vivster said:

There will never be a world without governments. Governments will form naturally in every single society because people need order. Everyone talks about freedom but nobody would actually be able to take absolute freedom. Soon enough people will band together and look up to people with power to protect them from sociopaths that now have complete freedom.

And how would a stateless socialist world even work? The vast majority of people will not want to share their goods. So how do you enforce socialism without a higher power forcing it?

Governments aren't an artificial product. They are the natural order of things that can be seen even in the animal kingdom. Every society without a hirarchy will soon develop a new one, even if they've just overthrown the last. Who do you think will have the most power after your great revolution? Exactly the people who are the most power hungry and who will have amassed the most wealth and firepower during that revolution. What a happy new world will it be to be ruled by completely new power hungry monarchs that are ready to kill every dissenter. Because without order, there are no laws. Which means the powerful will rule. With violence. Yes, that's so much better than today where the vast majority of governments strive to build peace between all nations.

A few ending up dead every now and then is definitely better than every single one of them every time because the people attacking them all have guns...

And how exactly is a gun going to prevent rape? If you're not able to protect yourself from a rapist using a taser or pepper spray then a gun wouldn't make any difference whatsoever. Unless you suggest walking everywhere pointing your gun in front of you just in case?

Getting rid of guns would be difficult and would most likely require multiple generations, but the sooner you start it the sooner it will be finished...

Most countries can't stop illegal drugs from being sold, most do a very good job at stopping illegal guns being sold though. It definitely helps that drugs can be grown, including within the country, while guns can't.

I would like to see you defend yourself from being overpowered by the government with your little firearm.

That's why I said stateless, not government-less. There'd obviously be a form of government, just done differently than it is now, in a horizontal configuration, rather than top-down. And what do you mean by share their goods? Personal property would still exist. And if the vast majority of governments strove to build peace, why is there so much war-mongering?

How many countries of the 200 are war mongering? A small handful. And how many of those countries are reprimanded for it? Every single one. Nobody wants war except for a few countries with terrible leaders.

How can a government be horizontal? You mean like it is now where basically all governments of all countries are on the same level without anyone above it? You will always have leaders of municipalities. Why would you think war would stop? Especially when it is your desire to pump every country full of military grade weaponry?

As long as there are humans and especially as long as there are weapons made for attacking and killing people, there will be war, suffering and violence. Humans are by nature chaotic and selfish. It baffles my mind that you have more trust in random people who only look out for themselves than people who actually swore to protect other people.

These cross-country comparison never work out, Switzerland has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the world, but little gun-related street crime. Mexico is the opposite, few guns but high gun crime rate.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21379912

It's even funnier that people who are against gun control because of its ineffectiveness are for the illegalization of drugs.

There will never be a world without governments. Governments will form naturally in every single society because people need order. Everyone talks about freedom but nobody would actually be able to take absolute freedom. Soon enough people will band together and look up to people with power to protect them from sociopaths that now have complete freedom.

And how would a stateless socialist world even work? The vast majority of people will not want to share their goods. So how do you enforce socialism without a higher power forcing it?

Governments aren't an artificial product. They are the natural order of things that can be seen even in the animal kingdom. Every society without a hirarchy will soon develop a new one, even if they've just overthrown the last. Who do you think will have the most power after your great revolution? Exactly the people who are the most power hungry and who will have amassed the most wealth and firepower during that revolution. What a happy new world will it be to be ruled by completely new power hungry monarchs that are ready to kill every dissenter. Because without order, there are no laws. Which means the powerful will rule. With violence. Yes, that's so much better than today where the vast majority of governments strive to build peace between all nations.

I would like to see you defend yourself from being overpowered by the government with your little firearm.

A few ending up dead every now and then is definitely better than every single one of them every time because the people attacking them all have guns...

And how exactly is a gun going to prevent rape? If you're not able to protect yourself from a rapist using a taser or pepper spray then a gun wouldn't make any difference whatsoever. Unless you suggest walking everywhere pointing your gun in front of you just in case?

