LogFAQs > #943245605

Zeus posted...

lolwut? Does a drug dealer "fuck up" when he sells drugs? You're pretending that there's some oversight when it's usually just deliberate criminality.

That gun was legal at one point. Criminals don't have their own secret gun factory that they use to manufacture their firearms. So somebody, at some point, bought that gun legally and it eventually came into the criminal's hands. How the criminal himself got a hold of it isn't particularly relevant to this point, because the point is if there were stricter controls on guns and/or fewer guns floating around, there's less of a chance for that gun to get to its original owner and, therefore, less of a chance it eventually passes on to someone who will use it for criminal means.

Zeus posted...

Not really, no. There are countless onerous laws on the books making it difficult for law-abiding citizens to buy guns.

No, there aren't.

If you want to see actual, effective gun control laws, go literally anywhere else. Even other "gun-friendly" countries like Switzerland (19th most guns per capita), Canada (7th most guns per capita) or Finland (10th most guns per capita) have things like gun licenses, registration, mandatory training, mandatory waiting periods, etc.

The US's gun laws are only strict if you don't compare it to anyone else.

Zeus posted...

If everybody at that BK -- including the employee -- was packing, do you think this thug would have engaged in a violent confrontation?

The numbers say yes.

If your logic actually worked, the US would have the lowest violent crime rates in the world, particularly in gun-heavy areas, because criminals would be too terrified to commit violence. The US, after all, has by far the highest civilian gun ownership rate, so shouldn't all those guns push down crime rates as criminals are either deterred or killed in justifiable homicides?

But that's not what actually happens. Instead, the US has high rates of violent crime and a frankly obscene murder rate, proving that this "gun deterrence" is and always has been right-wing fiction. There's also no indication that gun-friendly states fare better than their gun-restrictive peers, as many of the US's most violent states (Top 10, in order, are Alaska, New Mexico, Tennessee, Arkansas, Nevada, Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina, and Arizona as of 2018). When civilians have essentially free access to firearms, the criminals do too, which makes them more effective at what they're doing because, unlike their victims, they know when violence is going to take place and they can have their weapons ready first.

I also shouldn't have to point this out, but someone who is willing to shoot someone else over fast food service isn't thinking rationally and plainly is not all that worried about consequences for their actions or else, y'know, they wouldn't have shot someone over fast food service. Adding guns to the mix is not going to alter that equation.

Zeus posted...

Given that you guys don't trust or even like cops, you should be all for more citizens having guns to defend themselves against violent felons like this punk who, even if he only had a knife, was a danger to the employee and others.

Half the reason why policing in the US is in such a sorry state is because the cops are dealing with a heavily armed populace. They need to have itchy trigger fingers for their own safety, because there's an excellent chance that whoever they're trying to arrest is armed.

You notice how most other first-world countries have police that more effectively de-escalate situations? How many have cops that don't even bother to carry firearms? They can do that, because their odds of running into an armed criminal are low. US cops always have to assume that whoever they're dealing with is potentially armed, because there's a ~50% chance they do.

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