the main concern.
Besides the police works too slowly to truly protect you when SHTF. Sometimes even a minute or two is the difference between you being alive or dead.
This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home. I'm countries with virtually no private ownership of guns, it is extraordinarily unlikely to be in life threatening danger in your home.
> This is especially true when you are likely to have guns in the home
Citation needed, because I highly doubt you're correct.
Conversely, if people with guns think there's a decent chance you have a gun too, they'll be terrified of any move you make and have a high chance of misinterpreting any gesture you make into violence. So there is much higher tension.
Of course, there is a possibility that you're being attacked by a crazed murderer - in which case you're probably going to die either way. But this happens vastly, vastly less often that robbery.
You can take a look at crime stats from even the poorest European countries. The proof that lack of gun ownership in no way causes more violent crime is evident. Everything I just added above is an explanation of why this happens, but the fact it happens is not up for debate.
I was once involved with a project that returned determination of land ownership from people's physical custody to the courts and the resulting drops in assault and homicide rates (for the entire country) was in the double digits over a period of months.
If you re-read what I've wrote carefully you can observe I didn't refer once to my lived experience.
A safe community isn’t one where people are held in check by police. People are not roving around thinking “oh I’d break and enter and murder and rape but for the fact a police officer might shoot me.”
People in such a community lack guns but they do have things like a working public health system, decent education, daily encounters with other people that are positive and so on.
The threat of police shootings is not what makes a safe society safe.
Constructive, open and fair trade is the equivalent at an international level. Cooperative and trusting. Not staring down the barrel of each other’s guns.
Except this isn't borne out in the data. Look at deeply conservative places where guns are literally everywhere, and you'll see very low crime rates compared to cities with strict gun control.
And why? Well, as a criminal, I'd be loathe to try something when there's a good chance the victim is armed.
In your perfect community scenario, a single armed criminal would wreak havoc, completely unopposed.
Why do Canada and Europe have dramatically lower violent crime rates despite having a mostly unarmed population?
Grew up rural Alberta with rifles around the house all the time, in plain view. For shooting game. Not a word was ever uttered about "defending ourselves" with guns... From who?
Hell, we left our door unlocked when we left the house unless it was overnight.
Good grief. Nothing is sadder than people valorizing social/cultural breakdown.
"Peace, order, and good government."
I don't lock my house or my car habitually, never had a problem, never felt the need to keep a weapon either, but I know plenty of people that live in the city that have been robbed or assaulted and do feel the need to carry though. I can't really blame them for not relying on police.
[1] - https://ovc.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh226/files/ncvrw2018/...
Although on this topic I'd also add that urban areas have a similar issue. Criminals know that the overwhelming majority of crime goes unpunished, while people have a reality deluded by shows like CSI. Homicides, for instance, have the highest clearance rate, by far. And it's 47.5%. [1] Vehicular theft has the worst at 6.6%. If you end up with your window busted out and everything that's not strapped down stolen, there's no real point reporting it to the police unless necessary for an insurance claim because you're never getting that stuff back, and the thief is never getting caught.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearance_rate#In_the_United_S...
Source: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2017.3040...
That's also not necessarily the point I'm making. Suppose you are in a society where a small part of people are bad actors, for whatever reason. They will break and enter, murder, and rape. You want to protect the rest of the society against these bad actors. You can now equip everyone with weapons so they may defend themselves. That also enables the bad actors to use said weapons because we don't know who really know who is a bad actor (at least not the ones that didn't commit any crimes yet). Or you give weapons only to a small part of society, where you enforce strict gun laws.
The alternative is to reduce the number of bad actors and this is, in part, fulfilled by the conditions that you are describing. But how do I reduce the number of state leaders that are willing to shoot each other? I guess it's what you are saying, namely constructive, open, and fair trade. But we're not really making progress in that direction it seems.
The differences are so extreme it's a waste of time to discuss the analogy further.