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I'm a 2A guy but stabbings are a stupid example, you can stab a few folks that might die or shoot like 200 that will die in the same amount of time. America would be much "safer" if we yanked every gun. (It would mostly stop suicides and gang bangers, but statistically "safer") A better example is that we still have 1A while most of the world does not.
I'm really not convinced we'd be noticeably safer all told.
I still remember The Waukesha Christmas Parade Attack which killed 6 and injured 62. Trucks are relatively cheap, at least to rent, and can rack up a body count. If shootings get supplanted by trucks running down parades as the preferred modus operandi, I don't know that the death toll from the mass killings would be substantially less.
And I will consistently remind people that Guns can be 3D printed, so a sufficiently motivated psycho or criminal is going to be able to procure a weapon if they really want to. This will only get easier going forward.
And try estimating of the number of casualties that would be sustained in the process of confiscating firearms! If even 1% of firearms owners choose to resist, and 10% of those incidents result in at least one officer being injured or killed, we're talking somewhere on the order of 80,000 - 100,000 casualties over however many years. Compared to 21k homicides per year.
Is that reallllly worth the tradeoff, if we don't believe we can confiscate every firearm without incident?
Anyhow, I would redirect you to my recent policy proposal about banning and confiscating guns for Democrats only,, as my proposed compromise on this topic.
If I could Thanos snap every privately owned gun away in the US (and future proof so it any other gun or firearm disintegrates as soon as it is made or brought within the border) I probably would, I think it would indeed make the country safer. However given that I can't do that, and that regardless of the laws, there are so many guns, and so many ways to import guns or make them, I think banning them would be overall counter-productive for the average citizen as it stands. Which I guess makes me a theoretical gun grabber and a practical 2A supporter, give or take.
“Looks like tyranny’s back on the menu, boys!” - American politicians, bad cops, the 80,000 new armed IRS agents, etc.
Eh, I don't think the US government is likely to slip into tyranny, I'm for big government not against it. Bad cops would still be a problem of course, but overall i think the trade would be worth it. Though see the below discussion there are probably other Thanos snap interventions which would be more useful (if perhaps more immoral, depending on your POV).
Agreed it would take at least a decade of permanent citizen firearm disarmament for American politicians to turn full tyrant.
But I bet in that time, the combined rage and innovation of the new “guncels” will come up with a ranged weapon which is deadlier or safer, or both. I’m guessing phasers with stun and kill.
I’m betting on Elon’s STEM minions finding the end-run around the gun ban.
Though note, we're not talking about a ban, we're talking about Thanos snapping away every gun and every future gun in private hands, depending on how you word your "wish" that might include anything that acts like a gun. This is magic (of a sort) not law.
As long as the magical wish could also prevent any government agent from having a successful shooting of an innocent, that might work. Of course, it would also lead to police just “firing” into crowds and whoever’s not “innocent” gets shot. All sorts of dystopia come into play there.
In Northern Ireland when the British Army shot into crowds it wasn't stopped by other people with guns (in fact it was soldiers fear of that which often presaged such events), it was stopped by a largely unarmed populaces horror.
The chances of the US nation descending into tyranny in the next say 50 years is in my opinion, very close to zero, no matter which side wins elections.
Magical (or advanced tech indistinguishable from it) aside, the problem with removing guns through banning them, isn't that I think it would make the government more likely to be tyrannical, privately owned guns have a negligible impact on that in my view. Its that criminals would still have them, and that even the attempt of a ban would create (understandable!) widespread instability and violence among legal gun owners which is I think is much more of a risk than government tyranny to long term civilizational stability.
So pragmatically the 2A should remain, at least in my view.
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