How do you feel about guns?

Tiassa,

I hate to say this, but you are be more than a tad overreactionary. The way you paint gun owners in a always negative light is neither good debating nor entirely truthful. Yes there are incidences where people have done wrong. Notice it is the people, not the gun. It could have been as esily a knife, club, bow, or car that was the weapon. Painting people who wish to retain the right to bear arms as paranoid is harsh and uncalled for. Many people live in violent areas. Yes the answer is to clean up the area, but that takes time and you have to defend yourself until then. Some town do not have their own police force. Some places you have to defend yourself from wild animals. Carrying a concealed weapon is no different than buckling your seatbelt or learning CPR. You are preparing for an event you pray never happens. The type of event that you have to act quickly. One that comes whether or not you prepared.

 

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It's about the discussion as much as the reality: Do I believe all gun owners are really so paranoid? No. I've known one in my life who wasn't. In fact, he got rid of his gun when he decided it made no real difference. Does the gun advocates' rhetoric describe the state of mind of all gun owners? I would hope not.

In the last couple weeks, Seattle area news outlets have reported on a few incidents worth mentioning:

- A mentally ill man was shot to death recently after attacking someone on the street. Apparently his victim was armed.

- A boy of 13 or 14 brought an assault rifle to his school, threatened students and the principal, and discharged the weapon into the ceiling. He surrendered to police without exacting a blood toll. How did this weapon come to his hands?

- A teenager in the Seattle area is currently charged as an adult in his brother's killing. The shooter claims it was an accident. He traded for the gun.​

The first is such that gun advocates would point to the incident as proof of the need for guns. I won't explore at this time the question of why nobody else intervened; news reports suggest there was plenty of time. The second and third incidents, however: how do we, as a community, work to prevent the illegal transfer of weapons? That such a transfer is considered "illegal" is in itself gun control. Do gun advocates really mean to legalize such transfers when they say gun control is unacceptable?

If I shot everyone who I perceived to threaten me over time, the death toll would be huge. Unlike a neighbor downstairs, I do not find that the next-door neighbors throwing a party on a Saturday night is reason to load up the Glock. As someone who has had two separate cars stolen from me, I do not think my car is worth killing for. To the other, I once knew a stereo theif who caught some buckshot in the ass after trying to boost a sound system from a VW Beetle. And an acquaintance of mine claims to have pulled a gun on a guy who was "standing to close to his car".

When people assert that "gun control is unacceptable", as has been variously stated in this topic, what does that mean? Let's start with the exaggerated: does the right to bear arms include nuclear weapons? Am I being ridiculous? How about grenade launchers? Machine guns? (After all, semi-automatic, properly used, is at least as effective as automatic.)

Is it really that gun owners are so afraid that their primary argument revolves so heavily around perceptions of threat? "Don't penalize the responsible gun owners," some say. Well, if fear is the primary motivation behind the anarchic argument of so many gun advocates (and some of our posters), I say, "Don't penalize the civilized." After all, why should we, who survive daily without the comfort of knowing we have sufficient firepower to kill anyone who looks at us, have to tiptoe around the paranoias of such a massive corpus of insecurity? There are plenty of people who understand that cooperation in society is the best reason for willing participation. Coercion and fear only multiply, and have a cancerous effect on society. If the gun advocates' arguments didn't rely so heavily on fear and coercive force, perhaps those arguments would make sense.

The security of a free state, for instance, is not simply reinforced by arming the population. The security of a free state is reinforced by not having grenades exploding everytime someone stands too close to your neighbor's car, and certainly by not having the city nuked every time a prowler tries to break into a home.

The single-minded attitudes of the gun-advocacy argument are so prevalent in my personal experience that, yes, gun owners are, generally, creepy. They do, in fact, seem very frightened by damn near everything under the sun. Charlton Heston feared the National Guard. My neighbor fears our Hispanic neighbors. The Columbine killers feared jocks and status freaks. The rationality of anyone's actions (or the irrationality), when those actions are dictated by fear, has much to do with the rationality of those fears.

