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this post was submitted on 19 Aug 2023
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the problem I have with this is that you're basically saying more people should have guns. a significant part of the issue is that there already are too many guns around and accessible and that is statistically going to result in more alterations resulting in shooting. you can talk about how much respect guns should be given all you want. but if more people have guns then there will be more gun violence.
You're not wrong and I mainly don't disagree with you.
But look at it from another perspective.
Those millions of guns in households are largely in the hands of conservatives since gun ownership skews heavily towards white people, males, and those living in rural areas which we already know also skews conservative, within which is a subset that fantasize about having a reason to murder their neighbors over dumb shit like colorful flags or opinions.
Liberals are much more diverse of a population than conservatives which means that when it comes to liberals, women or poc the odds of them having a fighting chance are not great in a life or death situation they didnt create, vs who is most likely to be the aggressors, conservative white men.
My take on it is that the cat is already out of the bag. In a perfect world I would prefer not having easy to operate life-ending tools spread freely throughout the country, but that's not the reality we live in. The best shot we have is to even the playing field so to speak even with the downsides it presents. The current status quo is letting terrorists gun us down with impunity and that doesn't sit well with me.
I disagree and think the core problem of too many guns could be solved the same way other Anglophone nations did it.
However, your argument was very well written, and I appreciate both its intention and its focus on the human.
I'm open to a solution, but it's unrealistic to expect Americans to give/sell back enough of their guns for it to work like it did in Australia.
We have A LOT more guns here, and each one lasts 100 years or more. We could give up 99% of them (we wouldn't though) and there would still be like 6 million guns here.
Demanding people give up their guns would just cause an open civil war. The solution that worked in other countries wouldn't work here because the ideology is different.
I have no faith that what has worked in europe would work here given the political and cultural landscape before us. If it was feasible for america I'm not sure we would be in this situation now.
I wish it was, you and me both, but until that changes I'm simply accepting the lay of the land for what it is and reacting accordingly. We can work towards a better solution in the meantime; these actions and thoughts are not mutually exclusive.
Thanks for the kind words. It is rather annoying being the change I want to see in the world though.
I mean.. I kind of get where you're coming from but "with impunity"? The shooter is now dead. If they weren't dead they'd be either executed eventually or in prison for 50+ years, or more likely, life.
The trouble with this is that like @Liz@midwest.social pointed out in her comment about individual rights vs societal safety, from the perspective of the individual being shot, it is with impunity.
That woman had a right to life and safety and some stupid asshole came along and ended that no matter what justice the shooter rightfully faces after the fact.
Yeah that's fair.
It's a balance between individual rights and societal safety. You have a right to defend yourself from threats to your life and safety by using deadly force. To say otherwise removes the ability for a good chunk of the population to adequately defend themselves. I'm related to plenty of people who cannot defend their life against the average male aggressor without a gun, and you are too. At a certain point size and strength are insurmountable.
But yes, encouraging people to responsibility engage with firearms for self defense use means that there will be more guns floating around, which means more accidents, suicides, and murders. Just as with any other choice for the rules of society, it's a trade-off. How much do we value keeping the right to adequate self-defense as a universal right? How much do we value preventing accidental injury and death?
The classic comparison is cars, simply because the annual death numbers are similar, and pretty much no other reason. But even so, we can draw parallels. Cars have mandatory features that reduce the likelihood of injury without impacting the usefulness or general experience of using a car. So too do guns, with nearly all guns having to meet industry requirements for safety, like being able to handle an overpressure event, and being drop-safe.
Cars have a licensing procedure (though it's essentially a joke here in the US) and a licensing procedure would be fine for guns, so long as it can't be used to restrict access (racist approvals and denials would become a problem in a hurry). My ideal licensing program would be a free handling skills course where failure would require some sort gross negligence, and even then you'd still get racist denials.
And really, this is the fundamental problem with guns: I (and many others) view them as a necessary tool to accessing a highly valuable right. The chances you'll need a gun are very low, but the cost of not having it can be very high. You don't have full control over whether someone else will attempt to take your life, and I don't want to say to a large chunk of the population "we're going to take away your ability to defend yourself in order to save other people who would still have that option either way."
And I want to be clear, I completely agree with the other person. If you're going to bring guns into your life, you had better learn medical skills, social skills, and you had better train with your firearm in somewhat realistic conditions. You should carry pepper spray, you should practice learning how to actually effectively calm people down, you need to learn how to safely store your guns and ammo, etc. Etc.
I get the desire ban guns in order to save lives, but you'd also be endangering others. Compare that with the car analogy, and banning cars would have a similar trade-off. Some people would live thanks to not getting in a car accident, others would die thanks to not having the same level of mobility (which has about a billion knock-on effects for quality of life).
Without regard to the rest of your comment, somehow the lack of guns works ok in Europe and they aren’t all exactly equally sized.
I think your argument sounds good until you look at other countries. I don't know for sure but I'm guessing there aren't more violent attacks on vulnerable people in countries that have gun bans. I think it's possible you're exaggerating the fear of attack without factoring in the overall safety benefits of removing so much gun violence. I'm convinced that if it could be done the benefits would fast out weigh the draw backs.
obviously the reality is that actually accomplishing this task in a country whose identity is so pathetically attached to guns is the impossible task. there's already just too many gun nuts so that ship had long sailed.
regardless, to me there's no question whether it would be better or worse for there to be more people with guns.
Oh, no, it's just that I don't weigh all violence as equal. I have a different value system then you do when it comes to interpersonal violence and that's okay that we disagree there.
To me, removing a potential victim's ability to protect themselves isn't worth removing a potential victim from being attacked at all. To me, they're not a 1:1 trade. You probably disagree, and that's okay, but I place a high value on an individual's agency, to the point where I'm willing to let them live in a slightly more dangerous society to get it.
This trade-off exists in all areas of life, and I don't necessarily side with personal freedom in all of them (I would ban cars if I could), but I do in this area.
so selfishness then. got it. your desires for yourself are more important than what's better for everyone. you can't pretend this is your choice for others. it's definitely for yourself.
Uh, no, it's so that everyone has the ability to make the choice for themselves. We could force everyone to live in padded cells for their own safety, but we both agree that's ridiculous. We're just arguing over what is and is not an acceptable trade-off between safety and agency.
in this case there's only really 2 options: better for society or better for yourself. you can't argue it's better for everyone to have the choice to own killing weapons when it's clear that position results in more gun violence and death.