Free Step Dodge

I agree, especially with the amount of people suddenly getting gun licenses and enrolling in police academies just to carry when they're not even mentally/emotionally prepared for that responsibility makes me concerned on how it'll be like years from now if stricter gun laws weren't in place in America. :-(

Get rid of the police first.

A ton of suicides happen just because there's a gun available (in their house) to someone in the moment.

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
shoutouts to The Onion

I don't like the idea of disarming the citizenry tbh. I think people should be able to defend themselves - the American government/police are clearly not qualified to do it. Especially with such a poor track record of brutalizing innocent citizens themselves.

My question to you @TheIndustrialCowboy would be is it worth putting everyone else in danger for the slim chance of protecting yourself? What chance does someone have? A good friend of mine was shot in the face at Vegas shooting. What chance did he have to defend himself? Self defense with a gun is a sentence and a shot in the dark.

@deathofaninja I don't think law-abiding gun owners should be punished for the actions of depraved individuals. The fact that mass shootings only became a real phenomenon after the 90's (while the legal ownership of firearms has existed much longer) should tell us that there is an underlying societal issue here that isn't being addressed.

Plenty of law-abiding gun owners have their weapons stolen and are then used in gangs or on innocent people. Like I said. When you own a gun you pseudo protect yourself while putting everyone else in danger. Other countries impose bans and guess what? They don’t die to guns! It doesn’t matter when mass shootings started happening; the fact is they did and we are the worst country for it.

@deathofaninja Legal firearms are one of the few equalisers between individuals of all different size and gender. For instance - what chance, realistically, do most women have of being able to fight off a man of greater size that wants to harm them? If someone were to break into your home and threaten you (with a weapon of any kind), would you be content to just beg for your life?

People in the other nations of the world may not die at the same frequency to firearms as in the US, but they're still stabbed, beaten, and raped every day by evil people. It's sad and unfortunate, but bad people exist and no amount of lawmaking will ever change that fact. I'd rather have something to combat them with myself rather than trust incompetent and disinterested government personnel to protect me.

What chance does anyone have if they are jumped by another individual regardless of size? Not much because it’s a pre-planned ordeal. What happens when you pull out the firearm and accidentally shoot someone else? Guns are a big problem in this country and not every police officer is incompetent; in-fact I would argue that most are actually beneficial.

What happens when the break in thief comes in, disarms you of your weapon and now a criminal that didn’t have a weapon before now has a weapon that can not just be used on you but others that try to intervene or others on the very street you live on? They are truly too much of a gamble with many different variables that are not self serving at all to the owner that thinks he’s defending himself.

A stabbing is far more intimate and far more rare because accidents typically don’t happen with these attacks. Whereas guns leave opportunities for many accidents to happen.

And to be even more clear I don’t have a problem with anyone that thinks differently than I do, but if people think owning a gun is freedom I would argue that they have a warped sense of reality. We would still have more freedoms and luxuries than any other country in the world without guns. The only people that should have them are licensed hunters (single shot rifle/ crossbow) and police/ military.

As an individual, it should be my responsibility then to mitigate risks through proper firearm storage and practice.

It's true - there are any number of hypothetical scenarios where someone could be killed in cold blood without recourse, gun or no gun. At the end of the day though, its an argument of collective vs. individual responsibility, and my personal belief is that collective safety is an illusion.

Have you ever heard of anyone getting accidentally stabbed? I haven’t, but I hear of people getting accidentally shot and killed every single day.

And a gun kill doesn’t end with you defending yourself. It ends with a legal process, and by the time they get done with you 9/10 you will wish you were attacked or robbed.

Again, it's up to me as an individual to mitigate the risk of accidentally shooting someone by handling my firearm appropriately. The same way it's up to me to be a responsible driver and watch for pedestrians when I get behind the wheel.

The fact that the legal process behind self defence is so convoluted should tell you we have a bigger problem with our judiciary system than guns themselves.

I'm not trying to write a manifesto or anything here, and I'm not trying to convince you to change your beliefs. I'm merely stating my own, and providing a rationale that will hopefully allow you to better understand where I'm coming from.