The UK's version of gangs is tiddlywinks compared to this country. The state of Texas has worse gang violence than Britain and Scotland combined. Think about it.
Did I say that? Are you saying the UK has as many inner cities or people in inner cities as the US? They do have some fantastic knife control laws though.
This. Owning a gun dramatically increases the chances that you or somebody you know will die by a gun. Alongside of that it increases the chances that everybody else will die by a gun.
The UK's gang population may even be higher per capita than the US gang population per capita. This is not surprising given that gangs as we think of them now have been in existence for more than 4 centuries in the UK and they had a head start on us in that regard. It's also true that the UK massed poor people in cities long before the US existed. Like many other things we took an established phenomenon and perfected it.
Awesome. That way, when people realize that the US is becoming more of a totalitarian state than they ever imagined, it will be so much easier to quell the uprisings with martial law. Works for the Muslim states. Most of them aren't even allowed to look at a woman's ankle without being beaten in public.
Owning a gun also dramatically decreases the chances that some asshole will break down your front door, beat you to death, rape your wife, and steal your flatscreen after he takes a nice long enjoyable dump in your master bathroom. Maybe we should make valuable items to steal and also attractive women illegal. Less of a threat for break-ins.
The idea of irresponsible gun owners is the myth. police do not prevent crime, they respond to it. someone who is murdered takes very little solace in knowing that the Police arrived to cover their body with a tarp.
I'm all for owning a gun and gun rights but seriously, that argument makes some people just sound like nut bags... There are parts of the world where people have evolved past the violent stage...Unfortunately, stupid Americans aren't
Are you kidding with this? You know what guns in the hands of citizens are going to do if we ever get to a state of martial law? They're going to get a lot of citizens killed alongside a few soldiers. They're going to cause huge collateral casualties among the people close too and in residence with the citizens with guns. You know what happened at Ruby Ridge and in Waco? Just think about that as the .001% tip of the iceberg if we ever get to a state of martial law. You've taken a poorly thought out position on this. Cuz the government's drones are going to trump anything the citizenry can come up with. The way to survive and defeat martial law is with non-violent responses. You can't shoot your way out of a confrontation with the government, you can only shame it and hurt it economically until it bends to the popular will. The secondary problem here of course is that martial law will likely be the result of the popular will of the moment. That will pass though.
It's easy for you to think like that because it is what you are expected to think. Would it bother you that people think you are a nutbag for believing the Ancient Alien theory? Where have people evolved past the violent stage? Tibet? There is violence everywhere. It's human nature to purport it.
Violence is a natural result of the human condition. The extent to which it can express itself is largely confined by the society in which it manifests at any given point. You would not have seen US lynch mobs routinely hacking people to death with machetes because they were a different tribe, as happened in Rwanda and the Congo. The US lynch mobs would still be killing people but in less gory ways most of the time. There are some relatively primitive societies in the Indonesian and New Guinean highlands, where the potential for violence is very high but the actual violence that occurs is very low. That's because the people in each valley know that if they go outside their valley they are likely to be killed so almost nobody strays far from home.
It's too bad that they didn't have comprehensive machete control laws in Rwanda and the Congo. All of that death could have been avoided.
Great points made by both sides here. Im in teh heart of gun control arguments, seminars, rallies blah blah. The only point I cannot comprehend was made by abyz...and many, many others. Its the notion that we defend that 2nd amendment thingy about organizing a militia to fight off our eveil government. With glocks and rifles? Against the US military? Silliness, no?
I'm sure people thought it was silly that the little army of the colonies could defeat the great British army too.
I am certainly not. This country is on the verge of economic collapse, the government controls the media and is conditioning people to be distracted and docile as an big government will do when they fear civil unrest, but using a system of "privately" controlled networks to do it instead of an information ministry. It amounts to the same thing. That is the unfortunate consequence when a power that is losing control forces by tightening their control on their populace. Casualties. Maybe it will even equal the number of Americans that died in Afghanistan over the last three years. It's funny that you would mention both of those incidents in the same sentence. Waco was an incident where one man went insane and killed people prodigiously until he was shot. Ruby Ridge was an incident that was actually mishandled terribly by the same types of government officials that you seem bent on giving every semblance of power to. If you want to get into it about Ruby Ridge, start a separate thread about it. I have already written two papers on the subject and know the details quite intimately. Suck my dick. Yeah, right, because the government controls the people by force and without any concern for human rights. You are basically giving the government's company line about martial law, and a government can only truly achieve martial law by first disarming the populace. Martial Law happens because the government fails to achieve a successful balance of human rights and societal content. "That will pass". You sound like a dictator. This country is going to crash hard and people like you will defend the flames.
When Nixon federalized the State Militia that boat sailed. Egypt is going through it's second public turnover of their government without firing a shot. Gandhi brought down the British Empire without firing a shot. You want to enforce the 2nd amendment go back to State Militia's and disband the Federal army.
