I'm a gun owner and this is the key point for me. No politician is in a position to tell me I don't need my semi-automatic pistol if every day I see a patrol car go by my house with 2 fully automatic AR-15s locked between the front seats and my local police department owns an armoured vehicle. If you really think you have a plan for getting rid of guns for bad guys as well as me, prove it. Demilitarize the police at the same time.

edit: To be fair, I think such a plan is possible, but it requires fixing other problems that too many politicians are afraid to touch. It's obviously been done successfully elsewhere, but only when cultures and geographies were more ready for it. I enjoy shooting and prefer to own a gun, but I'd give them up for a plan I thought would work. I just haven't seen one proposed in the US yet.

Unfortunately, we're going in the opposite direction.

--

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21599349-america...

SWAT teams were deployed about 3,000 times in 1980 but are now used around 50,000 times a year.

New Haven, Connecticut sent a SWAT team to a bar suspected of serving under-age drinkers. That same year heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando, Florida; they said they were hunting for guns and drugs but ended up arresting 34 people for “barbering without a licence”. Maricopa County, Arizona sent a SWAT team into the living room of Jesus Llovera, who was suspected of organising cockfights. Police rolled a tank into Mr Llovera’s yard and killed more than 100 of his birds, as well as his dog.

Federal cash -- first to wage war on drugs, then on terror -- has paid for much of the heavy weaponry used by SWAT teams. Between 2002 and 2011 the Department of Homeland Security disbursed $35 billion in grants to state and local police.

...it is hard to see why Fargo, North Dakota—a city that averages fewer than two murders a year—needs an armoured personnel-carrier with a rotating turret. Keene, a small town in New Hampshire which had three homicides between 1999 and 2012, spent nearly $286,000 on an armoured personnel-carrier known as a BearCat. The local police chief said it would be used to patrol Keene’s “Pumpkin Festival and other dangerous situations”.

No, that's what the legal system is for. The idea of trying to have some sort of legal right to political violence (terrorism) is bonkers. Maybe it comes from the Lost Cause or something.

The AR-15 has been mentioned in a couple of places in this thread. It has rather different connotations in the UK, being one of the favoured weapons of the IRA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_A...

(The Troubles seems like the exact nightmare scenario pro-gun people talk about when they talk of armed resistance to the government firing on demonstrators, coming round to the houses of dissidents in the middle of the night, etc., and yet I've never seen it discussed)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide#Rwandan_Patri...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising

However, I've never understood the logic behind it. Do people really think their handgun is going to help them resist a predator drone strike? The US military is vastly more powerful than any gun owner. Do people really think they can compete? What's more, advocates of legal gun ownership often also push for more military spending (though that might be less true here on HN). Am I missing something here?

Edit: To be clear, I certainly don't mean to be dismissive of legal gun ownership - I tend to argue in favor of it. What I don't understand is the argument that gun ownership curbs government power in any meaningful way. Guns and/or shooting and/or hunting seem like great hobbies.

For a single person, or a small group? I know of no one who believes that.

> The US military is vastly more powerful than any gun owner. Do people really think they can compete?

The US military is composed predominately of gun owners :).

> What's more, advocates of legal gun ownership often also push for more military spending (though that might be less true here on HN). Am I missing something here?

From my perspective, this is almost pure cognitive dissonance. They also tend to support things like NSA spying and restrictions on effective encryption.

Fair enough. Neither do I. I meant it as a rhetorical question because it's such an absurd thing to think, but I realize that wasn't necessarily clear.

> The US military is composed predominately of gun owners :).

So is the thinking that people in the military would disobey commands and join the uprising? (Or are you being entirely facetious, like the smile might suggest?)

> From my perspective, this is almost pure cognitive dissonance.

Exactly. But there are presumably smart people who make this argument. There's got to some kind of reasoning behind it. Right?

Yes. tl;have work to do: The knowledge of the potential for large portions of the population to resist oppression by use of small arms is sufficient to deter governments from radical, direct assaults on human rights.

No it isn't; the US has massive gun ownership and direct assaults on human rights. Especially of nonwhite people. The US never really "signed up to" human rights in the modern (postwar) sense.

Various insurgencies have given the US military a run for their money, even with all the advanced weaponry at its disposal. I think that a similar insurgency of Americans on American soil would be even harder for the US military do deal with than those foreign ones.

No, but as a group the people of the US would most certainly defeat the US military. As others pointed out much less armed and smaller groups have held the military at bay, and for long periods of time. But there are two much bigger factors in US military vs US people.

1) Telling soldiers to attack their own people is not going to be as smooth as telling to attack foreigners, especially in any size.

2) The biggest issue by far is that the US military needs a massive functioning economy to provide support for them to function any length of time. Look how much war costs - that represents acquisitions, salaries for civilians, replacement, etc. If they disrupted their own economic base they'd fall pretty quickly.

So comparing a handgun to a drone is shortsighted. In reality the people are a massive check on the current form of the military.

It can do some damage to the person flying the drone. Or maybe "right to bear arms" will include the right to own our own drones?

What you are actually missing is that guns are part of (some American's) tribal culture. The move to ban guns is mainly, at this point in time, a front in the culture wars. (Historically it was also about disarming blacks in order to empower terrorists.) There are many cultural artifacts and other enjoyable practices which kill people; Britain's drinking culture, gay sex (http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html), etc.

Gun control is mainly about attacking one of the cherished cultural values of our tribal enemies, in much the same way that Bush-era "faith based $X" or opposing various gay things is.

And I guess experienced combatants with surface to air missiles are "regular people with guns".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Hollywood_shootout [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

So I don't see it changing any time soon.

In the US most criminals who are armed have inexpensive, unreliable handguns. An armed criminal in the UK (while less common) would seem more likely to have something like a submachinegun or a machine pistol. If the penalty is severe and the gun is rare and expensive... why go through all that trouble and risk for a .32 revolver, when you could just as easily obtain a Skorpion?

UK armed robberies are often [citation needed] carried out with imitation or deactivated firearms, as the robbers neither need nor want to kill anyone and it's considerably cheaper, easier to get hold of, and less illegal.

