What you don't take into account, my dear Luna, is that if a certain government of a pro-gun nation were to become so shitty that it would warrant a rebellion, the civilians would have a certain percentage of the military fighting alongside them, as can be seen in the American Civil War.

a) If Bush's 8 years don't count as shitty enough for Americans to put an early end to it, then the argument for armed rebellion is moot: Even if they got such a shitty gov't modern Americans just won't have the will to fix it. b) If the civilians have the military fighting alongside them during some hypothetical rebellion, then the military has plenty of guns to go around, no need for the general populace to be armed to militaristic levels all the time during peace time.

I'm not saying which side would win, just that people wouldn't give up straight away.

Realistically, if the US ever became a dictatorship which controlled the military's purse-strings, which is the most likely scenario of course, then the civilians would have zero chance against the gov't with their puny civilian grade armaments. A couple of tanks or helicopters against 100s or even 1000s of guys with even fully automatic rifles would be more than enough to quell them.

Besides, I guarantee you that most of the gun nuts of today would be the ones on the side of the dictatorship in the first place. They are far more politically right-wing, authoritarian, totalitarian, blind-faith patriotism bordering on nationalism than any of the folks of the American Revolution.

Like Hitler, the dictator would be voted in by these nuts.

Ummm, can I please point out the obvious?

If knives and clubs are sufficient for all your killing needs, .... ummmm, ... why the big fuss over gun laws? Just stock up on knives and clubs. Bonus, you'll never run out of ammo!!!

On the flip side, if we go the other way and say no weapons should be restricted, then why not let anyone own a Bazooka (or the modern equivalent)? After all, if the gov't suddenly turns into a dictatorship, someone will need to shoot down all those helicopter gun-ships and you'll need some anti-tank weapons too. Heck, even granny needs one.

Kid, its not fucking spetznaz. Its a religious nut who got ahold of a gun. Someone who goes to a range and practices daily, takes classes and learns proper shot placement know how to deal with the situation. And guess what else classes teach you? How to stay calm in situations like that :o

Lawlz your ignorance about the Paris attacks truly amazes me.
The terrorist were heavily armed with kalashnikov, grenades and explosives, they were also seasoned warriors fighting in Syria for 2 years and trained there for the war.
I agree with you about the fact that he is a real "religious nut" but that does not mean they werent heavily armed and trained, stop underestimating it and I highly advise you to read more about these attacks this was well planned and there could have been way more deaths if the security did not stop them for example in the Stade de France, where the French President and the French and German national teams of football + 80.000 people in the Stadium were at the same moment while the explosions occured.


Also for gun supporters bringing the fact that knives could kill as much as a kalashnikov, are you all serious here? Stop being insane and think about what you just said, war weapons are way more deadly than just knives, it took 1 hour for the police to stop the terrorists in the Bataclan and secure it, why? Because they were trained (they fought for 2 years in Syria) and HEAVILY ARMED, what do you think, hundreds of people wounded and killed during a concert, you really believe 2 guys with knives could commit this massacre?

On the other hand we know how deadly guns are, when used by mad civilians, here a "small list" of shootings (only in schools, just reminding since 2013, 160 school shootings occured):

* 9 killed - June 17, 2015 - Dylann Roof, 21, shoots and kills nine people inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, in Charleston, South Carolina. Eight die at the scene; a ninth dies at a hospital. Roof is arrested the following day; according to police, he confesses and tells investigators he wanted to start a race war.

* 12 killed - September 16, 2013 - Shots are fired inside the Washington Navy Yard killing 12. The shooter, identified as Aaron Alexis, 34, is also killed.

* 12 killed - July 20, 2012 - Twelve people are killed and 58 are wounded in a shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater screening of the new Batman film. James E. Holmes, 24, is taken into custody outside of the movie theater. The gunman, dressed head-to-toe in protective tactical gear, set off two devices of some kind before spraying the theater with bullets from an AR-15 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and at least one of two .40-caliber handguns police recovered at the scene.

* 27 killed - December 14, 2012 - Sandy Hook Elementary School - Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza, 20, guns down 20 children, ages six and seven, and six adults, school staff and faculty, before turning the gun on himself. Investigating police later find Nancy Lanza, Adam's mother, dead from a gunshot wound. The final count is 28 dead, including the shooter.

