(As a general concept of how a society should run, not intended as a US-specific question.)
I sometimes see people on the internet saying that giving people easy access to guns is too risky and there should be stricter gun control, while simultaneously wanting to abolish the police? I’m just confused on what people really want?
You cant both abolish the police and then also disarm the citizens, gotta pick one. So which is it, internet? Self-policing with guns? Or reform the police?
[Please state what country you’re in]
---
(Also its funny how the far-right of the US is both pro-gun and pro-police, I’m confused by that as well)
Guns should be available, but hard to get, and hard to keep.
Probably harder to get than a driver’s license.
It’s depressing to hear that’s not already the case.
I mean… in Non-North-American Western Countries, that’s already a thing, right?
Edit:
Australia + Many countries in Europe requires permits and that requires a “good reason”. From what I heard, the police is usally much less shitty than the US counterpart.
I might be wrong, but I believe ONE OF the reasons why American police is so shitty is because every citizen might be—and often is—carrying a gun. This causes stress in the police force, higher chances of casualties among them as compared to other countries, so it builds feelings of fear and “acting first, asking later” in most situations.
Sure, many of them are also power-tripping assholes on top of that.
Indirectly. They use the fact that people could be armed to justify their behavior, especially the overuse of ‘he’s got a gun’ when the person doesn’t. But many people interact with other people in dangerous situations while attempting to deescalate which the police tend to use the possibility as justification for escalating violence.
Mental health professional: talk down the person who is having a crisis
Police: shoot while claiming they are afraid for their life from an unarmed 12 year old
Maybe they shouldn’t become cops then.
Yep! I wasn’t justifying them.
Then only the rich can have guns.
No sure if that’s what you had in mind?
Not hard to get as in expensive, hard to get as in the amount of training and certifications you need in order to legally own a gun.
Yes, and I have understood it in the same way.
On the poor end:
Would you sponsor all these trainings and certificates for everybody who can’t afford them?
On the rich end:
Don’t you think that as a rich person you could delegate most of the hassle to somebody you pay? (not saying to buy false certificates, but even that is thinkable)
Maybe this is what they had in mind.
Don’t put that racist shit on me.
Any time something is hard to get then it is available to whoever has power and denied to minorities. While you may not have intended to mean that, it is the end result of the approach you are promoting.
How do you propose keeping guns away from people prone to violence, criminals, and the insane?
There is a massive gap between handing out guns in happy meals and being hard to get.
Committing violent crimes or being of unsound mind are perfectly fine reasons for restricting possession as long as there is due process and the possibility of restoring the rights under certain conditions. If someone is charged with a violent crime then they shouldn’t have possession of firearms until that matter is settled.
There will always be the cases where someone has zero history of violence before they commit a crime so it wouldn’t be perfect, but even in the US most states have restrictions based on obvious reasons someone shouldn’t have a gun.
Hard to get doesn’t mean expensive. It means you can’t have it if you can’t handle it. Like a car. Nobody would give a driving license to a blind person. And nobody should have a gun permit if you are mentally unstable.
Expense is not the only way to make something hard to get, and gun laws have a long history of being made in a way that intentionally or unintentionally makes it difficult for minorities.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-02-07/if-we-must-rely-on-history-and-tradition-to-assess-gun-laws-does-racist-history-count
Cool, what about a nailgun? You ever see what they can do? Better make them harder to get. /s
There are tools for nailing things and tools for killing things.
K, nail someone in the head and ask em how they feel afterwards.
We literally use a nailgun to kill cattle before slaughtering them.
That has nothing to do with what I said.