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt... page 6 has a breakdown graph into shotguns, handguns, imitation (includes air and BB), and "other".

Someone carrying a cheap pistol is still more heavily armed than someone carrying brass knuckles.

I'm not going to go find the facts and figures, still, I'm pretty sure that the incidence of gun crime is higher in the US, pointing out that gun buying criminals in the UK probably buy nicer guns doesn't change that.

There are likely a greater portion of unarmed criminals in the UK. Since their potential victims are also unarmed, that means that are at the mercy of physically dominating criminals. I fail to see how this is an improvement.

> Someone carrying a cheap pistol is still more heavily armed than someone carrying brass knuckles.

Practically speaking, a person with a 6" knife can do far more damage to a person and have a higher likelihood of inflicting a mortal wound than someone with a .38 revolver.

> I'm not going to go find the facts and figures, still, I'm pretty sure that the incidence of gun crime is higher in the US, pointing out that gun buying criminals in the UK probably buy nicer guns doesn't change that.

Yeah, me neither, and rates don't really factor into this thread. My entire point is that more restrictions means that it's in the best interest of an armed criminal to obtain the most effective firearm possible.

Say 1 guy uses a legitimate high caliber machine gun to commit some crime, is that the only crime that gets used when describing how criminals are armed in that country?

More than half of the firearms offences in England&Wales involved the use of air weapons, a substantial number of the rest are imitation weapons, and only 12 of over 8,000 recorded violent crimes involved a machine gun (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt... table 3.02)

A study by the police of the gun crime market (http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110218135832/htt...) concluded that automatic weapons were mostly used in gang warfare and as a status symbol; they're more expensive and the study noted that ammunition for all weapons was in short supply, which would make a bullet-hungry gun less attractive for other criminal usage (which is mainly to threaten).

With an imitation gun going for £20 and an automatic costing £1000, why would you choose the real gun to commit a robbery?

edit: I changed 'weaker' to 'softer', because it's a stronger claim, it's likely to stand up to scrutiny, it's almost a banality.

> There are likely a greater portion of unarmed criminals in the UK. Since their potential victims are also unarmed, that means that they are at the mercy of physically dominating criminals.

It's certainly true that most criminals in the UK are unarmed, but the "physically dominating" bit is way off the mark because most criminals are not physically dominating - anyone can be a criminal - the factors driving people towards crime have nothing to do with physical stature. This means that the majority of criminals are actually not particularly threatening, I have a friend who was mugged and simply picked up his assailant and threw him over a wall, another just laughed in the face of the teenager who threatened to mug him and walked off. Pepper spray and some knowledge of self defence will make you well prepared to handle the vast majority of criminals in the UK.

> Practically speaking, a person with a 6" knife can do far more damage to a person and have a higher likelihood of inflicting a mortal wound than someone with a .38 revolver.

First of all, knifes are also tightly controlled in the UK, though obviously smaller knifes are not particularly hard to come by. No doubt a skilful knife wielder can do a lot of damage to a person, but most criminals also are not skilful. At all. An inept gun wielder of any physical stature can effortlessly kill someone from yards away, in an instant. It's so easy, a toddler can do it. Also it's a lot harder to accidentally stab someone than to accidentally shoot them. Furthermore, those so inclined can (and do) learn how to fendoff a knife attack - you can't do that with a gun attack.

> my entire point is that more restrictions means that it's in the best interest of an armed criminal to obtain the most effective firearm possible.

That's completely backwards. You could hold up pretty much anywhere in the UK using a fake gun or an air rifle. There's absolutely no need for criminals to have actual weapons when their victims and the police too, are unarmed, because they pose no threat. Contrast this with the non-restrictive environment in the US where an unarmed or poorly armed criminal risks being shot by their victim, a responder, or the police. I live in the US now and my local ATM has an armed guard for crying out loud. That's an incredible incentive for criminals to turn up very well armed.

> rates don't really factor in to this thread

Oh but they do, because criminals with guns don't just wave them around for show: they use them. The per-capita homicide rate in the US is 5x higher than the UK and that difference is almost entirely composed of gun crime [1]. Take a moment to think about that.

So in conclusion, the U.K. is much, much safer because criminals don't have access to lethal weapons that are effortlessly easy to use and the statistics spell this out as clear as day.

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604

Is this because of the accessibility of firearms or other factors (specifically inequality and poverty)? While it's true that the US has a higher per capita rate of homicide, the impacts are not evenly distributed across society. Most Americans live in safe communities with crimes rates similar to other OECD countries. Even within cities with high rates of crime, homicide is usually restricted to a small geographic area.

What complete crap.

The vast majority of deaths from firearms result from handguns not AR15s. You dont have criminals in Level 4 hard plates roaming around down town LA with shoulder fired rockets.

The majority of US gun murder is one guy with a handgun shooting another person, which won't ever make national headlines

Your comment about chemical safety and tools bring up a very good point - a gun is just a tool, like a woodchipper, and while I wouldn't let my kid play with a woodchipper, I've never asked if there's one available at her friends house.

I'll freely admit that I'm inconsistent on this, and my attitude is based in part on my general anti-gun stance, and the easy moral superiority I feel when asking the question.

But seriously, my 12 year old self and friends never treated guns with the respect that we would a woodchipper. Possibly too many TV shows where guns were just bang bang bang, or that _Fargo_ hadn't come out yet.

The whole point of the 2nd Amendment was that the country was founded by taking up arms against tyranny, and the framers knew that the new government they were forming could just as easily lean towards tyranny.

Well, we're here. The police are no longer community organizations, rather they're full military units charged with waging war against the citizens they purport to protect.

Personally, I lean towards the side of always needing guns available, as a check. Quote nukes and F-16s all you like, civil uprisings are much more likely in a country where people are armed, no matter how poorly in comparison to the military.

That said, as I see tyranny increasing and police militarization increasing there is no part of me willing to now part with the rights I have left.

All that said, guns are not safe, they are for killing. The woman quoted in the article got lax in a place that requires constant vigilance (gun safety). One of the biggest problems with our gun culture is that the divide runs along the "don't take our guns!" line, and rational discussion, where we can admit the truth about the dangers ownership presents aren't heard.

