Why is the U.S. obsessed with guns?

@Nightweaver20xx
 
Implying violence CAN be stopped.
 
Seriously, in a perfect world there would be no violence to stop, but as it is all we can really do is keep eachother in check.
 
Oh, and as much as we like FiM, we know all to well by now that it’s far from infallible and it’s unreasonable to think we can make the world look like Equestria by following its example. In other words, IT’S JUST A CARTOON!
 
And to all the people insisting that fascism, socialism and communism isn’t in the same vein: quite frankly, if they all have big government and don’t protect the God-given private rights to life, liberty, and property, then they might as well be, because America’s the polar opposit of ALL that (or at least it originally was). Besides, you can’t blame a guy for not knowing all the hundreds of ways the lightbulb DOESN’T work when he only needs to know about the one way it DOES.

Because they’re a bunch of Christian Conservatives…

I think everybody should have guns so that we just all point them at each other and be in a continuous standoff, in constant fear that the other will kill each other. Sounds like a winning idea to me.

Shooting at a human being is bad. But who would pass out an opportunity to fire an assault rifle? It would be a thrilling experience. I bet most of you would want to do that. In a non-lethal manner of coarse.

@Nightweaver20xx
 
And you think it’s better for people to be defenseless? Do you expect Superman to swoop down and stop the bad guys? Because I didn’t see him at Sandy Hook.

@archestereo  
Didn’t the Sandy Hook killer shoot everyone with his nice, legally owned weapons?

@Background Pony
 
And the people defended themselves how? Oh that’s right, they couldn’t defend themselves because “gun free zone” bs and they got mowed down by the ONLY guy with guns,and the only reason he even stopped was because he knew OTHER guys with guns were gonna come after him and would’ve been stopped ALOT sooner if someone on the premisis had a gun.

@archestereo  
So… remove guns from the equation entirely and you’d have no one shooting anyone down at all.

@Background Pony  
Won’t stop people from murdering each other. Humans have been doing so since the Genesis.

@SeraphimDawn  
Of course it won’t, but it’ll do a lot of good to stop them from murdering so many.

@Background Pony  
Gun violence still occurs even with those stupids laws. Criminals WILL get their hands on guns one way or another, with law abiding citizens unable to own guns, the criminals will get the right of way. Your best defense against a gun is a gun of your own. These laws are almost like saying that criminals will abide to laws and good citizens are the law breakers.
 
Canada has a far more stricter(almost UK level) guns laws, but that did not stop criminals from shooting people up, even though there are less occurrences here.
 
Too bad, guns have already been invented and it will NOT go away!
 
I’m pretty sure even you wouldn’t pass out a chance to fire an assault rifle at non-living targets. In a safe manner of coarse.

@SeraphimDawn  
I keep hearing that, but then I look at the EU, and I see the vast majority of countries there have very strict gun control laws, and exceedingly few gun related crimes. And even when such crimes take place there tend to far less victims than in the US.
 
And I have passed on the opportunity; one of the companies I worked for for several years kept an arsenal of all sorts of fully working firearms (including an absurd number of AK-47 variants) for sound foley. I just never felt any interest in using them.

@Background Pony  
I guess everyone has their own views.
 
You know, I used to think this way myself. Thinking, “Those crazy Americans, why do they even need guns? They’re only gonna kill each other with it.” True, guns were invented to kill, but some gun enthusiast people prefer to view guns as works of art and admire them for their design and history behind them, rather than a tool used to kill.

This isn’t a matter of what guns are for and what they mean to different people. It’s a simple, verifiable fact that strict gun laws do not inevitably lead to a situation where hordes of armed criminals run roughshod over a defenceless public, because we can observe this hasn’t happened pretty much everywhere that actually has strict gun control. In places with such laws, it is hard to acquire guns, both legally AND illegally. Statistics do suggest that the majority of gun crimes are committed using stolen weapons, but also in the majority of cases those weapons were stolen from private individuals who legally owned them, which is how they got into circulation in the first place.

That doesn’t change the fact that, even with the strictest gun laws, SOMEBODY has a gun ( if nobody else, it’s the guys that BANNED them that have them). So who’s gonna keep the guys with guns in check? Are we just gonna hope they’re too benevolent to point them at us? King George sure wasn’t.

@archestereo  
Warfare has changed dramatically since King George. A bunch of assault rifles aren’t going to mean anything when “the guys with the guns” show up in attack helicopters.

@Background Pony
 
Which is why I said the only solution is “all access”.

I’m from the US, and I’m not obsessed with guns.
 
Well, not too much…
 
 
…
 
 
I’m a terrible liar.

@Background Pony  
You have too much faith in your authorities’ ability to protect you. There are time when you have to fend yourself.

It’s pretty simple, actually. Our country broke away from Britain in an armed revolution, and was founded on an Enlightenment-era philosophy that citizens have not just a right, but a duty to overthrow their government when necessary.

