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The love of guns in the United States has been well documented, as have multiple mass shootings across the country such as those in Orlando, San Bernardino, Newtown, and Virginia. The ease of access to guns in American society comes at a shocking cost.
As of September 2016, almost 11,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence. Despite this high death toll, mass shootings in America show no sign of disappearing.
The Stateside obsession with guns can appear baffling to UK observers unfamiliar with its origins. So just how did this gun culture become so deep-rooted in the American psyche?
BBC source: Why Are Americans so Obsessed with Guns?
Wikipedia: Gun politics in the United States
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Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Guns?
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The worst part of valor is indiscretion.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @09:08PM
I believe there are three major viewpoints behind the phenomenon:
First is nostalgia: it reminds many of the "good ol' days" when life was (allegedly) simpler, and cowboy-ish (rural) people had more power.
Second is distrust of the government or governments. It's seen as an insurance policy against some unspecified tyranny or takeover.
Third, hunting is seen as an alternative food source if apocalyptic conditions arise. Evangelicals are especially worried about such because they are often taught that the end times are near, based on their interpretation of scripture.
Given these, the risk of higher homicides and suicides is seen as worth the trade-off. For example, if one believes there is roughly a 1/3 chance of a mass uprising or apocalypse in one's lifetime, then a 1% increase in the homicide and suicide rate may seem acceptable compared to losing such weapons during famine or invasions.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday January 09 2017, @09:18PM
I'm sure that during the biblical apocalypse, there would be no opportunity to hunt.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by turgid on Monday January 09 2017, @09:22PM
And you can't kill the undead with a gun, no matter how powerful. I reckon Satan himself is impervious to anti-tank rounds and RPGs. You need something that squirts holy water or flings crucifixes at least 100 yards. Question is, though, is it Catholic or Protestant holy water?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 09 2017, @09:30PM
"Question is, though, is it Catholic or Protestant holy water?"
Holy crap, what are you trying to do here? Start another Holy War?
(Score: 3, Funny) by fadrian on Monday January 09 2017, @10:13PM
Holy crap, what are you trying to do here? Start another Holy War?
That depends on which superstition you adhere to - emacs or vi...
That is all.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday January 09 2017, @10:19PM
Vi, for the record. Emacs is the superstition.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday January 09 2017, @10:46PM
I bet you never actually used vi, only vim.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday January 09 2017, @11:10PM
Elvis. Wash your mouth out with soap and water!
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 09 2017, @10:46PM
Heathens. Nano is the One True Editor (TM). Vi is a strange form of black magic and Emacs is...well, it's a neat little text-mode OS but MAN does its text editor blow...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Monday January 09 2017, @11:12PM
Nano???!! Haven't you heard of Pico? Give me strength... I'd like to see you use that newfangled nonsense on a 120 baud modem anyway. Kids these days...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday January 10 2017, @08:32AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @10:43PM
Get the water blessed by both. Assuming it doesn't cancel each other out at least.
(Score: 3, Informative) by nethead on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:29AM
Catholic or Protestant holy water?
Just go with Episcopalian. It's kind of the O-positive of holy water.
How did my SN UID end up over 3 times my /. UID?
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:52PM
Arnold Schwarzenegger blew up Satan with a grenade launcher in End of Days. Didn't kill him, but slowed him down and messed up his plans.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:30AM
What's the exact scope of the Apocalypse? My edition didn't come with a map.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:46PM
The bible. Outside of the bible, any attempt to invoke it is invalid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @09:24PM
Second is distrust of the government or governments. It's seen as an insurance policy against some unspecified tyranny or takeover.
While I think that most gun-nuts wouldn't even notice when they would have to take up their arms.
Third, hunting is seen as an alternative food source if apocalyptic conditions arise. Evangelicals are especially worried about such because they are often taught that the end times are near, based on their interpretation of scripture.
A good government should prevent these conditions from rising.. however those governments are scarce. In those conditions you will run out of bullets at some point and IMHO growing food is a more sustainable way to overcome those conditions than hunting (is there even enough wildlife in the USA to support the whole population for more than a week?).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 09 2017, @09:33PM
" . . . to support the whole population for more than a week?)."
By definition, the whold population doesn't survive an apocalyptic event. My only concern for the bulk of the population that didn't survive, is "where did they store their ammunition?"