Yes - but this is not a good thing! It's a bug not a feature!

I started this thread mentioning Dunblane, but perhaps I should have mentioned the Easter Risings and the Good Friday Agreement instead. The UK had an armed uprising for decades in Northern Ireland and it was terrible. I can't seem to get any of the guns-are-important-for-fighting-the-government advocates to engage with this and look at what actually happened when people responded to civil and human rights violations with AR-15s and Semtex.

From the point of view of many Americans, not only is it a feature, but the defining feature of a free state.

Then again, many Americans take to heart Jefferson's line about the 'Tree of Liberty needing to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants' without realizing what he actually meant by referring to both patriots and tyrants as 'its natural manure.'

Now one might argue that the "primary purpose" for them is their safety and not killing, but no, it's not. That is assuming safety by creating a 'threat of getting killed' to the opponent.

I know this punishment is little harsh (and should be decided on per case basis based on the level of negligence) - but we should also agree that if there's no punishment whatsoever - this will continue happening. Mass killings is a real problem that needs to be solved, and most of them get access to guns in their mom's drawers or something like that.

A significant number of guns used in crimes are stolen, so its too bad that more gun owners don't believe in secure storage like you do. I don't get your "slippery slope" comment, could you expand on this more?

edit: if you were a business that works with poisons and you did not provide adequate security measures, you would be so fined if someone steals the poisons. Then why you as individual wouldn't be responsible for the same thing.

And yet when I've been in Europe I've seen plenty of police and/or paramilitary units carrying submachine guns, something I never saw here in the U.S. even after 11 September.

They were there, mainly at the airport. Not in recent years, and probably not very long after 2001, but I certainly saw armed military at the U. S. airports for six months or more after 09/11/01.

Conversely if you want to see the use of the AR-15 in public artwork, you should go to Northern Ireland.

In Switzerland I once saw a conscript get on a train and put his rifle in the luggage rack exactly as if it were an umbrella. But Switzerland is different (guns are mandatory, ammunition heavily controlled, the people are the "militia" and support the government, and the whole country is a mountain fortress).

Let's talk about basic human needs. Food, water, Air, and to a lesser extent clothing and shelter. You don't need a gun for any of those things. Sure a gun can help with food, but guess what, you don't even need to eat meat, there are so many other sources of food.

So no, you don't need a gun, and you sure as hell don't need a "semi-automatic pistol".

From a more practical perspective, what are you going to do about it? Are you proposing to take arms from the American people by force? How many deaths are acceptable to make that happen?

To be clear, I don't mean the above as a threat or anything of the sort. I'm merely pointing out the certain result of a policy of disarmament, and the hypocrisy of using force to render a population defenseless.

There are negative rights and positive rights. We all could learn a little more about them. See 2.1.8 @ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/#2.1

To the extent that libertarians believe that taxes are extracted by force (I usually see this written as "violence") then yes. If each gun carried a tax sufficient to mitigate it's societal cost, and if each cartridge were an order of magnitude more expensive, we would be done with this issue in 100 years.

It will take a long time, but it won't get done if we don't start.

(Preventively - yes, you can 3D print yourself a handgun, and likely blow your hand off, and reload your own bullets. At that point your personal time doing that work is a proxy for the taxes you would have payed.)

But it looks just as feasible from an ideological point of view as ending white supremacism in the US.

Tell that to the president and secret service.

EDIT: The purpose of the comment above is to point out the prescription above isn't a black and white issue. At least not if you are thinking about the real world we live in.

"nobody needs a gun"

This is a statement that for anyone to take seriously requires you to say your age and approx geographic location as it clearly is informing your belief.

For example, 1911 Turkey, 1929 Soviet Russia, 1938 Germany, 1964 Guatemala, and 1970 Uganda.

I'm sure plenty of citizens would have preferred to have had a gun in the years shortly after the bans.

http://crimeresearch.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-b...

Obligatory un-zeroed-axis warning, but the point stands.

It did point out that I was wrong about no mass shootings (p57):

"In 2010/11, the police provisionally recorded 642 offences of homicide, which includes the 12 people killed by Derrick Bird in June 2010. Homicide offences increased by four per cent (24 offences) compared with 2009/10 (Table 2.04).3 Caution should be taken in looking at short term changes in the number of homicides, as they can fluctuate from year-to-year. For example, the rise in homicides this year follows a fall the previous year"

But the dead giveaway is buried in a footnote on p58:

"As measured by the Homicide Index. The number of currently recorded homicides peaked in 2001/02 at 794. There are more currently recorded homicides for 2002/03 (943), but these include the 172 victims of Harold Shipman, which were all recorded in 2002/03 but took place over a number of years."

Harold Shipman was a doctor who spent a large part of his career murdering elderly patients with medication. The huge spike in John Lott's graph is almost entirely due to this one set of crimes being recorded in 2002/03.

There has been a general downward trend in police recorded homicides over recent years. If the provisional figure of 642 homicides is confirmed when the final figures from the Homicide Index are published, then this would represent a fall of 19 per cent in homicides since 2001/02."

and

"The BCS shows that the number of violent incidents increased gradually through the 1980s and then increased sharply after 1991 to reach a peak in the mid 1990s. The number of incidents then showed steep decreases in the late 1990s. Since then, despite non-statistically significant year-on-year changes, there has been an overall decline."*

The decline in violence is actually somewhat global and not really anything to do with firearms either way. What the gun ban does unambiguously reduce is the opportunity for mass shootings.

(Did you mean compare rates within the same country, or rates between the UK and US? The UK's overall murder rate is comparable to that of two or three US cities. Sadly this PDF only goes back to 2000/2001 and doesn't cover the 90s.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...

Please explain the lack of correlation between gun murders and gun ownership. Even when controlling for density, there is still no correlation.

Further, crime rates need to be adjusted for poverty or they become meaningless.

My point still stands below, despite that spike, the overall trend is still very much downwards. People just don't read charts very well.

