It's often been said by people who work in the field (my wife worked in a psych hospital for many years) that the reason so many really awful drugs are in common use now is that the shit-for-brains government has been cracking down on marijuana, which is what most of them would rather have. It was a colossal nightmare to discover that the byproducts of marijuana stay in your blood for 30-60 days, whereas most of the other common drugs are gone in 24 hours. This means that if you work for a company that does drug-testing, you can't smoke pot. So instead you find something that isn't as good, and is even more dangerous, but at least it won't get you fired.
Actually, I agree that the drug problems have to do with Prohibition.
Sure. By the National Rifle Assholes. They run this whole damn country now.
Actually, the study did it to itself. I originally went in disbelieving the claim of the NRA (who you continually attempt to repudiate and fail) but the wording of the study and how it was performed was all I needed. Oh and if the NRA ran the country there would be no Gun Control laws, Bills, or even Organizations, so clearly it is not in charge.
Nonetheless, if you have to slit your wrists in a tub of hot water, take an overdose of pills, fill your garage with exhaust, climb to the top of a tall building, or make a perfect hangman's noose that won't decapitate you and leave a real mess for your family to discover when they get home... You still have a significant amount of time to change your mind. With a fucking goddamned gun, it's over in a few seconds.
You don't think that slit wrists in a bath tub makes a huge mess? Are you sure you live in the real world? Hanging causes a real mess as well, and while it may not decapitate you don't get the luxury of being saved if done half way right. Overdoses of pills are barely reversible, and most that are reversed are "cries for help" rather than actual suicide. And yes, you have time to change your mind and those methods are used by people even when they have access to guns precisely as they are unsure.
It doesn't skew it enough to make an important statistical difference. The fact remains that cars are useful, whereas, unless you live in some godforsaken place like Montana where you have to shoot your own food, guns have no legitimate purpose except to make little boys feel like big men.
Are you kidding? Seatbelts alone have saved at least half the people that would be killed in accidents. Airbags and well designed cars have reduced it again at least 50%. Then there is the matter of speed limits reducing the number of fatal accidents. Cars used to kill far more people than they do now.
As for the use of guns. I realize you are stuck in a "A real man doesn't need a gun to defend himself mentality." No, he might not NEED it to fend off an attacker of similar strength and training. How about a woman needing it to do the same? How about a man defending his family against at attacker who is larger or armed themselves. In your mentality the woman and the family are raped and dead. The only people I can think of who risk this outcome are complete morons and criminals. I pray you are not a moron.
I notice that you left handguns out of the equation.
I also left out knives, blunt objects, fists, clubs, poison, cars, Bows, drowning, suffocation, and dogs...So?
Indeed. Yet the bastards keep making (and importing) more of them.
Well, there are already Billions of weapons in the world. And as one of your Gun Control Advocates proved people depraved enough to supply them illegally while telling everyone they can't have them. The bastards of the world are not the people who make the tools, but the people who misuse those tools.
Apparently you don't think there were other factors that played a role in that, like for instance the wrenching changes in the UK's demographics?
Which are happening in other countries as well. Why disarm yourself when you know there is a segment of the population willing to decapitate you in the street in broad daylight.
What century do you live in??? Apparently you don't keep up with things very assiduously. The government doesn't need guns to control us anymore than nations need guns to attack each other.
Then why do you need to ban guns? Simple, you realize that people will learn how to spoof your drones or worse one good High Power rifle an your tin pot dictatorship is holding your funeral.
The next war will be fought in cyberspace. In fact it's already happening. It's universally agreed that the Chinese have hacked into every important computer in the USA. Russia crashed the banking system in Estonia for almost an entire day. If the U.S. government wanted to disempower us, all they need is a massive denial-of-service attack on the internet and the country will crash to a halt. In less than a week there will be no food, no gasoline and no electricity.
Well, there are people who have been planning to survive that kind of attack. Those people are smart enough to know that if you have resources then they need to protect themselves as well. Funny how you can see this off-the-wall scenario yet fail to see how it might be beneficial to be armed.
As for protecting yourself against government thugs, well sure, a gun may have been handy in pre-Hitler Germany. But our government has drones with infrared sensors that can identify your heat signature while you're sleeping and shoot you right through your roof. Your little pea-shooter ain't gonna be worth shit against that.
One gun may or may not make a difference. 80 million of them sure as hell will. What's the government going to do kill off almost a third of the population in one night? DO they have eighty million drones, let alone 80 million operators willing to kill everyone. Hell even if one drone could take 100 in a night (loiter time would it to that) you still need 800,000 drones and 800,000 operators to follow that order.
All your gun is good for is killing ME!
Actually it's only a danger to you if you attack me. Are you planning to attack me? Why do I need to be disarmed if you are not planning to harm me?
So please stay out of my town... my state... my country. I wish there was a way to transport all of you gun nuts to a separate planet where there are no rules. You could shoot each other all day, every day, until there was only one left, and when he died of old age that would be the end of it.
If law abiding gun owners were as violent as you claim, there would have been 80 million gun murders in the USA yesterday. Was there?