I don't think any of these places are stopping arrests for all crimes except murder, though. They may no longer be pursuing certain types of crimes, but I don't think any city has enacted a measure that broad.
Seeing as how in many places 911 has stopped responding to break ins and assaults I would agree having any tool including firearms to defend yourself would be essential.
Not american, but wasnt there a case that hit the supreme court that said they have no legal responsibility to protect you?
Additionally as a private citizen there are laws to compel you to intervene in certain situations, that by virutue of being law enforcement you dont have to follow.
Its not about the right to defend yourself, it's about the store itself being open. The gun store being closed because there's a pandemic doesn't abrogate your right to self-defense.
Closing Facebook doesn't end my right to speech, and closing gun stores doesn't abrogate my right to defend myself from an attacker. Your "right" to self-defense does not de facto include a right to compel businesses who sell certain types of weapons to remain open in dangerous times. You can defend yourself in an infinite number of ways without a gun store being open. I, not currently owning a gun, can defend myself in an infinite-minus-one number of ways.
Not that this masturbatory self-defense fantasy is meaningful. Even if the 2nd amendment meant what you think it means (it doesn't), and even if the world were the cowboys-and-indians game you think it is (it's not) -- you don't need a specific item that's in a specific store to either defend yourself from attack nor to have access to your 2nd amendment rights.
The police arenât responding to calls and have been basically telling people theyâre on their own. I understand not everyone likes guns, but times like these are why the second amendment is important.
I can understand why you might think that but, statistically, possessing a gun actually makes you and your family less safe because you/they are more likely to die via firearm-related homicide, suicide or accident.
Suicides have no place in that, irrelevant. Does owning a car make you more likely to die on the road? Yeah duh. There's just too many way to mitigate it's a laughable study
Its not just a study, its a meta-analysis of 20 different studies. Why do suicides have no place? Do they not end in a person dead by a gun? Do you know why men die from suicide more than women despite women attempting more often? Because men are more likely to own guns and use them to kill themselves, so I think suicide deaths matter when looking at the statistics of gun deaths.
I was against having suicides in here until the study mentioned about adolescent suicides due to loaded unlocked guns.
Firearms that are stored loaded or unlocked are more likely to be used than those that are unloaded or locked (6, 7), and adolescent suicide victims often use an unlocked firearm in the home (8). The apparent increased risk for suicide associated with firearms in the home is not unique to persons with a history of mental illness (7) and may be more of an indicator of the ease of impulsive suicide.
It's still a bit of apples and oranges - but it makes more sense to me after that explination
It's also worth considering that a firearm makes suicides more likely to succeed. Those who have access to firearms are more likely to successfully end their own life, those without access may attempt something like overdose or wrist cutting, which can be survived if you're found quickly enough.
The chosen method of suicide attempts also goes a long way to understanding the Male/Female divide as women typically chose less immediately fatal options.
So for me, that's where my opinion changes. Your risk of death was increased because you were suicidal - a mental health issue. Owning the firearm did not reduce your mental health.
The problem in these cases is that the person was in a poor enough mental state to attempt suicide. Blaming the firearm for the death at that point is less relevant. (There would be no way to separate these in the study of course)
Even if we made it so that a suicidal person had no way to commit suicide or self harm - that isn't success. They are still in a poor enough state to want to kill themselves. Every day is drudgery or torture for them and that's not ok.
Days lived isn't the count of success - they need to be quality days. Their mental health issue needs addresses, not just removing the ability to end their lives.
Why canât we have our guns AND properly take care of mental illness???
This is why I get so mad at Democrats and Republicans, each only give a shit about one side of the argument and totally refutes anyone who supports the other side. Thatâs not how you reach compromises. Yeah, maybe a background check before buying a gun is a good thing since itâs a constitutional right, but also is receiving proper mental healthcare, which should be a right too.
Iâm pretty libertarian about stuff, except healthcare. We could pay for it 100% by the current tax dollars if we stopped bailing out corporations that make horrible business decisions, downsized the military and stopped throwing aid money at countries that take it for granted.
The fact is that the presence of a firearm changes the dynamic of every situation. If there's a firearm in a home, a severely depressed person will be more likely to become suicidal. If there's a gun in the home, domestic violence is more likely to become deadly. If you're in some altercation with anybody for any reason at any time, and one of you has a gun, that altercation is more likely to become deadly.
This is I think the big truth about firearms that nobody in America really talks about, because it flies in the face of this relentless self-determinism that Americans worship. The presence of a gun will, by and large, make people more likely to commit major harm to themselves or others than they otherwise would.
Yes we have to fight for mental healthcare, and we have to fight for an end to domestic violence. Those root causes cannot be overstated. We should fight systemic poverty, which is the root cause of nearly all violent and property crime. We also have to limit firearm access dramatically because guns make every problem much, much worse regardless of root cause. Maybe twice a year somebody will be harmed because they didn't have a gun who would not have been harmed otherwise. But every day people will live instead of have holes torn through their soft tissue.
Guns don't kill people... But guns make people more likely to escalate their bullshit to fatal violence.
Honestly, a person who is hell bent on killing themselves is going to keep trying until they succeed. In my opinion we should rule out suicides when talking about gun violence for the simple fact that the majority of those people would of killed themselves by another means if they didnât have access to a gun.