* 8 killed - October 12, 2011 - Eight people are killed during a shooting at the Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, California. The suspect, Scott Evans Dekraai, 41, of Huntington Beach, is arrested without incident as he is trying to leave the scene. The eight dead include Dekraai's ex-wife, Michelle Fournier, 48. He was armed with three guns -- a 9 mm Springfield, a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, and a Heckler & Koch .45 -- and was wearing body armor during the shooting rampage.

* 8 killed - August 3, 2010 - Manchester, Connecticut - Omar Thornton kills eight co-workers at Hartford Distributors before turning the gun on himself. Thornton had been asked to resign for stealing and selling alcoholic beverages.

* 13 killed - November 5, 2009 - Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 people and injures 32 at Fort Hood, Texas, during a shooting rampage. He is convicted and sentenced to death.

* 13 killed - April 3, 2009 - In Binghamton, New York, Jiverly Wong kills 13 people and injures four during a shooting at an immigrant community center. He then kills himself

Edited 11/18/2015 10:37:55

Off Topic and important news!

Currently another assault is occuring near Paris, in Saint Denis with a squad composed of the army and elite police officers (RAID and GIGN) they already shot 2 terrorists including a kamikaze woman trying to explode herself, and arrested 3 other people.
No civilian casualities fortunately, the entire town of Saint Denis is now closed with thousands of police officers and soldiers, good luck for them, we trust in you! :)

Edited 11/18/2015 10:27:32

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/nov/18/paris-attacks-police-hunt-ninth-suspect-as-germany-on-alert-after-hanover-bomb-threat-live

Alright Eklipse, here we go.

Let's go over your post:

the enemy is a group of trained killers wielding Kalashnikov assault rifles, and you're just a panicked civilian with a handgun.

And that's somehow worse than being a panicked civilian with no defense at all?

Roughly 33,000 people die in America annually due to guns. (Yes, this figure includes suicides, accidental deaths n stuff, the important part is the gun, not the cause)

Would the death toll really be lowered by banning/restricted guns? All the things you mentioned can easily be carried out by other means. Knives can be involved with suicide and mass killings. One can rig up an explosive using legal chemicals.

I really don't understand why so many people would rather be totally helpless than have guns. Armed citizens won't always prevent tragedies, but they can give the common folk a CHANCE, and that's better than nothing.

"And that's somehow worse than being a panicked civilian with no defense at all?"
Yes, because that's what the topic is about. The sole purpose of the topic is to prove to you that arming citizens is a bad idea, despite the possible short-term gain. Either lose 120 in an occasional terrorist attack, or lose 5,000 every year to guns.

"Would the death toll really be lowered by banning/restricted guns? All the things you mentioned can easily be carried out by other means. Knives can be involved with suicide and mass killings. One can rig up an explosive using legal chemicals."
Bombs were also used during the terrorist attacks. They did not kill nearly as people. However that is something we will see more in terrorist attack rather than school attacks by some insane guy.
As for knifes, please refer to Angry Panda's post:

Also for gun supporters bringing the fact that knives could kill as much as a kalashnikov, are you all serious here? Stop being insane and think about what you just said, war weapons are way more deadly than just knives, it took 1 hour for the police to stop the terrorists in the Bataclan and secure it, why? Because they were trained (they fought for 2 years in Syria) and HEAVILY ARMED, what do you think, hundreds of people wounded and killed during a concert, you really believe 2 guys with knives could commit this massacre?

"I really don't understand why so many people would rather be totally helpless than have guns. Armed citizens won't always prevent tragedies, but they can give the common folk a CHANCE, and that's better than nothing."
I'm not refuting that armed citizens could MAYBE help stop an ongoing terrorist attack.
But the long-term effect of having armed citizens is not worth it. As I keep trying to tell you.

Yes, which proves that when deprived of guns people will find other means to kill. It's pretty darn easy to carry out attacks against UNARMED civilians. Whenever your target is defenseless you could commit murder with a CLUB. Of course, you're going to dismiss this point as "bullshit" because it runs counter to your agenda. I understand, don't worry.

Don't worry, I understand you're going to keep spewing the same shit over and over again instead of directly refuting any of the points made against you.

