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…Of course. Charlie Kirk would still be alive today if America had strict gun control. There’s only a tiny chance that this terminally online dude would be able to acquire an illegal firearm in Utah, and still only a tiny chance that he would successfully assassinate him through some other means. The gun is a causal factor in his death, in the same way open borders is a causal factor in the illegal immigrant example. In both cases, the victim reasonably believes that policy decision effects a greater good which supersedes the risks and harms.
I of course totally disagree that we should care about illegal immigrants and pretty much agree that we should have guns, but that’s opinion.
Your argument is entirely bogus., and even @TIRM's refinement below cannot save it. Japan has extremely strict gun control, but it also has high social cohesion and a population sharing highly cohesive values. If half of Japan actually wanted to murder the other half, there is no reason to believe their gun control laws would prevent this.
Japan’s 1/1000th rate of gun crime is not invalidated by one outlying case of assassination. The assailant in question planned to kill a cult leader for 20 years, tried and failed to obtain a firearm, built his own firearm, then spent a year planning to kill Abe only because he supported said cult. This was a highly unusual event all around.
Japan's low rate of violence generally comes from a highly values-cohesive culture, among other things. Murdering people you consider evil is rare there, because most Japanese do not appear to consider most other japanese evil. When a japanese person did come to view some of his fellow citizens this way, bang, you got a gun murder, even when he had to make the gun himself.
I do not believe even the strictest gun control implemented in America would reduce our rate of political murder. People who want to kill each other will find a way to make it happen, and values-incoherent politics is exceptionally good at inducing the desire.
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The most plausible form of 'strict gun control' in the USA is one like in Latin America, where badly-written laws are sometimes enforced in major city centers- largely at the discretion of local police- but most people who want to own guns just own them illegally instead of bothering with paperwork requirements, regardless of their personal intentions. Criminal gangs already flagrantly violate gun control laws and the pro-gun-control party has no interest in cracking down on straw purchases or making firearms theft(the two most common avenues for criminals to evade gun control laws) a major priority for police.
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Japan or North Korea strict gun control maybe. Typical developed nation gun control no.
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In most countries with strict gun control, buying a .30-06 Mauser is as easy as being part of a gun club or holding a hunting license, sometimes easier than that. Bolt action rifles are old enough technology you can buy them through mail as antiques and barely even have to produce ID in some cases. And essentially everyone owns something like it in the countryside, for obvious reasons.
The gun control angle makes absolutely no sense and is completely retarded in this situation unless one is proposing to ban private ownership of firearms outright with no exceptions.
Came up in a different thread, but an urban college student is very unlikely to be allowed to buy a bolt-action rifle in the UK without being asked searching questions about why he needed it. He might have been able to manage anyway due to his family, but it wouldn't have been trivial:
https://www.themotte.org/post/3126/smallscale-question-sunday-for-september-7/363028?context=8#context
Utah isn't urban though -- hunting is probably ten minutes away from this guy's house.
Not sure that there's really comparable locations that have colleges in the UK, but I'd guess that a student living in Aberdeen or someplace would be able to get a stalking rifle?
St. Andrews is pretty rural I think.
My impression is that getting a rifle is more difficult, because it's easier to use as a weapon and also just easier to accidentally kill people if you don't watch where you're firing. Shotguns are much more common. He might be able to get one but it wouldn't be easy and he'd probably need notes from a stalking club or something.
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Yeah especially when Tyler's experience with and access to guns is all downstream of his family. He likely doesn't have the experience or awareness to pull this off if his family and upbringing wasn't like 98th percentile pro-gun
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I’m not a gun guy, but wasn’t the weapon used the kind of single shot deer hunting rifle a grandfather would use? IOW, the kind of firearm that would still be easily available in almost any plausible form of “strict gun control.
It’s one of the cheapest and most widely commercially available hunting rifles in the world. A single shot, bolt action hunting rifle.
The kind of firearm that is available even in countries with strict gun control.
The idea that gun control would have prevented this is nothing short of farcical.
It’s the firearm equivalent of like… a common chef’s knife. Or a two door sedan. A claw hammer. Or bleach. Or gasoline. All incredibly common things that can nevertheless be used by a determined attacker to kill someone.
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