Ask Lemmy

Every man for themselves, free-for-all, no resurrections.

Tell me you're from the US without telling me you're from the US.

Let's have a hypothetical scenario, imagine there was a machine that could be used to murder people easily, even if that wasn't their main purpose anyone could use it in a fit of rage to kill someone, in fact anyone could kill someone by accident with this machine. You would want this machine to be regulated, have people evaluated psychologically, and have them take classes and perform an exam to ensure they won't kill anyone by accident.

Did you think guns? I meant cars. And asking if no one or only cops should have guns is like asking if no one or only bus drivers should be able to drive. There's a midterm that most of the world has already reached, where we require people to go through some process to prove they can operate the death machine safely.

Neither this nor that. Your options are too simplistic.

Of course, police needs guns.

Some civilians need guns, too. But not many. They should be able to get them, but they have to prove their need. It needs rules set up in advance to define what kind of needs qualify for getting guns. And then it needs laws against gun abuse.

In addition, soldiers need guns. They even need weapons that are much stronger. So there must be boundaries between several kinds of weapons, and normal people cannot get all kinds. And there must be boundaries between what police can do and what soldiers can do. For example, soldiers must never go against civilians, and nobody has the right to order them so, and they can never get punished for denying such an order.

People shouldn't have guns. Why would you need a gun? To protect yourself? Well, if you have a gun, the one you are protecting yourself from has a gun too. See, not really protection at all, it just enables you both to hurt each other much more seriously.

Just look at all the school shootings - most of those would never had happened had guns been harder to get.

Edit: Look at murder/kill statistics for countries that allow its citizens to have guns. I don't think guns = safety, but rather guns = more deaths and leas safety.

Abolishing the police is an overly broad demand that can't really be taken that seriously as an actual, society wide, legislative course of action.

That being said, it might still be worth advocating for as a matter of negotiation, and it's worth abolishing many specific existing police forces and replacing them whole cloth with new professional forces.

And no, gun ownership should not be allowed. It's fucking asinine to think that the world will be a better place when you allow anyone to point and click murder someone on a whim.

Guess what happens when you let good people buy guns? Bad people buy them more frequently, and in greater quantities.

Guess what happens when you challenge your local government's use of force with you own personal cache of weapons? Oh look, every police force in the country just bought APCs and militarized to make that infeasible.

You'll still always need hunting rifles, shotguns, etc. and you will likely need to have special circumstances where someone or their security guard can get a firearm for exigent circumstances, but by and large the idea of allowing widespread firearm ownership for personal defense reasons is nonsense. All of the arguments fall apart when you examine their effects at a systemic level.

Absolutely, why should only some people be afforded a right.

Criminals will be criminals, take guns away and they start running cars through crowds.