The death of my entire family at the hands of a gunman, while incredibly tragic, would not make me any less pro-gun. As other commenters have stated, the right to own guns is fundamental to the identity of many Americans. If the government could take away our guns, what else could they do?
Perhaps you should look to other western democracies to see how they deal with it?
Seriously, the whole 'guns protect our rights from the government' argument is nonsense. There's been all sorts of assaults on the Bill of Rights in the past couple of decades, and there's been next to zero organised, armed resistance against the government. And those who do engage in armed resistance against the government get nowhere with it. You can keep government agents at bay for a short while with your weapon, but they're going to win.
Imagine if instead of "we need our guns to protect us from the government", there was as much passion in "we need to engage ourselves in our communities, to engage ourselves in politics". You'd have stronger community bonds, less fear, and more traction. The government would stop being seen as "those people over there", and start being seen as "that thing that we are part of".
Other western democracies did not struggled through what America struggled through to free itself from the British monarchy in order to establish democracy.
Because of that, these western democracies do not value the importance of arms the way Americans value it.
Arms of the American people is the basis for which democracy in America was built on.
Right. Most of those countries in Europe have never been threatened by invasion or fought off invaders. Oh. Wait. They have. This notion of an antagonistic relationship to the world around us is childish and has to end. The small-minded fears of a minority of this country are inflicting greater fear and damage on the rest of us.
They see things differently than Americans. Unlike Americans, Europeans countries do not see the value and importance of guns, even after they got conquered or have to fight off invaders.
>The small-minded fears of a minority of this country are inflicting greater fear and damage on the rest of us.
The same thing could be said about anti-gun people. These people fear guns, and because of that irrational fear, they're trying to infringe other people's fundemental right to self-defense.
You don't want a gun. Cool. But I want a gun. I am not forcing you to own a gun, so why are you forcing me to not own a gun?
How about we let each person decides what he wants to do instead? You don't buy a gun. And I buy a gun. It's call Freedom.
> Unlike Americans, Europeans countries do not see the value and importance of guns, even after they got conquered or have to fight off invaders.
Sure we do. We just have an actual system for managing this, making sure weapons that are actually useful for defense are quickly available to those actually trained to use them in resistance fighting.
Compared to the American system of wild-west-style anarchy, where people with little to no training in resistance tacticts buy a wide variety of weapons more or less suitable for resistance fighting and with a huge variety of mutually-incompatible ammo, who do you think is better prepared?
Here in Norway, for instance, people who serve a year in the National Guard get issued a service weapon (currently HK416, used to be AG3) and a decent amount of ammo when they are finished. In the olden days, these were stored at home, but today we have many decentralised storage facilities around the country which spring into action if the Russians come.
No where did I mention armed resistance. This discussion is framed the wrong way. It isn't about plastic/wooden/metal sticks that eject lead, it is about whether citizens should give up their rights.
It's one of fundamental rights of an American. It's one of the power granted to the people by the Constitution.
Asking the people to give up this power is as idiotic as asking Congress to give up its power.
Also of note, the Constitution specifically DENIED the government the power to outright ban guns. The government can regulate it, but the government can not outright ban it.
There's calls right here in this discussion to alter the constitution. It's not sacrosanct. So it's not impossible to regulate guns in a way that would not be allowed under today's constitution, just difficult.
edit: I see you've discussed this below. Interesting though that gun owners rising up to protect themselves from the government wouldn't be constitutional (it would be done under the authority of the gun, not under the authority of the Constitution).
I see where you're coming from, but I don't agree. The Constitution specifically protects the people's ability to maintain the force necessary to be a credible threat. If not to maintain the threat of armed rebellion, what purpose would it serve?
Obviously actually engaging in insurrection against a constitutional government would not be constitutional. Anyone taking arms against the government would presumably believe that that government was not operating within the confines the Constitution provides; the act of insurrection would be seen by them as a remedy to an unconstitutional government and therefore neither party would be subject to it.