My response to Neildo guessed after a human cause for his distorted perception: I do not attribute his conclusions and questions to simple stupidity or malice. There is a human factor involved, which can be wildly erratic. And yet his arguments echo so many others I've encountered that I do, indeed, wonder if this represents a common malady among those gun owners who speak up in such irrational advocacy.

That nobody can offer any other theories, except to blame "liberals" at large?

What, then, would you like me to think? Just accept whatever irrationality is put before me?

 

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I don't know anyone who is against common sense gun control. However, a lot of people here want to see them banned outright and that's just flat out wrong. I know many people who say that current gun control laws are a joke and don't work and are only there to hunder law-abiding citizens, and doesn't do a darn thing to target the ones who need to be targetted and that's criminals.

So far people have said people shouldn't be able to buy a gun outright. Well, there's already a 10 day waiting period for one. Some people said you should have to be licensed for a gun and have training. That's already mandatory in many states for handguns and for concealed carry permits, it's even more strict and also requires renewal skill checks like with driver's licenses. In many states, it's required that a gun be in a safe, not some little wooden cabinet or under a bed, but even then some kids have used a brute force to bust it open and get the safe even on a heavy duty one as criminals usually go in and out and can't spend that much time crackin it but a kid with his parents at work have 8 hours to do so. Some people have said criminals shouldn't just be able to buy a gun and that background checks should happen and background checks already happen. People say felons, mentally ill, and other types shouldn't be able to buy a gun and they can't. Some people have said you shouldn't be able to just trade a gun to someone and you can't.. it's illegal and you need to have a licensed firearms dealer do the legal transfer otherwise you're breaking the law.

Most of what people have said should happen are already law so what's the beef? Can't you realize that laws don't work at stopping criminals? Does it hurt that much that your ideals are failures? Laws are about restricting society, not criminals. Using laws to stop criminals is all in vain. It won't stop people that want to kill someone. All of those things can easily be bypassed by a criminal so in essence all you're doing is targetting law-abiding citizens and not the ones causing all the trouble. A criminal can easily go buy a gun in any bad part of town just as they can drugs. All of those laws are a joke because it doesn't stop them one bit. You guys don't realize that if someone wants to kill someone, they will. You can't stop crime, you can only help deter and defend yourself against it. You must realize that guns are a tool, not a crime itself. By getting rid of guns, you do not get rid of crime. When Australia and the UK banned their guns, their violent crimes didn't lower, it actually went up. Hey, less people to defend themselves adequately and guess what? Gun crimes still happen in those countries.

So again, I don't know of anyone who's against common sense gun control, but so far what you have all come up with are nothing but failures. Just like your utopian dreamworld you all try to achieve, it seems good on paper, but it just don't work when it comes to reality. You can even ban guns and they still won't be gone. Laws only affect law-abiding citizens. Ban guns and criminals will still have em and use em in crimes. Go ahead and say "but we'll know who the criminals are" but that's not so. Why not? Because police don't arrive until the crime happens and usually they get away with it. Reality isn't a Hollywood movie like Minority Report where you can instantly know who is hiding a gun or when a crime with a gun will happen beforehand. What are you gonna do in the meantime, do a house-to-house search looking into everyone's homes for guns? Wow, what a great idea -- not. Heck, criminals will just bury em like they already do. With literally hundreds of millions of guns in this country, good luck getting rid of em.

All I gotta say is that our gun crime rates aren't that bad when you take into account the millions of citizens that own guns here and the cache that is more than twice our population. With regular violent crime outnumbering gun crimes big time, I'll glady take the risk of gun crimes or accidents happening while having the opportunity to defend myself with one.

Afraid of reality? I don't call it being afraid, I call it common sense safety. Are you so paranoid and afraid of getting in a car accident you wear your seatbelt? Are you so paranoid and afraid of getting your house robbed that you lock your doors? Are you afraid and paranoid that you won't go walking alone in a bad part of town at night? It's common safety. If crime were a rare thing, then you can call it being afraid and paranoid, but in cities, crime is a regular occurance. I've already mentioned the things I have to deal with on a daily basis. It's not like I'm in some ivory tower saying people should be entitled to guns without a threat ever happening to myself where I'm preaching theorhetic bullshit but instead I'm preaching reality.

