Even more interesting to me is the idea that the American government has such a hold over the patriots in the military that they could be commanded to enforce tyranny.
Or, that owning an assault rifle is some antidote against the best funded military in the world, which has been fighting armed insurgencies for years.
Consider this though, we have repeatedly conducted studies that show bringing a gun into your house increases the chance of gun death.
Maybe, perhaps, given the chance, gun ownership will help stave off tyranny.
Tyranny generally doesn't come overnight. There are plenty of things you can ask soldiers to do that they'll feel uncomfortable about but still do it, and then in eighteen months when it's time to reenlist they decline. A decade later you've got only zealots.
> Or, that owning an assault rifle is some antidote against the best funded military in the world, which has been fighting armed insurgencies for years.
Because we sure handed it to those Iraqis, and the Vietnamese before that.
Counter-insurgency is hard. Having planes and nukes doesn't help you when the bridges and cities are friendly assets. Morale is low when you're fighting your own people. You can't guard every military resource with hundreds of soldiers, but that means the one guarded by twenty can be overrun by a hundred civilians if they're armed.
And it only takes one bullet to kill Hitler.
If I recall correctly they both lost and lost their rights - whether we consider those rights the right to own slaves or leave the union.
> But an insurgency requires a sufficient number of people who feel strongly enough to take up arms.
Not true. "The accidental guerilla" by David Kilcullen is a great book on this idea. I'm wondering though for what reason you feel the confederates felt less strongly than gun owners do today.
Guns don't help with that goal. Having a gun makes you more likely to die of gunshot wounds, either self-inflicted or by others.
We agree.
I also think that by some tragic circumstance or another a lot of those mentally ill people have no friends or family to support them. I'm happy to pay the government to care for those "idiots", to be frank.
What do you think?
Barring that, we already have measures in place (e.g. involuntary hospitalization) for the acutely suicidal. For others, why stop at taking away their guns? Take away their kitchen knives, Tylenol, and spare rope while you're at it. Hell, throw them in a padded cell so they aren't tempted to visit any bridges or tall buildings. Taking away guns doesn't treat the actual problem.
Suicide rates are: 21.1/100k for US males 17.4/100k for Australian males
Guess you aren't paying enough?
How many people do you know who brought a gun into their house solely for protection against someone with a gun?
The correlation between guns and gun violence and injuries undermines any claim that owning a gun increases liberty or enables self-defence.
1) a survey on firearms-related deaths that doesn't even look at in-home use or defensive vs offensive use.
2) A review of 26-year-old death certificates. Did you read this part? "Blacks, persons less than 35 years of age or older than age 100 years, and persons who died from external causes of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury were oversampled in this survey."
3) Uses same cooked data as #2, study done by an anti-gun interest group (VPC).
4) Again uses the same cooked data from 26 years ago.
5) A thirty-year-old phone survey that doesn't even examine in-home gun use. Seriously?
So, no, none of those is "evidence" of anything. Now, how many of those were you previously familiar with vs just googling on "gun death home study
Ok. How do you want me to look for the data?
> 1) a survey on firearms-related deaths that doesn't even look at in-home use or defensive vs offensive use.
It's not just a survey.
> 2) A review of 26-year-old death certificates. Did you read this part? "Blacks, persons less than 35 years of age or older than age 100 years, and persons who died from external causes of homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury were oversampled in this survey."
Oversampling doesn't invalidate studies. Are you annoyed they acknowledged it? A less rigorous study wouldn't.
> 3) Uses same cooked data as #2, study done by an anti-gun interest group (VPC).
What neutral groups do you think are studying this stuff? The CDC? Well, they can start now.
> 4) Again uses the same cooked data from 26 years ago. > > 5) A thirty-year-old phone survey that doesn't even examine in-home gun use. Seriously?
Could you help me understand what you'd consider "evidence", considering you won't accept articles from peer-reviewed journals. Why does suicide or homicide have to happen "in-home" for it to be valid?
I'll provide more references if you can explain exactly what evidence would satisfy you. Otherwise it seems like a waste of time on my part.
How do you want me to look for the data?
Often when I'm google searching its because I remember the title of something or the general concept. Its something lots of young people do these days rather than printing articles out to scrapbook or saving them to desktop or whatever it is old people do.
Let me know what evidence would satisfy you that owning a gun increases the chance of dying via gun. Cheers.
Prepare for some kind of snarky defense of a flawed "correlation is causation" argument.