It probably doesn't change much but Americans ask the opposite question since ownership is already legal.
We ask what you hope to solve by removing gun ownership.
From the perspective of a gun owner who is in favor of better gun control, the biggest issue with gun legislation in the US is that those proposing restrictions either have no idea what they're talking about or are just catering to those who don't.
The pro gun control crowd is too busy inventing a nonsensical category of guns to ban ("assualt weapons") to even acknowledge that the homicide rate comes from poor people killing eachother with cheap, concealable handguns.
Reasonable enough, but many people have access to information about how the world outside those borders operates - which is why free healthcare, minimum wage, and other changes, are now being a bit more actively discussed.
Anyway.
> We ask what you hope to solve by removing gun ownership.
What's on offer is a significant (order of magnitude) reduction in the number of violent gun deaths. [0]
No one's trying to sell this to the USA.
OTOH various agencies within the USA are certainly trying to sell the idea that this is a bad thing. The budget differential of the two groups is enormous - consequently it'll almost definitely never happen.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/05/7435796...
I think I wasn't totally clear about the point I was trying to make.
Very very very few politicians in the US (I can't name a prominent one but I'm hedging) are for any sort of firearm prohibition that would put us in line with any of the nations we are often compared with. So, given that, the restrictions being proposed will not and should not be expected to bring us in line with those nations. Therefore, the question I'm asking is, given the proposed restrictions, what benefits should we expect.
The point I wanted to make was that the answer to that question, "what benefits should we expect?", is basically none from the current viable proposals and that's why, while I am for more gun control, I am against most existing and proposed gun control measures as I feel they are either completely ineffective or overly burdensome for their effectiveness.
I find the oft-said quote of "If we can save even one life..." type of argument a massive red flag.
If that's roughly it, then I'd suggest:
a) the cautiousness is a political necessity - and does not preclude the option of pursuing stronger, but similarly sentiment policy changes down the road. First steps, and all that.
b) my understanding is that even very basic, not hugely contentious (almost bipartisan support for) ideas, such as removal of full automatic and ridiculously high calibre from the marketplace, stopping sales at gun shows without background checks, cooling off periods, requiring safe storage gun cabinets, etc - would result in a measurable decrease in deaths (murders, massacres, suicides, accidents).
In any case, it feels like even if (b) wasn't a highly likely, the cost of doing it is relatively low to the potential (but, really almost guaranteed) outcomes.
> I find the oft-said quote of "If we can save even one life..." type of argument a massive red flag.
I don't speak for all non-American citizens, but outside of the country looking in, it feels like (media, social groups, etc) this past year or four we've had an alarming reveal about the attitudes of a surprisingly large portion of American society -- even if something trivially inconvenient is requested of them, that demonstrably will save the lives of other citizens, there's an instinctive and violent push-back.
So, yes indeed - suggesting that some lives could be saved probably isn't a sufficient and satisfactory argument for many people there. But that's a separate problem.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
I guess I should add, if you can't find a way to respond to a comment without violating the guidelines, it's better to downvote, or flag if it's called for, and move on. I've discarded quite a number of half-written responses (and hastily deleted a few freshly-posted comments) on that basis.
Aha. See, if you had phrased that as a question, there could be room for curious conversation. Instead, you took the least generous interpretation and ran with that.
If I did something similar, like ran around pointing out that children can actually consent do actually have a working theory of the world in a thread about CP you'd probably question whether or not I have a load of CP on my computer. There is something as too much benefit of the doubt.
So... maybe?
> It's usually the opposite sentiment for gun owners- I trust my fellow citizens with arms.
And now:
> Have you ever read about the terrible things people do to each others? Or the barbarism of human history?
Those positions aren't precisely orthogonal, but they certainly have some conflicting sentiment behind them.
As to owning a handgun for private use for:
> Any living threat, which could be a much much larger attacker or mob of attackers.
... from a naive perspective (I've never been in that situation, thankfully) it feels like any advantage I may have, via agility, negotiation, ability to out-run, etc, would be negated if everyone involved had a handgun. Certainly if everyone in that scenario is armed, there's no clear advantage to me to be armed.
(I concur that if the other party(ies) were not armed, and I was, then that's advantageous to me. And if they were armed, and I was not, well that's also very bad for me. But that's not the likely scenario in a heavily gun-equipped scenario.)
Anyway, I'm sure you've gone through all this before, with many people smarter / more informed than me.
Precisely why many Americans are convinced gun ownership is an answer to something, despite all the statistical evidence, I'm just not likely to ever understand. Thank you for your patience with my questions.