Tiptoe around and insecure? Speak for yourself.

And yeah, most people know that cooperation and being nice and all that lovey dovey stuff is the best way to go. But guess what? That don't always work. Again, welcome to reality. You are aware that hundreds of thousands of crimes occur each year, yes? Stuff like that only works if everyone abides by it. Until I don't have to deal with crime, I'm gonna play it safe as I do with all things in life. Here are the crime stats for 2005 in the U.S., assuming they're true from http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

Population: 296M
Violent Crimes: 1.4M
Property Crimes: 10M
Murder: 16k
Rape: 93k
Robbery: 417k
Assault: 862k
Burglary: 2.1M
Larceny: 6.7M
Car Theft: 1.2M

A total of what, almost 20 million crimes in one year? That's friggin' crazy! That means about 1 out of 14 people have one of those crimes happen in them each year. Count yourself lucky! I feel sorry for the people in the big cities that have this crap happen to them more than once! You can all kiss my ass telling me I shouldn't be able to have a gun to defend myself from the ungodly amount of crimes that happen all the time. A dreamworld is all you guys live in.

No, maybe if you left your liberal dreamworld and came to reality our arguments would make more sense for you. See above statistics.

While I'm not one that blames the liberals for everything like right-wing nuts do, I do blame liberals for our massive crime and gun crimes.

Why?

Liberals don't like the death penalty so criminals remain alive.
Liberals find prison to be bad so criminals don't serve long sentences.
Liberals prefer rehabilition which doesn't work so those criminals come back on the streets.
Most criminals have been in prison MULTIPLE TIMES therefore commit multiple crimes and acts of violence due to all of the above.
Liberals are the leaders in most big cities and that just so happens to be where most crime is centered.
Liberal leaders have banned guns in most major cities yet gun crimes still happen there at an ungodly rate because criminals do not follow laws.
Liberals have put the safety of their citizens in jeopardy due to the gun bans as it means law-abiding citizens have unadequate means to defend themselves against criminals becoming easier targets.
Liberals have wrote most of the anti-gun laws and they're all jokes based not off how a gun operates, but how it cosmestically looks.

Shall I continue or no?

Good, you better not have because I already gave real life examples for my need for guns. Distorted perception, ha! Crime happens all the time around where I live. I've already been victim. I've already saved people before. Most of my friends are cops and we all have to pack because they're targets. They get confronted all the time by criminals they've written tickets for or have busted. We have to leave the fun we're doing on our days off if we spot a guy because a confrontation will happen. It's even worse when one may be alone with their wife as that really sucks big time having to evade everyone because cops are so hated. What you don't realize about gun owners is that we don't go looking for trouble. We don't resort to our guns as our first line defense. We try and avoid confrontations to begin with. Surely with is us being so "paranoid", you'd have known that. We only use guns as our last line of defense.

But hey, what am I talking about? This world is a peaceful utopian society. This is all stuff that never happens and we like to make up. Crime doesn't exist all because you've yet to experience it therefore nobody else ever needs to defend themselves because we all live the same lives as you.

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- N

 

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I though the point of the laws in Australia and the UK were to lower the number of gun related deaths in particular mass murder.

I think you've been reading too much of the Baron. Who is "you all"? What utopian dreamworld on paper? Even if every single gun on the planet was gone tomorrow I don't believe too many would be claiming that as utopian.

When theres people like Baron Max carrying concealed weapons around I'd be feeling a little insecure

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The foam coming from your mouth says no

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You anti gun people make no sense. If someone wants to kill you, they don't have to use a gun. At least with a gun, people know you were murdered. Some of the other more sophisticated ways aren't as traceable, but I guess you all prefer that people poison and accident each other instead of shoot each other.

You just don't get it. The murderer instinct is in the blood, it's not in the gun.

 

You anti gun people make no sense.

You must want people to resort to poisoning people and accidenting people, you want people to resort to less detectable methods.

