Quote:
Originally Posted by manaboutown
Americans have the right to defend themselves with lethal force if necessary. Criminals will obtain guns no matter the law as they do in Mexico and other countries. If I have a gun I can hopefully shoot someone who has broken into my home rather than wait 20 minutes or more for the police to show up and discover my corpse.
|
This is a common argument for guns, and I believe it is mostly a reasonable argument. However, the trouble is in the details:
1. The argument does not require unlimited unregistered guns of any kind to protect ones self at home or in public. One could say they need automatic weapons using this argument, since without them only bad guys would have automatic weapons. One could say they need a Challenger 2 tank to protect their family. One could say they need a nuclear weapon to protect themselves against N. Korea and others. One of the fundamental reasons villages and larger groups of people were created is to provide for the common defense so individuals do not have to protect themselves from every possible enemy.
2. The argument does not require you be able to defend yourself without training and certification/licensing - neither of which would prevent your defending yourself or your family and would in fact help you do so.
3. The argument does not require you be able to accumulate unregistered guns. I personally do not believe that registering your guns would help stop mass shootings, but I see no reason it would hurt.
4. Requiring guns to be designed to only be able to be used by registered owners would not prevent you from defending yourself or your family and would prevent a bad guy from taking your gun away from you and killing you and your family (and other families) with it.
The number of lives saved by having unlimited access to guns seems to be seriously out weighed by the number of innocent people that are killed by bad people having guns. The argument that society would be safer if there were more guns would seem to have been proven wrong, since we now have over 300 million guns in circulation, that is more guns than adults.
With 300 million guns in circulation it is not possible to enforce a ban, so that is not going to happen. (Or let's just say, attempting to do so would probably make the civil war look like a peace rally). We have allowed this untenable situation to happen, and we need to figure out how to resolve it.
As has been said, the guns of themselves are not the problem. It is the undesirable uses of them that are the problem.
I find it difficult to understand why people who want to own guns are not the most vocal in trying to resolve this problem. It would be in both sides interest to work together to find a solution.
And finally, some statements from both sides from are just not useful. I have a daughter in law who said she was not worried about her son being killed in a school shooting, she was going to train him to use guns and he would be packing went he went into first grade. Seriously, I am not making that up. Can you imagine a class full of first graders all carrying guns?