Guns shouldn’t be a right.
but part of what Tyr and Jeebus seem to be advocating is that it is just to hard to force a fix that too many people fundamentally diagree with (but guns are my American RIGHT). It is true in a very pragmatic sense, but it is also very frustrating to me.
Part of what i do is software development, so i certainly tend to think in terms of ‘that old software is fundamentally wrong, lets replace it!’, and so part of me just screams against the idea of accepting something is guaranteed to yield bad outcomes. it is like keeping on using that buggy product, even though every now and then it corrupts the data. (deleted a way too long and drug out analogy that doesn’t even make sense)
All i can say is, i really do think that guns are the problem, but sure, we can also try some other solutions. But solving peoples desire to murder is even harder than just getting rid of some of the murder weapons…
I mean… you can say they shouldn’t be a right, but you’d be wrong (tee hee). It serves a symbolic and practical purpose by saying that we as a people will not be ruled by tyrants, and giving us the means to defend ourselves against that eventuality. A huge part of American identity is the Revolution and throwing off the mantle of oppression, which wouldn’t have been possible without the average American citizen being able to pick up their rifle to fight for what’s right. I like the idea of that, and considering we’re not yet at the point that we don’t elect dangerously insane senile old white men into the highest office in the land, I’d kinda like to hold onto that kind of right, personally.
Symbolic, yes. Practical, no. Gun ownership would be equally effective against the rule of tyrants in modern America if the guns in questions were made out of cardboard and depended on the owner to make banging sounds with their mouths to signal that the other people should fall down.
Again, I disagree with this. See Afghanistan in the 1980s and Vietnam in the 1960s.
That’s just a case for increasing the costs of a foreign invader such that their balance sheets no longer work out and they withdraw (i.e. asymmetrical warfare). Not really quite the same thing as your own local tyrannical government, but actually a pretty decent analogue to the US Revolution in that respect.
Guns and gun ownership are parts of an issue, sure, but a much much smaller part than the overall issue in my mind (we have more guns in the country than people, but we’ve not all been murdered yet). Tackling that issue is going to be difficult and hard, like you said, but I’d rather go after that than ban guns… and then ban knives… and then ban sticks and rocks… and then ban karate lessons… and then tackle the root cause. Let’s get the hard part done first and I think we’ll find that the smaller problems solve themselves to an extent.
Once the world rids itself of crime, hatred, and violence – sure, that’ll solve the problem. But in the meantime Australia banned and destroyed guns and their homicides have dropped significantly without having to wait nearly that long. Australia still has violence, mental illness, hatred, domestic violence, and even terrorism. It’s quite possible not a single crime was stopped by their gun ban. But the crimes that did happen had fewer victims, which is the entire point of gun bans. Frankly I’d have been much happier if all of our recent mass shooters were just as deranged and criminal as before, but were using one of those cardboard cutout guns instead of real ones. Failing to tackle the root cause never seemed so good.
Australia had almost no mass shootings until the one that prompted their ban. Australia already had much less crime/homicide than the US, even before the ban.
Agreed, they thought their rate was too high even though it was lower than ours. In the US, we get a multiple shooting almost every day. If that was cut in half, or even a 75% reduction, I’d say it was still too high, so I’m with the Australians on this one.
I’d argue that the way the media idolizes mass shooters has a profound effect on the amount of mass shooters we see. The fact that I can name and picture most of these guys the day after they do the deed and I can’t think of even one victim is indicative of this. “Almost every day” is a bit of a stretch, though. =P
I’m all for lowering murder and crime rates. 100%. The issue is when we get into writing off rights, or valuing one more than another.
Australia had no Second Amendment or much of a gun culture as compared to the US. Australia has fewer people and far far fewer guns than the US and the main impact was on suicide rates.
The first couple points indicate how they managed, politically, to pass the ban when we have a much bigger problem and we can’t. As for suicide rates, I agree with your assessment. Mass shootings are not the primary downside of private gun ownership. Suicides, “simple” homicides and accidental deaths are a much worse problem, but they are so common they’re just background noise. It takes a mass shooting for people to consider that there may be a better way.
But, again, banning guns doesn’t deal with the fact that people who want to do these things will find a way to do them. We should really be addressing the fact that there are almost no readily available support systems in the country for people with health and mental health issues, and that these issues if left untreated can cause profound changes in people, not to mention their financial situations. And not even getting into poverty and racism and gangs and the demographics those issues affect. This is all stuff that will not be solved by blanket bans of guns. Not to mention that gang violence rarely involves long guns like we saw in Las Vegas anyway.
Australia is a continent surrounded by water, whereas America has two massive mostly-open borders to the north and south (and if you think the central/south American cartels are making a [literal] killing on drugs right now, just imagine if you just took all the guns from a country with a gun culture like the US has).
Mostly agree again. Most state-by-state regulations don’t work for exactly this reason, and Australia does benefit from geography. But we are the country flooding our neighbors with guns, not the other way around.
The black market on drugs simply increased the price of drugs. If the ban doesn’t work out, maybe an 800% sales tax would do the same thing. I’m fine with that.
I feel like if there were suddenly a deficit of guns in the US, we’d see a lot more people moving guns here from out of country along the same lines drugs are now. Maybe the issue is lessened, but it’s not stopped by a longshot. Canada has this issue right now, even with the laws they have. So does Chicago and other American cities with tight laws (granted, other states have looser laws and that contributes, but the point is that those who want will get).
In the end, like Scandinavia, Australia is a totally different country/culture/environment than the US, and what is good for the goose is not always good for the gander (though much like in Australia, homicides and gun crime in the US is the lowest in 50 years as well).
I didn’t actually buy into the Scandinavia metaphor to begin with–I think how well socialism works isn’t geographically defined–socialism is nothing more than democracy applied to economics, and democracies can make good and bad choices. And wrapping back to the beginning, America’s homicide rate is still higher than Australia’s, which Australians considered to be a problem worth solving, so they did.
You make a lot of fantastic points here, and I enjoyed reading your post.
I obviously disagree with your main point, but it’s nice to have rational discussion about this issue with level-headed people. I love having my viewpoints challenged and having to really defend what I believe in - or change my views.