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Picture of a #Dutch outfit during WWII... why am I not even surprised.
The Dutch couldnt be anymore Dutch if they tried!
@freemo The Dutch were absolutely not prepared for WWII. Shitty equipment, and not expecting to be invaded at all. We kinda expected a repeat of WWI.
@trinsec Thats what happens when as a nation you tend to be anti-gun, i finda would have expected the Dutch to have learned their lesson from WWII
@freemo Heh, way to go to compare a situation from 80 years ago with now. 😝
Besides, I do fully expect soldiers to be armed, jeez.
@trinsec The situations arent unrelated.. by not having armed civilians who knew how to use a gun when it came time for every civilian to fight there were neither the guns nor expiernce to to do it. This policy ultimately led to a complete inability to prevent nazi germany from taking over.
now, 80 years later that same formula is at play and should another hitler ever rise dutch will find themselves repeating history never having learned that lesson from WWII
This is Mur 
thats a naive view of guns. The vast majority of legitimate uses of guns doesnt result in any loss of human life. Most people most of the time, at least during peace time, use them either for sport, or to protect the animals on a farm, or a combination of both. The use of a gun to actually kill someone is such a small percentage of their use as to be almost insignificant in terms of percentages of when/how a gun is used.
As for not needing guns or needing wars, that is always the hope. Lets hope people who are armed only ever need it to shoot at targets and enjoy the sport.
However it is scary just how similar your wording is to the views after WWI when the people of europe felt they learned their lesson and through coalitions, rather than guns or armies, could solve their problems. A wonderful idea, and by all means peace should be the goal. But things often dont work out as planned, they didnt work out then, and chances are they wont work out again. And when the next world war does happen it will again be the people without the guns sent to the gas chambers.
@servant_of_the_anime_avatars That is not true. You have the right to defend yourself. Just not with a firearm here.
Guns are the great equalizer.
Here in germany (where knifes openable with one hand are illegal) there was a case where a women was raped at knife point during her camping trip after being dragged out of her tent while her boyfriend waited inside and then called the police. And the comment of the police was that they both did the right thing.
I don't want to live like that. I don't want the responsibility for my safety and that of the ones I love purely resting on government agents keeping the bad people away.
Well said, and I often point out that as far as gun rights go it is probably one of the biggest issue in womens rights and one of few ways women can protect themselves. Policies that restrict access to guns are ultimately (although perhaps not intentionally so) sexist in their nature.
@freemo @servant_of_the_anime_avatars
"Guns are the great equalizer."
I thought it was about freedom, not a 'level playing field'.
Guess the argument I had the other day wasn't quite 100% correct. Everybody needs guns, apparently, in order to be able to defend themselves, or to even live normally at all.
And it is terrible what happened to that woman in Germany. But would the outcome really be that different if they had guns? There could be deaths, and it might not even be the culprits who died. We don't know, so it's pure speculation at this point. It is also not a common occorence, thankfully.
Go learn martial arts if you're seriously concerned about your well-being. That's allowed.
If you had ever done martial arts you would know three things:
- It's hard and very time consuming to get good at. And even if you are good, if the other guy is just a lot bigger or there is more than one, you loose.
- It's near(!) useless against knives. If you are defending against an attacker with a knife the best thing you can hope for is non-lethal wounds on your arms.
- It's useless against guns. Unless someone is stupid enough to put the gun directly on your head there is about nothing you can do.
Any person is able to kill with a gun with an hour of training. Every person with a gun is automatically dangerous, but at the same time no person with a gun is ever powerless.
The thing I care about in this discussion is self responsibility. I want to be responsible for my own life, I want to be able to protect it as best I can. To be free means to be responsible for oneself.
The question I ask myself is "what would I have done sitting in that tent", if I had a gun the answer would be clear, but if I hadn't what then? I seriously don't know, but what I do know is that I never want to be in a position where I am without any power to change my own fate.
The other problem is, while a woman can learn martial arts, so can a criminal.. but a criminal isnt allowed to own a gun and has less access to them where a law abiding woman can.
Also good luck telling a woman to learn martial arts. My friend (a tiny woman) is learning right now and even her instructor says "do not engage you will loose and you will die even if you are trained.. i will teach you how to run away".. which is a great skill to have but not always effective. Not nearly as effective as a gun.
@freemo @servant_of_the_anime_avatars
Point taken about the martial arts. I'll retract that statement, that was a good reasoning and naive of me.
But you're talking about the viewpoint where it is a criminal who is not allowed guns. In the other debate I wasn't talking about this viewpoint at all. What if they do own a gun legally?
(Also, if every non-criminal can get guns, then criminals would be more likely to be able to get guns as well. In a society where guns are abundant, they can be stolen and sold off to criminals easier.)
