Originally Posted by
Evianir
ITT: We need guns to protect ourselves from the guns that the bad guys stole from us.
As a dane I will never understand that concept. We don't own guns, as a general rule, the bad guys have very limited access to guns as well, and the guns they do have they rarely use, or use only against other "bad guys" as pretty much any illigal gun in Denmark belongs to some gang.
I also don't understand the reasoning that you need guns to protect yourself against your own nation/military. As far as I know, correct me if I'm wrong, you're are still a democracy. Meaning you elect whoever gets in there, and they have limited power with which to start killing off its own citizens. Frankly I just don't see that happening, ever.
If you can't trust a democratically elected government to protect you, then why do we even bother with that system?
Mihalik made a great post that was for the most part ignored, I think it deserves to be posted again, would really love it if the untouched points in his post could be addressed, specifically, why do you have to own that gun, if no body else have a gun as well?
Originally Posted by Mihalik
OP good for you.
Now I'm a European coming from a place where you literally never see firearms unless it's a military parade or the police are wearing it. Today I live in another European country where the situation is pretty much the same. Altought there is one difference. This country has a strong hunting culture. (Hey the King's 10 year old grandkid shot himself in the foot while hunting under parental supervision!) Regardless. You literally never EVER see firearms. Criminals don't have acces to it. Usually when police raids go down there are no shoot outs. Ever. Even the local terrorist organization is largely unarmed. They resort mostly to the use of home made bombs or hunting rifles. You don't ever see them running around with assault rifle's, submachine guns etc. So whenever anything goes down the police completly outgun the shit out of anyone, usually completly avoiding the use a violence, thanks to the intimidation factor, you are not likely to go up against a police fireteam in kevlar with assault rifles if all you have is a really long knife a replica katana and a piece of crap buckshot.
The point is this.
What is a firearm?
It is a tool designed to kill or wound. It is not useful for anything else. You can't build houses with it, can't work your land with it, can't cook food with it etc. etc.
It is designed to kill and main. Animals or other people. If we would have to go out and hunt for our lunch every day like our ancestors have, I would get the reason for needing to own one. But we don't. We get our food from farms and ranches and we hunt them in our local supermarket.
In our day and age could you have a gun? Sure why not? I can think of a good couple of reasons.
You are a sports shooter.
You are a collector.
You hunt for a sport (I think this is stupid, but who am I to judge.)
None of the above justify you owning functional and loaded automatic, semi automatic or such pistols, rifles, submachine guns etc. etc.
None of the above justify you being able to transport a loaded firearm.
The fact is guns are bad. There are no "good" uses for a gun. Even when the police is forced to use a gun, it is a horrible situation. It happens because there is no other option, because they often need to take lives to save others. It's a no win situation. Everytime a person is shot, innocent or criminal a life is taken, without due process (if you are a fan of the death sentence). And death is always final. You can't repent, change your mind or anything. And also mistakes happen.
You can't argue that living in a unarmed society is more unsafe then living in a armed one. Most European countries have very strict gun control laws and much higher public safety then most of the United States.
I studied for 2 years in the States. And I have to tell you I have been in many more violent situations or borderline violent situations then during my 2 years of studies in London. (And believe me London is not a shining star of public safety by European standards.)
Now there is one final fact.
I don't think the US will ever be a gun free society. For cultural and practical reasons.
When you have so many guns in a society like in the US, once you try to implement gun control only the honest folk would give up their guns. So on the short term public safety would drop. It would be a decades long period untill law enforcement would be able to bring illegal guns under control.