The UK had a spike in homicides in 2003, so what? The overall trend is clearly downwards. The 2009 firearm homicide rate is less than half the avg. rate for the 90's and I believe it has only gone down further since (cherry picked date ranges).

Ireland had an increase in homicides following gun bans in the 70's? And it was the gun ban that caused it, not the Troubles? Likewise Jamaica - nothing at all to do with the massive increase in drug trafficking flowing through the Carribean, following the start of drug-prohibition in the 70's?

EDIT: It turns out the data is dodgy as well. The spike is due to all 170+ of Harold Shipman's murders being recorded solely in 02/03

Clearly laws are useless.

Licensing rules were already very stringent at the time - you just can't compare it to the US - and Dunblane was a feak incident. I'm not aware of one like it before or since in the UK.

And Dunblane wasn't a freak incident here's one from 1987: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_massacre

Here's some data. Very clear downward trends since 1997.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/rate_of_a...

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/rate_of_g...

Here's the Australian chart just for good measure:

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/10/rate_of_al...

Not to mention that of course "gun crime / illegal possession" went up. We'd just made it all illegal by definition...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4

I'm actually fairly pro-gun (for the UK at least), I think we're quite restrictive on the type of guns allowed (eg. larger calibre rifles would be fun down a range). But at the same time I'm very pro gun-control; they should be licensed, inspected, restricted in type and how/where you're allowed to carry, etc.

Overall I'm happy with how it's worked out, I'd rather not have guns than have the problems of mass gun ownership.

You're completely overlooking (dismissing ?) animal husbandry and predator control for livestock, etc.

Depending on your location, a rifle (or three) is absolutely necessary to protect animals.

On our ranch, we have a herd of sheep that we need to protect from heavy fox and coyote and bobcat predation. We also have to trap raccoons that go after our flock of chickens, so we have a .22 to put them down (no reason to wake up the whole valley with a larger caliber just to kill todays raccoon).

Remember that next time you're at the farm to table restaurant eating the local lamb or the free range chicken - "your farmer"[1] uses firearms and considers them essential tools.

[1] Popular in the US is a bumper sticker "Know your Farmer, Know your Food" ... or ... "I know my farmer"

However, the vast majority of firearms sold are not for farming purposes. Agricultural jobs make up ~1% of the US workforce, yet there's over 1 gun per person. It's a bit of a red herring to talk about it though; no-one is advocating complete gun bans, but sensible gun control.

Not really. Farm workers in Australia are allowed to own "class C" firearms which are "Pump-action or self-loading shotguns having a magazine capacity of 5 or fewer rounds and semi automatic rimfire rifles" ...

I wouldn't really characterize a rimfire weapon as a real rifle and I am not really sure how useful that is, other than the raccoon work that I mentioned above. I wouldn't attempt shooting foxes or coyotes with a .22.

The Australian gun laws are amazingly restrictive for a country that large and wild and varied. I would feel quite hamstrung as a farmer (or even simply a resident) in a remote, rural area with only a shotgun and/or a .22 (the typical rimfire weapon) ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Australia

"Fuck off. I like guns!"

Here's another graph showing the same thing, and another one below showing a correlation in the reduction of gun crime to an increase of policing resources.

http://crimeresearch.org/2013/12/murder-and-homicide-rates-b...

    Not to mention that of course "gun crime / illegal possession" went up. We'd just made it all illegal by definition...

It's not irrelevant as a large number of firearms were unlicensed. There were a ton of old service guns lying in peoples attics completely unregistered. It takes time to enforce a law.

    It's not irrelevant as a large number of firearms were unlicensed. There were a ton of old service guns lying in peoples attics completely unregistered. It takes time to enforce a law.

As far as handguns that were in active use - i.e. the ones relevant to this conversation - they had to be (and were) handed over to police within the year iirc. It was done quickly and efficiently.

The licensing laws are and were very strict. Anybody who had a handgun was required to have a licence for it, for which good character references and criminal record background checks were (and are) required, and they had to renew it every year. They also had to be an active member of a gun club (the only place you were allowed to use a handgun), and that membership was also reviewed every year.

So it's difficult to imagine how banning handguns would have much of an effect on handgun crime in the first place, unless you want to argue that licenced gun owners were committing crime and getting away with it, which I don't.

But still, I'm willing to be convinced with evidence. A graph that doesn't show gun crime increasing after a ban would be a good place to start.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox

The chart is very clearly downward, with a couple of upward slopes in the middle. If you cherry pick the evidence like that crimeresearch.org link does, you'll get the upward slope. If you look at the data as a whole, you get the long term downward trend. This is pretty much the definition of Simpson's Paradox. The downward trend is the correct one.

Another interpretation of the data, also just a theory but no less valid, is that handguns rose in popularity as the weapon of choice within gangs, and the police responded by targeting gun crime. Again, I wouldn't want to state it as fact, but it would be a useful starting point for additional research.

The reason frankly why I would need so much convincing that banning hand guns had any effect gun crime rates in the UK is because I just don't think there were enough gun owners to be statistically significant in the first place. Handgun shooting was a niche sport - a very niche sport.

As for cherry picking: right back atcha. But even that doesn't work for the Ireland, Jamaica, DC, and Chicago graphs.

As for Ireland and Jamaica, the increase in homicides are very explainable given the Troubles and rise of Carribean drug trafficking in the 70s.

I think I found the problem.

Dunblane was a freak incident in the UK, but would be a regular occurence in the US. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/02/mass-shooting...

The mass shooting phenomenon seems to be a side effect of US culture's relationship with violence, and especially "righteous" violence.

But again, a lot of my understanding on this subject comes from the media, so you can take it with a pinch of salt if you like.

E.g. take this article: http://crimeresearch.org/2016/01/compared-to-europe-the-us-f... . They're mentioning:

- 303 deaths in the EU. This is simply an incorrect result, it counts victims from Norway, which is not an EU member.

- Only 4 mass shootings in the US in 2015. I don't live in the US and I can name at least 6 that made the headlines over here in Europe (e.g. the Harris County mass shooting isn't included).

