I follow some people who are extremely opposed to private gun ownership. What better way to learn to see though rhetoric and refine your own position than by seeing how people who hate you address your position?
This first screenshot was shared by CAKE on Facebook.
Note the premise starts with "rich democracies" as an attempt to sidestep some criticisms.
I don't challenge the first assertion. It seems to bear scrutiny, and presents a real problem in the "land of the free." The US has a shockingly broken "justice" system with mass incarceration.
Wikipedia linkThis assertion is impossible to confirm either domestically or internationally. However, I also contend that this data point is entirely irrelevant, as there isn't a correlation state-to-state or region-to-region of violent crime and gun ownership within the US even where we do have any data to work from. Instead, we have problems of prohibitions creating violent black markets and regulatory barriers trapping people in poverty, primarily in urban areas, which throughout history have been centers of crime.
I have addressed the topic of crime rates in the US recently. Last time I tried to find international data to compare the US to other countries, I had difficulty finding relevant data. Not only can it be hard to find, but once found, the criteria for the data often differs. Burden of proof is on the hoplophobes, but the fact that their Chicken Little claims have failed to manifest in reality innumerable times already should be sufficient to discredit them.
The US is quite high on the list, but certainly not at the top. Since the original post cherry-picked "rich democracies," the US is indeed shockingly high, and smack in the middle of repressive dictatorships and impoverished post-colonial countries. However, this is again evidence of a legislative and executive problem, not a gun ownership problem. Police violently enforce bad laws. Disarming peaceful people is not a solution, and why would you want these violent police to be the only ones with effective guns?
Heh. Pwned! Looks like someone pro-gun batted that objection down.
Mass shootings don't happen when someone stops the shooter before any mass can accrue. Freedom, not prohibition, is the answer.
I also contend that voting is inherently far more dangerous than gun ownership. All the police state abuses in the US are the result of politicians using "the mandate of the people" to justify their decrees. That is one of the reasons the right to self-defense and the right to own effective arms is so essential if we want any restraint on such a rapacious system.
However, here on the anniversary of Lexington and Concord, I would like to reiterate my opposition to the notion that a Civil War 2 or Revolutionary War 2 could fix the problem. The psychological and economic incentives of monopoly power guarantee abuse and corruption, especially when coupled with usurped political authority. Whether you shoot the bums or vote the bums out, their replacements will just be more bums. We need to subvert the state. Undermine, don't overthrow. Violence is a last resort, not a first recourse.
So actually make voting more difficult than buying a gun. I don't care. Voting is not a right. I can rightfully neither rule my neighbor nor impose a ruler upon him. But if you want to deprive peaceful people of arms, any arms, I can only place you in the same category as tyrants and thieves.
This is understood by so few people. Even most of those few who enter into politics with good intentions become corrupted in a short time.
All the incentives - economic, psychological, political, cultural - push the bums toward corruption. None reward virtue.
Good words man. Those soy chuggin fools try to state their cases, but theyre weak points.
Universities have been transformed from places where ideas can be challenged into echo chambers where dissent is a threat. Since such people perceive disagreement as violence, no wonder they respond like they do.
It is a little scary man. 2 spoon fulls of unity ya know lol.
Weird how this lefty, progressive mentality stuff has really taken over. And yeah, hard to argue against them. Theyre thinking with more emotion nowadays, and some facts matter less.