At least when a person is killed by a gun, you know they were murdered. If you are for gun control, you still arent anti violence, or anti murder, or even anti criminal, you just prefer the criminals be smart. All you are going to do if you removed all the guns on planet earth, is empower the chemical and drug dealers, and people of this sort.

Let me guess, some of you own stock or something in drug companies? A bad pill can kill, a drug overdose, food poisoning, bad water, bad air, I mean why do you worry about guns? Do you really feel more secure or do you just fear dying from a bullet more than all the other more likely forms of death? You people don't check or secure your food, or your water, and you fear guns? Do you eat at resturants?

Ultimately, murder is murder, death is death, it does not matter how it happens.
The killer instinct, the murderer instinct, it's not in the gun, it's in the blood. People are born with the ability to easily kill people or not, and it does not matter what weapon the person has, anything can be used as a weapon. In prisons theres no guns, but people find ways to create weapons. Most murders arent gun murders, but poisoning is still the top form of murder, yet you still fear guns?

Why don't you outlaw pesticides, chemicals, and other harmful chemicals that could be used to poison people? Why don't you make people get a license before they can purchase any harmful chemical, or in fact why not have drug control, chemical control, pesticide control, and just fully protect people from the environment?

Protecting people from guns in my opinion solves NOTHING, what you really have to do is protect people from people.

 

What I don't understand is why, anti-gun people seem to not even care if they live or die. I mean, at least the gun nuts admit they are insecure, people like you want to be naive and pretend like theres a guardian angel protecting you.

Your halo will not protect you. So theres no gun violence where you live? There's still murders going on, theres still people dying, whenever people are dying, there may be people being murdered, you have to track every statistic. In general, murder happens, because there are more aggressive people in this world than passive. Yes a lot of people are passive, but do you realize and admit that you are defenseless? Will you admit to being a completely defenseless sheep?

I don't know WHY you feel safe, the world is not safe, it has never been safe, people have been killed over and over, murdered over and over again, in all sorts of innovative ways, and you feel safe? Life is moment to moment, you may think you are safe while actually being in danger. You may be safe at this moment, and in danger the next. There is no way to calculate safety, the only way to be safe is to be paranoid or join a gang.

In prison, only two people survive. The first kind, are those who are paranoid as hell and who don't trust anyone, but who stay to themselves and hope to avoid a confrontation. The other type are the people who join a gang, and who have strength in numbers.

If you are neither of these people, theres absolutely nothing to prevent you from being gang raped, abused, and bullied to death.

Read both of these links before responding.
http://www.wikihow.com/Deal-With-Being-in-Prison
http://www.ipt-forensics.com/journal/volume9/j9_3_6.htm

 

Are you also against insurance for the very same, exact reasoning? If not, why not?

Baron Max

 

Amazing ...just fucking a-fuckin'-mazing!!!! You're arguing for gun control, you want to take guns away from people to use and enjoy, yet you know so fuckin' little about gun laws and restrictions?! What the fuck???

New York City, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburg, Philadelphia, ....the list goes on and on and on. Take Washington ...guns are illegal and the purchase of guns within the city is tightly controlled ...yet Washington has one of the highest rates of gun violence in the whole fuckin' nation! Yet you, James, want to pass another law to control guns in Washinton??? And you think it'll stop the violence in Washington??? Hmm?

Get an education, James, instead of relying on your own intuition ....which ain't workin' too good on this issue!

Baron Max

 

Do you wear seatbelts when you drive, Bells? Why? I mean, surely you don't plan on running into another car, do you? Or do you plan on someone else running into you? If not, why wear the seatbelts?

Do you carry insurance on your car, Bells? Why?

Baron Max

PS - your little scenarios were pretty funny, but idiotic.

 

But all-in-all, what I can't get through my head is .....why are you gun control advocates trying to punish the good guys because of the stupid actions of a few demented individuals? Does that make sense to you? Really?

Should we punish all Muslims because of the actions of a few violent individuals? Should we punish all the kids at school for the actions of a few bullies?

Should we take away all of the freedoms because a few people use those freedoms to commit crimes?