- Hundreds of victims in France -- which is correct in terms of numbers, but most of them were victims of terrorist attacks, not mentally-deranged students who bought a rifle one sunny morning and started firing around. Most of those incidents barely match their own definition: "four or more people killed in a public place, and not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty".

- A high number of victims for Norway, all of which are due to the Breivik incident. Limiting the debate to the Obama administration has the convenient consequence of keeping Norway's figures high. It would literally be twice as low if it were to include the Bush administration as well; I suspect the figure for the US wouldn't be twice as low in that case.

Besides, the conclusion is highly debatable. It tries to obtain that "US becoming safer compared to Europe" but:

- It does not include data from all European countries

- It "statistically" (i.e. incorrectly) conflates countries with widely differing legislation and enforcement status. This is very blatantly wrong: Serbia, second in that list, has a very strong gun culture and very liberal gun ownership laws compared to other European countries. My Serbian friends can carry guns that are only issued to members of the police and military where I live.

I don't know enough about how things are in the US to challenge that institution's opinions on the US, but their analysis of the European landscape is shaky at best, betrays a very obvious cluelesness about European laws and Europe in general, and frankly, I think the numbers are nicely tuned to give useful statistics.

I've heard of crimes with that damned pocket knife but never a gun.

Also it looks like you created a throwaway to say this. It says a lot about your conviction on what you're saying.

This does not mean data is irrelevant, but it is quite important to know who collected it, following what procedure, and with what goal in mind. Not sure that study above is the most unbiased, for instance.

If you like, take the time to go through the data and understand why it does not actually fit the reality of the situation here. Don't expect other people to disprove shit data.

Both events lead to changes in firearm licensing rules, and in both cases if the existing rules had been correctly enforced, it's doubtful either person would have held a licence.

EDIT: And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings in 2010 10 dead, 11 injured.

I guess another question would be, why on earth would anyone need _any_ of those guns.

I can understand wanting to collect, or at least try, different types, but who in the world needs an assault rifle?

People interested in self defense. The term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon" was made up by the media. An assault rifle is just your typical rifle that your great grandfather would have used for hunting back in the day. It is not what the media and politicians will lead you to believe.

I think what leads people to ask this question is an major misunderstanding that an "assault rifle" is a big scary machine gun. They are not. An AR15 or AK47 are not machine guns that spray bullets with a single trigger pull. (Those are fully automatic weapons that are already heavily restricted). Assault weapons account for, on average, 2% of all firearms used in crimes, with the highest estimate being 13%. [1]

The semi-automatic AR15 or AK47 are actually very effective and safe home defense firearms for a few reasons:

- The round they use is less likely to penetrate through walls compared to a standard handgun round. This has been ballistically tested numerous times but no one likes to mention it when talking about the issue.

- They are easier to shoot more accurately at close range and longer distances.

- They hold more rounds. Why do you need more rounds? Because one shot is unlikely to stop most threats. Shocking I know, this is also something that is not how it seems in the movies. Also unmentioned when talking about self defense is that there may be multiple attackers. It's not so uncommon to have more than one attacker in a home invasion.

[1] https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/204431.pdf

Wouldn't you be better off with a semi auto pistol if wanting self defence in a house? Rifle seems a little, well, unwieldy and better suited for range. Clearly I'm not an expert. :)

> People interested in self defense

See that's always been a difference in UK / US gun use and ownership.

If I were to shoot an attacker with even a .22 rimfire target pistol I'd expect to go to prison for a considerable number of years. Somehow we've managed to avoid the use of firearms in self defence aside from the occasional farmer with shotgun. Even then it gets widely reported and discussed.

Even at the height of legal gun ownership using one against a person, or in pursuit of a crime has been relatively rare. For the longest time using a firearm against police (generally unarmed here) carried a very high stigma and until the 60s likelihood of being hanged. It's still newsworthy for the police to get out an armed response unit in many areas.

The only self-defence legislation permits the use of reasonable force, which generally means the bare minimum you can get away with. Legally you can kill someone in self defence, but it's almost unheard of. Woe betide you if you hit them a little too hard or often and badly injure the poor burglar.

We tend to view discussion of home invasions and wanting self-defence weapons as a quaint excess of our transatlantic cousins. We don't keep firearms in the home, there are very few baseball (or even cricket) bats kept by our beds. We don't expect, or prepare for, home invasions. Probably in some of the worst areas it's a little more common, and illegal gun use a little higher.

It's interesting our nations diverged so much given gun ownership was fairly common here in earlier years, and both wars lead to many old service weapons kept in drawers and attics, unlicensed of course.

In the UK someone did use a gun to "defend" themselves, against two people without guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)

An escaped inmate holding your family hostage? http://www.vicksburgpost.com/2016/03/10/man-killed-following...

A crazy man on a hatchet rampage? http://www.vicksburgpost.com/2016/03/10/man-killed-following...

A violent criminal attacking you in an elevator? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3481507/Woman-leaves...

Of course defensive gun use doesn't fit the anti-gun narrative so it must not happen.

http://q13fox.com/2016/03/13/machete-swinging-attacker-shot-...

Toddlers, apparently!

I am not attempting to influence any reaction. Are wikipedia?

The Sun, is a terrible, terrible source of 'news'; http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3062107/Getting-hi... (you can safely ignore any of the red tops in the UK)

I can understand the deep interest in guns, for instance I thoroughly enjoy FPS russia. But I do not think as a society we can manage the general public having guns, Australia and the UK are a very good example of how new laws have come into place.

There are numerous other developed/OECD countries with "high" rates of firearms ownership and use that do not have the same rate of violence seen in the US. Not to mention the millions of responsible gun owners who safely use firearms for hunting, sport, and self protection. Violent crime with firearms still occurs in both the UK and Australia - both countries have a seedy underbelly that occasionally spills over (e.g. the gang related shooting in Sydney yesterday or the drive by shooting in Brixton last month). Gun control is a spectrum - there are other other countries that have sensible gun control measures that help to limit violent crime without penalizing responsible gun owners. Personally I have no issue with sensible control measures, but I do wish society would also address many of the other associated issues (access to mental health services, inequality/poverty, the war on drugs).

