If having guns worked like that, then the USA, with all it's guns, has nothing to fear from the government banning crypto, since you can all just overthrow the government with all your guns, right?
and as the original intent went, it made sense. but owning a gun doesn't really protect one from a modern intrusive government, but it does raise the risk of gun related death to those around you by a significant margin
> but it does raise the risk of gun related death to those around you by a significant margin
Needs citation.
Unless, of course, you mean having access to a gun increases your chances of successfully committing suicide, which is fairly well established... but I think that this is rather different, at least in terms of connotation, than what you said. My impression was that you were implying that having a gun in the house makes you significantly more likely to be the victim of an accidental shooting, which while technically true, really isn't worth worrying about compared to, say, car accidents (or even airplane accidents) accidental gun deaths are very rare.
That's what is interesting to me in this whole gun debate. The majority of gun deaths are intentionally self-inflicted.
Interestingly, it seems to me that the people who support gun ownership more often than not oppose physician-assisted suicide, and vis-a-vis.
If you accept my assertion that the gun debate is actually about suicide, "From my cold, dead hands" takes on a whole new meaning.
> “Bringing a gun into the home substantially increases the risk for suicide for all family members and the risk for women being murdered in the home,”
> “Impulsiveness may be a catalyst in using a firearm to commit suicide and may also play a role in firearm-related homicide.”
I grew up with guns in the home, but these guns were for hunting / bear protection, not "self defense" and were stored unloaded and locked. I support the right to own guns but I find the willfully ignorant, cavalier and dismissive attitudes that many pro-gun advocates have towards the risks of gun ownership to be a shame.
> My impression was that you were implying that having a gun in the house makes you significantly more likely to be the victim of an accidental shooting, which while technically true, really isn't worth worrying about compared to, say, car accidents (or even airplane accidents) accidental gun deaths are very rare.
Are you sure about the airplane accidents part? Do you have data to back it up? I know that traffic fatalities in the US are about even with gun fatalities overall [1], but if you can show that accidental gun deaths attributable to gun ownership at home are roughly equal to deaths from plane crashes, I'd be very interested in seeing that.
"Firearm— In 2013, 33,636 persons died from firearm injuries in the United States ( Tables 18 and 19), accounting for 17.4% of all injury deaths in that year. The age-adjusted death rate from firearm injuries (all intents) did not change significantly in 2013 from 2012. The two major component causes of firearm injury deaths in 2013 were suicide (63.0%) and homicide (33.3%). The age-adjusted death rate for firearm homicide decreased 5.3%, from 3.8 in 2012 to 3.6 in 2013. The rate for firearm suicide did not change significantly."
so, that gives us 96.3% of all gun deaths as either suicide or homicide, leaving 3.7% unknown. 3.7% of 33,636 gives us 1,245... okay, uh, so if all of those are accidental deaths, then I'm wrong, as planes aren't nearly that dangerous.
But, even if the lower ~600 number is right, that puts it in the neighborhood of total airplane deaths globally... so it looks like I was wrong, accidental gun deaths are not rare compared to airplane accidents.
which apparently only gives me stats from 2013, NVDRS States: AK, CO, GA, KY, MA, MD, NC, NJ, NM, OH, OK, OR, RI, SC, UT, VA, WI
but it has a fascinating table of accidental gun deaths.
However, I'd still say that this doesn't detract much from my general argument that the gun control debate becomes more interesting (and, I think, makes more sense) if you understand that Americans use guns more often on themselves than on other people.
> owning a gun doesn't really protect one from a modern intrusive government
At an individual level it doesn't. At a population level there is an argument that it makes a guerrilla civil war potentially winnable by the rebels, which has a deterrent effect on extreme totalitarianism.
Theoretically it would if the American populous, heavily armed as we are, had any chance whatsoever against the military. We don't, so the point is moot.
> Theoretically it would if the American populous, heavily armed as we are, had any chance whatsoever against the military. We don't, so the point is moot.
You're imagining construction workers and commercial airline pilots and physics professors against professional soldiers. Imagine 500 professional soldiers with the backing of 5000 construction workers and commercial airline pilots and physics professors take over the military base where those 500 soldiers were already a quarter of the garrison, because the 5000 already had their own small arms and knew how to use them.
Then they have tanks and planes and nuclear weapons and popular support and the same dynamic plays out at ten other military bases.
Democracies are stable because if you have enough people behind you then you can vote the bums out before you have to fight them militarily. But authoritarian "democracy" where you have a central government imposing controversial laws with only 51% national support and significantly less than that in specific regions is more than a little unstable.
This is unknown. The entirety of the military would probably not be unified in an all-out Civil War II. Furthermore it is not relevant considering police state abuse is more rampant than ever, which is a good enough "logical" reason, which again is also not important considering it's a fundamental right at its base level.
By this logic, if there was one section of the gov't that had extremely advanced crypto cracking capabilities, then keeping crypto legal for normal citizens should also be a "moot point".
However, citizens would probably still want to keep their data private from all kinds of other eavesdroppers just like they want guns to protect themselves from threats less capable than the military.
>but owning a gun doesn't really protect one from a modern intrusive government
The fact that the government outscaled civilians RE: military power doesn't make it a useless law. Think abusive law enforcement at the local/state level.
I'm not sure how armed citizenry helps with law enforcement.
People are shot and killed by law enforcement. Sometimes they're shot and killed very quickly, within 30 seconds of an officer arriving on scene.
People who are thought to be armed are often shot and killed by US police. Notice the "thought" there, many people are shot even though they don't have a weapon because law enforcement thinks the person has a gun.
Do you have any examples where an interaction between a citizen and a cop is made better by the presence of a gun on the citizen?
(I guess the strongest challenge to my argument is the presence of MalcolmX)
>Better thought: Do you think a completely unarmed populace is a better idea given how bad police abuse their power?
Well, yes, I do.
The US is heavily armed. The US has a lot of poorly trained, unskilled, abusive police officers.
Gun ownership hasn't made US police any better. If anything it's made them far more lethal - one reason given (by both pro- and anti- gun advocates) for the shocking numbers of people shot and killed by US police each year is the presence of guns in the population.
When a police officer abuses their power I can grind through it, or I can pull a gun and get shot. In most cases getting shot is the worse outcome.
I think it dies give some protection. Sure when swat comes to your house, guns will not save you. However in a extrem case were masses of people feel threatened by government and their is real civil unrest, the cost for the govemnet to put this down by force will be massivly higher.
In that sense its the same as encryption, it all boils down to an argument of economics.
When the NSA wants to hack you, you are fucked. When the FBI wants to arrest you, you are fucked. Only in mass can either of these measures have a large impact on government policy. Both things stop the goverment from some actions that they might take.
I agree that guns have larger everyday danger effect then encryption. However Im not convinced that, its sufficantly good argument outlaw guns.
> However in a extrem case were masses of people feel threatened by government and their is real civil unrest, the cost for the govemnet to put this down by force will be massivly higher.
It didn't seem to stop them at Waco. Since they're getting army surplus from actual warzones I'm not sure the civilians can put up much resistance.
