this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Laws are not protections. They give government license to punish you.
Saying guns should be registered, then some people shouldn't own guns, then felons shouldn't own guns - you keep shifting your narrative to dodge the arguments. Pick one.
The actual text of the amendment is not an interpretation - that's literally what it says, word for word.
They're only preventable in the manner they happened which is past tense. You can't say they wouldn't have happened otherwise. Again, your opinion is wrong. You favor sacrificing liberty for a little bit of perceived safety. It seems you haven't spent much time looking into the past other than some people died a couple years ago. Genocide has followed confiscation enough times in history that neither I nor anyone else should vote for any form of gun control because it's nothing more than an easily digestible double speak that ultimately breaks down to mean confiscation. If you want to vote your liberties away, that's on you. Stop encouraging people to jump off that bridge with you.
None of those are mutually exclusive, so I'm not sure what you mean by "shifting narrative".
You are implying a specific interpretation.
Sure I can. The evidence shows that the number of people dead would decrease with better protections, because simply having a gun around increases the chance that somebody dies.
No, it's backed by evidence.
It's not perceived. There is evidence backing my position.
No, it's EVERY year, roughly ~50,000 per year.
If that's true, where is the genocide happening in the EU, australia, Japan, etc? Basically every western nation has gun control, yet no genocide.
It objectively isn't a bridge.
Shifting your narrative into different wording to sidestep the point. You know exactly what I mean. I can tell you're an intelligent person, don't act dumb.
I'm implying no interpretation. The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed - it's right there in plain text. It doesn't get any more straightforward than that.
I wasn't saying what you clearly cited was opinion. Why is that one even here?
It is perceived safety. If the wolf in your grandmother's clothing invites you in the house, the safety is perceived, it's not truly safe.
As for history, shall we start with Germany? Say, somewhere around 1929? We could do Cambodia circa 1975... We could do China maybe 1935 or so? Tiananmen Square comes to kind but I'm not sure what part confiscation played there so just bringing it up cause, well, frankly, they couldn't fight back. Wanna do Bosnia 1992? There's always Afghanistan....now.
You argue that it doesn't always happen but I argue that it does happen period. I'll take my chances. I hear Ukraine could use a few guns. Sure would have been useful to have them before the big R came knocking buildings over and killing civilians in the streets.
You've identified three policies that are not mutually exclusive. I don't know what else to tell you.
I'm well aware of the the wording. You're aware I'm aware of the wording, yet you quoted it for support, thus implying that your interpretation is correct.
>10 deaths per capita verses 0.25-3 deaths per capita.
It is not perceived, the evidence shows that I am correct.
If personal gun ownership is a solution against tyranny, and gun control is tyranny, then Germans wouldn't have been disarmed.
But they were, so one or both of those things are wrong. I'll give you a hint, both are wrong. I'm not going to address the rest of your examples, because it's more of the same.
I asked you this:
And you've given no answer. Because gun control is not a form of genocide, or a cause of genocide.
This is a terrific argument for multiple reasons. First, Ukrainian citizens do have the right to own guns and they do excerize that right. They have a shit load of civilian arms, roughly a million at the low estimate, and roughly 4.5 million if you also count the rough estimate of illegal weapons. They have enough to arm more civilians than Russia has actual troops.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine
It hasn't done shit for them. Ukrainians were still slaughtered in the villages and dumped in mass graves or left out on the streets despite owning these guns. A civilian with a gun is incapable of resisting a platoon, even one as terrible as Russia's. A civilian with a gun is incapable of fending off a tank, jet, or missile attack, all of which have been some of the biggest threats. The whole war started with missile barrages, and no amount of civilian arms could stop that.
They had guns and Russia still came knocking buildings over. Russia didn't give one flying fuck about civilians being armed, because an armed civilian is not a concern to a tyrannical state like Russia. They'll bomb your house, village, hospital, etc regardless.
