Only because it's you, and you asked me so nicely! <3
Laws are for everyone, even the rich - it just does'nt hurt them as much when it comes to monetary compensation. My point of outfitting everyone is that there will always be poor folk that can't afford such luxuries as firearms, if you want to remove that rich/poor divide you would have to distribute weapons to everyone. It was also meant to serve as a strawman example.
The police are responsible with protecting you, you should ofcourse make efforts like using good locks and alarms to give police time to get there, just as firealarms are there to wake you up in the middle of the night before a fire becomes an inferno. Protect and serve.
I'm pretty certain you were born with bear arms, but I digress, if it is a right to bear arms, should criminals and mentally ill people not have them too then? It is afterall a right, and not a privilege. And that right shall not be infringed... People need to be licenced, deemed worthy and fit to own something as dangerous as a firearm, and doubly so if you want to use that weapon for self defence - people don't react well when surprised or stressed.
Comparing firearms ownership with sexuality is silly though, you'd have an arguement there if you were actually born with a pistol instead of a hand.
Your sniper rifle would'nt help against drones, airstrikes and tanks that the military has, the only real protection you have against the military is a safe social environment where the military has nothing to gain from tanking over the country and where information is free and available to everyone so that soldiers and police can not be decieved.
Having an full auto capable rifle or machinegun won't help you, but it sure would make for interesting gang wars.
I'm not saying there are'nt some stupid laws around, especially here in Sweden, but people need to be licenced and guns checked to reasonable limits. I don't mind someone wanting to go hunting with an AR-15, could'nt care less, but there is no need for that person to have an M4/M16.
Yeah, I also live in a rural area, and a couple of years back some people were brutally murdered in my municipality. Brutally enough that the police that responded has PTSD. And he was a gunowner. It did'nt help him one bit.
That does'nt mean it's wise to allow people unrestricted access to weapons just incase they might be able to get to them before they are surprised in their sleep. And it'll more likely lead to an escalation of violence, where robbers need to get guns to defend themselves. It'll lead to more shootings instead, with the likelyhood of innocents being harmed having increased.
I thought the three exclamation marks would indicate irony, but I guess I should've added smileys or something.
But, still, Breivik shot and killed 70 people on Utøya, with, if I recall correctly, a Ruger Mini-14 and a Glock. His legal firearms, that is. He was more deadly with his firearms than his bombs, they injured more, but his shootings brought the most victims by far.
I mainly pointed out these people because from what I remember they used legal firearms, wich in my opinion points to that people need to be reevaluated for their firearms licence more often and have psych evaluations, at heavilly subsidized prizes. And not to limit the magazine size or types of firearms, or similar silly ****.
Explosives are licenced wich is why he could'nt use 1000kg of TNT but used less efficient homebrew explosives wich kept the explosion smaller. The real kicker? Imagine the result of his shooting if he had to actually do the same with the firearms, build them from scrap parts.
Breivik wanted to get full auto weapons from the eastern bloc, but he did'nt succeed in that for some reason, so he went and bought legal firearms instead. He did'nt car-fu 70 people to death, because he had much more efficient was of ending their lives. Like headshots.
And yes, I'm a thosand more times likely to be involved in a car crash (infact, I have been in a few), but I also spend several orders of magnitude more time around cars.
And yes, criminals does'nt care about laws but they also are'nt stopped by guns, but accidental deaths in families and heat of the moment kills are lessened by gunlaws.
No, I know that many people do actually think they are doing it for the greater good, they have a different viewpoint on it than you - they don't trust people to handle firearms and they don't see the need for guns. To them it's just a weapon, a tool for destruction with no value to civilians whatsoever. All of my friends have this viewpoint, they don't see a need for their existence at all and that they are only dangerous to society, and while I may come across as strict to you - I'm nothing compared to them.
I can see and understand both sides though.
I'm glad that we can agree on that atleast
I agree that it would, but when it comes to many of the examples you list they are nowhere near as potentially damaging as firearms. When it comes to big amounts of flammable or combustible materials, purchases of these do draw attention to themselves, knives and axes has more use as tools than as weapons, same with chainsaws. I do agree that many drivers should be forced to redo their licence tests every now and then though, 'cuz damn...
Though as you say, it would turn into a bureaucratic nightmare, so I'll stick to guns for now, but without being a psychologist I don't think a subsidized psych evaluation every 5 years or so would be too much.
It needs to be at a tight enough interval that you catch most people before they loose it, but also not so tight that it'd be impossible to keep the system running.
Just for clarification, to avoid any confusion; I want guns and gunowners to be licenced, and evaluated, I don't want civilians to have access to fully automatic weapons or ordnance and I don't want it to be prohibitively expensive either.