I'm well aware the Sun is just a comic, just sharing the recollection. :)

Overall I'm in favour of law abiding citizens being able to shoot if they wish to, but the experience of the likes of Hungerford and Cumbria tells us it's not worth the risk. I'm inclined to think that in the absence of firearms Ryan or Hamilton would have done something equally terrible with an axe or bread knife. We already had a school machete attack in the 90s. It's the mental state not the firearm per se that's the problem. So I don't find it as clear cut as maybe I'd like it to be.

I was actually taught to shoot at school in the UK (cadet scheme), so it's not something entirely alien to me. But it's not something I can see as "necessary" either.

Ignoring the "assault rifle" part of this. Semi-automatic carbines are great fun to shoot, they have a lower recoil impulse than traditional larger rifles and military surplus ammunition and parts generally creates a cheap and easy way to enjoy firearms. You can get an AR-15 for $600 or so and spend an afternoon enjoying it without a hurt shoulder or a bloody nose.

I've only shot air-rifles and shotguns IRL, I can appreciate the addictive qualities.

More americans die of eating too much food each year than in all gun deaths ,let alone mass shootings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings

BTW doesn't the UK have zoos, animal sanctuaries or wealthy residents who own predators?

In the USA thousands of lions, tigers, cheetahs, cape buffalo and other non-native predator species reside in zoos, animal sanctuaries or even back yards. Subplots of apocalyptic movies/stories sometimes depict the ensuing confusion/mayhem should these predators get loose.

Hunting African game species is significantly more difficult than hunting North American game species. Indeed the African species may be hunting you! Larger-caliber firearms are recommended, larger than most firearms commonly used in North American. The .223 (e.g., AR-15) is a varmint cartridge designed for coyotes and stretched to hunt deer and men, the 30-06 (.30 caliber) a military round intended to kill humans. Hunters of African predators typically use larger calibers, .375" and up.

A true SHTF scenario in either the UK and USA would result in some interesting inter-species encounters, to say the least. But they would still pale in comparison to the intraspecies encounters.

There are zoos and suchlike, and there have even occasionally been escapes, which are usually recaptured with a tranquiliser dart gun.

flood,

hurricane,

severe blizzard,

fire,

riots, political unrest, lynching,

epidemic disease,

while all unlikely, happen with regularity in the USA. We are lucky we don't need to deal with famine here, but in the rest of the world it is a real threat.

1. Do you know police shot and killed unarmed people at Danziger Bridge during Hurricane Katrina?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danziger_Bridge_shootings

2. Have you read how, during Katrina, the New Orleans police and federal agents disarmed people illegally, leaving them unprotected?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/us/nationalspecial/police-...

3. Google

police and national guard disarm citizens during katrina

and read about what happened - I dare you.

Don't you have armed police/military who, while a blessing in some instances, are in others a curse?

Occasionally. This is why I keep bringing up Northern Ireland. However that is a situation in which armed civilians fought back against having their civil rights violated by the state, resulting in a >30 year civil war and bombing campaign.

I don't even understand what you're saying should have happened instead in New Orleans - should people have been shooting back? Surely the right answer is everyone being less trigger happy?

The police, federal officers and National Guard should not have confiscated weapons. Then people could have protected themselves as was their right. Note that there was no evidence of "everyone being trigger happy".

Protection from wild animals? Contrary to popular belief, we don't all have polar bears in our yard.

We had a coyote on our street last year, but nobody felt threatened enough to pull out a gun.

I didn't mean to suggest that everyone should carry a firearm because of this. I've hiked in areas with brown bears, regularly go into areas with black bear/mountain lion/wolves, and often encounter/hear coyotes at my house. I personally do not feel the need to carry a firearm because of this, but I can understand why others may. It depends upon you tolerance for risk. For some, the small chance of a dangerous encounter justifies their need to carry a firearm. I think it would be disingenuous to suggest that firearms are totally useless for that purpose

The RCMP even have a website about it... http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/fs-fd/wild-sauvage-eng.ht...

This source shows the lowest number of gun deaths a year from 1996 as 130. Actual murders will be lower than this figure, but do you have a source? http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/total_num...

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/htt... p11 puts gun deaths of police officers at <1 per year.

I think you are off by a factor of 40 ?

http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-hom...

Are you sure about those statistics?

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/total_num...

It's quite a lot more than that in N.Ireland alone / year, even since '96.

[edit] My bad, found it. It's the graph below the one I originally linked. Of the total guns deaths, it looks like roughly 1/4 are homicide, 38 in 2011.

http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/compareyears/192/number_of...

All other factors aside your proposition is true; fewer guns per capita, fewer bullets leaving said guns at capita

Registration is the first step to disarmament. Look back no further than Janet Reno, thankfully no longer in her position, who famously said that the actual goal is disarmament of the population. A certain venomous Democrat presidential hopeful has also echoed this sentiment publicly, recently stating on the record that only police and military should own handguns. Why on Earth would anyone vote for someone who wants to take away freedoms enshrined in the Constitution?

Because it is adjusted as we develop and learn more about the world we live in, it has happened in the past, and I sincerely hope it continues to happen.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution#Rat...

The battle for freedom began in Lexington and Concord when a group of British soldiers attempted to disarm a group of Colonists.

You (and many people) are under the bad assumption that as we learn more our basic human nature changes, but it does not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battles_of_Lexington_and_Conco...

It's not about fear; it's primarily about a worldview that centers on individuality and distrust of government.

So you own a handgun? The government will have assault rifles. Oh, you own an assault-like rifle? The government will have RPG's and grenades. It doesn't matter what you own, the government will win every time. You are guaranteed to lose.

We hear this argument from Americans every single time this topic is brought up. "It's to keep the government in check!". What a load of horse crap. Every time, we only hear repeated "Constitution! Constitution!". Perhaps a little rational thought is required to comprehend that a document written ~227 years ago is probably out of date with modern reality when it comes to firearms.

It's a combination of amusing, frustrating, and bewildering to witness a large number of Americans' behaviour whenever this topic resurfaces. Honestly, most of the rest of the world out here just can't understand how you people are so goddamn self-indoctrinated into keeping your guns. There is no reasoning that I can apply to even begin to validate the concept that guns in the hands of citizens is a good thing.