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:30PM
I would think medicine would be the more valuable find. You can make your own ammunition or even fall back on primitive weapons, but it's pretty tough to make modern medications without clean, laboratory conditions. You could do OK with minor complaints if you knew the natural pharmacopeia the Indians did, but if you have diabetes or heart issues, you're SOL.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 10 2017, @02:54PM
Yes, but. Pharmaceuticals have a limited shelf life, under the best conditions. Post-apocalypse conditions aren't likely to be the best. Nothing wrong with your thinking. The limited stocks of properly stored drugs will be as valuable as anything that might be salvaged from the old civilization. But, ammunition has a pretty long shelf life even in bad conditions. You can count on finding good ammo for a lot longer than you can count on finding good drugs. Depending on how bad things got, people might have to rely on alcohol and/or cannabis as an anesthetic, a disinfectant, headache remedy, and whatever else.
(Score: 2) by lgw on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:15AM
While I think that most gun-nuts wouldn't even notice when they would have to take up their arms.
It will be quite obvious: when the Brown Shirts come to pull your neighbors out of their house and take them away or shoot them on the street. Tyranny doesn't start with a totalitarian government, it starts with assholes using violence to enforce their belief system, while the government openly tolerates that violence. It takes only a very small percentage of the population (1-2%) willing to go into harms way when that happens to outnumber and outgun the Brown Shirts.
In those conditions you will run out of bullets at some point
America will never run out of bullets. There are certainly more than 10 rounds per person in the US, probably in the range of 30-100, in private hands, and more in government armories. If those ever run out, you just need to be friends with a reloader. Cartridges aren't high tech (except some special fancy ammo), and really only primer is hard to make.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:28PM
unless those neighbors are black, mexican, muslim, homosexual, transgender, jewish, catholic, hipsters, liberals...
no, they wont start acting until its their personal door being kicked in, else they would've started acting decades ago.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:30PM
None of which is happening outside of the illegal Second Prohibition. Lie detected; try again?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:36AM
While perhaps true, their behavior is based on what they BELIEVE they are capable of, not what they actually are capable of.
(Score: 5, Informative) by DannyB on Monday January 09 2017, @09:44PM
I think you miss the prime reason.
Obsession with guns is due to being prudish about sex and therefore continuously frustrated. Is there a higher gun fascination among right wing people?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday January 09 2017, @10:00PM
Its well known that "discovering girls" results in the temporary (decades) abandonment of ham radio as a hobby, so its not a completely ridiculous idea.
What I observe is I don't see that in the shooting sports beyond the usual "old people have more spare time and more spare money" effect that applies to all hobbies.
If the hypothesis were true, one could theorize that military personnel would be unusual non-horny given access to machine guns and battle rifles to satisfy their urges, yet I never really saw that effect when I was young either before, during, or after I was in the Reserves. If anything, fondling M-16 barrels (barrel guards ribbed for your pleasure) made us even worse.
There is some truth to the "hunters widow" stories about the wife laying down the law and "no you are not going 'hunting' with your bros I know damn well you spend five hours at the strip club getting drunk for every hour you spend in a field supposedly shooting at deer" and depending on red or blue pill consumption levels the husband might get whipped into staying home. As a non-hunter it was never an issue for me.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 09 2017, @10:48PM
> red or blue pill consumption
Let me guess, you took the red one? Cripes, if I roll my eyes any harder they're gonna get stuck staring at their own optic nerves...
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 09 2017, @11:14PM
You know, I could write a bot that would throw out better insulting replies than you. If I let you have the source would you promise not to try manually anymore? You're really bad at it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:30AM
You stole that one from me anyway, dipshit. Remember when I replied to you and said something along the lines of "I could take a text dump of your post history, hook it up to a Markov generator, and no one would tell the difference?" Pepperidge Farm remembers, and so do I :D But you apparently don't.
And wow, you sure do seem to be making it a point to hunt down my posts on this thread and bitch about them. Walgreens is still open; here's five bucks for the extra-large tube of Preparation H. Now piss off, feathers-for-brains.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:50AM
I like guns. You like to shitpost. Our getting crossways in this story was a foregone conclusion.
No, I don't bother remembering what you say. It's unimportant and doesn't even have the saving grace of being especially witty. And "go away or I will replace you with a very small script" isn't something you can claim ownership of on account of it being older than you and stolen a gerzillion times over the years.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 10 2017, @02:04AM
Hey, I like guns too, surprisingly. Shot a fair few since moving out here to Wisconsin. I consider it a good skill to have under my belt, like cooking or fixing my own computers. Some people shouldn't own the things, though.
