Guns: Should ordinary citizens have them?

[Osweo]

I don't actually think guns are much use against our sophisticated governments. Organisation is the key to uprisings, and most fail abysmally.

I am in favour of gun ownership as a means of protecting ourselves against an ever more unpredictable criminal world, where the worst dregs of all continents are deliberately imported to our towns, often from warzones where they've got quite used to certain forms of behaviour, and where our own underclass is the most violent it's ever been in our history. I'd sleep easier knowing my sister and mother had a gun.

[Troll's Puzzle]

Of course. Not only to protect them against criminals but more so against their own government.

If you think a bunch of civilians who can't organise to simply vote out the govt. they supposedly 'hate', are going to organize to give up their comfortable couch-potato lives and defeat a modern govt. with standing army (something trained fanatic guerillas with missiles and automatic weapons can't do), armed with peashooters, you're deluding yourself (but not deluding the govt)

I am in favour of gun ownership ... and where our own underclass is the most violent it's ever been in our history.

So the solution to the new, most violent evern underclass is to proliferate the country with guns? sounds like a good idea

[Troll's Puzzle]

BTW, I don't think there's much danger from civvies with guns in a relaxed, rural, familial society. Some of america is like this (usually the loudest proponents of 'guns for all'). So I can't vote, because it's not always bad for people to have guns. But it would be a disaster if my overcrowded european country had american-like gun laws. and in the modern world also we have alienatied people doing things with guns like school shootings which happen regularly now so it's established.

I can understand a little the 'protect yourself' argument. It could really save your life. But the % of deaths are still higher in the USA so the absolute probability of death by gun is really higher.

Just don't give the bullshit about 'overthrowing the opressive govt' or 'protecting' yourself from the govt or that it's 'national suicide' for people not to have guns. You're a fantasist, like someone reading Turner Diaries and longing for RaHoWa. Or playing a shoot-game and dreaming about single handedly killing an army. In the real world, todays world, it isn't possible, and the USA (with its more guns) is the country idealogically leading us into national suicide, not the other way round.

[The Lawspeaker]

If you think a bunch of civilians who can't organise to simply vote out the govt. they supposedly 'hate', are going to organize to give up their comfortable couch-potato lives and defeat a modern govt. with standing army (something trained fanatic guerillas with missiles and automatic weapons can't do), armed with peashooters, you're deluding yourself (but not deluding the govt)

You don't truly believe that our voting system isn't rigged, right ? And - you're wrong btw. The Maquis in France and the partisans in Eastern Europe gave the Nazi war machine a very hard time. The Americans and French were kicked out of Vietnam by a bunch of farmers with AK47s.


Anyways-- the thing is that an army is much more likely to turn itself against the government if they are made to fight their own population. Even more so when this population is also armed to the teeth.

[Osweo]

If you think a bunch of civilians who can't organise to simply vote out the govt. they supposedly 'hate', are going to organize to give up their comfortable couch-potato lives and defeat a modern govt. with standing army (something trained fanatic guerillas with missiles and automatic weapons can't do), armed with peashooters, you're deluding yourself (but not deluding the govt)

Thankyou for that lengthy paraphrase of my post.

So the solution to the new, most violent evern underclass is to proliferate the country with guns? sounds like a good idea

THEY already have guns!

Actually, the organised criminal element do, but the more ubiquitous (and more annoying from a social point of view) feral youth crime is more about knives and just general physical intimidation. These youngsters would not be able to buy guns and ammunition, obviously, and many would not be able to afford them anyway.

Too many get stabbed and harrassed by gangs of these animals, which would be a little harder if the respectable citizens had arms (or even just the added confidence that they provide).

You don't truly believe that our voting isn't rigged, right ? And - you're wrong btw. The Maquis in France and the partisans in Eastern Europe gave the Nazi war machine a very hard time. The Americans and French were kicked out of Vietnam by a bunch of farmers with AK47s.

I'd point out that all these movements had massive superpower backing, unfortunately for your argument and our political sovereignty.

