[colechristensen]

If everyone lived in padded rooms in government run asylums we would all be "safer".

The founders wanted the population to have irrefutable rights to have weapons of war in order to prevent rule-by-force which was everywhere in their time. Rule by force is everywhere today too and with current leadership trends it is not hard to believe that it could be attempted here again.

In the UK they talk about knives in quite similar ways to how we talk about guns in the US which leads me to think that the problem isn't the tool.

Weapons are power. Power is often used irresponsibly. You can try to eliminate the power or you can try to eliminate the irresponsibility, but it's not so complicated to do the former.

Much of the unprecedented world peace comes from the influence and policies of the US, and much of the stability of the US comes from citizens' power afforded by its fundamental law.

[spaginal]

The existence of weapons in a population also serves as a deterrence and a check against more criminal activity bleeding out into the general population as a whole.

A part of the reason you see so much mass shooting activity in gun free areas is the general likelihood that you won’t encounter someone else with a firearm immediately. Same reason gang activity tends to concentrate instead of fan out.

The trend that bothers me in western society is the almost gleeful willingness to having rights stripped from us that were hard fought for. All for the illusion of safety and civility. As if simply silencing people or disarming people makes the original problem go away instead of just hiding it. It’s unsettling.

[colechristensen]

>The existence of weapons in a population also serves as a deterrence and a check against more criminal activity bleeding out into the general population as a whole.

You hear this quite a lot. It seems it could be provably true or false, has anyone tried?

[DanBC]

> In the UK they talk about knives in quite similar ways to how we talk about guns in the US which leads me to think that the problem isn't the tool.

No. We're in the middle of a knife crime epidemic, and this is seeing calls to more strictly enforce the ban on sales of knives, or to change the law to prevent pointy knives[1] being sold. The rate of knife crime is seen as a public health emergency and is seen as being deserving of action to tackle it. Our discussion is quite different to the US discussion.

This is so severe you will have heard about it in the US.

How many deaths have caused us to have this national conversation? In a population of 60 million people. Have a guess.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand...

> 5. What methods of killing are used?

> As in previous years, the most common method of killing for both male and female victims was by a knife or other sharp instrument, with 213 such homicides (37% of the total) recorded in the year ending March 2016 (Appendix Table 2.03). Although the absolute number of homicides committed by knives or sharp instruments has risen from 186 in the previous year, the proportion of homicides committed by this method remains similar (36% for the year ending March 2015).

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8101032.stm

[colechristensen]

>We're in the middle of a knife crime epidemic, and this is seeing calls to more strictly enforce the ban on sales of knives, or to change the law to prevent pointy knives[1] being sold.

Replace knife with gun and you have the exact conversation in America. This is what I mean. (I am not talking about the response but the subject and degree of concern about it)

Take away a weapon and people will find something else. Focusing on access to the weapon and not what leads people to kill perpetuates the problem.

My thesis restated. Too many people are blaming the tools people use to empower them to kill, not enough people are talking about the motivations of people who kill and how to help prevent the motives.

If you want people to kill each other less you have to create a more just, open society. You have to alienate people less and make sure everyone can have hope. You have to understand people who hate and empathize with them instead of demonizing them.

You also have to make policy that is driven by thought and reason instead of party-ism, instead of fear, instead of intuitive emotion.