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In reply to the discussion: Man shopping for coffee creamer at Walmart attacked by vigilante for carrying gun he was legally per [View all]gcomeau
(5,764 posts)Last edited Fri Jan 23, 2015, 12:24 PM - Edit history (1)
Drunk drivers are an excellent analogy in favor of my point. I actually have trouble thinking of a better one. You just overlooked the incredibly obvious.
The analogous point in the sequence of events where you would intervene to stop a drunk person from driving and potentially killing someone is when they are *heading for their car with their keys*.
That would be the drunk driving equivalent of restraining the guy who has a gun and is heading for a crowd of people somewhere he has no reason to be bringing a gun before he starts pulling out and using it. And I don't know what crowds you run in but among pretty much everyone I know intervening at that point would be considered the exact proper thing to do. Even if it required physically restraining the person in question to keep them from getting in the car.
Once you let them get in the car and drive away on the other hand that would be the equivalent of waiting for the guy to pull his gun. Now you're screwed aren't ya? As you so convincingly described. Boy, too bad nobody stepped in before that driver got in their car huh? Of course at that point they hadn't broken a law yet... so that would have been outrageous right? How dare anyone!
Auto fatalities is now below total firearm related deaths, but deduct, say, suicides from both, and your public safety perspective shifts violently on which is the best bang for your buck, trying to save lives.
I find myself wanting to repeat my post title.
You realize automobiles are something used on a daily basis for significant amounts of time by massive percentages of the population? That *absolute number* of deaths related with their use are under those conditions anywhere remotely in the neighborhood as deaths from firearms which are used a minuscule fraction as often or by as many people demonstrates how MASSIVELY more safe automobiles and the many many many regulations surrounding their ownership and use are. We could only wish guns were as well regulated and as safe as cars. But even if you manage the first the second's not going to happen... because they're guns. They're not safe by nature. Their entire purpose is to be not safe. A gun that poses no safety threat is defective.
There are other nations that share that civil right, that have murder rates that are tiny compared to ours.
Not in the ridiculously poorly regulated and nearly unrestricted manner the US is there aren't. Please, by all means, point at Switzerland or something and we can spend a good long time discussing things like widespread mandatory military service coming along with all those people having guns. Something you simply will never see the NRA or their ilk touching with a 100 foot pole when they start ranting about the right to bear arms.