@Background Pony  
Yeaaaahhhhhh about that.
 
You’re probably going to need a bit more than just guns to forcibly overthrow the US government.
 
I mean, we are talking about a nation that has armed, flying deathbots that can surgically rain death down from 20 thousand feet in the sky without any notice and can be controlled from half a world away.  
We are talking about a nation who has more than a dozen ways of turning a specific coordinate into a crater with some nasty bits in it.  
We are talking about a nation who has FUCKING TANKS, FUCKING JETS and FUCKING CRUISE MISSILES.
 
When the founding fathers created the 2nd amendment, they didn’t have those things.
 
Now, I know that technology isn’t the only thing that one must consider in a war, after all, Americans did stick it to the superpower of that day(Britian), but technology sure does help in a war. If it came to a no holds barred armed conflict, a ragtag team of rednecks will have no chance against the full might of the United States’ arsenal.

The walk toward peace has to begin with someone, with one person saying “I choose not to act violently toward my kinsmen.” Even if they are being violent around you, one of the only tenets I follow is the path of peace. Violence only breeds more violence, and if you “defend” yourself with a firearm, then someone will some day choose to “defend” themselves against you with another weapon.
 
Put down your arms. Nobody is going to shoot you. Unless you live in Baghdad, Aleppo, Bogota, or similar war-torn zones, you are in no imminent threat of being shot dead by a criminal. The answer to bad guys with guns is not a good guy with a gun, it is peace and the path of nonviolence.
 
Humans may be instinctively aggressive, but that does not mean we have to remain that way forever. Do you expect that conflict will continue forever, with no solution, only more violence and conflict? Then I do not want to live in the world that you’re envisioning.

@Nightweaver20xx
 
“Envisioning.”
 
>Implying we WANT violence.
 
This is REALITY we’re talking about: if you don’t wanna live in it, tough. Laying down our own arms isn’t going to lead to your little fantasy land, because some opportunistic predator isn’t going to have the moral fiber that you radiate from your little soap box.
 
And why are you speaking of geographical locations as if bad behavior is restricted to bad neighborhoods? It’s not like those ploces have a curse on them that turns all the residents evil! You’re clearly taking your own safety for granted. I bet you don’t even know what it’s like be in danger! As soon as you’re staring down the barrel of a gun, THEN you can tell me how well your righteous ways stopped a bullet.

@archestereo  
So how many guns have been pointed at you in anger in your lifetime? Zero? I thought so.

@Nightweaver20xx  
I’ve had knives (multiple units of) “pointed” at me. The thought process is “I can  
a: pull out my knife and likely get stabbed,  
b: talk my way out of this and possibly get stabbed,  
c: walk away and probably not get stabbed,  
d: agree to their demands and most likely not get stabbed, or  
e: run like a bitch and not get stabbed”.
 
Getting stabbed is bad, but, unless the guy gets lucky or seriously wants to murderize you, likely not (immediately) fatal.
 
You can probably try those things if someone pulls a gun on you, but given that gunshots tend to be a whole lot more fatal (and can, you know, kill someone not even involved in the whole thing) and are rather hard to outrun, I really wouldn’t recommend anything but option ‘d’. The concept of being able to pull a gun on someone that’s already pulled on you sounds nice and all, but given all he has to do is tense a single muscle in his arm to kill you, I really wouldn’t recommend trying it. And if the idea is to pull your piece out while the other guy is distracted, then why is he distracted? If it’s because other people are around, remember that bullets kill and have a somewhat long range, ie a missed shot can kill someone innocent; hell, even a good shot can go through a body and kill someone innocent.
 
Of course, one could argue that in this situation everyone has a gun, meaning the bad guy would not be crazy enough to pull out his gun in a more public area. We are, however, dealing with someone that is crazy.
 
I have no inherent dislike for guns; they’re just tools. However people are flawed, deeply, and it’s much easier to remove tools flawed people can use to kill other people than to try and fix people. Which of course is backwards and not my own personal position, but if there’s so much of a fuss over “the government taking our guns”, I don’t even want to know what would happen if the government tried to do psych tests on everyone, with “rehabilitation” plans and all.
 
The concept that any number of small arms is going to help in an uprising against an oppressive state is ludicrous. A militia would need tanks, planes, helicopters and ships to not get smushed. They could try the whole asymmetric warfare deal, but that tends to devolve into high amounts of “collateral damage” (either militia trying something more extreme or army going “fuckit, bomb everything”). And these weapons that could pose a threat to a regular army, even if allowed on the open market, would only be financially accessible to corporations; I think we’ve all read/watched/played enough dystopian things to know how that would play out.
 
 
Also option ‘c’ has worked 2 out of 3 times so far, with ‘b’ working the other one. Admittedly these were simple muggings and not psychopaths or contract killers or something.