So if the woman in Germany was allowed a gun.. who's to guarantee that those rapists weren't carrying a gun either? Especially with those intentions they'd prepare accordingly. Instead of a knife, they might actually have put her at gunpoint.
Yes a criminal could potentially steal a law abiding citizens gun. The argument here is not that no criminals will ever have guns. The argument is that because there is a significantly greater barrier for a criminal obtaining a gun than a law abiding citizen then the odds are always going to favor the the law abiding citizen being significantly more likely to have a gun than a criminal, putting criminals at a disadvantage and the superior defensive position being with the law abiding citizens.
We do occasionally have incidents of criminals pulling guns, however you'll find an overwhelming majority of such incidents int he USA take place in no-gun zones where law abiding citizens are not allowed to carry and thus dont. typically when such an incident takes place in the general public away from no-gun zones the good guys far outnumber the bad guy when ti comes to guns and the incident often doesnt progress very far
A prime example of this is attached in the below. A person in a public space in that picture tried to pull a gun with the intention of shooting up the place. However 7 different people with guns immediately responded and took down the individual without futher incident. Showing exactly what I mean where even if a bad guy does get a gun, which is relatively hard to do so most dont, they will be outnumbered significantly and unable to use it. In this case law abiding citizens with guns outnumbered "bad guys" 7 to 1.
@freemo
I think I've read about the incident in that church before. In a country that's already so infused with firearms, it is a good thing to own one to prevent such situations from escalating. Because to de-arm the American civilians (and criminals) at this point is pretty much impossible.
Europe, however, is a totally different beast. Especially in the urban areas. To introduce guns there like USA has would not improve it, of that I am certain.
Europe is basically almost a gigantic no-gun zone. Yet we don't really seem to have criminals waltzing around with guns in abundance. Sure, knives are a possibility. But knives are around aplenty, so pretty easy to get. And if guns were legal, they'd get crafty and 'acquire' guns instead.
So long the average statistics show that USA is not in better shape regarding violent cases (murder, rape, etc) than my country, I am not feeling terribly inclined to vote for easier gun laws here. Even though the average American citizen is able to defend themselves, apparently it is not really making society that much safer.
There will always be extreme cases, like terrorism. But that's exactly it, an extreme case. Even in USA it's hard to fight this, despite their gun laws.
Well obviously we disagree. I hear of rapes in europe all the time and plenty of other incidents that I have no doubt most of which would have been prevented by responsible gun ownership.
Pretty sure the women raped in your urban centers would be a lot better off if they had had a gun.
@freemo
That's exactly it. You are convinced that it would be less with responsible gun ownership.
Why can't USA prove the same by having lower average crime statistics for the same crimes right now? They've got the guns, surely the rape incidence should be a lot less than my country?
Let's grab this link, I hope it is official enough:
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/rape-statistics-by-country
Rape rate in NL is 9.20 and DE is 9.40. Rape rate in USA is 27.30, but man, it got the guns.
What strikes me as funny is that the Scandinavic countries have a higher rape rate than central Europe... while gun ownership is a bit more easy over there. Surprised me a bit. Belgium's fucking scary as well, despite that they also seem to have more easy gun laws than we do.
So, it doesn't seem to be a guarantee at all. I do not agree with your conviction that responsible gun ownership would've prevented all this. Who ensures that only the responsible ones own them? If after decades of experience USA can't manage this, why would we even think of entering this rabbit hole?
As a Data Scientist I can tell you right off the bad this is loaded with more statistical fallacies than I care to count.
In statistics we do not draw cause and effect conclusions from correlation, we use causality tests to assert causality.
The fallacy in your thinking is the idea that if guns show an improvement in the number of rapes, that it must also be the most dominant factor in rapes. For example you completely ignore mental health access, poverty leading to poor home environments, greater ethnic and religious diversity coupled with greater levels of racism, culural ethics in how men treat women. Most of these are far more dominant causes in the frequency of rape attempts than a gun, simply because a gun improves the numbers, even if it improves them significantly in no way even remotely implies that the places with the most guns must therefore have the least rape, particularly if your sample-size of countries is rather small. when it comes to gun ownership
Don't need to take my word at all, like I said we have actual statistical tests for causation. My opinion is based on the data not my gut.
> From the examples you've given, it sounds like we'd better put more effort in mental health access and all that other stuff instead. That sounds much more fruitful in the long term.
There is no instead, every item I listed. guns included, all improve the numbers. No need or reason to pick one over the other, adopting **all** the methods that work give you the best results
@freemo
The problem is that I'll just have to believe you on your word that guns would've improved our numbers, and that removing guns would've made American numbers look even worse.
From the examples you've given, it sounds like we'd better put more effort in mental health access and all that other stuff instead. That sounds much more fruitful in the long term.
Like you said before, we obviously disagree. I am actually getting weary and would like to head to bed soon since it's near midnight here.
Agree to disagree?
@servant_of_the_anime_avatars @mur2501