Is it really hard to fathom why many people despise the US?

[clv101]

I am having trouble following your logic here. Are you now saying that a justification for lax gun control - with the huge associated damage - is to make suicide easier? If America actually wants to facilitate suicide (and I'm not convinced that's the case) why not just set up an assisted dying organisation like the Swiss have.

Ha Ha, good luck with that, can you imagine the reaction? It would make the protests outside abortion clinics look like Sunday afternoon picnics.

Physician assisted suicide is becoming the law of the land in the USA one state at a time. A spirited debate for sure but no great uproar or protests.

Great, so you guys won't need guns for suicide any more. So we're back to defending yourself from invasion or your own government?

[vtsnowedin]

Ha Ha, good luck with that, can you imagine the reaction? It would make the protests outside abortion clinics look like Sunday afternoon picnics.

Physician assisted suicide is becoming the law of the land in the USA one state at a time. A spirited debate for sure but no great uproar or protests.

Great, so you guys won't need guns for suicide any more. So we're back to defending yourself from invasion or your own government?

And Home invaders, or burglars, as well as Bears in the pig pen and foxes in the chicken coop.
But why should I have to go through a bureaucratic process where some underpaid flunky decides if I'm sick enough or not to do myself in instead of walking, or crawling , or wheeling myself over to the gun safe and choosing the gun that no child or grand child will want to own after Gramps does himself in with it and ending it at a time of my choosing and at a location where I think it will the least upsetting to those that survive me.

[biffvernon]

Over here we try really hard to stop people killing themselves. It's a cultural thing.

[UndercoverElephant]

Over here we try really hard to stop people killing themselves. It's a cultural thing.

I'm not sure that is anything to be proud of.

If people want to die, in dignity, I don't think anybody else has any right to try really hard to stop them.

I also don't think this has much, if anything at all, to do with the debate about gun laws/crime in the United States.

[clv101]

Physician assisted suicide is becoming the law of the land in the USA one state at a time. A spirited debate for sure but no great uproar or protests.

Great, so you guys won't need guns for suicide any more. So we're back to defending yourself from invasion or your own government?

And Home invaders, or burglars, as well as Bears in the pig pen and foxes in the chicken coop.

But as a responsible gun owner, your firearm is kept unloaded and locked away. Hardly on your hip ready to defend yourself 24/7. Anyway isn't the evidence clear that you're far more likely to kill yourself or be killed by your own gun that that of an home invader. Statistically, you and your family are safer without a gun in the house.

But why should I have to go through a bureaucratic process where some underpaid flunky decides if I'm sick enough or not to do myself in instead of walking, or crawling , or wheeling myself over to the gun safe and choosing the gun that no child or grand child will want to own after Gramps does himself in with it and ending it at a time of my choosing and at a location where I think it will the least upsetting to those that survive me.

You, as a responsible gun owner should have to crawl through a mountain of bureaucracy, delays, checks etc, exactly so the irresponsible folk can't get guns so easily. This is why you and any America who sees themselves as a responsible gun owner should be calling as loudly as possible for far tighter gun control.

I'm certain you don't accept hundreds of children being killed just so you can avoid a bit of bureaucracy!

[vtsnowedin]

But as a responsible gun owner, your firearm is kept unloaded and locked away. Hardly on your hip ready to defend yourself 24/7. Anyway isn't the evidence clear that you're far more likely to kill yourself or be killed by your own gun that that of an home invader. Statistically, you and your family are safer without a gun in the house.

You or any intruder seeking to enter my house thinking the guns are locked away might be surprised at your reception. It would certainly not be so during any kind of emergency where looting or rioting was going on.

You, as a responsible gun owner should have to crawl through a mountain of bureaucracy, delays, checks etc, exactly so the irresponsible folk can't get guns so easily. This is why you and any America who sees themselves as a responsible gun owner should be calling as loudly as possible for far tighter gun control.