Baron Max

 

Why does the 'right' to own guns = freedom? I would worry that people carrying guns might restrict my freedom in that I could be confronted by someone carrying a gun at any time. Even if I were 'free' to carry a gun the other person could be a better shot than me.
I feel more free knowing that people aren't free to carry guns in my country and those that do illegally usually end up shooting each other. There's always the danger of becoming caught in the cross-fire but I could just as easily be mown down by a car.

 

Common Sense?

Common sense gun control: look, we can agree that it would be wrong to ban guns outright. Part of the problem I perceive with the dialogue is that the anti-liberal diatribes tend to ignore those of us who acknowledge on the one hand that guns have a place in society and, to the other, that there are problems deriving from guns or any other lethal power that can be possessed.

And perhaps you don't know anyone who is against common sense gun control, but part of the discussion in this topic you are objecting to comes in response to sweeping statements to the effect that any gun control is wrong.

How should someone like me consider those messages? Their prevalence, perhaps motivated by an "anti-liberal" ferocity, is striking: it is such irrationality--e.g. that even what you and I might be able to agree is "common sense gun control" is wrong--that casts gun owners and advocates in such a morbid light. When a "common sense" gun advocate rushes to the defense of guns in a discussion that involves extreme limits, that common sense gun advocate paints himself in the extreme colors.

Why does a common sense gun advocate get so frustrated by inquiries into the nature and motivation of extreme and irrational rhetoric? Why should a common sense gun advocate make this an issue about general labels like "liberal" when such labeling conveniently casts aside any progress that could be made through more specific, considerate, and rational discussion?

If you want to respond to me, for instance, with generalisms about liberals, the discussion will stalemate at best. As to what's the beef, inasmuch as the existing laws are concerned, a law in one jurisdiction is not necessarily a law in another. If we're seeking a free and secure state, safe from threats by government, other nations, and also our own internal criminals, what we're really seeking is freedom from the effects. Why object to the killer? Because someone is dead. Why object to the accident? Because someone is dead or hurt. Why seek to reduce gun violence? Because someone is dead or hurt. The corrosive effects on our community and collective strength are the problems. Meeting corrosion with corrosion accomplishes nothing positive.

So where do we go from here?

 

The confusion you describe is a matter of your own perception. People care about living and dying. But if we spend our lives worried about living and dying, we're not really living in that broader sense that applies to both high literature and lowbrow insults, such as, in the case of the latter, telling someone to "Get a life".

Think of those single-minded politicos who make abortion or taxes or anarchism their central, living motivation. They're often as dead-eyed as the so-called Joneses who strive for their 2.4 children, 3.7 televisions, 2.5 computers, the minivan, the riding lawn mower, &c. How can you find any happiness in life if everything you see is an image of fear, loathing, or even simple discontent? Does the rabid Marxist shout, "To the proletariat!" at orgasm?

Earthquakes, comets, hurricanes and floods? Yes, we need to give these thngs some consideration, but if we cower every day in fear of these things, if we spend our lives waiting for God, are we really living? Are we not, in the case of terrorism, doing the terrorists' bidding if we spend every day afraid of when and where the next strike will come? So I vote, I write, I talk about it with friends every once in a while, but I'm not going to freak out about terrorists. A Muslim has as much right to be a complete idiot as a Christian or atheist or witch (ad nauseam). Just because a Muslim in my community says something stupid doesn't mean he's a terrorist. Just because the people downstairs throwing the party are Hispanic doesn't mean I need to load up a Glock. I wouldn't shoot someone for my car. Should one of my best friends have shot her father for his improprieties? The horror of that situation is its own; how would she deal with the knowledge of having killed her own father?

There have been a rash of burglaries lately in Seattle. Thieves are entering and exiting quickly, targeting small items like wallets and purses. Having guns in the house won't do much for anyone; keeping your wallet or purse somewhere other than the kitchen counter, however, will. A home security system will help more than a gun: how can you shoot someone if you're asleep and don't know they're in your kitchen?

