Exactly! No one would break the law, that would be illegal!
And while we're at it, we can use it as an opportunity to crack down on minorities we don't like, and maybe do some good old selective enforcement, genius.
In the same way other countries who've banned firearms have carried it out? It's not like there's no precedent for this if you look outside of America.
America isn't other countries. Guns are as ingrained in rural America's culture as lifted trucks and beer. There would literally be armed revolts if the government tried taking peoples' guns away en masse.
Every time I see this argument come up people always try to frame it like it will be ‘nutters’ shooting ‘some’ people. You are very wrong, and that is the attitude that will get a lot of innocent people killed. This country is filled with rational, professional, well organized people who will kill before being disarmed.
> well organized people who will kill before being disarmed.
The collective noun for people who will kill rather than obey the law is "terrorists".
One of the conditions for peace in Northern Ireland was that political groups had to disarm in order to enter politics, because you can't do politics with people who are threatening to murder you. That's not a democracy.
One of the founding principles of the US was the right of its citizenry to protect itself from the overreach of the government, which was enabled partly through the right for citizens to own firearms and other weapons. They're a means of self defense, but more importantly as a way to keep the gov in check. No government can control millions of armed citizens--which is exactly the point.
Killing in response to being disarmed is probably one of the most "American" things its citizens could do.
You don't think trying to murder policemen because your country enacted gun controls to protect schoolchildren would be "nutters trying to shoot people"?
"Oh but I need this 1000 round per minute gun for pest control in my apartment! I'll murder people to protect my right to have it."??
I'm not sure where you got 1000 rounds per minute from, even a fully automatic rifle generally cannot fire that quickly (it would probably need to be belt-fed or you would be changing magazines more than thirty times per minute).
A semi-automatic rifle like the AR-15 is unlikely to surpass 100 rounds per minute.
What's interesting is that rural America was in favor of increased gun control in the 1960s when blacks started to assert their right to own guns. Ultimately peoples' attitudes can be swayed and changed and it isn't really hard to do it. Witness our embracing of torture, taking shoes off to board an airplane, fear of sharia law, etc.
Yes, and blacks were taking up arms because they were literally being bombed. The whites wanted to control their rights to have guns so they could continue controlling the black populations with violent force.
So you highlight how gun control has been used as an oppressive tool in the past. What are we do to when only our corrupt government is allowed to have guns?
If you're going by second amendment rights, at this point it's more to the spirit of it for civillian fighter jets and tanks to be legalized than guns.
To some extent, I actually imagine it'd be safer for the average citizen.
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From a more protectionist standpoint, you could say that an AR-15 or an AK-47 will allow you to stand up against your government. This isn't really realistic, however - no civillian weapon, especially not a semi-automatic rifle, will reliably take care of a tank, fighter jet, drone or military robot. [0]
> From a more protectionist standpoint, you could say that an AR-15 or an AK-47 will allow you to stand up against your government. This isn't really realistic, however - no civillian weapon, especially not a semi-automatic rifle, will reliably take care of a tank, fighter jet, drone or military robot. [0]
It gives you some leverage however if you need to get some ingredients for your IEDs.
A few guns might make the difference between efficient large scale killings like Auschwitz and a case where a large number of civilians get away and hide until the international community can come and help.
Yep, people with rifles and improvised explosives are completely ineffective against a modern military force. That's why the US was in and out of Afghanistan in less than a year!
Our "corrupt government" would crush us with jets, tanks, nukes, laser weapons, missiles, helicopters, drones, ships, chemical weapons, smallpox, and probably many more things regardless of whether we had AR-15s or not.
Libya and Syria are probably good examples of this not being the case. Libya had the benefit of NATO coming to the aid of the rebellion and stopping the airstrikes, Syria also had outside involvement. When a government goes to war with it's civilians other nations tend to get involved.
Even if that isn't the case, all those weapons are on the ground or in port at some point. Meaning an attack with small arms to get in there and preemptively blow them up will work. These weapons also have to be maintained meaning they need a base. You have millions of citizens with weapons and a military that's a much smaller fraction of that, with bases that have a much smaller fraction of personnel. The base is going to be overrun. There is also the chance of military personnel defecting, so that some of these weapons never get fired.
