Firearms are absolutely a benefit to society. They were how peasants a serfs gained more and more liberty back in the day, and remain essential to the preservation of freedom. You can deny it all you want, but at the end of the day, political power boils down to who can exert physical force on who. We've come up with all kinds of fancy ways to dress that up, and as long as a population doesn't become stressed by lack of basic survival needs, that facade will hold, even without firearms... but we live in a remarkably good time overall, and there is not guarantee things will remain like this.
Can you point to a time in the past . . . . oh, let's say 100 - 110 years where small arms did what you claim they do, and preserved freedom?
No cheating, remember:
- We're talking specifically about small arms, not small arms + rocket launchers/nukes/tanks/grenades/air support/artillery (as all of these things are heavily restricted and therefore not related to the freedom you're professing comes only from having a gun in your hands).
- We're talking about where an oppressive government was replaced with a kinder, gentler, less oppressive government of course. Switching one tyrant for another isn't an improvement.
I suspect you'll have a lot of difficulty finding an example of this.
I reject your timeframe limitation. 110 years is the blink of an eye and the arc of history is longer than that, so there's always the American revolution.
But, One example fiting your criteria is WW2. The Allies put a significant amount of effort into arming The Underground, and they did quite a lot through the process to weaken the 3rd Reich.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_during_World_War_IICiticzens who broke into the armories that repelled Franco's fascists in their initial attempts to take over Spain.
I made no such comments on banning or "unreasonably" restricting firearms. Good job on the straw-man
Then you are illogical. If you think firearms are a net negative, versus a net positive that needs some regulation, the only logical position you can have is to ban them.
If not a ban, what are you proposing? Looking back a few weeks, your contribution to this conversation seems to be baiting people with pointless hypothetical which strongly imply what your viewpoint might be, then quibbling about their "straw men" while not saying much useful about how you want to solve this.
And again you completely ignore any cumulative/secondary affect and the ability to defend without a gun. That happens when you start with a conclusion and force the data to fit the narrative. Kind of like telling the grieving parents of a child killed at school their grief doesn't matter.
Yep and the cool thing about self defense is the fact that there are a plethora of ways to defend yourself these days. Of course that didn't factor into your "calculations" because it doesn't fit the narrative.
Nice strawman yourself, guy. I never said anyone's grief didn't matter, of course it does. I'm just not going to advocate bad policy in a futile attempt to prevent all of it. I also maintain that the cumulative secondary effects of crimes prevented because of firearms more than washes the cumulative secondary effects of the crimes committed because of them.
As for the "you could defend yourself other ways:"
It is not incumbent upon the victim to scale their defense down to what 'could have worked'. Any defensive use is accredited to the positive impact of firearms on society because it ensured the victim had the most effective tool to defend themselves. additionally, a massive disparity in force can result in less injury/struggle. (think about it - would you try to assault someone at knife point if they were aiming a gun at you? Probably not, unless you were on meth.)
LMAO I always love this line of reasoning. Because you're little "pee shooter" scares the government. You know my job in the military boiled down to being able to level entire cities with a simple radio call. Sure back in the day of musket loaders and cannons the government might have been a little concerned.
You think they're going to airstrike every city in their own back yard to get the resistance? There are myriad ways an armed resistance can foil an oppressive tyrannical government.
Good question. Debunking your own calculations I see. ( : To go along with that how many were followed through on because they wanted the victims gun? I mean over 1.4 million guns were stolen in robberies between 2005 and 2010. I didn't see that in your calculations. In 2016 over 237,000 guns were stolen. Irony is "law abiding gun owners" fueling violence across America.
Let's be honest. Your calculations are simply a way for you to justify your preconceived notion that guns are good for society. You have no desire to acknowledge the true cost of firearms. And with that I have no more desire to debate with someone who lacks empathy.
My statement does nothing to debunk anything else I said... the opposite, infact. It's impossible to calculate all of the good intangible impacts firearms have on society just as much as you can't calc the intangible bad ones.
I am not lacking in empathy, but as I said, I won't let empathy drive me to support bad policy, and I support some ways of improving the situation without compromising the utiity of firearms.
The 237,000 guns stolen, as I recall, are part of that 414,000 gun crimes per year in the BJS data I discussed. Securing one's firearms is an area I think some legislative improvement is needed. That's a view I've evolved during the course of this thread.
My calculations were an attempt to compare how many crimes happened directly because of guns, and how many didn't happen directly because of guns. Nothing more, nothing less. Yes, it supported my preconceived notions, but I didn't know that when I started, and I included my reasoning. You can evaluate what, particularly, about my reasonings you don't like, but the data is from the BJS and is as solid and broken down as I can find. So far your criticisms indicate you haven't read that study, or given what I came up with any thought, and instead want to just accept the FBIs hilariously half-backed analysis because it fits YOUR preconceived notions.
And here is the real heart of the matter. This is why GRAs are not concerned with gun violence. Even if all gun related deaths could be eliminated by banning guns, they would still be against banning guns.
To argue with them about the harm guns cause is utterly futile, because at the end of the day they don't really care.
That's pretty ungenerous, strawman-esque even. It could be that we recognize that gun violence is actually pretty rare, and that there are many other reasons to keep them that might weigh more heavily in favor of keeping them.
But, I'll play along:
If:
-all gun deaths could be eliminated by banning guns, (Not likely)
-Gun deaths wouldn't convert to death-by-other-means (Even less likely.)
-All criminals would announce upon the commencement of their burgling, raping, and murder what they brought for offensive capabilities, so I might select what to use to repel them (not likely)
-something major about human nature changed and the desire in some people's hearts to oppress others was eliminated (Still less likely!)
Then: Yes, we could ban guns. There would be no need for them. That's a world I'd love to live in. Unfortunately, in the real world, those hypothetical will not come to pass, and I cannot support a ban on guns as the consequences would be worse than what we're enduring now.
I still care that firearm deaths happen, I literally am sick every time I hear about another school shooting. I know people who died in the Roseburg shooting in 2015, I took classes there! So for the 100th goddamned time I'll say that I support some things to reduce them, up until they start to compromise the main utility of firearm ownership, as when emotion is set aside, those things matter to.