I'm pretty sure the situation Lawlz is referring to would involve far more than a handful of citizens. Plus, you entirely missed the point of his picture. This "Oh, we'd just fail anyways so why even bother?" is a stupid attitude.

Is it?
Please read:

Realistically, if the US ever became a dictatorship which controlled the military's purse-strings, which is the most likely scenario of course, then the civilians would have zero chance against the gov't with their puny civilian grade armaments. A couple of tanks or helicopters against 100s or even 1000s of guys with even fully automatic rifles would be more than enough to quell them.

Besides, I guarantee you that most of the gun nuts of today would be the ones on the side of the dictatorship in the first place. They are far more politically right-wing, authoritarian, totalitarian, blind-faith patriotism bordering on nationalism than any of the folks of the American Revolution.

Also +1 to Thomas, wct, Angry Panda

I can't remember if this has been covered, but...
if I was a gunman, and I had unarmed hostages, I wouldn't kill them. I can use them to ransom things like buses and a plane ticket to (insert poor country).
If my opponents had handguns, I'd shoot them without mercy, knowing at least one would manage to hide their gun as the fighting broke out and would shoot me later.

Wanna know why people need guns?

Because they're too fucking stupid to use what they have around them. Everything, literally everything is a weapon. The only difference is how fast it would take me to kill you with my laptop, than it would be with the .22 revolver at my hip.

Kill someone with a spoon...

Please read:
Realistically, if the US ever became a dictatorship which controlled the military's purse-strings, which is the most likely scenario of course, then the civilians would have zero chance against the gov't with their puny civilian grade armaments. A couple of tanks or helicopters against 100s or even 1000s of guys with even fully automatic rifles would be more than enough to quell them.

Besides, I guarantee you that most of the gun nuts of today would be the ones on the side of the dictatorship in the first place. They are far more politically right-wing, authoritarian, totalitarian, blind-faith patriotism bordering on nationalism than any of the folks of the American Revolution.

And how would the US go about becoming a dictatorship in the first place? The one thing Americans treasure is their idea of being free. One cannot snap their fingers and turn the US into a totalitarian government, there would need to be a strung-out process of slowly taking away the freedoms of the people.

"But what are the costs of having a country full of guns? Well, let's use America's statistics"
swiss gun statistics show that having a country full of guns can work perfectly fine when a country is ruled by the citizens, instead of fake democracy.

@Des I fail to see your point, if guns are outlawed we will not see an outbreak of mass laptop killings. Guns are far more efficient. My point stands about the knives^^^

Guns laws are there for a reason.

@The Man Who'd Buy Spain

While there guns give them a heavy advantage (compared to no gun countries) if they ever had to fight an oppression government I doubt they'd have the spirt to fight for long anyway. And it's not really worth the cost still it's swings and rounderbouts.

What you don't take into account, my dear Luna, is that if a certain government of a pro-gun nation were to become so shitty that it would warrant a rebellion, the civilians would have a certain percentage of the military fighting alongside them, as can be seen in the American Civil War. I'm not saying which side would win, just that people wouldn't give up straight away.

Haha good point hopefully it won't come to that ever

And how would the US go about becoming a dictatorship in the first place? The one thing Americans treasure is their idea of being free. One cannot snap their fingers and turn the US into a totalitarian government, there would need to be a strung-out process of slowly taking away the freedoms of the people.

Don't ask me. Ask the gun nuts who try to use this concept to justify their fear of gun laws.

It's like asking an atheist to define the god they don't believe in. It's not up to the atheist to define the god. It's up to the believer. The atheist just points out the inevitable holes in the believers' god-concepts. Same here. Gun nuts think that their guns protect them from some hypothetical future where the US gov't goes out of control and they need to fight back; typically, some form of dictatorship. How did it get this way? Beats me. Ask the gun nuts.

"But what are the costs of having a country full of guns? Well, let's use America's statistics"
swiss gun statistics show that having a country full of guns can work perfectly fine when a country is ruled by the citizens, instead of fake democracy.

Le sigh. These bogus arguments are so easy to debunk if you take 10 seconds to google them. One of the first links I found was to this http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/20/charleston-south-carolina-shooting-gun-control-reform-myths which said:

Myth No4: Switzerland and Israel seem to do OK without gun control

Proponents of unfettered gun ownership often point to the example of Switzerland, which has a tradition of more widespread firearms ownership than most other European countries but is not known for its gun-ravaged inner cities.