[anonymaus]

Your poll question and the question in your post are different, so I answer yes to the poll and no to your posted question.

every nutjob

...

assault rifles and stuff like that.


...Columbine massacre

Three separate issues:

1) likelihood of illegal use of the firearm due to psychological malformity or various other reasons

2) yes, I agree, these weapons ideally ought to be restricted to specific usage licenses, because they are not required to defend oneself, property, etc. Even if a criminal has an assault rifle, a bullet or eight from a pistol is just as effective at stopping him, although shotguns are the vastly preferred home defense weapon. I am unaware of any rational justification for a general availability of assault rifles or other weapons of mass killing.

3) committed entirely with semi-automatic weapons, but by crazy people.

[Osweo]

although shotguns are the vastly preferred home defense weapon.

From simple curiosity, why is that?

[Sol Invictus]

If you think a bunch of civilians who can't organise to simply vote out the govt. they supposedly 'hate', are going to organize to give up their comfortable couch-potato lives and defeat a modern govt. with standing army (something trained fanatic guerillas with missiles and automatic weapons can't do), armed with peashooters, you're deluding yourself (but not deluding the govt)

I think you give the voting process today too much credit. And you don't give the militia movement enough credit. Militiamen generally aren't the couch-potato kind.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

-JFK

[Frigga]

BTW, I don't think there's much danger from civvies with guns in a relaxed, rural, familial society. Some of america is like this (usually the loudest proponents of 'guns for all'). So I can't vote, because it's not always bad for people to have guns. But it would be a disaster if my overcrowded european country had american-like gun laws. and in the modern world also we have alienatied people doing things with guns like school shootings which happen regularly now so it's established.

A relaxed, rural environment? Honey, I live in a "relaxed rural environment" and you still have crime, and still want to have a gun on your bedside table. People are people no matter where you are in this world, urban and rural alike. It's not as common out in the sticks, but that's just because of the lower population density. Obviously you have some fanstasies of your own to wake up from.

I can understand a little the 'protect yourself' argument. It could really save your life. But the % of deaths are still higher in the USA so the absolute probability of death by gun is really higher.

This is a correlating factor, and not a symptom. Just because I own a gun does not mean that the gun is going to cause me bad luck like an evil charm and attract gun crime to me because of some taint. Gun crime happens, and everyone blames guns instead of the idiot who pulled the trigger. It's just like saying that because people who die of heart disease must have died from high cholesterol because hot diggity dog, they've got lots of cholesterol in their blood, and in these constricted blood vessels here!! When, the high cholesterol is not the culprit, it's a sign of the condition. Oh, there's guns in the society, blame the guns for the gun crime!

Just don't give the bullshit about 'overthrowing the opressive govt' or 'protecting' yourself from the govt or that it's 'national suicide' for people not to have guns. You're a fantasist, like someone reading Turner Diaries and longing for RaHoWa. Or playing a shoot-game and dreaming about single handedly killing an army. In the real world, todays world, it isn't possible, and the USA (with its more guns) is the country idealogically leading us into national suicide, not the other way round.

Please don't tell us how to think. And go ahead and hop on down from your soap box, it's really not neccessary.

And don't lump everyone into the same pile. Just because I want to be able to defend myself doesn't mean that I'm a nutjob just waiting for some sob story about the evil government wanting to take away our liberties in order to take up arms! I want the right to defend myself from that nasty rapist that trying to crawl through my window. I wish to defend against the plausible, and what I just theorized on is much more likely to happen in my lifetime.

Now as far as militias go, I support a citizen's militia. It was the militias that won the Revolvutionary War, along with other armed citizens. It is America's historical right to be able to bear arms, and the Founding Fathers placed that in the Bill of Rights because it was because of their taking up of arms that they won their country. It has been ingrained in our cultural psyche for over 200 years. You really don't get our love of our freedoms, since you were never raised with that assurance in your rights, and that point of pride. It's part of being American, that note of pride in our history. We should continue that tradition, as we may never know if they will be needed.

[Osweo]

There's at least one member here I know of who claims they wouldn't be here today without the right to bear arms.