Sorry you think my posts are shitposts. But I suppose it's inevitable you would; as I said in this very thread, hypocrisy, projection, and ignorance are the bread and butter you regressive morons thrive on. It's okay, Uzzard; I've long since accepted that you can't be saved, that you've willingly and spitefully sold your soul for what amounts to an eye's blink of temporal triumph. You are not the first, you sure as death and taxes won't be the last, and by Cthulhu, I am going to *enjoy* watching you get yours in this world and the next :)
Keep posting. Keep modding me down. Keep trying to break me. You can't. You lost this fight before it even began.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sulla on Tuesday January 10 2017, @03:26AM
I go to soylent for the articles, I say for the back and forth argument. Regardless of dislike between you if either of you were not here the disussion would be of a much lower quality.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:33PM
Agreed, but I often wish the back & forth was wittier. Knee-jerk insults I can get on Huffington Post or Drudge. Here I hope for more.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Tuesday January 10 2017, @02:47PM
I agree with Phoenix666 that holier than thou eye rolling is weak sauce.
If you like banjos, the only thing better than a banjo is dueling banjos, played well. Even if you don't like banjos, dueling banjos sound better. But a banjo plus eyerolling or ranting, eh go home and sleep it off.
The problem with a response like "you're a big poopy head" is its basically stockholm syndrome speech for "I agree with you completely on all the facts and analysis and conclusion, but for political reasons I must pretend to disagree in public". Its a way of saying "AOL me too" in a politically non-diverse setting where the truth can't be spoken. Very millennial college student-esque, like something you'd hear said in "problematic white identity 101" class. But... this isn't a college campus where diversity in political thought is strongly suppressed. If you like something non-progressive counter-cultural non-establishment, you can just say it, at least here. No need for obtuse "My areas of disagreement are as numerous as angels dancing on the head of a pin" (aka... I have no idea what this means, actually) or "Your argument contains as many errors as Moldbug" (aka infallible).
I always enjoy reading and occasionally disagreeing with AthanasiusKircher's well reasoned posts. Also Aristarchus and Azuma when those two are not triggered. Runaway1956 is interesting because we agree and disagree in so many apparently unpredictable ways and his arguments are uniformly very strong. None of that is weak sauce.
We should have a new mod option "triggered" where people can just filter it out once its been identified. Yeah yeah yeah Azuma is all fired up, turned up to 11 ranting again, just mod it as "Triggered" to skip it and get on with reading the good stuff.
The God Emperor's inauguration is in ten days I should be decorating and preparing the feast and readying Kek's worship shrine alcove in my house and celebrating in good cheer not getting in flamewars about whacked out UK gun control.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @03:53PM
This is so true. Find a guy that knows how to use a sword, and he'll be called a geek, every single time. Something is more masculine about knowing how to attack and defend in personal combat, but the typical 'gun nut' is more about the size of the weapon...
There are certainly gun enthusiasts that understand very well how their weapons work, how to maintain them, all of the complicated aspects of owning and maintaining and improving upon a weapon. But most that I have met are simply users that think it provides them power they can't get elsewhere. The knowledge aspect of it is for chumps, they can pay someone to clean it or fix it or buy a new one when it gets old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:35PM
NONE of that is complicated, and "improving a weapon" is typically a matter of bolting on an accessory to an existing bolt-on point.
Cooking is more complicated than the responsible use, maintenance, and even "improvement" of firearms. The fact that you believe otherwise is evidence of your lack of simple education.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by VLM on Monday January 09 2017, @09:52PM
if one believes there is roughly a 1/3 chance of a mass uprising ... in one's lifetime
The press, nominally uniformly ultra left wing, none the less help with this belief because if it bleeds it leads.
I'm like middle aged-ish kinda and I've lived "in the area" of several uprisings. Never involved with any of it, but I can see I should probably own a gun.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:34AM
No.
The Press is uniformly Democrat.
Democrats are not lefties, liberals, or progressives.
Therefor the Press is not lefty.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:37PM
I would say they're uniformly corporate, Establishment. I have watched the modern, post-fairness doctrine press kiss up to administration after administration no matter which party occupied the Whitehouse. The New York Times cheerled the invasion of Iraq, even.
