RE: Come and Take It!
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He's not going to listen. He's just going to keep brow-beating you until you make some kind of concession. I thought he was a useful idiot, but now, I'm starting to think that he's just another narcissistic moral busybody. Arguing with such people usually feels like this after a while:
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I'm absolutely willing to listen.
I totally understand why people would want to own single shot rifles for hunting, but I don't understand why someone might need to own a firearm that can fire 60 rounds a minute.... especially now that we know so many innocent children have died in school shootings to those types of weapons.
If there is a real reason why citizens need those weapons that is more important than the lives of those school children I'd love to hear it.
Your failure to understand is irrelevant. Your are building a false choice when you present either owning modern firearms or protecting children. You are also deliberately ignoring the violence necessary to enforce these arbitrary edicts and the dearth of evidence that firearm freedom is the root cause of violence in society.
Why are your fears more important than my liberty? Why do you advocate government violence against peaceful people as a solution to your fear?
He completely missed the point of my arguments as well. When I informed him that countries which restrict access to firearms tend to have a lot of knife crime, he deflected to "gUnS dO mOrE dAmAgE tHaN kNiVeS."
When I informed him that his statistics are lies by omission, he said they weren't misleading.
When I informed him that the majority of gun crime in the US is committed with handguns, he expressed support for banning them as well, not just semi-automatic rifles. Apparently he really liked my brief explanation of Russian gun laws, and fully supports implementing them in the US. I don't. Russian gun laws are a wee bit restrictive IMO, but I could at least live with them, unlike British or German gun laws.
Are more children killed by knives in Japan or England than by firearms in the USA?
Obviously knife crime will rise in the USA if common sense gun regulations were introduced, but I imagine the overall numbers of school children affected by violence would be lower. Is that not a fair assumption?
That assumption is not remotely fair, and you basically admitted that your solution is bollocks anyway: "just keep banning implements until citizens have nothing left to kill each other with, and don't ever address why they want to kill each other in the first place... because that's hard, banning stuff is easy."
I'll put it this way: I hate football, and I hate football hooliganism even more. Should we ban football to stop football hooliganism, or should we figure out the underlying reason that football fans are so truculent?
Look, if pouring resources into mental health services, police reform, low-income communities, etc all reduce gun violence in America, without having to change any gun laws, then great. Let's get it done. Whatever it takes to prevent so many children dying needlessly.
The problem is that the solutions never seem to get implemented either. No one wants to pay higher taxes, or decrease military spending, to pay for those services.
So yes, I'd like to see:
to help decrease the violence in the United States.
The quickest win, to me, is the gun regulations. It would likely have an immediate positive effect, where the other solutions may take years, decades or generations to really improve. Very happy to be wrong on that.
I want to see the government get out of medicine and stop extorting the populace for the "public services" it offers as a facade for funding a military-industrial complex for war abroad and police abuse at home. You want the police to enforce arbitrary "regulations" which require threats of violence against peaceful people.
Again, first principles matter. I advocate for a society where people interact by mutual voluntary consent. Firearm ownership does not violate this concept. In each instance, you advocate for a nanny state imposing coercion instead. Why do you believe this to be a solution?
One of the stats often included in "gun death" statistics is suicide. Japan has a far higher suicide rate than the US despite the absence of guns. You can't legislate away the root problem.
That's not correct:
Source
In your original post you treated banning books, guns and weed as equally insane. I agree that banning books and weed doesn't solve many problems, and is more likely to cause more problems in society.
My objection to your statement is that guns are in a very different category, and that common sense gun regulations would reduce problems like school shootings. I'm not advocating for banning guns at all... but I do think something needs to change to solve the uniquely American problem of school shootings. I think the real solution is a number of things, including increased mental health services and resources for underserved communities, and I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but I haven't seen anything yet that leads me to believe that common sense gun regulations would not decrease school shootings in the USA.
My data may be outdated. Until recently, japan far outpaced the US. same source. However, the point that firearms ownership is not a demonstrable cause of suicide remains. Fixating on the guns misses the mark. You can't argue against my point that violent crime has plummeted from its peak in the late 1980s, with no demonstrable effect from the Clinton-era gun ban. Guns are not the root cause of suicide or violent crime.
Guns are inanimate objects. Drugs are merely substances people choose to injest. Books are filled with ideas. People may choose to use any of these to endanger themselves or others. Bans and restrictions are the wrong response in each instance.
I don't advocate for government violence against peaceful people.
Is a child in the United States of America more likely to be killed by a firearm wielded by a US citizen... or by government violence?
Aight, Ima post this again:
Also, have you ever heard of the "public school to prison pipeline"?
When Australia banned semi-automatic rifles and handguns in 1996... how many people were killed in that process? Was it more than the 35 dead and 18 injured massacre that prompted the regulations?
I have heard of the public school to prison pipeline. The USA needs to do a lot more to help its population avoid poverty. The USA is the world's richest country but for a huge slice of its population the opportunities are bleak. I would love the USA to put more resources into helping those communities. It would likely lift the economy of the entire country.