Cerb
Elite Member
We compare to both violent crime that does not cause death, and to violent crime that causes death. However, the big difference is that we consider death itself to be of secondary importance. If someone is posing a threat to your health, without provocation, they have forfeited their own right to life. Therefore, we don't see a huge difference between surviving a rape, robbery, carjacking (with a deadly weapon, or other threat), etc., and killing someone. All related crimes that could (a) result in death of the victim, and/or (b) are likely to scar the victim (psychologically or physically) are matters of degree, and should be compared together. The threat to one's life is what is important, not the die-roll of what might have been the outcome.
Show why someone must follow through to a murder or manslaughter for the threat to have existed and lethal retaliation to have been warranted. By the time you have enough information, it will have been too late, one way or another. Therefore, the correct path is to err on the side of the rights of the potential defender.
If that dies not fit with your worldview, no one is going to get anywhere. I see you only being concerned with numbers of deaths by certain weapons. Meanwhile, we are concerned with being able to empower our fellows to defend themselves, and willing to accept that those who would commit heinous crimes may have access to efficient means to do so because of it. Reducing firearm accidents and murders by removing firearms from otherwise law-abiding people empowers criminals more than it helps their potential victims.
With such a worldview, gun violence in a vacuum is bullshit. Crimes that could be defended against with firearms are what are important. Crimes for which a firearm is the most efficient and effective method of defense, are doubly important.
These worldviews are contradictory. The view that we should empower what will be the majority of good Americans is a view that comes with acceptance that it allows for crimes to become more volatile. The solution is to focus on those persons that would make the decisions to commit violent crimes (including affluent white and Asian males with Aspergers, and other social skill-/empathy-related disorders, that really should not have access to firearms). Removing the tools on a population-wide basis serves to disarm those that could put them to good use more than it does to save people that shouldn't have had to die, from the minority of criminals that attempt to legally acquire firearms.
We see your view as categorically wrong, and you (plural) persist in using data that doesn't matter much, lies, twisted truths, etc., in trying to make it seem like the right thing to do is make the average person less able to defend themselves.
But if everyone has fake guns, the intimation factor will no longer apply. Ever seen Snatch? There's a great scene in it about this, that we Americans could hardly even imagine. I would not want anything like that to play out in reality, in which the criminal would have a huge edge in the situation, and probably beat the crap out of the victim with their own fake/unloaded gun, instead of being deterred by it, or stopped by it if they were not deterred.
No, the potential for killing is used as a deterrent, which is the true purpose. Killing potential is a useful contingent option, against a species with a strong individual drive for survival (us humans). That being possible is what allows it to function as a deterrent.
Not at all. When did we ever have fewer guns per capita than the U.K.? Exact figures will be hard to come by, but I'd wager we've likely always had well in excess of 40x the guns available per person. Having more guns almost necessarily relates to higher gun deaths, and higher gun crime rates. It comes with the territory, much like wanting to have a justice system that would allow killers to go free under unsure circumstances, as an acceptable balance against the threat punishing innocents.
Have we really changed all that much since the early 90s? The last time I recall a large-scale need for firearms was the L.A. riots. The few that had them, and could use them, were able to put them to good use to keep their homes, and for some, livelihoods, safe from looting and burning.
Every few decades, something tends to happen to reinforce a continued usefulness of our right to bear arms, on a scale larger than individuals.
You've already been called out on weapon technology, and multiple times, at that. Give it up, already, and accept facts: muskets were common, but much more existed, and the beginnings of future firearm technology was known to many educated people at the time. There were kinks, but the beginnings of repeaters were known, and the rebellion made good but limited use of sniper rifles in that very war, and some realized right afterwards that moving to rifles, and making them faster firing, was the next step to take, and that they needed to do it before risking getting into a war that they couldn't win by attrition (it's a common misconception that we truly whooped the British. If they had truly wanted to win, they could have.). In addition, the framers clearly intended, by writing it in their own words at greater length, for the 2nd amendment to continue to apply to future technological advancements.
