Neither this nor that. Your options are too simplistic.

Of course, police needs guns.

Some civilians need guns, too. But not many. They should be able to get them, but they have to prove their need. It needs rules set up in advance to define what kind of needs qualify for getting guns. And then it needs laws against gun abuse.

In addition, soldiers need guns. They even need weapons that are much stronger. So there must be boundaries between several kinds of weapons, and normal people cannot get all kinds. And there must be boundaries between what police can do and what soldiers can do. For example, soldiers must never go against civilians, and nobody has the right to order them so, and they can never get punished for denying such an order.

Tell me you're from the US without telling me you're from the US.

Let's have a hypothetical scenario, imagine there was a machine that could be used to murder people easily, even if that wasn't their main purpose anyone could use it in a fit of rage to kill someone, in fact anyone could kill someone by accident with this machine. You would want this machine to be regulated, have people evaluated psychologically, and have them take classes and perform an exam to ensure they won't kill anyone by accident.

Did you think guns? I meant cars. And asking if no one or only cops should have guns is like asking if no one or only bus drivers should be able to drive. There's a midterm that most of the world has already reached, where we require people to go through some process to prove they can operate the death machine safely.

Long guns and hunting weapons sure. I'd ban everything else with heavy prison terms for illegal firearms.

With frequent mass school shootings I would think the only defensible position would be to be for as much gun restrictions as possible, otherwise you'd have to defend a necessary condition to allowing mass shootings to continue.

Absent that condition I think people should be allowed to do what they want without fucking up everybody else.

I am pro gun owner ship... But I don't own a gun due to liability risk being higher than my need to have one. I lived in more rural location that calculus would change.

But American gun culture is pathetic anf thats the root cause of the issues we have with guns. Mouth breathers cos playing operators

Abolishing the police is an overly broad demand that can't really be taken that seriously as an actual, society wide, legislative course of action.

That being said, it might still be worth advocating for as a matter of negotiation, and it's worth abolishing many specific existing police forces and replacing them whole cloth with new professional forces.

And no, gun ownership should not be allowed. It's fucking asinine to think that the world will be a better place when you allow anyone to point and click murder someone on a whim.

Guess what happens when you let good people buy guns? Bad people buy them more frequently, and in greater quantities.

Guess what happens when you challenge your local government's use of force with you own personal cache of weapons? Oh look, every police force in the country just bought APCs and militarized to make that infeasible.

You'll still always need hunting rifles, shotguns, etc. and you will likely need to have special circumstances where someone or their security guard can get a firearm for exigent circumstances, but by and large the idea of allowing widespread firearm ownership for personal defense reasons is nonsense. All of the arguments fall apart when you examine their effects at a systemic level.

USA citizen here (unfortunately)

Guns are designed to kill, or at least cause harm.

I don't think we should kill, or even cause the kind of harm that guns inflict.

∴ Guns shouldn't exist.

I recognize this is a super idealistic approach, but this is just a "general concept of how a society should run."

Yes, I'm taking into account hunting. We shouldn't be killing non-human animals either. Sports is a more difficult problem to tackle for me, I recognize others like shooting for sporting events, and it's not causing harm inherently. Might even be safer than American football, lol.

Having said that, a more realistic approach would be a gun buy back program and a slow phase out of guns for our police or at least a reduction / demilitarization of our police. I have no hope that this will happen, but wow, it'd be nice.

I'm not against gun ownership, but it needs to be regulated.

Compare it to your car. You need to prove your ability with a test, carry your license with you, register your vehicle, and in some places, it must pass an annual safety inspection. We do all this just to get to work and back, but I can stop at one of many stores within 10 miles of my house and buy armfuls of military hardware designed to do nothing but kill.

Handguns, shotguns and hunting rifles are all you need. Small magazines, no burst or fully automatics. Everything gets registered.

Some extra context: There are a LOT of areas in the US that are rural enough that wildlife is a serious threat, and hunting is a sustainable option for meat. It makes no sense to tell those people they can't have one.