| Dulfite said: I've said it before and I'll say it again, armed citizenry is the greatest deterrent to someone invading you and doing so successfully. People always think it comes down to missiles, but countries like Russia or China don't invade to just wipe out entire cities and populations, they want to capture that nations economy and absorb the profits. You can't do that by blowing everything up and killing everyone, you have to do a land invasion. This is why the USA is so protected. In 2018, a survey showed there were over 1 billion guns in the world. Of that number, 85% were in the hands of citizens, not militaries. Of that number, 46% are in the hands of the US citizens. The safest thing humans could do to deter invasions, school shootings, hostage situations, the list goes on, is to issue every legal adult a gun that passed a mental screening. This isn't the wild west, where many had guns, they could shoot someone and ride off never to be caught. We have cameras everywhere, the internet, satellites. Arming people isn't going to cause sane people to start shooting randomly at people. It will prevent those already with murder on their hearts from killing as many, if any other people because ideally any room they step in with a gun pointing at someone will have numerous people pointing a gun right back waiting for the police to show up to arrest the would-be murderer. There would be fewer massacres every year and a lot less international tension and ears if every legal citizen that is mentally stable had a gun. Do mental screenings annually to be safe. |
Those are really just gun-lobby talking points. A country like the UK has far few gun deaths and gun massacres than the US due to a much higher level of restrictions on gun ownership rather than greater availability of firearms. Its also more guns mean just that - more gun both legally and illegally owned due to a general increase in supply.
What you talk about is actually the setting of the Homefront video game (the first one). I seem to remember two instances in that game of other 'armed citizens' pulling guns on your character for reasons other than what you set out.
As for the massacre bit - guns aren't in short supply in the US so why do the massacres keep happening? Most people tend to run for cover first. I remember two other instances of note on this. One at a university where an armed bystander decided (sensibly in my opinion) it was better to remain where he was an not use his gun as he (reasonably) figured if he tried to use it police could well mistake him for the shooter. Another where an armed security guard managed to restrain the shooter. He has his gun drawn on the shooter when police arrived, and the police mistook the guard for the shooter and shot and killed him.
Last edited by SecondWar - on 23 March 2022
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