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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 
@freemo Good news, you're allowed a weapon here for hunt or sport. Get your license and have fun!
https://www.politie.nl/themas/wapens.html#alinea-title-hoe-krijg-ik-een-wapenvergunning
I consider the rest to be a rather pessimistic view of the world and bordering on fearmongering. :P
You act like there arent 100 wars going on in the world at this very second, or countless cultures being murdered because they have no way of defending themselves.
Its not fear mongering to recognize what is not just true but actively happening... nor does it stop you from ensuring peace simply because people are prepared should someone someone choose not to be follow your dream of peace.
@freemo Those wars right now are not in my country, and I sincerely hope that's going to stay this way. 'Prepare for peace, build an army', civilians are not armies. You might think your militia is, because of your constitution, but we don't.
We send troops over the world as support to try to help resolve some of those wars. Our army is geared to try to stabilize regions and de-escalate situations.
Might bigger armies be needed, we still have conscription in our laws. It is merely put on hold, but it can be put back in use any time. The government decided having professionals was the way to go, so our army is full of trained people which can be used in any situation.
I will have to trust my government. I do trust my government. It probably helps that a chance of a type like that orange guy getting in office and deciding everything is extremely slim.
Armies are find whe your sending a few people off to help the USA fight iran or something.. But unless you intend to waste half your budget on armies like america does (which I do not recommend) that wont suite you when and if war does come.
Not even a single generation has passed yet since the last world war (but we are at the point where in about 10 more years we will be only one generation removed)... It seems like huberis to say it could never happen and thus no need to consider it when we havent even managed to go a single generation yet without one.
Yes my example was of an eminent war.. do you know what percentage of soldiers in any war carry guns vs those carrying rocket launchers? a hint, the overwhelming majority. In a war situations the ones int he tanks and the rocket launchers are the specialists, not the common soldier, and certainly there is little need for such a group to be comprised of the common civilian.
@mur2501 I never claimed all freedom is good, though im not sure id be opposed to personal ownership of tanks under the right system and conditions. I just dont see it as nearly as pressing or as having much of a defensible reason as there is with guns. But I dont see a huge problem with it if done properly. I dont trust most of our military to not be murderers and they seem to roll around in them so why not.
You can legally own a tank in the USA and I have yet to hear of a single incident where it has been a problem.
@freemo
Not in USA mostly, though you can ask the people of the war torn countries. What's the problem with an American tank, a Chinese tank, a Russian tank.
@mur2501 Like i said in the right system and under the right conditions. It is legal in the USA and has never been a single incident. That doesnt mean it would work in other countries and under different conditions or regulations.
@freemo
You know conditions and regulations only work when all people respect and follow them.
@mur2501 There are a lot of americans who would have no problem not respecting or following the regulations around tanks.. yet somehow, not a single incident.
So yea, obviously the regulations need to be enforced, that is a given. But that doesnt mean an individual on a whim can violate them, its usually people in power enforcing it and ensuring they cant (hopefully).
@freemo
This just like saying you don't have any gun incidents.
But who trusts in the powerful?
@mur2501 having no incidents is pretty good evidence its safe.
@freemo
No incidents of?
@mur2501 Someone in the USA exercising their right to own a personal tank to kill someone.
I dont even think governments should have nukes. That has less to do with weapons ownership and more to do with weapons of mass destruction in general.
@freemo
Not killing, though can't say there are no incidents 
https://youtu.be/KpgkhngU8yE
Also there are not many personal tanks in USA to give any numbers
@mur2501 That has absolutely no relationship to legal ownership of tanks.. That was literally someone from the army who stole a tank from an army facility.. So if anything that proves my point rather than detracts from it, that the military in tank are a greater risk than the general population having legal access to them.
@freemo
Yayyy take away the tanks from the armies 😎
@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.
> "Guns are the great equalizer."
>
> I thought it was about freedom, not a 'level playing field'.
Depends, you cant take catch phrases out of context and expect it to apply.
When we talked about a "level playing field" you spoke about criminals having guns and thus requiring people to own guns in order to "keep up". In that sense, as we covered it wasn't valid since criminals do not have legal access to guns and thus there is a greater barrier to a criminal being armed than a law abiding citizen, so the idea of a "level playing field" or a need to buy guns just to keep up with criminal elements with guns was invalidated. The context is important.