They cheerled for Hillary recently because she was Establishment, not because she was Democratic.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday January 10 2017, @04:49PM
You are laboring under the assumption that Democrats are NOT warmongering corporate whores when that is EXACTLY what they are.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday January 10 2017, @08:07PM
I am not laboring under that assumption. It's that I don't want to feed the false dichotomy and false narrative of Left vs. Right/Democrat vs. Republican anymore. It's tricky because many many billions of dollars have been spent to indoctrinate all of us with it so we spend all our time fighting each other instead of properly assessing accountability and making progress; and even when you consciously try to avoid it it still creeps back into your speech and thought patterns. But I have resolved to do the best I can to name things truly; I hope others might do likewise, but that's beyond my control.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Monday January 09 2017, @09:57PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @06:15AM
We will always have a crime problem. No jobs, crime pays when work won't.
Plain and simple as that.
The problem we face now is how to avoid civil war. Our right wing media outlet, fox news is inciting literal civil war by promoting Black Lives Matter as terrorists and cops as heros.
The rub is that cops aren't the only ones with guns. Eventually an oppressed people will fire back. Ever hear the name Custer?
After all the black youth gunned down on the streets by the pigs lately. I have NO sympathy for murders.
I remember Kent state.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 10 2017, @08:36AM
Our right wing media outlet, fox news is inciting literal civil war by promoting Black Lives Matter as terrorists and cops as heros.
Too bad there aren't any other media outlets.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:55AM
Ever hear of an echo chamber?
Cops are watching Fox et.al. and being encouraged to shoot BLM terrorists.
Blacks are watching lefty MSM and hearing that the cops are murdering peaceful blacks with impunity, BLM heroes are their only hope.
Both sides are encouraging this.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 12 2017, @02:01AM
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:05PM
Actually if you look up the stats, places and times with more gums, and especially with some form of legal carry, have noticeably less violent crime. Especially rape.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 09 2017, @11:02PM
The second one is the primary one. Without privately owned guns, there would not be a United States of America; there would be a bunch of British colonies. First privately owned guns created this nation. Then in the early 1800s ensured the continuation of this nation. Then in the middle of the 1800s freed this nation from itself. Do you see yet exactly why we have in our heads that privately owned firearms can be an extremely powerful force for good?
More to the point though, it's not some unspecified tyranny. It's the currently existing and ever-expanding tyranny. Eventually, likely within my lifetime, private weapons will again be used against tyrants on US soil. This time they'll be the ones we created for ourselves but their origins only matter after the fact when reconstructing a system hopefully less prone to spawning tyrants.
In any case, check the violent crimes rates and murder rates in the US vs most of the world. We're doing just fine on that front, thanks. Our gun-violence rates are higher, yes, but the overall numbers say that just as many people would be dying if guns were completely banned. The raw odds of you being shot in the US are pretty low; less than half a percent. If you can refrain from joining a gang, killing yourself, or committing a violent crime, they fall to winning the lottery levels.
Final fun fact: if we could exclude the counties of the US that voted Hillary, we'd lead the world in both safety from criminal violence and gun ownership.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 09 2017, @11:47PM
Calling BS on this:
> Without privately owned guns, there would not be a United States of America; there would be a bunch of British colonies.
Obvious counterexamples from different eras are Canada and India, along with many other former British colonies, many of which left the empire without major wars.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:25AM
Which of them were the major center of goods and profit that the colonies within current US borders were for the British again? Oh, right, none of them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by tekk on Tuesday January 10 2017, @07:40AM
You mean like Canada, the world center of the incredibly lucrative fur trade which was the reason the British beat the French up over it in the first place?
Or maybe India, not like any valuable products were extracted from there. No sir, haven't heard of tea (literally the reason the subcontinent was conquered) or exotic spices or anything like that.
Those Caribbean holdings probably weren't worth anything either, right?
The British had plenty of holdings that were on the same rough level of value as the US, and I would argue that India was worth more than the US, all of which managed to separate from the empire without a civil war.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:21AM
Erm... sorry, no. Not a one of the above came anywhere close to matching the production value of the American colonies. Not even matching just the southern colonies.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 10 2017, @10:32AM
Obvious counterexamples from different eras are Canada and India, along with many other former British colonies, many of which left the empire without major wars.
