[glesica]

You can keep your footing on a slippery slope for awhile, but I personally believe that it is an unstable equilibrium in this case. I will admit, though, that in some sense all societies are just in temporary equilibrium, so maybe it's all a moot point. I still feel that it is better to remain firmly at the top of the hill rather than bet that you can keep your footing on the slope.

As for examples, France is in the news for the ban on certain Muslim attire and Turkey is apparently sliding toward theocracy. The argument I'm making is similar to the argument against letting people have all the guns they want (which of course the US does, to terrifying effect): if you don't give people the tools to commit violent acts easily, they will commit fewer violent acts.

[foobarbazqux]

This is a bit of a caricature, but the way I see it is there is a valley between two hills. The free speech guys are at the top of one hill, and the social conservatives are at the top of the other. Neither group realizes that the other group lives exclusively on the opposing hill, because to them, anybody they've ever met from the valley seems just like the people who live on the other hill. So they're both afraid of sliding down the slope into oblivion. (Imagine what will happen if we let our girls go to school! Imagine what will happen if we don't let people advocate genocide!) Meanwhile a lot of us are calling up from the valley and saying, "Hey, it's really pretty nice down here, and your hills don't seem that big anyway, so why don't you join us?"

[ewbuoi]

Can you find a source that doesn't show the UK having 5-10 times more violent crime than the US, per capita? I couldn't believe the numbers at first, so I tried but couldn't find anything saying otherwise.

I think the UK is a great example that violent crime will happen despite restricting weapons.

[adammil]

Please cite an example of how the number of guns a US citizen can have creates a terrifying effect? Or did you mean simply that you are terrified of guns?

[foobarbazqux]

I think he's referring to statistics about gun deaths:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

[felixfurtak]

probably referring to mass shootings.