91–100 of 107 posts
> we find that a socially optimal level of ownership is often greater than zero I suppose one could model this in some way. But as a pacifist, vegan and never owner of firearms, I’m genuinely clueless as to how this could be. Is the social optimality here a function possessing weapons for hunting, which can be a social activity?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the absence of firearms, the person who has the next most dangerous weapon can easily dominate everyone else. The country where I'm from was disarmed by the British to keep us from fighting them. But armed gangs still terrorize people with knives and machetes and whatnot. Some fraction of the population in any society is antisocial. A non-zero rate of firearms ownership allows the people who aren't antisocial to s…
Is this theory working in the US? Do we see the social people with weapons suppressing the antisocial gangs with weapons? If you see proof for this, good. But I don't see it. Also, one downside of firearms is collateral victims.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can describe myself in the same way as you, and yet, if I lived in a country where ownership is allowed, I'd always vote to keep it so, even without having the intention of owning a weapon myself, because otherwise the balance of power shifts too much in the favour of the State/ruling class. I disagree with the sibling comments about defending the country against an invader (if your country is facing invasion, weap…
Except the people with guns are often aligned with regressive/authoritarian regimes. Which makes the problem much worse. Is there any country where guns are politically neutral? Switzerland, maybe? Certainly not the US.
It's probably far more than you think.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t there a massive body of research that indicates gun ownership is less safe on average that non-ownership? Ie the chance of accidental shooting of family/friends is high enough to offset any benefit (on average across the US)?
There's a problem with statistics for this and many other things. Guns attract idiots, idiots have idiot gun problems, it does not follow that if you get a gun, you'll have the same problems. Similar statistics are easy to fool people with. Doing $expensive_thing is associated with health/wealth/success so if everybody did it everybody would be better off! But in reality there's just a selection bias and whatever the…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the optimum level changes based on whether or not citizens are being actively brutalized by an authoritarian government and their police forces en masse. When that happens, the optimum level is a lot and when it's not happening, the optimum level is probably orders of magnitude less. Unfortunately, we can't accurately predict when these things will happen.
I hear this argument repeated a lot, and I think it is legit the reason for the 2nd amendment - but it doesn't make sense with modern technology. That authoritarian government is going to come at you with Bearcats, helicopters, and drones. Firing a gun at them is just going to make you cannon fodder. If you want to actually challenge the authoritarian government, you need MANPADS, RPGs, cruise missiles, and drones of…
> Bearcats
Solution: drone
> helicopters
Solution: drone
> and drones
Solution: drone like P1-SUN
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the absence of firearms, the person who has the next most dangerous weapon can easily dominate everyone else. The country where I'm from was disarmed by the British to keep us from fighting them. But armed gangs still terrorize people with knives and machetes and whatnot. Some fraction of the population in any society is antisocial. A non-zero rate of firearms ownership allows the people who aren't antisocial to s…
Is this theory working in the US? Do we see the social people with weapons suppressing the antisocial gangs with weapons? If you see proof for this, good. But I don't see it. Also, one downside of firearms is collateral victims.
Do you really see armed gangs terrorizing citizens somewhere in the US then? You not seeing people in the process of suppressing gangs is fine, it just means the suppression is very effective. If suppression did not exist as you imply then you'd be seeing armed gangs collecting protection money from you every week.
The whole concept of optimal levels of firearms ownership should have been expanded upon, as this premise is probably new to the audience and a cornerstone of their entire research.
Their cohort studies are across three completely different populations. I would be willing to listen to an argument that for some specific population there’s a firearm ownership level above which there are diminishing safety returns, but I find the idea that this same level would hold across wildly different populations absurd
I suspect the optimal proportion would be similar to the optimal proportion of the vaccinated to stop disease spread.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it matter? Control of you life is your basic human right. Firearms are the great equalizer.
Sure but some people own like 30 guns. There’s more going on with gun ownership than just basic self defense.
1: I own a gun because a disarmed populace is required for genocide and should it come around again, I’m not going to be that guy. I’m not going to be standing on the side.
Ry Jones
https://www.amazon.com/Armed-America-Portraits-Owners-Their/... page 186
2: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/warsaw-ghe...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Teen suicide in households with a gun is a very interesting stat to bring up for this. Suicide in general is higher for gun owners, which can be handwaved away as “that’s my right”. But suicide is higher for children of gun owners? That seems like a tough risk to justify.
[flagged]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the absence of firearms, the person who has the next most dangerous weapon can easily dominate everyone else. The country where I'm from was disarmed by the British to keep us from fighting them. But armed gangs still terrorize people with knives and machetes and whatnot. Some fraction of the population in any society is antisocial. A non-zero rate of firearms ownership allows the people who aren't antisocial to s…
Is this theory working in the US? Do we see the social people with weapons suppressing the antisocial gangs with weapons? If you see proof for this, good. But I don't see it. Also, one downside of firearms is collateral victims.
Yes. It's the country with the most gun ownership metrics from almost every dataset, and there's not nearly as much gun violence as you'd THINK despite that.