However now we are talking about criminals having the upper hand not because they have a gun or a weapon but because a man is physically stronger than a woman. In that sense yes having a gun absolutely creates a "level playing field" but in a way that is completely unrelated to your earlier use of the term. In this case it allows a woman to defend herself against a stronger man and protect her from being rapped.
I'll give you a pass this time as you tend to debate rather respectfully, so ill take it as a slip. But please dont become one of those people who start using what someone says in a debate out of context in sound bite form just to try to get the upper hand in an argument. If we go down that route these discussions will become very unpleasant very quickly.
> 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.
You dont **need** a gun to defend yourself or live normally, not all the time. But it does ensure that if youa re at the mercy of a gang of people, or an individual stronger than you, or people with knives, that you walk away alive rather than dead.
> 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.
While you may not know for sure how it would have ended would she have had a gun its a pretty fair bet she stood a hell of a better chance walking away without having known rape and with a dead rapist at her feet than walking away raped and traumatized for life. Yes someone would have probably wound up dead, and in all liklihood it would have been the someone who deserved death through their choice of actions.
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.
It would be extremely unusual for someone to have no mental health issues in their past, no violence, and no criminal record and then one day in their 40s just decide to go start killing people... While there will always be exceptions the vast majority of people who are going to take a gun and kill someone is going to have some prior history of more minor violence.
@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
@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?
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
Some cherry picked data points against your argument, basically all taken from
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_homicide_rate
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state
- Texas and California have a very similar homicide rate, despite quite different gun laws and (I suspect) quite different attitudes to guns
- Both the state with the highest homicide rate (in 2018) Louisiana and the state with the lowest homicide rate South Dakota appear to have very similar gun laws
Just as correlation isnt how statisticians test for causation with regards to showing guns have a negative effect we cant use it to show a positive effect either.
So while your counter examples do hint at the fact that the correlation isnt implying causation it is mostly just bad statistical reasoning in the same way trinsec's assertion is.
What you need to argue statistical causality formally is a causation test, the most common and simple of these being the Granger Causality Test.
A causality test does not lot, and should not, compare absolute numbers in the way both of you are doing. What they look at is how a change in the theorized causative property (in this case the strictness of gun laws) is **followed by** a change in the observed property (in this case homicides, deaths, rape cases, or generally violent crimes)... If we find that a change in one often leads to a change in the other in the months that follow (how long into the future you look is important) then you can show causation.
In fact I have previously discussed this very topic with @hansw and you can find my explanation of Granger Causality here as it applies to guns along with some examples of it being demonstrated in several major countries that had changes in gun policy. The evidence is strong that stricter gun policies lead to more homicide and violence. I've attached the images from that post here all of which show examples of Granger Causality demonstrating a causative link between stricter gun laws and more homicide/violence.
> All I wanted to say is that even within the US the argument "laxer gun laws => more crime" is very hard to make convincingly and there clearly is a lot more going on.
I disagree it is quite easy to make convincingly. You just cant use the method you used to make it.
The method I linked to and described in my response makes a rather convincing case and is statistically sound in its methodology.
The issue isnt that its a hard case to make, the issue is that most people have no clue how to make a sound statistical argument. But I find once it is explained to them how and why you can make such a case WRT guns it becomes apparent and somewhat undeniable to anyone who doesnt hold strong confirmation biases.
History shows that, armed or not, bad guys are repelled at the mere presentation of a weapon in an overwhelming number of cases. Then there's the disparity of force question. Rapists that held a woman at knife point, instead of gunpoint still rape. The victim being overwhelmed can as easily be killed by a knife as a gun.
The mere consideration of a rape at knife point being somehow less violent than at gunpoint is repugnant. No, there are no guarantees but she would have a greater than zero chance of successfully defending herself whereas, without, she has no chance.
Martial arts, while a valuable discipline as, at the very least, enhance one's normal SA quotient. It also presents one with alternatives and contingencies. However, the disparity of force is still a problem. A petite woman with excellent skills can still be overwhelmed by a hulking predator with sub par skills.
In that particular situation the women was camping together with her boyfriend, so, if both were armed, there would be no possibility for the rape to occur without either having the ability to shoot him.
But I am more concerned about the general case.
In any given situation your ability to defend yourself will always be greater with a gun, then without. To an extent so large that there is basically nothing a criminal could have to overpower you on its own.
Having a gun means that, no matter who you are, you have an amount of power which can potentially overpower anybody. And in that it gives you the ability to take responsibility for yourself.
@mur2501
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.
@trinsec