I also come from a near gun-less country, and think a similar system in America would work. However, there are some arguments in favor of guns that are not trivially ignored.

- Simply, guns are fun. Marksmanship is a serious sport of discipline and self-control.

- Hunting is also great recreation, is sometimes good for population control, and hunting is another reason for preserving and protecting nature.

- Self-defense. Sometimes, you need to use violence for self defense. Guns are a great way to apply violence.

- Independence. Partly, this ties in with self-defense above. Partly, this is about the government applying 'collective punishment' on all gun owners for the action of a very select few. Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government (i.e. the militia mentioned in the second amendment)

Now, all of these points have counter arguments. I think non of them hold up to the point of "we should keep semi-automatic weapons with 30 round magazines". But the arguments exist, and ignoring them isn't gonna help convince those that want to keep their guns.

I'm not American - so I'm not particularly out to convince anybody. I think gun-ownership is really embedded into the deep and often weird tangle of american identity, and it's basically immune to rational argument at this point.

On a purely technical level, I think the problem with the arguments you've mentioned are they don't generally stand on an even footing with the arguments against gun-ownership, except perhaps the one about self defense. Gun violence is a problem that costs lives, tears apart communities, and destroys families. For gun ownership to make sense, it needs to serve a similarly grave purpose. In that vein, only self-defense would fit the bill.

At which point, we break out the statistics - and it turns out that guns are kind of terrible for self defense. I think Americans would be better off just paying more taxes (with the money they would have spent on guns), and spending the money on police or social programs.

That said, many iconic possessions of western society are pretty horrible from a cost-benefit perspective. So I guess guns are just the most egregious.

Guns are certainly part of the American identity, for many Americans at least. Sadly, there are some pretty horrible biases and misconceptions as well.

There is a theory that democracy flourishes, when the Government is not that much better armed than its citizens. So, the idea that we need to be armed against tyranny.

There are a couple of problems with this, in present-day America. First, as citizens get better armed with greater lethal force, simultaneously, the police have militarized. So while people are better armed, authorities are too.

The other problem, requires some deeper understanding. Tyranny is always a threat, but the tyrannical government of the 21st century won’t bust in to take your guns. They don’t need to. The tyranny is more subtle, often financial, and when they control public opinion they don’t need to take the guns.

Yes, the overarching counter argument is that these aren't good enough reasons given the bad results of legally owned guns.

I also missed the argument "gun-ownership is part of my identity" it is not an argument that comes up, because people don't expect it to convince gun-opponents. But I think it is the main reason opposition to gun-control is so strong. Thank you for pointing that out.

> Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government

Anyone who truly believes private citizen gun owners in the US could ever band together and overthrow the US government is deluded, at best. The US military would shut them down in record time.

It is indeed, a wrong idea. Nevertheless, it is an idea that needs to be addressed, not swept-aside. The same goes with all the other arguments I mentioned. If we just ignore these and say "There is no possible reason for owning guns" we are essentially arguing in bad faith.

Generally, convincing people isn't helped by immediately dismissing their entire position as trivially wrong and deluded.

> Generally, convincing people isn't helped by immediately dismissing their entire position as trivially wrong and deluded.

Who's doing that, though? Seems like a very small minority of people say "there is no possible reason for owning guns" and then refuses to elaborate when presented with possible reasons.

Don't open with "there's no possible reason for owning guns". Perhaps open with 'on balance, I think the arguments for gun ownership are far outweighed by the arguments against it'.

Sure. But in that case I'd ask that people on the other side of the debate not open with blatantly absolutist statements as well.

Let's not hold the two sides to different standards of argumentation.

Keep in mind, the US Military is largely composed of American humans.

Sure. I don't think a potential dictator would stand a chance if he/she didn't have the support of the US military, or at least the support of enough of it to suppress the rest. Either way, private-citizen gun owners are a rounding error in the equation. They just don't matter in this scenario.

