Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Probably more to do with policing structure. And culture.
Specifically, cultural homogeneity makes a nation much easier to run. Boring food, though.
Japan has pretty good food for being homogenous.
Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
391–400 of 1001 posts
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. From your link we see Brazil at 27, Mexico at 29, Argentina at 5, Uruguay at 12, Greenland at 5, Panama at 9, and Costa Rica at 11. Canada is the biggest outlier, but the US still has less homicide than even relatively nice New World countries. If you’re going to tout France’s low homicide rate of 1.2, I’d invite you to observe that Japan’s homicide rate i…
>The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. Yeah, I'd add that France doesn't have a long, porous border with the developing world. Nor nearly as much heterogeneity in its population.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. These are facts about France vs. the U.S. Maybe "developing" is a /little/ strong for Mexico, but I take your point to be more about Central America generally.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided. So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul. not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the high availability of guns for everyone The suicide statistics from…
> So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul I sincerely doubt the average first world person has what it takes to sacrifice their comfortable life and go live in caves to resist a tyrannical occupation. And there's no need for them to do that, realistically.
> I sincerely doubt the average first world person has what it takes to sacrifice their comfortable life and go live in caves to resist a tyrannical occupation.
I think the people seizing those weapons should be less concerned about "average" gun owners, and more worried about fringe citizens willing to die to detonate a high yield explosive in the centers of power.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#394A friend of our family recently bought a gun and that made me ask them why. Their response was of course personal safety at which point I asked them some more questions and turns out they keep the gun in a gun safe and bullets in another location so as to not cause any accidents as they have kids. But this practice seemed utterly useless if their home was being actively being robbed/attacked since they wont have the…
I imagine the friend may believe that being confident in one's ability to use guns safely and effectively is also a hedge against danger, independent of the utility of that specific gun. That specific gun may make training and becoming confident with guns possible. Playing it conservatively with storage and handling as a someone new to firearms seems like the reasonable path.
They also have kids so it sounds like that plays into why they would be extra cautious. Maybe they are willing to risk that extra time needed to have the gun out for protection if it means they don't have to worry about their kids getting ahold of their gun.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
So I guess you don't have fire extinguishers in your house, car or place of work, only buy car liability insurance because it's the law, or home insurance because it's required by your mortgage holder? No insurance for your personal property? I've owned guns for self protection in the same 40+ years and have never needed them for self-protection, but I also haven't needed any of the other above forms of insurance exc…
> So I guess you don't have fire extinguishers in your house, car or place of work, only buy car liability insurance because it's the law, or home insurance because it's required by your mortgage holder? No insurance for your personal property? GP said he didn't know anybody who needed to use a gun. - My wife has used a fire extinguisher - I have been reimbursed by car insurance - I have several friends who have been…
I don't know anyone who ever had a fire at their home, but I know a few people that were attacked on the street. Anecdotes are just that, anecdotes.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But the U.S. murder rate is not all that remarkable, really The US is at 4.96/100,000 for 2012. For reference, Angola is better at 4.85. Bulgaria and Romania, the poorest countries in the EU, are at 1.3. France is at 1.2. If by not remarkable you mean 3 as bad as other developed countries, sure. The numbers are only for intentional homicide, not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the…
3x a small number is still a small number. Your chances of getting struck by lightning increase if you live on a hill, but no one is basing home buying decisions on that. The real argument is that guns enable acts that, while rare, and while they affect few people, are so egregious that we as a society will go to great lengths to ensure they never happen (school shootings).
> go to great lengths to ensure they never happen (school shootings)
To dig into the far past...the potential bodycount during Columbine dwarfs the actual body count because they only were able to kill victims with guns. Their explosives failed, and hundreds of lives were spared as a result.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#397There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight. The idea that people should not be entirely dependent on police for their defense. And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong. Does this idea work? Surprisingly well. If you had to guess the…
I think the simplest counterpoint is Britain. The US Second Amendment is a direct descendant of the British Common Law right to bear arm. And Britain is arguably our national parent with a similar culture and history and a modern pluralistic culture. They effectively ended their right to private gun ownership in the 20th century to the point that it's now extremely difficult to procure one and there are very few guns…
Britain also spent a long time transporting violent criminals and resettling much of the relatively violent “Scotch-Irish”/“Borderer” population to the American colonies. We also got a lot of their religious fanatics. This explains a lot about America.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
3x a small number is still a small number. Your chances of getting struck by lightning increase if you live on a hill, but no one is basing home buying decisions on that. The real argument is that guns enable acts that, while rare, and while they affect few people, are so egregious that we as a society will go to great lengths to ensure they never happen (school shootings).
Yeah - I think that's the core, outlier events are extremely bad. I think there are real things that could be done short of a total ban, but the issue in the US it's a constitutional right so it's hard to restrict in any sensible way and it's politically impossible to amend. As it is, the policy question is accepting the tradeoff of the right to bear arms vs. rare, but extremely awful death of school children. I'm no…
outlier events are extremely bad
Don't forget the history of the 20th Century where such "outlier events" included 100 million previously disarmed people killed by Communists running their countries, and the Left likes to remind us of the small death tolls in right wing countries, although many of those were fighting communists. See also the WWI era Armenian Genocide which was so ignored by the rest of the world it convinced Hitler he could do as he pleased.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#399i live in the american south, where everybody owns guns. i own a gun for hunting. but for self defense, i have pepper spray and bear spray instead of guns because i don't want to kill somebody regardless of their intentions. i'd be curious to see the stats of self-defense/firearms, because it seems like self-defense gun owners are LARPing over imagined intruder situations. they're definitely not about to take up arms…
"they're definitely not about to take up arms against the state, and if they think they would do that, then they're certainly LARPing and live in a fantasy world." Didn't the Taliban prove otherwise? That would suggest an armed citizenship can be a counter to tyranny.
good point, but i'm speaking from a US-centric point of view. and so is this article. so i don't think the your taliban argument is a strong counterpoint to my claim.
Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds
#400There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight. The idea that people should not be entirely dependent on police for their defense. And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong. Does this idea work? Surprisingly well. If you had to guess the…
What's admirable about it? This is just a fiction that you Americans tell yourselves about the next revolution. Name one, just one way, that ease of gun ownership has protected Americans from their government in a way that citizens of other western democracies have suffered? There is no scenario in which any citizen with a gun in any country defeats their government. Your gun will keep you safe about as well as your…
> Name one, just one way, that ease of gun ownership has protected Americans from their government in a way that citizens of other western democracies have suffered?
1776
> There is no scenario in which any citizen with a gun in any country defeats their government. Your gun will keep you safe about as well as your password protected Word document keeps you safe from the NSA snooping.
Good thing it's not just one citizen then. Is the government going to nuke/drone all its citizens? If not, then they have to have some presence on the ground. At which point I'll take having arms vs nothing.