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If you live in a civilized country, you should have little trouble trusting your neighbors with weapons.
If you don't live in a civilized country, the need for weapons should be almost self-evident.
I used to lean slightly pro-gun-control, but there's simply no way you can deep dive into the statistics and come away with the idea that the guns are the problem, and by focusing on guns, it is in fact harder to address more fundamental issues.
Which is why I am losing patience with gun-control advocates who burn so much effort on a cause that simply will not achieve its purported benefits.
I mean, you can own a car and it can't be taken from you by the government without due process and such (literally the fifth amendment), whereas operating one on public property is explicitly a 'privilege.' So no, there is no explicit right, but there's still an inherent protection in there.
I mean, in my civilized country, a rando tried to assassinate the candidate of one of the two major political parties, so my trust is being strained.
My basic problem is that I can't say whether a rando trying to assasinate a political candidate is the 2nd Amendment working as intended (since it puts the power to decide when to overthrow tyrants in the hands of individuals), or if there is some principled way to criticize some acts of political violence as outside of the intended scope of gun rights?
The relevant comparison is whether it would be constitutionally possible for a Federal or State ban on cars to be enacted. I very much doubt if such a thing would ever happen, but I don't think it would be unconstitutional.
And in Japan, another civilized country, THAT HAS GUN CONTROL OUT THE WAZOO, a rando succeeded at killing an ex-prime minister. With a gun.
As I said, dive into the stats nice and deep and things become clearer.
If the problem is you DON'T trust your neighbors, that's a significantly larger issue, and evidence you don't live in a civilized (part of the) country.
And I should perhaps remind you that we can 3D print firearms at home now so you're NOT going to prevent a sufficiently dedicated rando from getting one.
The interstate commerce clause MIGHT stretch that far, but it is not in fact clear to me that a blanket car ban would pass muster unless there was some actual harm that the government was intervening to prevent. "Climate Change" might but probably doesn't cover that base.
The point of criminal laws is not to ensure that a thing never happens. We outlaw murder, but there will always be murders. The point of laws is threefold: 1) to discourage other criminals from committing the crime in question, 2) to reform the criminal so they never commit the crime again, and 3) if 2 is impossible, to safely contain a criminal away from the rest of society so that everyone else is safe.
My guess is that the number of gun-related assassination attempts in Japan over the last 50 years is probably going to be less than the equivalent number per capita in the United States. Now, if all-cause assassinations per capita were the same between the two countries (all else being equal), that would be evidence that gun control is unlikely to play much of a role in preventing assassination attempts.
... I mean, you can say that. But if that were the real point, surely we'd be seeing much stricter punishments for even petty crimes. And its the same people pushing for gun control who push for decriminalization of various activities, and 'defund the police,' and set up bail funds, and otherwise support an agenda that is so-called 'soft on crime.'
Yes, I have no problem admitting that the Japanese are far less violent on average than Americans. Not even a controversy.
Do YOU want to assert that violence in Japan would substantially increase if they repealed all gun laws and suddenly gun ownership became widespread in Japan?
(Because that's when we can start talking about the ACTUAL cause of violence, aside from guns)
What's your theory of the case? What, say, three interventions do you believe would have the largest effect on societal violence and crime, and be implementable within a little-l liberal constitutional republic under the rule of law?
Literally just aggressively prosecuting and sentencing violations of the firearm restriction laws we already have on the books would go a long way to solving the problem. If a felon with a firearm goes away for 10 years, they're not going to be robbing people on the street for a while. Instead we have a strong demand for gun laws that can be used on the mostly law-abiding, because otherwise we end up prosecuting too many of the wrong demographic.
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Not who you asked, but:
Forced institutionalization of the mentally ill and people addicted to hard drugs (i.e. heroin and meth, not weed). We had this in America until the 60's and 70's or so and we were definitely more of a little -l liberal constitutional republic back then. Institutionalization had plenty of its own problems, but most of them aren't inherent to the system, and it's hard to imagine it being worse on the liberty-tyranny spectrum than the current anarcho-tyranny letting junkies commit crime without real consequence is.
Mandatory high cash bail (or no bail at all) for violent crimes where there is strong and clear evidence that the arrestee is in fact the perpetrator. Also a three strikes rule or similar for violent crime, with a mandatory minimum of 20 years or so. Most young male criminals "age out" of crime around age 40.
Empower individual citizens and communities to police themselves. Robust protections for defense of self and property. Prior to the establishment of professional police forces this is how law enforcement was largely handled. The sheriff would deputize a bunch of locals temporarily when a more serious emergency arose that needed more manpower/force.
1 and 2 are really the most important things.
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I could get behind 1, but I don't know if I agree that institutionalization's biggest problems aren't inherent to the system. Sure, we can make very nice madhouses with blackjack and hookers, but at the end of the day there's always going to be people who straddle the fuzzy line of "too crazy for society" and "able to safely exist in society", and if those people are forcibly robbed of their liberty, they'll often be able to mount a justifiable case against any system that exists, no matter how nice.
We can always ignore such voices of course, but enough sob stories will almost certainly end at them being shut down again, no matter how nice they are. People don't like being stuck in a cage, gilded or otherwise.
With regards for 2 - surely you'd only want to set a high cash bail for violent crimes with a chance of recidivism or something? A crime of passion that's unlikely to have a follow up probably doesn't need a $1 million dollar bail.
As for 3, I'd certainly be open to letting communities police themselves. I was interested in the proposal someone put forward here about a neighborhood all chipping in for private security to supplement what the state provides, and I find that an interesting idea as well.
Why stop at ignoring them? If you can actually get the institutions set back up, you're going to have enough soft power that this won't be a problem at all. People might not like those sob stories, but all you need to do is use the full force of the government and associated media to throw those opinions into the same bin HBD is currently kept in and the problem disappears. People will be free to complain about how awful the system is, as long as they are so wealthy they never need to work again.
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