Absolutely not. The bureaucracy is used as a tool to limit your ownership and eventually leads to confiscation. Once the liberals have the power they will declare that anyone that wants a gun is irresponsible and demand they turn them in.

I'm certain you don't accept hundreds of children being killed just so you can avoid a bit of bureaucracy!

It is not just a bit of bureaucracy, it is a first step towards disarmament of the civilian population.
The deaths of children is of course tragic but stronger gun controls will not disarm the drug gangs or end their turf wars where most of these child deaths occur.
It is a high price but yes I will accept it. The alternative is just too dangerous in the long term. History is full of peoples that became defensless and are no longer with us.

[clv101]

The alternative is just too dangerous in the long term.

The alternative is what most of the developed world has already figured out how to make work. It's pretty worrying that you can't see how a low-gun society can work.

[vtsnowedin]

The alternative is just too dangerous in the long term.

The alternative is what most of the developed world has already figured out how to make work. It's pretty worrying that you can't see how a low-gun society can work.

Like the Ukraine under Stalin or France under Hitler?

[biffvernon]

And the French holding handguns would have stopped Hitler's Panzer Blitzkrieg?

[clv101]

The alternative is just too dangerous in the long term.

The alternative is what most of the developed world has already figured out how to make work. It's pretty worrying that you can't see how a low-gun society can work.

Like the Ukraine under Stalin or France under Hitler?

No, like almost every over developed country today where thousands of people aren't getting killed.

You're back to protection from an invading army now. It takes quite an imagination to think that first the US military is going to vanish, but other nations's militaries are still around to prosecute wars thousands of miles away and secondly that publicly owned small arms would deter them! Your publicly owned small arms are killing Americans today - not some imaginary bogyman in the future.

Your position is totally illogical, which would be absolutely fine if it wasn't leading to thousands of people getting killed.

[biffvernon]

Vt's scraping the very bottom of the barrel of irrational arguments. It's a bit like the climate deniers. I feel for them, all their long-held conceptions of how the world works crumbles before them and they are faced with the stark choice of admitting they were wrong over a life-time or continue to bluster inanities which everyone, including themselves, know to be absurd.

[kenneal - lagger]

VT, you have given away your democracy without a shot being fired by all those who hold guns. The right wingers who hold all the guns would even support this loss of democracy to the corporations as the "Capitalist Way!" The alternative to the bribery and corruption of corporations and billionaires owning your government is seen by many Americans as Socialism! You have been taken for mugs by the people with the money and power.

And, yes, I do know that the same thing has happened here but we don't pretend to hold weapons to protect our democratic rights.

[Little John]

VT, you have given away your democracy without a shot being fired by all those who hold guns. The right wingers who hold all the guns would even support this loss of democracy to the corporations as the "Capitalist Way!" The alternative to the bribery and corruption of corporations and billionaires owning your government is seen by many Americans as Socialism! You have been taken for mugs by the people with the money and power.

And, yes, I do know that the same thing has happened here but we don't pretend to hold weapons to protect our democratic rights.

Yes...all of this. Precisely this.

[vtsnowedin]

VT, you have given away your democracy without a shot being fired by all those who hold guns. The right wingers who hold all the guns would even support this loss of democracy to the corporations as the "Capitalist Way!" The alternative to the bribery and corruption of corporations and billionaires owning your government is seen by many Americans as Socialism! You have been taken for mugs by the people with the money and power.

And, yes, I do know that the same thing has happened here but we don't pretend to hold weapons to protect our democratic rights.

An interesting point of view with quite a bit of merit.
I don't think the Americans have quite given up our democracy just yet. There is an election coming up and we still get to vote after all. The bribery (often called campaign contributions) and corruption are indeed problems but I think they are separate from the guns and self defense issue.

[vtsnowedin]

To all those posters that feel their country has lived safely without guns in private hands for years I suggest that wars tend to come a generation or two apart and the fact that you have never experienced any need to defend yourself in your lifetime does not mean you won't have to in the years and decades to come.