I have a daughter going on four: her capacity for mischief is amazing. For me to have a gun in the house that could be used effectively in case someone broke into my home would, in my specific case, present a greater threat to my daughter's safety than crime. I do still have a good knife for stabbing people, but it's so deeply hidden that I'm not going to reach it unless the criminals take their own, sweet, loud time coming in the front door. In which case, I can still call 911 and expect the intervention of my neighbors long before I could put the blade through the bad guy's left eye.

It's not that I don't care about living and dying, but that I'm not going to spend every waking second in fear. I'm not going to see every human face as a threat. They're human, just like me. If I want to gamble, I'll play the damn lottery.

 

Huh, how in the heck so? Perhaps if liberals didn't give low sentences for crimes such as robbery and assault having to only serve 4-6 months but actually had some real punishment, they wouldn't be able to get out so early to go ahead and commit more crimes. Thankfully some states have a three-strike law, just too bad it doesn't always apply, but here's a big huzzuh to those that enforce it.

To me, they're one and the same thing. Prison isn't supposed to be nice. Prison isn't just supposed to be a place where you're kept away from society and that's it where you can still live a regular life, hell no. Life should be hell there and you should pay for your crimes. And there's a reason why there's minimum security and maximum security prisons. I don't think someone that stole a measly piece of bread should be put in a maximum security prison. I don't think some lil hacker should be in a maximum security prison. But someone who killed some people, violently robbed a bank, raped women and all that? Hell yeah they should be! And they shouldn't have a light sentence only having to serve a few months or barely 2-4 years for it either, even if they have been good in there!

Nice theory, in theory, but I guess I'm the exception to most rules as I live at the beach.

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What's the biggest reason for my position? I deal with reality. I see the crime that happens in my area on a daily basis and have also been victim to it. I'm not living in some ivory tower talking about theorhetical possibilities of what crime could do but rather living it.

Sorry, I shouldn't have said most major cities, but rather most major cities that have most of the crime, which would kinda be almost all major cities tho, heh. And yes, I'd say it's unconstitutional but there's not a damned thing we can do in most cases. Thankfully this past year in San Francisco, they tried banning all handguns but it was barely shot down, so to speak. Here's some other tidbits according to wikipedia:

* New Jersey adopted what sponsors described as "the most stringent gun law" in the nation in 1966; two years later, the murder rate was up 46 percent and the reported robbery rate had nearly doubled.

* In 1968, Hawaii imposed a series of increasingly harsh measures and its murder rate, then a low 2.4 per 100,000 per year, tripled to 7.2 by 1977.

* In 1976, Washington, D.C., enacted one of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Since then, the city's murder rate has risen 134 percent while the national murder rate has dropped 2 percent.

* After Evanston, Ill., a Chicago suburb of 75,000 residents, became the largest town to ban handgun ownership in September 1982, it experienced no decline in violent crime.

* Among the 15 states with the highest homicide rates, 10 have restrictive or very restrictive gun laws.

* 20 percent of U.S. homicides occur in four cities with just 6 percent of the population - New York, Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. - and each has a virtual prohibition on private handguns.[2]

* New York has one of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation - and 20 percent of the armed robberies. Even more troublesome is the fact that the places where gun control laws are toughest tend to be the places where the most crime is committed with illegal weapons

* After Canada passed a gun control law in 1977, the murder rate failed to decline but armed robbery and burglary, crimes frequently deterred by gun ownership, increased.

* Violent crime accelerated in Taiwan and Jamaica after handguns were banned.

I'm also trying to find my list of U.S. cities that have gun bans but can't find it at the moment. I try searching in google and the majority of links that come up is the stupid San Francisco gun ban issue as if it were spammed.

Yes, that's why 1.5 million crimes are prevented each year thanks to people and their guns whereas only half those crimes are commited with guns, eh?

Uh, that's not a generalization, but fact. I've made some generalizations about liberals in this thread, but that statement isn't one of them. Here's an example from wikipedia (or you can just read state law):

In regards to the features of a gun being illegal and how little difference it makes, here's an example. This is a rifle I'm waiting on to be released, the Beretta RX-4. Due to the "only one feature" limitation where two features makes it an assault weapon and therefore illegal, this is the combination of "accepts a detachable mag" and "pistol grip".

