Time for some truth, I really didn't expect my post to be rated the way it did (very positively - so that you don't have to look for it if you're interested). Perhaps you (Americans) do get portrayed far worse through the media. And I fell for it. I thought 99% of you will be completely in love with your guns. I'm not happy for falling for this one.
I'd like to add something to the debate. Perhaps you might find it useful if you're still tuning your stance. In this debate I read a lot of false arguments that are being pushed by pro-gun crowd. Even if you're pro-gun, these shouldn't be your arguments, they are not valid. Using a non-valid arguments makes you look like "I want my gun at any price/cost and I don't want to change my ways one bit, now go and find me a solution for gun related crimes/injuries/murders/tragedies. No go!
I even saw someone here saying explosives and such can easily be made so his girlfriend has a gun. (?!?!) I guess next step is providing some C4. I mean, you do want her safe, don't you?
We have a very low number of guns and a very, very low number of gun tragedies.
I wish you the same.
So, here are some different views than the ones you're being flooded with, perhaps you could use a view from aside:
Mass murderers being mentally ill - I'm not trying to provoke or insult, but it is decent, sane, law abiding citizens doing the mass shootings. Madness is systematic and it can touch any of us (no, nothing had to be there in the first place). If you're armed when and if it touches you, it is quite different than when not being armed.
Other things being used as weapon - This again comes from NRA the loudest. It is completely false. The damage adds up. It is axes + guns + cars. So, it is wrong to say; since you can kill a person with a car, we might as well have hundreds of thousands of guns out there it won't make a difference. It will make a huge difference. Try the same logic in another example; if there's one type of harmful pesticide in your food already, why not completely flood it with pesticides - you see how immediately it shows how false it is. Damage adds up. People who are using other means to take lives are NOT exclusively the people who couldn't get guns. So you have car-bombs+guns+knives+shivs.
Infringement, rights, defend myself - This is like a cartoon republican talking. I have all those rights. I don't have a gun and never will. I never had any problems (in my entire life, neither did anyone I know - imagine that; I don't know one single person who owns a gun, or had been threatened by one or been attacked or robbed in his own house). Problems did start to occur every now and then the more the people started adopting your ways (sorry to say, they see cableTV guys freely enjoying the guns and think I want one). Today you don't think women shouldn't teach at Universities, that also used to be your way. Trust me, you can change your bad ways. You've already done it before.
If we teach our children better, we can keep the guns - This is the "I want change but don't want to move a finger to achieve it" position. Here's a little bit about the holistic approach. American children are not brought up well (not all, but enough to make it a problem) because of your economy. As long as you don't want to budge an inch on that subject, nothing will change in other areas. They are left to their own devices and the street is raising them because their parent/parents work three jobs and still starve. I tried to touch this subject in another thread, but I was told then by a member that he doesn't think there's anything wrong with U.S. economy short of a few tweaks. These parents are not bad, perhaps they could even out-parent few of you
, but they simply have to be absent. If you want well brought up children parents have to be with them at least half a day. Sure, kindergarten and school might do the trick, but you also did everything in your power to ruin those completely. And it is a part of the same economic model that is completely dependent on destroying and undermining the state. So schools doing the trick is a problem for all types of "small-government" ideologies". But, schools could only cover for half the time. Teachers have their own children. The rest of the time, you have to be with your kids to raise them. You sleep 8 hours, you work 8 hours, you raise a family (and live a pretty life) 8 hours. You'd love it, I'm telling you.
I was safe growing up so I don't care for others; their fault. This is never a nice thing to say. Blame is never completely personal. You're safe until you're not. You might have been just lucky. The fact that it worked for you or ten people or a hundred can never be universal. You have your guns and you have your tragedies. You should start asking who is doing everything in its power to stop you from connecting the dots. I'd argue that preventing you from connecting the dots is a far greater infringement on your rights. Your right to understand should be more important than the one to bear arms.
Perfect world / gun free utopia. Well thank you very much, I didn't know I live in one.
You can't become gun-free without freeing yourself of guns. My world couldn't be further away from perfect and still we don't kill each other with guns. Because we don't have them. You might say we would and this is just covering what goes on under the surface. And I would say that's MY argument. A lot goes on under the surface, but rarely do people get killed over that. We don't have guns. See? It's hard living with heaps of guns vs. hard living with barely any.
No laws = no criminals - I guess this is a joke, right? Of course you could argue that since criminals are defined through braking the law, if there's nothing to brake, you couldn't be considered a criminal. But this is just child's play on words. There are a lot of ways to gain wealth and profit at someone's expense that are, unfortunately, not being covered by law. These ways are utilised far more than the ones where you have to break the law. Behind every single outsourcing U.S. ever did is this exact logic. You go somewhere where causing severe damage to people and surroundings is not regulated. No laws = crime aplenty! You owned slaves because no one said you couldn't and back then you weren't considered a criminal for owning them. It was legal.
Gun narrative: you have it > you have to be ready to use it > you have to demonstrate your readiness > you have to make your attacker aware of the fact that you have a gun > if taunted even slightly, you have to make the next step > all of this goes in the head of your attacker as well > he demonstrates his readiness and the next step > drawing and not being ready to use it will only facilitate your attacker to use it > warning shots > if not enough... and you're there, tragedy terrain.
This is the essence of existence of guns. Going against this narrative with a gun in your hand is much harder to occur. If you like target practice, choose a spear. You'll get some training as well.