This stems directly from American history. The Constitution was written in a time when things like the Boston Massacre, Bunker Hill, and Col. Parker's stand in Concord and Lexington were fresh in the collective consciousness.

> Perhaps a little rational thought is required to comprehend that a document written ~227 years ago is probably out of date with modern reality when it comes to firearms.

I don't believe it is - and there are millions of others who agree with me. We're armed to the teeth, so good luck changing it. That's the whole point :)

> It's a combination of amusing, frustrating, and bewildering to witness a large number of Americans' behaviour whenever this topic resurfaces. Honestly, most of the rest of the world out here just can't understand how you people are so goddamn self-indoctrinated into keeping your guns. There is no reasoning that I can apply to even begin to validate the concept that guns in the hands of citizens is a good thing.

I understand that. Sitting here in Virginia, I cannot fathom how the Brits gave up their weapons without a fight less than a generation after they were literally asking the American public to donate firearms in preparation of a German invasion.

That's OK though, because I don't live under their rule. I'm happy to share my perspective and learn about theirs. I hold no ill will against people on the other side of an ocean that don't understand my political views.

I think people certainly do imagine that, although few of them put it into practice. What about those guys who occupied the wildlife refuge? Like a lonelier, more heavily armed Occupy?

Brits gave up their weapons without a fight .. German invasion

Funny thing this. The war looms large in UK national identity; our finest hour, Dunkirk, the Blitz, the Few, etc. However there's no English(+) tradition of anti-government armed struggle, and obviously WW2 we were fighting for the government. There is very little gun culture either. It's just not an important factor in politics. The idea of the government going rogue is just not something people think about - unless you're on the left, which has perhaps a few more wounds. Whereas in the US this particular kind of armed antigovernmentalism seems to be a right-wing thing.

(+) does not apply in Scotland and NI!

The UK history of violent confrontation with the state is mostly "left". Bloody Sunday. Orgreave. Hillsborough(++). Peterloo. Red Clydeside. Brixton.

(++) an accident made far worse by aggressive victim-blaming and systematic evidence forging by police and press.

The ways in which violence, crime, race, poverty, policing, politics, political violence and dissent are conceptualised are mostly entirely different. Ideas do constantly leak through from the US film industry though.

When I finish laughing, I'll read the rest of your comment, but for now, have an up.

I think this isn't true if enough people decide to attack the government in concert, say 10% of the population, that's 30 million people. I'm not saying that will ever happen, but American police forces are already stretched to the limit and can be easily tied up.

But probably, knives would suffice for that purpose. Or just not showing up for work.

Which is why state police and then the National Guard and then other branches of the military become involved in any serious unrest. E.g. Ferguson for an extremely recent example.

> say 10% of the population

Overwhlemingly dispersed throughout suburban and rural populations that are far more easily controlled than a large urban uprising. And also, it would take extraordinary circumstances to find 10% of the population willing to commit to an armed revolution. If you have that many people that angry, odds are that the democratic process would work far better anyways. That's the rub with this fantasy and why it hasn't happened in recent memory -- once that many people are that angry, they probably have a sympathetic majority anyways.

Keep in mind that the United States has 2mil+ prisoners and has absolutely no problem keeping the police. If we assume only a small fraction of people who could land in prison actually do, then it's entirely possible that 10% of the population is or was at one point at danger of being locked up and still would never commit to an armed insurrection.

Also, only ~60% of the US even votes. So 10% is a truly huge number.

Actually, the most ironic thing about this part of the gun debate is that the people who are least persecuted by actual systemic violence against subpopulations of the United States both 1) insist that this violence doesn't exist or is justified; and 2) worry about their own non-existent completely hypothetical persecution at some vague distant point in the future.

All the while, people who are in actually persecuted groups (poor, racial minorities who have double digit odds at incarceration) don't get involved in the gun debate because they know the "standing up to the man" fantasy is dangerous bullshit.

> All the while, people who are in actually persecuted groups (poor, racial minorities who have double digit odds at incarceration) don't get involved in the gun debate because they know the "standing up to the man" fantasy is dangerous bullshit.

In my experience, racial minorities see firearms as a tool of a criminal and the oppressor, because they often grow up in a place where the only people they see with them are criminals and cops.

Meanwhile, I've personally introduced several individuals who are members of minority groups to firearms, and the message of self-reliance is something that really resonates with them. Consider that the motto of the Pink Pistols is "armed gays don't get bashed". It's not like it used to be, the gun community isn't just a bunch of old middle-class white dudes. Sure, I'm a member of the NRA - but I'm also a member of the Pink Pistols and the JPFO.

All the while, people who are in actually persecuted groups (poor, racial minorities who have double digit odds at incarceration) don't get involved in the gun debate because they know the "standing up to the man" fantasy is dangerous bullshit."

I regret that I have but one upvote to give for this.

You're thinking at the individual level. Of course the state is going to have far more firepower than anything an individual can muster.

Think in terms of asymmetrical warfare.

Why is the U.S. still in Afghanistan? Why did OIF go from a three-week invasion to over a decade of grueling counterinsurgency operations? Surely those scrappy little resistance fighters couldn't stand up to our might...they die in droves, yet they persist.

Sounds like fear to me.

I distrust my toddler, because she is incapable of making rational choices. I'm not going to let her walk across a parking lot by herself.

I distrust a venomous snake for the same reasons. I'm also extremely cautious around them, because they can cause pain or death if mishandled. That doesn't mean I'm afraid of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria_shootings

Exhibit A) Switzerland, 25 guns for 100 inhabitants, two mass shootings in the last 100 years

Exhibit B) France, extremely restrictive gun laws, two mass shootings in less than one year

So there's that...

Swiss gun laws are definitely not as strict as France's. Look it up.

How many mass shootings per year over the last decade? Two decades? And so on?

It's like those who pointed to Australia banning guns after the Port Arthur massacre:

"Homicides went up three per cent the next year! Gun control doesn't work!"