The key phrase is "different eras". Even if we were to suppose that the British empire would have collapsed on time anyway despite the additional economic support of the American colonies, that still means a century or more that the American colonies would remain under the thumb of the British.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:01AM
You were doing good until you stepped in this pile of shit. Explain what Hillary has to do with this. Otherwise its meaningless, divisive rhetoric.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:22AM
Hillary? Nothing, really. I just find it an interesting correlation that the blue counties are by far the most violent counties.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:17AM
Yet instead of thinking critically to have an informative opinion you throw out "that voted hillary" which isn't even quite correct. Urban areas still have a significant percentage of red voters.
It is interesting that urban centers have higher crime rates, the answer being at least partially because urban centers are where wealth inequality is at the most extreme. In rural areas people in poverty can usually still afford a crappy house on a small plot of land, and that is a huge lifestyle improvement over low end city housing...
Your opinionated statement just indicates low level partisan thinking, which taints anything else you might say as people must wonder if your opinions are valid or affected by emotional rhetoric.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @01:42AM
No, it's only mostly correct. This is true. I hang my head in shame that generalizations are not true to the last man/woman/child.
Wealth inequality is the cause of violence you say? Well, you would, wouldn't you? The reason it's happening has to fit your narrative. Must be someone else causing them to be criminals or all your cards come tumbling down, right?
Partisan? You know it's not only Republicans who hate the Democrat party's platform and policies, yes?
Now, how about some critical thinking of your own. Look at the cities that lie in red counties and compare violence levels to those in blue counties. Can you see the correlation or would that create too much cognitive dissonance?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday January 10 2017, @02:35AM
You aren't fooling anyone. You're trying to pick a fight. Stop baiting people with nonsense. It's childish and what you would expect from angsty teenagers. If a grown man needs to satisfy his ego by smacking down someone on the internet, well I just feel bad for them.
It's exactly what runaway did in this post: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=17380&cid=451649#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]. And look who came to his aid: https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=17380&cid=451725#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]. And resulted in a little mod skirmish. Grow up.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @03:20AM
Some fights need picked.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Tuesday January 10 2017, @11:44AM
some noses need picked...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:55PM
Most all of em but I'm not going to infringe on anyone else's nasal liberties. That's a step too far.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:25PM
The second one is the primary one. Without privately owned guns, there would not be a United States of America;
Just like there isn't an India. Or Austrailia. Or New Zealand.
However I think a more accurate statement would be "without private parity with armed forces" the US revolution would not have occurred. Does owning half a dozen P90s, a couple of glocks, and a few pickup trucks or whatever give you parity with the US military? In 2017, don't you need airplanes, helicopters, Obama's drone warfare, etc.
If the government had decided to ignore Trump's glorious victory and instead instill Obama as "President for life", do you really think that you'd be able to fight the government?
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 10 2017, @12:52PM
Yes. Without question. If only every tenth gun owner killed one jackbooted thug, they would run out of jackbooted thugs before we ran out of gun owners. You massively underestimate how many armed people there are in the US.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @01:51AM
those planes, tanks, etc are not autonomous yet. so, yes, easily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @02:24PM
We know you aint the sharpest tool in the shed. But claiming to be inteligent and then pretending a violent crime is a violent crime is a violent crime and just adding up the numbers is even idiotic for you. Getting punched and kicked in the UK is a lot different to being shot in America. Even Chinese kindergarten students survive stabbing rampages at their schools, American school gun massacres...not so much...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 11 2017, @04:10PM
Violent crime is violent crime is violent crime if that's what you're looking at. Would you prefer simply murders? Can't be done. The UK only reports [parliament.uk] proper Murder convictions and file them under the year the conviction was attained, whereas the US reports any violent or suspicious death at the time it is discovered, regardless of even having a suspect much less a conviction. Using the same methodology as the US, experts estimate the murder rate in the UK would be up to five times what is currently reported. That would put them down as significantly more deadly than the US to live in despite having to do it all with knives and cricket bats and such.
Another fun fact, the `96 gun ban in the UK had absolutely no lasting effect [mintpressnews.com] on the murder rate there, though it did cause a spike in the murder rate directly after it was enacted.
Do your research next time, so you don't look like quite as unprepared.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @03:36AM
You forgot phallic symbol.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 10 2017, @04:57AM
He's a Red Pillar, you know, an erect phallus that has been stroked a bit too much, like until the skin comes off. No wonder all these MRA types like metal rods instead! Although, you know, on full-auto they can get too hot to handle. Maxim, the gun, not the magazine. Water-cooling, without the over-clocking.