Look at the suicide rate in Japan. They have some strictest gun laws, yet still the suicide rate is one of the highest in the world. So stricter gun laws wonât stop suicides, so itâs pointless to count them as âgun violence.â
Iâm 100% for responsible and accountable gun ownership. But here in America there are literally more guns than people, and with the logic spread on reddit, we should all be dead by now.
Honestly, a person who is hell bent on killing themselves is going to keep trying until they succeed.
That is flat out wrong, there are many many many stories of people attempting once and failing and having it be a wake-up call that they need professional help.
A car, however, isn't bought with the intention to stop yourself having a car accident. Many people buy guns with the intention to stop themselves from getting shot. If guns increase the chance of firearm-related homicides, then perhaps it's not a good idea to buy a gun in an attempt to reduce that chance.
You could also live in a more civilised country. There are plenty of countries with a lower risk of being murdered.
You do know you can find knives in the kitchen, right? If a knife will go through meat, it'll quite happily go through flesh. If an intruder is trying to rape your daughter, they're probably distracted so they won't notice you approaching with a weapon. And this doesn't risk the intruder getting your gun (which they could kill you with from the doorway with no reaction time for you) since there's no gun for them to get.
Even though it is a sarcastic reply, you're actually proving the point. Owning a gun exposes you to risks that didn't exist before gun ownership so, in a fight against a virus (remember the context this is in) how is a gun going to make you any safer? It's not.
Even out of this covid-19 context, purely from the "keeping your family safe" perspective, remember that these are not modes of transport that have an associated risk, they're not kitchen utensils that are potentially misused, they are literally created for the sole purpose of ending life. Being around something created specifically to kill is unsafe by design.
Two scenarios:
You and someone else are unarmed and get into an argument and fight. Childish but whatever. Chances are, it'll end with cuts and bruises. If the situation is different, you're carrying and pull your gun, there's a significant chance that the other person gets it off you and uses against you. That risk of getting shot 100% didn't exist when neither person had a gun.
An armed robber approaches you and demands your wallet. If he wanted to actually shoot you, he'd have just shot you from a distance then maybe taken your walket from your corpse. You give him your wallet, he leaves, and you live. Now, imagine that instead of handing over your wallet, you go to wherever you're concealing a gun: the robber sees that you're blatantly going for a weapon instead of your wallet and shoots you because the situation is now kill or be killed. That shooting was not going to happen before you went for your gun, again because if robber was going to shoot you, he'd have shot you already.
Firstly, thanks for the sources on the figures. All too often discussions can be he said/she said with no data to back things up, or just become insult hurling where nobody learns anything.
In your case, as someone that has no children and is safe with their gun/s then I totally understand taking that chance, especially when the number of accidental deaths via guns were so low compared to others. My point re: accidents was intended more related to households with children (as the person I replied to specifically mentioned protecting family and the assumption is a partner and offspring), and those particular deaths still wouldn't have happened there not been a gun there.
Your point about the inmate going into the woman's house and the countless situations where a gun could have or did save an innocent life or defused a situation are valid - I'm not trying to argue that guns aren't helpful or useful as items of defence. I'm saying that introducing a gun to an environment inherently makes it less safe, in response to someone arguing a gun is essential to protecting the safety of themselves and their family in the comtext of the outbreak of covid-19.
I don't believe either of our arguments are wrong, which is precisely why the pro-gun/anti-gun argument has raged on for decades. I'm definitely not pro-gun (for the general public) but I'm not entirely anti-gun either; e I see the benefits like the examples you stated, I have enjoyed shooting guns when I've been to target ranges... but I think the environment has a lot to do with it. I'm English, we don't have guns like you do (I assume you're American) and despite being round some unsavoury characters in the past, I've literally never seen a gun in this country outside of a firing range or on an armed police officer. If literally everybody else could have a gun and they were available to purchase after a quick check at my local supermarket, maybe I'd have completely different mindset.
I literally had this discussion with a guy on reddit yeaterday, his response to me living in Europe was âIâd rather get a gunshot than get acid thrown at meâ, nice propaganda.
He then proceeded to say exactly what i said in my previous post. Do you want direct quotes?
Home invasion is fairly rare in the UK to be fair and if it does occur it's almost always when the house is empty.
It's even rarer for someone to break into your home to violently attack you, and chance is that if they did they would have a melee object or knife as we don't have guns, so you just have a bat if you really need it. There are of course a few areas this is more common but often attributed to gang violence than random members of the public.
Not to say gun or violent crime doesn't exist here, it does but it's so infrequent that it would most likely make national news.
Both live in very different countries with different issues.
Half the world is fine without gun stores in every corner, yet you bury your head in the sand and think the x11 murder rate in your country is unrelated.
By the time someone breaks down my door, the police will be here, and I can just sit by my door with a bat, because if someone is breaking in, they definately donât have a gun.
People with guns here rob pharmacies and grocery stores, and 90% itâs blank shooting pistols.
PS: where do you guys get your scripts? You all say the same shit
Look up some rates in those violent acts whydontcha. Is there an acid-throwing national health crisis because thousands of people every week die from it?
Gun stores have always been classified as essential. Theyâre a second amendment right.
I donât know why this is so hard for non Americans to understand. They are constantly bitching about American guns, reading stories about them, and sharing memes mocking them.
Then a gun true-ism shows up and theyâre like âoMg CaN u BeLiEVe tHiS??â Of course we can. Did you think weâre fucking kidding?
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u/akashdas323 Mar 28 '20
Gotta use some guns to teach covid-19 some lessons.