Fair point on Russia. I was under the impression we were sending rifles to Ukraine because they didn't have any. I can admit when I was wrong. However, I will say a million guns in a nation with a population of 43M isn't saying much for their defense strategy. Now moving on cause I'm embarrassed...
I identified three different policies that you brought into the conversation as just that, different policies that you're using to satisfy a point because it helps your argument rather than say "I guess it's not exactly true."
Reciting the direct wording is not interpretation - it's stating the wording as written. What is there to interpret about "shall not be infringed?" It's as plain as it could possibly be.
Safety is not guaranteed, whether guns exist or not, therefore, it is perceived no matter what angle from which it's viewed.
I don't think I get your point on Germany - a state which seems to oppress it's citizens would not disarm those it seems to oppress? If that's your point it's silly and I think you know that but I still don't think that's what you were trying to say.
Of course it's more of the same, lol that was the point.
The genocide answer is that just because it hasn't happened in those places (yet) doesn't mean it can't or won't happen. It's like saying "people in Nigeria need food" then responding "No they don't, Brazil has plenty of food."
Ukraine was a dumb argument. Can we move on? Lol
Thank you, I understand how hard it is and I appreciate it.
It's not just a million guns. Historically, Ukraine has been a leaky boat in terms of weapons through various smuggling sources. So up to the war, a large amount of unregistered, illegal weapons were in the country. From my understanding the situation was getting better. Plus not all of them would have been meant for smuggling. But the absolute number of guns is much closer to a couple million.
I'll try not to dwell on it, but it is a relevant part of the conversation. If guns did something to prevent tyranny, we haven't seen it in Ukraine.
In an ideal world, the founding father would have been a little more clear about the issue.
But that's not the reality of the situation:
https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2023/10/supreme-court-pulsifer-criminal-justice-drug-definitions/
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/14/us/14bar.html
The definition of the word "and" evidently isn't clear enough. If something like that isn't simple enough to interpret, "infringed" isn't either. "As plain as can possibly be" isn't something that really exists in law, let alone constitutional law.
Then forget perception of safety. We should seek to reduce the number of people who die, and a big cause of that is firearms. Most developed nations use gun control to do so.
My argument was not "Nazi Germany wasn't tyrannical". My point was that number one, guns didn't help, and number two, gun control isn't tyrannical.
Nazi Germany built the autobahn. And that was largely a good thing, even if done by a tyrannical government. Just because a government is tyrannical doesn't mean all of its laws are, or all parts of all its laws.
And this isn't to say that Nazi Germany's implementation of gun control wasn't tyrannical, because it was because it was based on race.
Let me try putting the original argument into a syllogism for you.
P1. Private gun ownership prevents tyranny
P2. The gun control Nazi Germany created was tyrannical
C. The gun control did come to fruition
Except the conclusion quite clearly is false, so one of the two premises must be false. P2 is and isn't true because if the reasons I explained above with it being based on race.
But P1 is also false because there is no causal link that allows it to be true. When a government becomes tyrannical, gun owners do not step up to deal with it, and that's because the lines are blurry as fuck.
Take the U.S. for instance. When the Patriot act passed, the government became more tyrannical, spying on everyone and everything. Did gun owners violently overthrow the government in response to that tyranny? No, because it wasn't tyrannical enough for citizens to care. The bar of tyranny was just barely nudged, just enough to take more, but not enough to cause a reaction. And that's how governments get tyrannical, slow gradual changes.
And because of how slow and gradual the increase in tyranny is, there isn't really a good place to decide to physically fight for change with guns. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and time and time again the line gets drawn after it is too late, such as the case with Nazi Germany. The SS officers nocked on your door and took your gun, and you didn't use your gun because if you did, you would have been shot right there on the spot. And that's how it went for most gun owners. Their gun didn't do shit for them, because it was already too late.
This is basically a slippery sloap fallacy, but with a whisper of a threat of a slope.
If every place can have genocide, then listing random genocides isn't enough to prove a causal link.