And we have pointed out that your comparison of some drugs which are illegal to the banning of all firearms is an invalid comparison.
So your claim is that there is not a black market for drugs, violent crime occurring to resolve disputes in that black market, or overflowing jails? Because that is news to me.
It's exactly the same situation you mentioned with regards to banning guns. A black market springs up for the illegal item, violence and jailings ensue. The government is also losing revenue they could gain from selling these items legally, and jobs selling and creating this item disappear. What exactly is the difference between the two situations, other than scale? Banning illegal drugs is effectively banning drugs from a consumer perspective anyway, because even the ones that are legal have to be acquired illegally for recreational use, barring a massive coincidence.
And I pointed out that the gun lobby and their supporters would make it abundantly known to legislators that banning guns is a practical impossibility.
And there are people making noise about drugs. Less effective post-ban than pre-ban, perhaps, but it's still happening. Mostly with respect to marijuana (which appears to be working in some states).
You must think our politicians are all total idiots
Not all of them, but some sure are. There's certainly no lack of government stupidity in the world.
You are just grasping at straws to keep your "boy who cried wolf" fantasy alive for some reason.
Could you tell me what this fantasy is? The scenario you mentioned post-ban with respect to guns sounded similar to the situation with the War on Drugs. I pointed this out. That's all. Unless, again, you're claiming that the idea of an underground drug market and overflowing US jails is a fantasy.
That sounds to me like, if the reasons to control them outweighs the reason not to then, you'd budge. I'm wondering what you'd consider reasonable?
Not really, because 'reasonable' would involve the banning of guns not being an infringement on our freedoms, which can never be the case.
you've claimed that there's reasons to control 'missiles' but you've neither stated what they are
Same as the reasons to control guns. They're dangerous weapons. Moreso than guns, because they have very limited applications for self-defense.
Your vagueness would lead me to assume that my assessment of your argument has been accurate.
I don't really have an argument with regards to missiles. In an ideal world, they'd be legal, but we're not in an ideal world. I don't really know, it's not ever going to happen so it's not been worth thinking about until now.
Most of us here are scientifically minded, so evidence is what we live by. I argue that you can't know something until you can confirm it, neither of us can confirm exactly what would happen, it'd be a fool's decision to take the US's statistics and universalise them, a good sociologist, heck any good scientist will tell you that's stupid. You might hold this libertarian ideology, and you're perfectly welcome to it, but don't allow it to blind you from the lack of evidence. You may feel guns would be the solution, but I'm sure you're man enough to accept that whilst you feel this, it's still unconfirmed?
You can go on about evidence and whatnot all you like, but it's irrelevant when it comes to the issue of freedom. If you're of the position that what people might do with an item should affect its legal status, then you can look at your stats and propose bans on all sorts of things up to and including tea cosies (which killed three people in 2002 or so). But I'm not, so all the gun violence statistics in the world have no impact on my position.
I find this to be delusional and not backed up by any evidence. If you can provide some, please do. AFAIK, just having a gun makes the situation more dangerous since it is a weapon intended to kill and you cannot guarantee the effect. You assume that drawing a gun will *always* defuse a situation and provide no evidence it does. You claim that drawing a gun makes the holder safer and show no evidence it does.
Always? Of course not. Some people are just that insane. However, I know that if I were in the process of committing a crime and the victim pulled out a gun, I'd stop what I was doing and get out of there.
I also heard a guy tell of a time he was held up with a knife, pulled out his gun and the would-be robber pocketed the weapon and walked off. He also saved a neighbour from a possible assault or murder in similar fashion. On neither occasion did he fire a shot.
Naturally, it's anecdotal evidence, but I'm not sure how you could empirically prove anything either way with regards to this issue.
Now, if we could guarantee that people who get carry permits are trained, not like the idiots who come to PA to hunt deer and haven't fired a gun before or only once a year, then I might be less bothered by the idea.
Yeah. A mandatory level of training is something I'd be okay with, for the same reason we have driver's licenses. That said, there would need to be some measure to ensure maximum training requirements, because otherwise anti-gun states could impose ridiculous amounts of training to deter gun owners.
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