641–650 of 1001 posts
Afghanistan showed that a people with the will and some handguns and rifles can face the greatest superpower the world has ever known, and win. The argument of private ownership of guns as protection from the government is a perfectly valid one.
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PS: I am strong supporter of Gun rights and proud gun owner. I fully agree with anti-gun crowd that having vast majority of guns in hands of citizens (legally or illegally) leads to more deaths. USA's comparison with Angola is actually more serious than the numbers tell you because you need to realize that USA has far better medical response and doctors trained to handle gunshot wounds. So to truly compare Angola and…
Yes, personally I would much rather put my trust in my neighboring citizens than the government. I trust myself and other citizens to stand up for our rights more than I trust the government to protect them. So, I'd rather citizens be armed than the government. IIRC Switzerland has an interesting citizen militia/gun ownership situation as well.
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Mexico is a big country. There are places in Mexico where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised. There are places in the US where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised. There are places in the Baltimore metro area where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised.
That's true for every sufficiently-large section of the world. But different places have different statistical properties. Look, my grandpa took me shooting when I was young. I remember doing target practice under a bridge when I was like 7, using a freakin' magnum revolver of all things. It was next to a very small river, and someone further downstream was trying to fish. I asked gramps "Do you think he heard us?" a…
Compared to Mexico and Brazil, the US numbers look fucking awesome.
Compared to Greenland and Argentina, the US numbers look perfectly reasonable.
Compared to France, maybe we look bad. But compared to Japan, even France looks bad.
If I was trying to convince the French to reinstate the death penalty by pointing out that their homicide rate was 4-6 times as bad as Japan, and the French said “yeah but our homicide rate is 1/4 that of the US”, they would have a point. Single factors that map onto popular political controversies aren’t as big a factor as broader social and cultural factors. If you look at those factors, Japan is not a comparable country to France and France is not a comparable country to the United States.
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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. > Or does it simply mean that France and Japan are different countries? Huh? Are you implying that simply existing in the “New World” would cause the baseline expected murder rate to be higher for some reason?
That’s the pattern we empirically see with most New World countries, and if you consider the question with an open mind for a few minutes while considering the history of Western settlement of the Americas you can come up with a few decent hypotheses as far as what the reasons might be.
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I have watched a lot of videos from Peter Santenello [1] on YouTube. He takes a somewhat deep dive into a lot of communities that the traditional media typically fails to highlight or fails to do it properly. He has quite a few videos where he speaks with people in the "hood" or the "projects" in various places across America. In many of these videos he asks some of the people in these communities what they think abo…
> These communities never seem to actually say they want less policing in them. They do! They've been saying it a long time, but no one paid them any attention until George Floyd's life was slowly and casually extinguished by a police officer on camera. Go ask any black male from New York in their 20s or 30s what they think about "Stop and frisk" and the sense of being violated by over policing. Before you accuse me…
I mean I just linked to a YouTube channel specifically interviewing and talking to different people from these areas you mentioned and as I already stated this is not how they feel.
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> From my EU perspective lobbying in the US is corruption, as the lobbying comes with money and paid-for political promotion. People with money and influence will always try to impact law. In EU it happens through actual bribes which is far worse. (Pretty much like India). In USA an immigrant like me can join hands with 10K immigrants and find enough support in congress openly by hiring lobbiest to advocate for the c…
> shoe string budget > Revenue (2018) $412,233,508[0] I don't know what shoestrings you're buying, but I suggest shopping around. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rifle_Association
> Revenue (2018) $412,233,508[0]
That could buy a lot of machineguns, according to the ATF.
https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/01/25/shoestring-mach...
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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…
Comparing the US to lawless, poor countries doesn't help make your claim. The more rational 'New World' comparisons would be Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and guess what: very low murder, very low rates of gun ownership. "Does this mean that France should adopt some aspects of Japanese law, for instance, by readopting the death penalty? Or does it simply mean that France and Japan are different countries?" Or mo…
Who could have imagined that British colonies who didn’t violently overthrow the British colonial government would end up being less violent overall?
Also, who would have guessed that former British colonies that didn’t have millions of African slaves shipped in for cheap agricultural labor and treated as a perpetual underclass for centuries would be more peaceful places to live?
Nah, must be the guns.
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What evidence do you have for suggesting that a citizenry with guns serves to protect other freedoms? The US generally isn't among the top countries on the various international freedom indexes[1] despite our prevalence of guns. We are usually behind Canada, New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries, and a few other European countries depending on the specific criteria being evaluated. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Citing several small countries with many significant differences from the U.S. isn’t solid logic. All of those countries are much smaller, much less diverse, and enjoy the geopolitical shelter of the U.S.
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You're probably overestimating how fast a home invasion can proceed. Unless the intruders are completely silent and/or have perfect information about the home layout and people's locations in it, it will take them quite a few minutes to round up everyone.
Yup, and common advice by well known firearms experts is not to confront intruders, but to retreat to a known location, ideally upstairs and call the police. Only if the intruders seem like they are going to come up the stairs do you announce that you have a gun and that the police are on their way. The purpose of the gun is not to kill the intruders. It is to deter them from approaching you and your family, and make…
There's a reason every professional military trains soldiers to that their knee jerk reaction to a threat should be to attack it as violently as possible (with some nuances). Taking back initiative counts for a ton in an ambush situation.
There'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…
This is the glass half full view.
The other view is that gov. doesn’t need to care about people with guns because that long hasn’t mattered in any way. A civil war hasn’t been at stake for a century, and the gov got away with anything it really wanted without ever having to fear for physical unrest. It feels a lot like letting your kid have his plastic knife so he can wield it to you to protest your authority when times come.
‘Not having to rely on police” also means they give themselves the option to just let civilians fight it out when shit hits the fan, which doesn’t look like a great thing to me.