Chemical and biological weapons are a really bad idea. The problem is a civil war isn't going to be geographically defined in this case. There is no polarization along something like a Mason-Dixon line. You will end up killing people that don't revolt, which will probably make them rethink their not revolting. How would you feel if your family and friends were killed in an attack, and they weren't on the rebel side?
The other problem is even if you increase the military's size to win the civil war, you have the second problem of the very people that you could grab immediately to fight are probably going to be a majority of people who have been opposed to gun ownership, don't have weapons and don't know how to use them. It will take time to become proficient and the other side has both the weapons and training.
Even with advanced military tech, the numbers game combined with a guerrilla approach, and the fact these are civilians and it would be hard to identify civilian combatants from non-combatants, will make it a losing battle. We already haven't done well in Afghanistan or Iraq for similar reasons, and despite the enemy being technologically inferior, we have never been able to secure those regions.
You would have probably been against the American Revolutionary War then? Meh, let's let the British tax us. They're big and powerful. They're the Government.
And what about something like Vietnam? Who won that one?
And even if you're right, that the US government is just that big and bad. What if half the military defects and joins the revolt?
People have the right to defend themselves, and must be trusted to do so. Otherwise you get something like England. Say the wrong thing and you go to jail. The 2nd Amendment keeps the government in check. Eventually, given enough time, it will need checking.
It's never going to be en masse. Australia enacted sufficient gun control to drastically limit mass shootings by introducing licensing, purpose and registration requirements as well as banning semi-automatics. There was a buyback scheme which most people complied with.
I do wonder if American resistance to sensible gun control will cause a flip straight over into hard restrictions, but it's difficult to see what the trigger event for that would be. Left-wing paramilitaries? (right-wing paramilitaries are seemingly tolerated!)
"sensible"? Since massive amoutns of guns have found their way to the public since the 1990s the crime rates across the US have been dropping dramatically. And even so the US isn't even close to the top of the list worldwide in per capita murder rate even though lots of people have weapons.
If anything those numbers show that there is at the very least no correlation between numbers of guns and crime, and may well indicate more guns means less crime. Since the US constitution protects ownership with the "shall not be infringed" clause and the stats show there's little downsides why stomp on people's rights?
At one point (1920 I think) there was an amendment which made alcohol illegal. It went on for 13 years and then was removed.
So there is a legal framework to add/remove amendments from the US Constitution, they are amendments after all, they were not there originally (I think 3 years after).
It was removed, but also (and maybe because) it was nearly impossible to effectively enforce. Gun restrictions would very much experience the same problems. There are millions of guns and gun owners in the US and many of those people are firm believers in their right to own a gun. They'd likely bury them in the yard or, as the old joke goes, "lose" them in a boating accident, before turning them over to authorities.
I personally would _never_ willingly turn mine in--they're for my and my family's protection and have saved my life before. I am certain many gun owners feels this way as well. Trying to enforce such a rule would be difficult, if not impossible.
I didn't really comment on if it was enforceable, just that in a logical manner there is a path for amendments to be removed, added or changed.
Doing minimal research on prohibition since I had no context into what triggered it: "Prohibition also united progressives and revivalists. The temperance movement had popularized the belief that alcohol was the major cause of most personal and social problems and prohibition was seen as the solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills." [0]
You could replace alcohol with firearms and the part about removing them being "solution to the nation's poverty, crime, violence, and other ills". I bet there are a lot of people that would believe that prohibiting firearms would help solve those issues.
Just because laws are not easy to enforce doesn't mean they can't happen. There are still counties in some states that are 'dry'.
I think he was alluding to the fact that although there is a legal way to make guns illegal, it won't actually get rid of guns, in much the same way making alcohol illegal didn't prevent people from drinking.
Do you understand that outside of obvious moral ethics - that a law against murder doesn't stop someone from murdering. It only gives lawyers a way to punish it.
It's the punishment that is the deterrent.
Why should law abiding gun owners be punished again?