One problem is the trend is not that different: more guns still lead to more shooting, just less so than in America. Switzerland is actually second among wealthy countries in terms of annual gun deaths (0.77 per 100,000 of population in one recent survey, versus 2.97 in the US and just 0.07 in England and Wales) but has barely half as many guns per 100 people (45.7 versus 88.8 in the US).

But even this comparison gets weaker if you look at the way the Swiss keep their guns, which stems from a tradition of military service that has been considerably tightened over the years. One US study by the National Institutes of Health points out that both Switzerland and Israel (another alleged exception to the rule touted as proof that guns don’t kill) actually limit firearm ownership considerably and require permit renewal one to four times annually.

Those are just the kind of gun control measures, in fact, that second-amendment fans in the US claim wouldn’t make any difference to gun violence.

(Bold added by me.)

I also learned (learning! what a great thing!) that recently Switzerland (in response to a mass shooting!) changed its rules about ammunition. According to a comment by a Swiss person on another article by Time, which repeated the myth uncritically:

"Gun-loving Swiss"?!? Seriously?!? This is disinformation!!! I'm very disappointed in the Time.

Switzerland is very gun averse! But the country sees it as a necessary evil to protect our country from outside theats. It comes from our history having a milicia and not a professional army. We, Swiss, hate guns! The grand majority of Swiss people feel that it is not necessary to keep our army rifle at home. So now, we don't have ammunition at home anymore. And the time we did have ammunition, we would go to jail as soon as we unpacked it without authorization. And unlike the US, we don't have guns to protect ourselves individually, but to protect our country. It's deep in our culture. And our laws prohibit the use of guns, even under threat. In Switzerland, if we get threatened by a person with a knife in our home and we kill him with a gun, we go to jail. That's because here, this would be an disproportionately inappropriate response to that threat.

(Bold added by me.)

They no longer keep their (militia) ammo at home but in a secure community depot.

For more (accurate rather than baloney) info, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

Ive read through all of this and their are some interesting arguments in here. Looking through them all puts a nice perspective on things. However there are a few things that ive noticed.

1.)Lets say America does set up anti-gun laws. The general populace has no more guns. But guess who will be figuring out ways to get guns? Everyday criminals. Gangsters and terrorists will always find a way to get guns. So how would one stop those kind of people from attaining illegal firearms? Because the idea of taking away guns is to keep people safe. So how would you keep people safe if criminals are the ones with guns?

2.)What if America remained pro-gun but Federal/State laws would require testing? This could help reduce injuries and stupid mistakes, could it not?

3.) America is not like Europe. They are very different in comparison. Socially,culturally, and overall in general. America has always been a sort of odd ball since its birth. Very few nations had implemented a republic democracy at the time. How would one implement anti-gun laws using European practice here in America?

4.)Lets take a moment to look at the Ukrainian Orange Revolution. Now, im sure quite a few different reasons on why things played out over there as they did but im going to touch up on only a few things. The people of Ukraine were peacefully protesting the actions of its government. Three times they assembled together peacefully and three times the police engaged the people to drive them away. At first it was just peaceful protesting and beatings. But when the people began to become more applying of their rights of protest, the police began killing people.

Something similar is happening in South Korea. The people were peacefully protesting and the police began to push them back and beat them. Killing some.

So to my question, how are the rights of the people guaranteed if they have no way to excerise or enforce them under a corrupt governnment?

Those are just a few questions I have for some of you. If it sounds like im pro-gun its because I am. But im trying to be sincere in my questioning.

So to my question, how are the rights of the people guaranteed if they have no way to excerise or enforce them under a corrupt governnment?

Austria has a corrupt coverment too (maybe even more corrupt than yours) and we can guarantee our rights without guns.

Lets hypothetically say the Austrian government wanted to do something their way and refuse to listen to its people? What then? The people would have two choices, either deal with what the government is doing or protest. If you deal with it you subjugate yourselves to them. But if you protest, the government wont listen they will attempt to quell any protests because they view it as civil unrest.

But then again, Austria has probably found a way to make that work. I wouldn't know because im not familiar with Austrian laws.