| mornelithe said: You can hunt with a bow, and you can hunt with a crossbow, people did it for quite some time before guns were invented, so, noone would be interfering with peoples right to hunt. Self-defense? Well...I would argue that if people were so concerned with self defense, every single gun owner would learn some form of martial art...because you will run out of bullets at some point. I'm not privy to the statistics, but I'm going to go ahead and guess most people who buy a gun with the sole purpose of self-defense, think it's a cureall, and personally I think that's a mistake. You're not always going to have your gun ready, ammo isn't limitless, you will have to reload sometime etc... Not everyone who carries is a marksman, nor are they trained to shoot under extreme circumstances (stress, adrenaline etc...)... This site is not located in the US, if I'm not mistaken (England?), so I think it's rather fair to assume that many folks from Europe and abroad will bring comparisons to Europe as they aren't....Americans (And may never have been to America so have little understanding of it, other than what the news shows them). Outside of this site, there are a number of individuals in the US who do make the comparisons, however, I think pointing out the differences is the way to go. Why wouldn't such things work in the US, why is it different, how can we address those differences to create better policy that would help this issue. Understand what I'm saying here? I'm not saying believe what others say 100%, but, provide your critique on their message, and listen to their response. If an argument cannot withstand critique, it's not a very good argument, afterall. However, maybe, if we allow full and open debate on this, maybe we start making some headway. Please don't think that I actually have all the answers here either, it's why I'm open to having the discussion. Because I don't. I just see what we're doing, and it's clearly not having an effect on anything but driving a wedge between Americans and pushing us further apart. That's not productive, and if anything, does harm to the country as a whole. |
That is a ridiculous argument. I never said that people can't hunt at all. Just that they can't hunt with guns. It is like saying that a ban of cars would not infringe on my right to freely transport myself because I can walk to anywhere I want to go, or ride a horse. Rights can be separated into parts. Alright, that doesn't make it any less of an intrusion on one's right to self-defence.
Alright, and the critique was given. Firstly: it is untrue to say that mass shootings don't happen in Europe, they do. Charlie Hebdo is a recent example. Secondly, there is no conclusive correlation between gun ownership and murder rates. There have only been slight correlations in all studies, concluding either way. Socio-economics and diversity of population are much stronger factors. Thirdly, due to different socio-politics and different border relations, a one-size fits all, "U.S should ban guns" does not work. For starters, the number of guns in circulation, in the U.S, outnumber the number of guns in Europe and also the population of Americans (and this is despite Europe having twice the population.) Furthermore, there are considerably more people capable of producing weapons. A black market in the U.S would be very strong, and by limiting the ability of moral and lawful Americans from owning weapons you are creating an environment in which they are vulnerable to the use of force by others. If any country is comparable to the U.S in terms of gun-ownership it would be Mexico, as both countries face similar sources of crime. Mexico, contrast to the U.S, has very strict weapon regulations, nevertheless the crime rate in Mexico vastly exceeds that of the U.S (not because they ban guns, but despite the fact.) So there are a plethora of other issues an caustations that we need to address before gun ownership.
The biggest solution to this problem, as I had mentioned earlier, is the decriminalization of drugs (all drugs.) The U.S crime-rate and prison population would be halved, and the violent crime rate would have a significant decrease as well (as drug cartels have less power.) After this occurs, then we can possibly compare the U.S to Western Europe.
