Nowhere in the U.S. except in a police station, in a prison, or in a courthouse do you have police protection, unless they happen to be standing right next to you, in which case they are still not obligated to do anything.

Police are responders, not guards or defenders. They show up after you've attempted to defend yourself, or after you failed to do so.

As an Australian gun owning person who has lived in the US, let me add my 2c.

- You can't compare the US with Australia. In the US gun ownership is a constitutional right (as you pointed out). But even more than that, gun ownership is a massive part of the fundamental culture in many US sates. Australian style gun laws just ain't gonna happen... ever. Added to that, the the US it >10x the population of Australia AND at least ~100x the number of guns make any sort of gun buy back impractal.

- Since gun-reduction/control isn't going work, we need to focus on other things that we can change: Increase security at schools. In many states in the US metal detectors/x-ray machines are common. I think we need start rolling this other across the county. Increase understanding/treatment mental health.

- In this case, the FBI knew about the shooter weeks before it happened... so there are at least some measures in place. They obviously were not acted upon - the reasons for this need to be understood and changed.

Excerpt from a paper I'm working on:

The Founding Fathers established this country on the idea that the Constitution would act as the highest law of the land, and that it was the duty of the citizens to ensure that the Constitution is always held to that level. The Second Amendment was placed in the Bill of Rights initially to ensure that all citizens had not only the right to bear arms, but to establish and uphold militias. The purpose of this is so that the citizens would be able to form a potential resistance against a tyrannical uprising in their government that threatens the Constitution, and this still applies today. This most common counter to this idea is that it is futile to resist the government today, as their military power far surpasses simple, rifle-wielding militias. However this argument is completely pointless, as it neglects the actual reason a tyrannical dictator would want to come to overthrow the Constitution in the first place. To understand the motives of a totalitarian regime, one would simply have to look at history. A perfect example of this would be Adolf Hitler. Regarded as one of the most power-hungry dictators of the all time, Hitler wanted nothing more than to expand his Reich through military power. In order to conquer regions, a civilization would need top level military power, as well as defense and infrastructure to protect against attacks. These conditions can only be met in a booming economy, or at least a stable one, with a cooperative populace to support the domination movement. This brings me to the premise of my argument, that a totalitarian government would never even think of usings its most powerful weapons to quell a resistance. For example, imagine that the U.S. government attempts to completely disarm all of its citizens. Obviously, many citizens would refuse to give up their guns, and a serious civil conflict would arise nationwide, potentially evolving into a civil war. The only way for the government to forcefully confiscate all arms would be to invade every home in order to take them, violating several amendments in the process. The citizens would most likely join forces through local militias so that they would be able to protect their rights. The common counter argument mentioned before applies here, as people will say that fighting against the government would be pointless if it would just involve the militias being blown to shreds by a drone strike. This argument is completely pointless, as the true purpose of a tyrannical government is not to simply kill its citizens, which they would have to do in America’s case. If a government were to use their highest power military weapons on the militias, they would be destroying their own populace, economy, and infrastructure in the process. This will then render the country nearly fallen, and it will become nearly powerless compared to other world powers. This is the polar opposite of what a totalitarian regime strives for.

I think you Copy+pasted twice, might want to check your side though to be sure you didn't repeat that over and over.

And something to add to "The military would wreck whatever resistance with drone strikes..." doesn't take into account how many Ex-Military Veterans there are in the US. And considering we've had troops going overseas for combat in Iraq/Afgan conflict you'd also have combat-hardened Vet's who will have weapons and training to offer whatever resistance there is, even disabled vets could train regular civvies to shoot and simple squad-tactics. It also assumes every single member of the military would be loyal to the tyrant/dictator, which obviously wouldn't happen and I'd say 1/3 conservatively would defect, and of that 1/3 I bet 1/2 would remain silent and enact sabotage upon anything they could. Then you have the fact that while the cities would be easily controlled the rural areas are gonna be tough as fuck, drones are great for hunter-kill missions...they are shit at enforcement of a curfew, shit at raiding a house that might be involved in the resistance, same with tanks and jets. And if they did use any of those tools they would only ferment more hostility and inspire more rebel's to take up arms, which it wouldn't take long before even your most loyal followers begin to lose family members to bombings and killings.

The last census listed US population at 323 Million and if even a 1/8th of that rebelled it would be the end of whatever regime was in power, you could even say if 1/16th of that population rebelled it would be high-level ISIS level shit everywhere.

HAHAHAHA ALEX JONES AHHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



This graph is misleading


Interesting reads: https://www.investors.com/politics/comm ... -straight/, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upsh ... world.html

Which means that more people own cars, so there are more cars in a +-3 cars for every gun ratio, so car deaths should be divided by +-3 to have a correct correlation.

On top of that you have vehicles for efficient transportation. These thing actually make you a lot of money and are beneficial to everyday life.
You cannot compare the 2 as you have, a car is an essential tool of everyday life for the average citizen, your country would be much less prosperous without citizens having easy access to it.
A gun is meant to kill people, owning one as a regular citizen does not bring prosperity to you or society.

Been there, done that. No regrets, never give up on what's important. Prioritize. Happiness is all that matters.
I really like meowers but can't own any for the time being.

Software Developer with a fondness for Python & UE4. 🐱‍👤

Interested in Star Citizen? - Use STAR-PZ6J-4C62 and get us both some cool extras :3

^basically the rest of the worlds argument to america lol

this is essentially what I was arguing, though with some better sources to back it up. The major difference here, as Doldol points out and as I said earlier, is that while a vehicle is a deadly weapon in the wrong hand, cars are still transportation tools by design and as its foremost purpose. Guns however are weapons by design and as its main purpose. Therein lies the difference. The vehicle accidents leading to death referred to in Kharn's graph are for the most part accidents. Comparatively while accidents with firearms certainly do happen (probably fairly frequently as well), the deaths as a result of firearm usage are likely to be far more malicious in intent than those resulting from vehicle usage.

I read this while I was searching for articles about all of this, thought I'd mention it.

In 2013, 99.4% of car deaths were accidental in nature. In sharp contrast, only 1.8% of gun deaths were accidental. (For USA) Yep. (This does not include legal non-accidental cases, which must be higher for guns than cars.)
https://www.investors.com/politics/comm ... -straight/

Been there, done that. No regrets, never give up on what's important. Prioritize. Happiness is all that matters.
I really like meowers but can't own any for the time being.

Software Developer with a fondness for Python & UE4. 🐱‍👤

Interested in Star Citizen? - Use STAR-PZ6J-4C62 and get us both some cool extras :3