Call me an out of touch west coast liberal, but I personally would prefer that I don't regularly encounter people carrying a weapon capable of killing me. This isn't a war zone.

You're not wrong. This state is getting worse all the time. A little kid was shot an killed because his mom flipped someone off for cutting her off. The kid's last words were something like. "mommy. my tummy hurts."

Last I checked, they still hadn't caught him. This is not a state where more guns us going to make things better. It's a state that very clearly represents the temperature of the country: financially strong liberal strongholds arm wrestling with the government around them. (Abbott and Patrick don't hold back on how much they hate Austin.) We're just going to shoot at each more and scream Castle Doctrine about it.

Liberal strongholds tend to be soft on crime. When your response to someone who assaults another person "just because" is a slap on the wrist, it's no surprise they move on to more heinous crimes.

"But the guy didn't kill anyone, he deserves a second chance" -- right. And the rest of us deserve some safety from people like him.

You can't ban your way to more safety if you can't reasonably control the thing that you're banning. The US government can't reasonably control who has a gun in this country, that's just a fact and it will not change as long as the second amendment is a thing.

What you can do is adjust sentencing standards so that the people who are at highest risk of re-offending in a violent way are locked up.

I find it bizarre that your stance on civil liberties allows people to carry a gun freely but is totally OK with totally taking away someone's freedom for years or decades because they are supposedly a threat to public safety.

> I find it bizarre that your stance on civil liberties allows people to carry a gun freely but is totally OK with totally taking away someone's freedom for years or decades

What is bizarre? Freedom, personal responsibility, and the right to defend oneself are not mutually exclusive. Your freedom is yours to lose, and that happens when you infringe on other peoples' right to freedom.

> because they are supposedly a threat to public safety.

Strawman. You take away someone's freedom because they committed a crime of some kind and are likely to be a violent re-offender. Most likely that means they committed a violent crime in the first place, and were just lucky to not have killed someone. That sort of determination requires looking at the totality of circumstances, too, not just checking a couple boxes.

We're hard on crime in texas... Unless you're white. Then we let you castle doctrine your way out of almost anything.

And that's a problem that needs addressing on its own merits, with different circumstances and a different solution.

SF and NYC are supported by the government around them, and look at the explosion of violence and crime in those cities over the past year. Not so in Austin.

You're not from around here, are you?

Then you should probably move to a country whose founding document doesn't explicity state that citizen rights to bear arms shall not be infringed.

I live in California, which is part of that country, and bans open carry. Why would I need to move to another country for sensible gun laws? I believe there is a balance which respects the second amendment (which I support!) while also placing reasonable restrictions on purchasing and carrying guns. Guns are extremely serious things, and just because I support the right of gun ownership doesn't mean that I support the totally unrestricted right of anyone to buy any gun at any time and bring it anywhere.

Let me post the whole second amendment for you:

`A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.`

Your interpretation above, of an individual right to bear arms, derives from DC vs Heller ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller) which is relatively new: 2008.

It also doesn't comport with the contemporary writings of the framers, nor the fact that the term "militia" in the constitution refers to the National Guard, which was at the time imagined as a body made up of all able bodied men between 18 and 45 years old. Additionally, at the time, only men were considered "the people".

Are you in favor of banning knives?

Knives of a certain design (switchblades) and lengths? Absolutely.

You don't need a switchblade to kill somebody. A steak knife or a filet knife will do just as well. Should we ban those, too?

We should (imho) enact reasonable regulation that balances rights with citizen safety in a country where people need to be told not to fill plastic bags with gasoline and there is a widespread belief that there are microchips in vaccines.

Screwdrivers, tent stakes, bottles of propane, battery powered circular saws... you can kill somebody very easily with just about everything they sell at Home Depot, and many of them are far more effective than a knife.

Do you drive?

No

In cities that works because you can get police response in minutes. Not so in the country.

So you support unincorporated areas having conceal and carry without a permit but letting cities regulate it?

Yes, if that's what the residents want. Similar to how some businesses don't allow weapons, that could just begin at the city line.

Cool. I agree with that.

Do you have a study or evidence to support this belief or is it just your intuition? Arizona is on the high end for age adjusted gun related deaths in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_death_rates_in_the_U...

I'd be interested to see that data broken down further by homicide vs suicide.

If you look at this data

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

it seems that murder rates do not corelate with the total firearm death rate.

Seems to not be supported by the evidence.

States that do not allow unlicensed carry of handguns have lower per capita gun death.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/gun-deaths-...

All gun deaths, or just gun crimes?

Well, the gun control argument is that guns are inherently dangerous, far moreso than lawn darts or kinder eggs, which are currently banned for sale in the US.

A gun is far more likely to kill a member of your own family than it is to protect a member of your family in a violent altercation.

Furthermore, evidence from the lowest crime and gun death countries around the world seem to indicate the gun ownership is strongly negatively correlated with gun crimes and gun death, unsurprisingly.

It's strange that folks epistemic horizon ends at the border.

Nah, it’s just ridiculous. I had to move away from my home state recently because I’m a member of a contentious minority and, after the legislature there passed a similar measure, I was becoming increasingly afraid that I’d be shot in broad daylight by someone who didn’t like the look of me.

Where are attacks like that increasingly happening aside from SF and NYC?

SF and NYC have some of the lowest per capital gun violence rates in the country.