Getting rid of guns would be difficult and would most likely require multiple generations, but the sooner you start it the sooner it will be finished...

Most countries can't stop illegal drugs from being sold, most do a very good job at stopping illegal guns being sold though. It definitely helps that drugs can be grown, including within the country, while guns can't.

Lynch mobs aren't at all common. You may get a gang of (unarmed) people attacking someone occasionally, but that rarely results in deaths. While gangs running round with guns and having shootings... yeah that happens in countries with legal guns, and as far as I'm aware only those countries...

So shoot someone because they look threatening? Do you not realise how stupid that sounds? Also kind of ironic that one person arguing for guns says it is to protect minorities, while you seem to think people should shoot minorities (let's be honest minorities are certainly going to be the ones that people think look "threatening"). A taser or spray most likely will be too late to use after the person starts attacking you, but like I said if you can't stop them with those then a gun isn't any different because you'll find out the person plans to attack you at the exact same time. Attacking someone just because they look threatening with your taser and/or spray would be illegal too by the way. But you're better off being charged with assault than murder...

The vast majority of people don't know how to make a gun, just like the vast majority of people don't know how to make a bomb. One of the most common ways of finding terrorists before they act is if they are searching for information on how to make bombs or buying the stuff needed to make bombs. The same could easily apply to guns. Just add anybody that googles "how to make guns" to a terrorist watchlist or something. And something being basically impossible to avoid doesn't mean you shouldn't try. 1 madman going on a shooting spree is better than 20 doing it!

Governments at the local, state or federal level. Trash men are government employees (at the local level?) are they not?

Or were you talking about mail men? Tax collectors? Fire fighters? All people that you really won't ever need to shoot regardless of how biased they may or may not be.

Perhaps you mean cops? Cops that shoot people if they suspect them of having a gun and intending to use? You're suggesting people actually pull out a gun on those cops if they think they're being treated unfairly by them? I'll agree that US cops aren't doing as good a job as they should (not even close really), but people pulling out guns on cops is just going to make things a whole lot worse!

There's nothing fantasy about the land I'm in, it's just a country with very strict gun laws and practically no gun violence or lynch mobs.

Seems kind of ironic that the main things people want guns to protect themselves from are problems that don't really exist in non-gun countries. Maybe that's something to think about?

Regardless of what the number is, a gun free zone in a specific area like a school (as was used as an example in your article) is not going to do a lot when access to guns are not restricted outside of it. But you were making it out to be an argument against gun control in general, rather than in regards to this particular half hearted form of it. Gun control can have negligable or even adverse effects if implemented poorly.
And not sure why you are sarcastically apologising about the mass shooting metric? I didn't complain about it. That was someone else. This was the metric used in both the studies you and I posted. And it's not uncommon for mass shootings to be categorized by two or more people shot. Which is why I didn't complain about it.
Some people may confuse it with massacre, as the terms tend to be interchanged in media.

And I'm not saying NRA should be expected to fund research on how best to prevent gun violence. Nor that they ever did. By defunding I don't mean NRA decreased their funding for the research. They never paid a dime for it, of course. They defunded it by lobbying congress to do it. It dropped from 5.6 Billion to just a measly 100k in the span of one year. As well as imposing the restriction on it that no matter what their research finds, they may not advocate gun control in their conclusion.
That's like bribing the goverment to force a research organisation that finds a correlation between smoking cigatrettes and lung cancer to not advocate caution when smoking.
"Should you smoke less? Sorry, we have no comment on that."

And they've done a lot more shady shit to keep the public in the dark. For example, preventing the ATF from having their database electronically searchable, when tracing the origin of firearms.
So if you want to look up records of a gunshop that has gone out of business, thanks to NRA the process looks like this:



500 million entries have to be reviewed by hand, or microfilm.
Absolutely ridiculous.

So it's not that they aren't funding anti gun violence research. They are spending money to actively prevent anyone from finding out anything negative about gun ownership.