>>102690160>You sound like you morally object to deadly force as a wholeYeah. As any human being with the smallest shred of dignity would.
The thing is, I'm not opposed to the ownership of guns, or using them for protection. What I'm opposed to is this fetishization of guns we have here in the US.
The United States has the largest concentration of guns in the world. We have enough guns for every man, woman, and child in the country to own nine firearms.
You know what country has the second highest concentration of guns? Yemen.
Yemen is currently in a state of civil war.
There are more guns in the united states than in an active warzone. That's fucking disgusting.
Also, the gun industry in the US is disgustingly huge, and the single largest lobbiest group by a country mile, by dollar spent. They sell the idea that you *need* a gun to be safe, just the same as any other industry peddles its wares, the big difference being that the car or the video game or the comic book industry can't use the constitution as a sales slogan.
People on this board talk about "protection" and detering violence, but the data just flat doesn't hold that up. Less than 1% of all firearms purchased in the US are discharged for the purpose of self defense. What they're really saying is they want the opportunity to protect themselves. They want to run into violence so they can feel badass and justified in spending the two-grand they got suckered out of on their AK. When you buy a new car, you want to go for a drive. When you buy a new grill, you want to make some burgers. These people don't want protection, they want to be the goddamn Punisher.
I am 100% in favor of the use of guns as a method of self defense, but we as a country are way, WAY beyond that, and it's stupid.
