Western society??
You mean US society.
Most of Western society has strong gun control. And they have democracy. And recreational hunting and sport shooting.
That can all coexist.
I hear the facial acid attacks in London this time of year is a cultural treasure to behold.
It’s not at all realistic.
What’s realistic is :
Require a license to own guns.
Don’t permit sales to the mentally ill or those with a criminal record.
Have mandatory training courses.
Limit the number of guns that an individual can own.
Limit amounts of ammunition can be purchased.
Limit calibers and rates of fire.
Usually when they say criminal record they mean all criminal records even offenses where no firearms were used. Then again in western society nowadays everything is criminalized even for the lowest offenses. You’re never done doing your time as your time isn’t done until you’re dead. No such thing as your time being served rejoining society in enjoying basic rights as a citizen afterwards. I digress…
Also, why shouldn’t the competent mentally ill not be allowed to defend themselves? I like how they use the term mentally ill generally speaking without being very specific. It’s almost like they can describe anybody as being mentally ill these days in not having the ability to arm themselves…
Does western society include Mexico and Switzerland?
Switzerland has lots of guns, and little (gun) crime, Mexico has lots of gun regulation, and lots of (gun) crime.
@Phyl
I don’t trust psychology, a soft, contentious ‘science’, to determine who’s mentally ‘ill’, firstly, and secondly, just because you’re supposedly mentally ill, doesn’t mean you’re more likely to commit violence.
Unless one’s criminal record is full of violence, it shouldn’t bar you from attaining firearms.
People ought to have the right to prep for a manmade or natural catastrophe.
It would cost billions of dollars for government to buy everyone’s assault rifles and enforce that, to prevent just a few dozen deaths a year, money that could arguably be better spent building hospitals, schools and affordable housing.
Of course government and psychologists have been, are and will continue expanding the amount of illnesses one can be diagnosed with, to fit as much of the population they possibly can under the heading: ‘mentally ill’, so they can be prescribed drugs, involuntarily detained, and, if people like Phyl get their way, have their firearms confiscated.
What you’re a conspiracy theorist, you don’t like the government, you’re mentally ill!
Now relinquish all of your rights, including the right to possess firearms.
Not just mentally ill or a conspiracy theorist you might also be anti semitic which is just another mental illness. 
On a serious note we must remember that people who are mentally ill or have prior criminal records are officially non-persons in society hence the easy generalizations.
In our societies there is a very long list of non-persons that seems to grow every decade.
Yea people like Phyl better be careful what they wish for, they might have a bout of anxiety or depression and be diagnosed with mental illness, millions of people are every year.
They might make some relatively innocuous comment here on ILP, and be placed on the no fly, no buy list for it, labeled as a threat to homeland security.
They might be charged and convicted with assault for defending themselves from their partner because they’re male, and have their right to keep arms, and other rights taken away from them.
I see a future where millions of people are diagnosed as being mentally ill or being charged as a criminal with visions of dollar signs for prisons and psychotropic pharmaceutical companies everywhere.
It will be glorious, whhhheeeee!
It wasn’t an exhaustive study, but simply to point out that guns do not cause violence. And remember that Kennesaw actually mandates every head of household have a gun (though no one has been convicted for not complying).
I’m sure I could find a liberal city of 30,000 with tight gun control and a higher rate of violence than Kennesaw in order to paint the stats how I want them to look, but no need to react to confirmation bias since I’ve already established what I meant to… which is that the addition of guns to a populace is not sufficient to cause violence and therefore the cause is something else.
You can totally drown me in guns and I’m still not going to shoot someone. And if I would, then I would either find a gun somewhere, make a gun, bow n arrow, drive a car into them, beat them with a ball bat, poison… I’d find something.
Now it’s true that it’s too easy to pick up an AR and shoot-up a school if one is given to that type of thing, but the AR is not the cause; it’s just an easy and convenient means to an end and it’s the convenience that’s at issue, but not the underlying cause of the outbursts.
It appears that from 1982 to 2002 the handgun ban did nothing to lower the rate of murder, even though the national average plummeted below the 1982 level almost a decade earlier.
Decorum is the only thing you’ve obliterated with that dispatch.