In other states, the top and bottom pic are legal (detachable mag and pistol grip) yet illegal in California, and the 2nd pic is the picture where it's legal in California because it has no pistol grip. The reason why the laws are silly is because it doesn't make it any harder to kill someone. Most of those laws are purely costmetical. Look at that second picture which is legal for California and tell me how it's any worse off than those other legal guns in other states?

Picture in link below:

http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/9799/rx4stack6cu.jpg

Woof.

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By your questions in those scenarios shows how little you know about guns and the training involved. You just don't flat out try and grab your gun instantly as that's foolish. Everything in life is about opportunity. Here's an real-life story and example from a guy I know on another forum since he goes into good detail about the encounter. And yes, it's true as he was in the paper and all. I'll make another post of it since it's a lil long.

- N

 

Here's that story I was referring to in my previous post in regards to defending yourself with a gun and how it's about opportunity, not going out with guns blazing the moment you get assaulted:

Edit: In that first link is a thread about real life encounters so there's some other good reading there although this one has always stuck with me due to the amount of scary detail.

- N

 

It's not the media. The world is just dangerous. Just because most people are killed by someone they know, it does not mean they should be less paranoid, it means the opposite, they should be more paranoid.

The reason Americans think like this is because we are insecure, we are insecure because we know more intimately how fragile life is. Cancer is the #1 killer, next to heart diseases, life is fragile as hell, and the basic theory of everything, is to fight to survive, for food, for water, for air, for everything, because nothing is guarenteed and nothing is free.

It's a competition to survive, you know it, I know it, and the only difference is you'll try to pretend it isnt in public while competing just as hard in private, while Americans are a bit more blunt about it, which I guess is more rude, but it's ultimately true.

America is the most competitive place on planet earth. We have some of the richest and some of the poorest people in the same country, we have ghettos here and we have mansions, and the only way to survive here is to compete for everything.

Police are generally good here, but there is a limited number of police officers, and even if most are good, there arent enough of them. We have a FBI here, and many in the FBI are good, but once again these are government entities which depend on government funding, while criminal entities essentially have unlimited funding. Banning guns would be as bad for America as banning alcohol once was, when prohibition started, the Italian mafia came to extreme power. There are stories about Al Capone and other mafia bosses and these stories are legendary. All of this happened because alcohol was banned. This means when you ban something, it creates a black market for it that would be bigger and more profitable than if you left it unbanned, and only the criminals will be involved in buying and selling guns. Just like how only the criminals are involved in buying and selling illegal drugs.

So this means there will likely be twice as many guns on the streets if you ban guns than if you don't, and it will create all sorts of new markets, but I guess you don't pay much attention to the economic side of this debate.

It's not about Americans, Americans are normal people, but we are also very insecure, because we know we are hated all around the world. Guns don't make us more secure, but it gives some people enough security to function and go on with their lives. If you are a famous celebrity, how exact are you supposed to function without a gun? If you are an important person, or you have an important job, you might need a gun just to stay alive. Some people need their guns, not because it offers full protection, but because it offers some protection, and you are demanding that people have absolutely no protection.

Your point of view only makes sense if you are rich enough to hire your own private army, your own body guards, your own high tech security system, etc, because if you arent, theres no one to protect you but yourself, and sadly thats what most Americans learn, they learn that they are in this alone, and if they don't protect themselves who will?

You don't seem to understand why people go to work, or go to school. We don't do it for our happiness, we do it for security. No one wants to live in the ghetto, the only way out of the ghetto is with a college degree. Life is a constant struggle for survival, and just because you had an easily life it does not mean the rest of us had it so easy. You just don't get it, if you don't protect yourself, who will?

How are you going to protect your daughter? with words? I'm not actually a gun advocate, I'm a self defense advocate. How do you protect your daughter? It's your primary job as a mother, so how are you managing to do it? Do you assume that order ALWAYS exist in the world?

I wish the world were like that, but order exists only as long as it's maintained.