Come spend some time with gun owners here in the states, and you won’t see a problem with people owning guns either.

I'm sure there are many nice, reasonable gun owners. If I lived in the states, I'd probably buy a gun myself - I think they're cool.

On the other hand, as a reasonable, intelligent adult who reads and understands statistics, I can say without any doubt they are awful for the USA as a whole. So, just like I'd ban leaded gas, selling alcohol to ten year-olds, and driving drunk, I'd ban guns. There are many, many less harmful things to go full-libertarian on than machines designed to kill people.

They absolutely have the advantage of putting a check on government power. The US is a very heterogeneous country (probably much more so than the country you’re referencing). Not all groups have a great relationship with the government and very sensibly feel that giving the government a monopoly on firearms is not in their best interest.

I personally think this part of the second amendment is outdated.

The check on violent government overreach are the moral compasses of individual soldiers, peaceful protests and a free media. If we get past all of these things, no "well regulated Militia" is going to stop the U.S. Army. The best chance would be state national guards. My point here is that fully automatic fire, tanks, artillery and air support make any resistance useless. Perhaps a guerrilla war could be fought, but to someone seeking complete control fighting guerrillas is an annoyance, not an obstacle.

This is mostly because the FDA tightly restricts ownership of 'destructive devices', which are the weapons needed to fight an effective war.

Just this week I saw footage of police murdering an unarmed man in Baton Rouge. Had that person actually been armed, maybe he could have defended himself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/3...

Had that man been armed, they wouldn’t have even bothered with an investigation after shooting him. Hey, he was armed, waved a gun at a cop, must have been a bad guy.

Likewise, given an active shooter at a school and armed teachers, how do police tell the difference between the perpetrator and the armed teachers defending the kids? Ya, they don’t.

Adding more guns to a situations where police are using guns unjustly is not going to end well.

Do they really curb the power though?

What is one reasonable scenario of a thing the government may want to do, that we could stop because we have a firearm.

I have a gun, and I don't think the government really has a right to tax me for an unjust undeclared war. If I don't pay my taxes, I don't think the United States military or law enforcement cares that I may be armed.

I think the police would be even more aggressive if they knew citizens were unarmed.

I think the police are more aggresssive because they know any citizen can be armed

When there’s a power imbalance, it’s sadly human nature to exploit it and become aggressive. For instance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

There are so many guns, police have to assume everyone is armed in dangerous. So accidental shootings by police of innocent civilians is significant and, unfortunately in our society, seen as mostly unavoidable.

This is completely unrelated to the Stanford experiment.

Whenever I hear that brought up as an argument, I recommend listening to what Jim Jefferies had to say about gun control. Despite Jim Jefferies being a comedian and phrasing his arguments in a comical, comedic way, I've yet to see anyone give a convincing counter-argument, especially to the "you're bringing a gun to a drone fight" part.

Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0

Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4

This argument is absurd. Most of the time, Americans can't organize enough to start a union, or even join one. The idea of Americans organizing an insurgency is ridiculous. The idea of Americans winning an insurgency, against the largest army in the world - an army that has more counter-insurgency experience than anybody except perhaps the IDF, is still more ridiculous. Guns will never check anything because the only thing that checks power is another powerful organization - a protest movement, or a union. Guns are what happen when a protest movement fails, and if you're relying on civilian-grade stuff at this point, your protest movement is screwed anyway.

This argument is absurd. Any "reasonable, intelligent person" who's read basically any history book ever written would know that the United States would not descend into civil war with its military intact.

I guess Iraq and Vietnam didn't get the message on this.

"Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal.

The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it.

For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war.

This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government.

Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains.

They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes.

Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult.

The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost".

It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.

Guessing you've never been to Idaho

There’s more to the government than the army. Go talk to some people from an ethnic group over represented in prison and ask them if the idea of police being armed while citizens are forcibly unarmed sits well...