Never said anything… lol.
Pretty funny considering this is my topic, in which I’ve said quite a lot.
Facts: 1. guns are necessary and important for personal protection, protecting family and others around you, and for preventing tyrants (such as communists for example) from taking over your country. If your population is armed en mass at the level of citizenry that is a huge deterrent against violent takeover by tyrants.
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Guns don’t kill people, people kill people and use various things to do that. Committing murder is already illegal whatever object you use to do it. Banning the object doesn’t address the actual crime of murder nor the reasons behind it.
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Gun free zones are invitations for mass murder, because anyone who is inclined to commit mass murder knows they can go to a gun free zone and no one there can do shit to stop them.
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Being able to own firearms and learn how to use them responsibly is a basic component of being an adult. If you’re so triggered by guns, that’s on you.
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Leftists never want to address the real causes of gun violence, which is why they try to blame the gun. Real causes of gun violence especially in schools include: shitty parents, abuse, untreated mental health issues, drug use, pharma psychomeds, breakdown of culture and disenfranchisement of human beings in the web of interconnected relationships they have, and the leftist cult of victimhood, wedge issue politics and entitlement that rules society now.
But yeah, just keep crying about how the NRA has blood on it’s hands. Such idiotic people give all youth a very bad name. Sort of ironic that it is young people getting killed and yet the young people don’t want to talk about the real reasons why.
Oh yeah, and you gun control people are being manipulated by the left for purely political reasons. The left doesn’t give a shit about any of this, they want political and social-cultural power. The gun issue is just a means to that end.
And you’re too dumb to see that you’re just pawns in their games.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
The USA kills about 5 people per every 100 thousand people annually.
The UK kills about 1 person per every 100 thousand people annually.
The UK has much stricter gun laws and less guns, so that must be the sole reason for the difference, right?
But wait a sec, Switzerland kills even less people than the UK annually, yet has gun laws and ownership rates significantly more comparable to the USA than the UK, so what gives?
Maybe the main reason(s) the USA kills 5 times more people than the UK, isn’t because of guns, maybe restricting guns wouldn’t be nearly as effective at reducing homicide rates as people have been conditioned to suppose.
Does anyone ever really look into what might be making the USA more murderous than your average European country?
What differences between the USA and Switzerland exist that might be making the USA a more dangerous place to live?
I never meant for it to be statistically apples to apples.
Kennesaw mandates gun ownership and has essentially no violence. So little violence that Family Circle rated it as one of the top 10 places to raise a family.
On the other hand
Chicago is a war zone in spite of its efforts to ban means of violent expression.
No statistical analysis is necessary because it’s plain to see that there is something else at play. If mandating guns doesn’t cause violence and restricting guns does not end violence, then guns are irrelevant.
The relevant variables are philosophies held by the people who choose to own guns vs the people who choose to ban guns.
People who choose the former are people who dogmatically refuse to kill people, mostly on religious basis (conservatives are often christian and Kennesaw is about as hillbilly christian as you’ll find)
People who choose the latter are people who are open to the possibility of murder being a means justified by an end. (they’re not dogmatic, but open-mined)
Since guns are associated with less violence, then something about the people who choose to own guns differentiates them from people who choose to ban them; therefore, it’s a philosophy of life that manifests the difference.
That, in a nutshell, is the difference.
It’s not your topic since you lack the ability to lead a conversation.
Guns didn’t protect nor prevent the school shooting. The shooter, using guns, caused the damage. Therefore guns are part of the cause.
The police and military have the authority to use guns. Average people, and below-average people, like you, shouldn’t necessarily have access to guns.
Spree-shooters and those willing to massacre lots of innocent or random people, shouldn’t necessarily have access to guns. Although your argument, in your own words, is that they should be armed and allowed.
Well as bad as the USA is, its homicide rate of 4.88 per 100 thousand people annually is still better than the global average of 6.2.
It’s better than places like Argentina (6.53), Brazil (26.74), Lithuania (5.98) and Russia (11.31), all of which have significantly tougher gun laws.
And while spree killings may be on the rise, which make up an extremely low percentage of homicides, the overall homicide rate has been declining in the US since the early 90s.