1. "Homicides" encapsulated other methods than "with a gun", and most importantly,

2. Whilst there are 17,000 homicides a year in the US for which a three per cent rise represents over five hundred more deaths, the conveniently omitted fact was that that same three per cent rise in Australia meant that deaths went from 94 to 96, in other words, an anomaly.

but no ammo. that one would be handed out in wartime.

but unknown how many Swiss have used their assault rifle to club someone to death.

That it's possible for a determined group to acquire guns and attack people is one thing. It being possible for a single mentally unstable person to do so is quite another.

What about Columbine (multiple shooters, conspired in advance to commit the attack), terrorism, mass shootings?

Given that firearm murders rose after the ban (link from jjoonathan), please explain very clearly to me how can the low rate (it was low in the first place) be caused by the ban (you said the ban 'means' the low rate)?

I'm really looking forward to seeing how you can support your claim.

The ban was put in place after mass shootings for both the UK and Australia - I believe that was primary driving factor behind it so I am not sure how that stat would or would not be effected by it and would suggest it is a bit of a red herring - and I am sure that data is interesting, if someone had the time to go through it and break it down.

All I can say is that in the UK, you don't need to worry about being shot.

http://blogs.ft.com/david-allen-green/2015/09/08/when-does-t...

I am mid thirties, grown up in the UK and not having guns here is amazing. People don't get shot, as a teenager in the council flats in the UK, no-one is going to turn up with a gun, or carry a gun. And unsurprisingly, people make mistakes with guns (accidents happen).

I have been forever conflicted, as I love the idea of guns, I wanted them as a kid/teenager, the idea of having such a tool is fascinating. However they are reserved for video games in my life...

The only time I may regret this is in some kind of completely hypothetical situation (zombies, aliens, gov gone crazy) which is so unlikely to happen I would rather the tools to kill each other very quickly were not legally available.

I'm more likely to get hit by a bus or drop dead of an aneurysm than shot and killed by anyone.

There's also just a metric fuckton of guns out there, so you'd have a hard time tracking them all down. I'm really not a gun collector, but I've personally got at least a dozen rifles and shotguns, and three or four pistols. You inherit these things... I work with a couple guys that are actually target shooting enthusiasts, and it's amazing the armories that they've put together.

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/15/brixton-shoot...

If it assures you in anyway, my grandfather who was in the war, handed in his 1911.

Also, all it takes is some really bad times for nice people to elect a tyrant. We've seen it before many times in history.

Trump phenomenon fueled on xenophobia, racism, and authoritarianism, which is scary for minorities, is an example of a gov that could go crazy.

>Trump phenomenon fueled on xenophobia, racism, and authoritarianism, which is scary for minorities, is an example of a gov that could go crazy.

Sentences like this are not arguments they are emotional regurgitations of fear created by endless news cycles of ad hominem attacks and half truths.

Trumphobia is the irrational fear of Donald Trump created by media attacks on a candidate they can not control.

-tweets a statistic that most white people are killed by black people, never apologizes, refuses to backtrack

-pretends he has no idea who white extremist groups or the kkk are when asked point blank whether he will disavow their support

... The list goes on and on

we need to talk about illegal immigration and criminal activity. We need to talk about Black on Black violence not just police violence. Why should he know David Duke is? and he disavowed 15 times.

I love the push back, that is what america is about having debates about important issues, not shouting down people who have different opinions.

The next day "Oh, of course I would. It was a bad earpiece they gave me, I told them it wasn't working well."

Well enough that he heard the question just fine and was able to put together a coherent (if bad) answer. Nope, blame your earpiece. Some disavowal that was.

Donald Trump knows perfectly well who David Duke is and what he stands for[0].

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/03/...

fair enough, good debate on if trump knew him, but since that first interview where he claimed to have a bad ear piece he had disavowed him many times since. I know it gets a lot of air time because the media gets to say "Trump" and "kkk" in the same sentence but this is just an association fallacy and not even an evidence for anyones argument.

(slanted framing)

Because they are illegals the stats are difficult to prove or disprove.

-An estimated 25,000 of these undocumented immigrants serving sentences for homicide

-A cumulative total of 2.89 million offenses committed by these undocumented immigrants between 2003 and 2009 (although half a million of these were for immigration-related offenses)

-Among those offenses: An estimated 42,000 robberies, 70,000 sex crimes, 81,000 auto thefts, 95,000 weapons offenses, and 213,000 assaults

http://www.gao.gov/assets/320/316959.pdf

http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/just-facts/anecdotes-eviden...

> Sentences like this are not arguments they are emotional regurgitations of fear created by endless news cycles of ad hominem attacks and half truths.

or maybe they're simple observations of the guy himself talking uninterrupted in his election rallies. i saw some on tv, it was embarrassing.

though you have a point, his campain does resemble Hitler's. sure, it's jews in one and brown people in the other... other than that? the greatest nation on earth under siege! let's make this country great again! they will pay for what they've done to us!

These are the qualities of hitler, I pull it to illustrate how ridiculous and lazy your arguments are.

You get offended by someone saying people coming over the boarder illegally are criminals, yet it is ok compare Trump to someone that called for the killings of tens of millions of people most not jews or brown, but white[1]. I don't see the media yelling for apologies on that one...

[1]http://www.ukemonde.com/holocaust/victims.html

I would also argue that all those xenophobic trump fans can legally own guns...

After the last elections in the UK, I don't really trust the "general public" =D

Experience is a dear teacher but fools will learn no other way.

Trying to say owning a handgun would prevent a clandestine branch of a first world governments assassination.

simple economics of scale... your govt cannot afford to drone kill everyone and everyone can afford a rifle / pistol... it will be bloody but an armed citizenry will always win...

assuming they care enough to fight

Who won in Northern Ireland?

One of the things that annoys me about this stupid phoney insurgency that's always brought up as a pro-gun argument is that we actually had one in the UK and it was awful.

Having an actual discussion on armed political conflict vs. the government would involve Northern Ireland, which would take far too long for HN.

You had a revolution once and talk about gun rights as if you were expecting one again. And the threat of one is hardly doing anything to contain your governments continual erosion of all of your other constitutional rights.