Adding punitive laws is not a deterrent. Enforcing those laws is. We don't enforce many guns laws, then you come in yelling about adding more laws.
The logical conclusion isn't that laws have no meaning if they're broken, it's that they have no meaning if they aren't enforced, and we're not.
Parkland could have been avoided in at least 6 different ways. So tell me how your new-laws that make illegal things illegal-er would stop people with no criminal record from being bad.
A person is law abiding until they aren’t. It’s about keeping people from having ready access to so much lethality when that person decides to become a bad actor. Banning guns would lower the likelihood of a bad actor having as much lethality as they currently are easily able to acquire.
Parkland could have been avoided in a 7th way too. Without access to guns it wouldn’t have been as lethal.
Average national response time is 10 minutes, even in cities the median is 5min, but can be as high as 30min for some remote areas.
In certain situations there may be no police response at all, as was the case in 1992 Los Angeles riots or practically any major natural disaster.
The ‘let the police do it’ argument would only logically work with incredibly pervasive and invasive surveillance technology and/or police robots (https://goo.gl/wpMV8).
Even so, 2nd amendment would be even more relevant to balance the killer robots.
That might be a good argument in theory, if it wasn't for the part where US police don't have to protect citizens and all the population that are outside of effective police coverage. It's not the argument gun control campaigners seem to be making right now. They mainly seem to have gone for the approach of supporting police officers standing by and doing nothing as kids are murdered one by one. Given that, I suspect you're going to have a hard time convincing people who don't already agree with you that they should give up their guns and let the police take care of everything.
This isn't like organizing roles at a startup company. We're talking about an individual's right to defend themselves against someone bigger and stronger, someone with a weapon who wants to take your shit or fuck you or just fuck you up.
You put much faith in the Government, and I put it in the individual.
What happens when your police force is turned against you, becomes incompetent, gets lazy, or just doesn't show up?
It's idealistic. Life is a struggle for the individual, no matter how much we'd like to forget it or offload our worries.
So ask the threat to wait a 5+ minutes while you call the cops?
Should we DRM 3D printers (DMLS@home is coming) to a walled garden of things? The 2nd Amendment is not separable from general purpose computing. Who needs "assult crypto" anyway?
It's a valid question. If we had something like phasers instead of firearms, I'd be more than happy to use those exclusively. The problem is we don't really have a good alternative. Tasers that shoot tend to be one shot solutions, and even then they don't always bring down targets, or they might prove as lethal. Rubber bullets you can fire multiple of, but they could cause serious damage too, especially if shot in succession, and there is no guarantee of taking the target down. There just isn't a solid alternative right now.
That is too simple.
The conclusion is the laws only work as long it is percieved better to follow than not, either by force, violence or social coercion or their actual concequences.
Drug laws for example does not really work, since some people self medicate no matter if there is a death sentence. Others don't care since they probably wont get caught.
While other laws kind of does work, people can rationally choose to follow them because the concequences of doing so are the "best" available option.
People do illegal things. This isn’t surprising nor an argument against making something illegal. If it could be shown that banning guns and making it illegal to sell guns didn’t decrease the frequency of their usage to commit crimes then I would no longer be advocate for banning guns.
Except that there is no correlation to gun ownership and crime.
We know the places that have more guns don’t have more crime, we can’t call correlation to that, but we do know adding guns doesn’t increase crime - because that’s been true since the high crime peak of the early 1990s where crime has been falling with guns skyrocketing.
It’s painfully childish to claim that it’s some surprise that where guns are that there is more gun-crime. Something can’t be abused where it doesn’t exist - the joke is that people look at gun-crime compared to overall crime.
Rape rates in Australia are 40-45% higher than the USA. If you’re a rapist, it’s much safer to “work” in Oz, does the rapist getting shot in the USA contribute to “gun-crime”? On paper, yes.
Adding guns probably doesn’t increase crime rate. It does the mass murder rate. It is precisely gun crime that I abhor. Thus I'm opposed to their availability.
Can't wait for the citation from an actual study (try the CDC, they've put out at least 3 since 2013)!
You should be able to easily show that rural USA with it's murder rate on part with Europe is definitely not the place where all our guns are... oh wait...