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by Turing_Machine
4975 days ago
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"But the statistics show that people seem to find...." Nice weaseling. You were wrong. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM Actually, the statistics show that governments with too much power have killed orders of magnitudes more people than have ever been killed by individuals with guns. |
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Australia has had zero (0) gun massacres since Port Arthur. The major leading cause of gun deaths in Australia is suicide, around 300 per year from among the ~750k gun owners in this country.
I agree that totalitarian governments have been the leading cause of death in the 20th century. But it's an orthogonal point. Look around: guns do not prevent tyranny. Neither do high explosives. What counts is institutions. The United States inherited a set of institutions (cultural norms, the rule of law) from the British that went a long way to assuring economic success and a culture of freedom.
So did Australia. Our freedom has never been guaranteed by the kind of constitutional mechanisms the USA has; it has always been reliant on culture and history. The freedom of the people of the United Kingdom is not guaranteed by any written constitution; it is reliant on culture and history. And so on and so forth. Widespread gun ownership does not banish shitty governments (ask a Saudi).
We are not going to agree, and nothing I say will change your mind. Please feel free to leave another triumphal remark below this one and let's both get on with our lives.