1) Guns are a form of protection.
Shields, armour and helmets protect you. Guns shoot toxic pieces of lead into other people.
2) Guns are a form of self-defence.
They can be, sure. However, statistically speaking, more guns are used in crimes than are used in self-defence.
A study of gun use in the 1990s, by David Hemenway at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, found that criminal use of guns is far more common than self-defense use of guns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
Obviously, potential criminals are going to purchase guns if they are legal. Therefore, you make a useless trade: increased personal protection for increased need for it. The only logical outcome of that trade is more people will die.
3) I don't trust the government.
If the government wants to get you, then your Dirty Harry handgun is not going to stop them. End of story.
4) A 100 lb woman shouldn't have to struggle with a 300 lb rapist.
But you can't arm the victim without simultaneously arming the rapist. So, instead of a rape occurring, which is consequently then investigated by the people whose job it is to investigate rapes, you have a bloodbath. Maybe the rapist gets killed, maybe the victim gets killed, maybe they both get killed, or maybe innocent bystanders get killed.
There are alternative ways to deal with rapists which are final, much safer, and do not end in loss of life.
5) Guns don't kill people. People kill people.
Then it is a stupid idea to give them guns then, isn't it? Unless you are trying to make fucking sure.
Any thoughts?
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M_W ago
I didn't downvote this post because it was a liberal take on things. I downvoted it because it was trash in terms of logical thought. This isn't the kind of thing that needs to be settled in a post debate, but inside OP's own head, before pressing the post button.
If this is going to be the new Voat; moronic posts with suspicious amounts of upvotes, I'm out. We'll see, though. The front page having bits and pieces that look like Reddit is a personal nightmare.
This was one of the last places on the internet to have a sane conversation, without it being shitted up. Even a hint of shitlib insanity making it to these shores has me ready to sound the alarms -- and as a former liberal/user of sites that went through this transformation, I know exactly the signs to look for.