About people who keep quoting Switzerland, it's a valid argument that guns can be managed in a safe way, but it's just one example between many counter-examples, and there's way more to put into account.

=> Good quality education is provided by the government for free.
=> The minimum wage is very high
=> The poverty rating isn't very high, and the poverty line is really one of the highest on the world, so even very poor people aren't that poor.
=> Healthcare isn't free, but everyone is recquired to have insurance, which is subzidized by the gvt if needed. It's one of the best healthcare systems on the world btw.
=> The social security in Switzerland includes several public and private insurance plans to promote the welfare of the population.

Should I keep going on? The day the US has all of this, maybe gun related deaths won't be as much of a problem. But until then, stop quoting Switzerland as your counter-example for gun responsability, because if you think none of the above is a right, then gun ownership sure as hell shouldn't be one.

guns are important

u can defeat the tyrannical government that has the most powerful military on earth by having a ak 47

Please correct your statistics, they're really weirdly put on when it comes to percentages. Plus I'm pretty sure you don't need to register your guns as a mandatory thing, so many unregistered guns aren't illegal. Just new guns are registered, many old world war and hunting guns aren't registered.

I don't see what is wrong with the stats, anyhow, all automatic (fully banned from private wield), semi-automatic assault weapons, and handguns (near banned from private wield), which just leaves some shotguns as unregulated, which don't make up a very big bit of the 17,000,000.

And I have to say something, I feel way safer in France then I did in the US where theres more guns then people in the country. That feeling is proved by statistics.

What's your feeling to do with it? It matters what actually happens, not "feelings". Also, especially in America, it probably depends where you go. Marseille and Texas are different from Paris and New York.

Also, most gun related murders in France are in relation to mafia or other kind of special crime tiers. The normal citizen will hardly by killed by a gun, it's more likely he's killed by any other thing really.

It's probably the same in America, so what?

Again, I'd be for banning guns, but that doesn't work at all, so just do the way that gives the most freedoms.

Switzerland doesn't have a minimum wage. I seriously doubt crime was a problem in Switzerland before 1848. Healthcare in Switzerland is private not government controlled , stop advocating government controlled healthcare if your gold standard is private not government owned. And on private social security: Since private social security is good, why do we need extortion and inflation to pay for folk?

@Жұқтыру

I'm from the south dude... Marseilles is the city my father was born and I went there several times already. It's not nearly as bad as people think lol... It just has a bad reputation. I'd say the city is way safer the most of the US for real.


@Major General Smedley Butler

There are a lot of minimum wages rules in switzerland. There isn't a national minimum wage, but a lot of professions and sectors have their own while some have none. Still, on those where there is minimum wage, it is a very high one.

I never said private healthcare was better, but the switzerland's system who is very close to Obamacare works really well. Which is really ironic to me, because it seems here that you have a double standart on this matter.

My official position is to defend the French system, which is considered the best in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems_in_2000

Edited 4/19/2016 05:14:04

abolish the minimum wage

Juq give your source first before giving random figures as it is far from being accurate, and last but not least, your high figure is easy to explain: I know many people in France that have a gun (or more) in their home, see my family: my grandfather, my uncles, etc, they all hold a rifle in their home for hunting (since it is a national sport in the place I am from alongside fishing), this factor could alone explain why there is those hypothetical 17 million guns in France (which aren't illegal at all as I will show you just below)

Lets take a look on the French legislation about it:

"Avant d'acquérir une arme de chasse, il faut savoir à quel régime administratif elle est soumise. En effet, dans certains cas, il faut déclarer l'arme à la préfecture et dans d'autres cas, il faut simplement procéder à son enregistrement auprès de la préfecture."

-> Basically it means you only need to go to a prefecture and register your rifle and that's all. Then, you can keep freely your rifle uncharged at your home, my Grandpa keeps his rifle in his own toilet x)

why do we need extortion and inflation to pay for folk?

Why do we need extortion and inflation to pay for the army, for the defense industry, for bankrupted banks or for intelligence agencies?

A state should have higher priorities like improving its welfare system and education, more than anything else. Something that will not happen at all with people like Cruz, the Donald or even the Klington.

Edited 4/19/2016 11:30:09

@TG a law to increase the LEGAL minimum wage in Switzerland from 0 to 22 Swiss francs an hour was rejected by 76% of the voters.

I didn't read the whole thread, but I'm just gonna throw some numbers in here.

First of all, these European countries which supposedly have "no guns" actually have some of the highest gun ownership rates in the world. For Example:

Switzerland: Ranked fourth, 45.7 guns per 100 people
Cyprus: Ranked fifth, 36.4 guns per 100 people
Sweden: Ranked ninth, 31.6 Guns per 100 people
Norway: Ranked tenth, 31.6 Guns per 100 people
France: Ranked eleventh, 31.2 guns per 100 people
Austria: Ranked thirteenth, 30.4 guns per 100 people
Iceland: Ranked fourteenth, 30.3 guns per 100 people
Germany: Ranked fifteenth, 30.3 guns per 100 people

I could go on, but you get the point. And these numbers are all far above the world average of 10.2 guns per 100 people.

And furthermore, some of the nations with the lowest gun ownership rates aren't exactly known for being the most stable, prosperous nations:

Tunisia: 0.1 guns per 100 people
Ghana, Ethiopia: 0.4 guns per 100 people
Eritrea, Bangladesh: 0.5 guns per 100 people
Sierra Leone, Rwanda, North Korea: 0.6 guns per 100 people

And one final stat:

It's a misconception that the US has the highest rate of gun violence in the world. Sure, when you take all gun related deaths the US ranks number 12 with 10.54 deaths per 100,000 people. However, 2/3rds of these gun-related deaths (6.77) are either accidental deaths, or suicides, AKA not exactly "Gun Violence". When you only account for Homicides, the US only has 3.43 homicides related to guns per 100,000 people.

When you're dealing with numbers this small, you have to ask yourself if it really worth breaching freedom over, especially given all the countries with stricter gun control laws that have much higher rates of gun homicides.

Just to put that number into context:

South Africa: 12.61 gun related homicides per 100,000 people, or 3x that of the US
Brazil: 18.79 gun related homicides per 100,000 people, or 6x that of the US
Honduras: 66.64 gun related homicides per 100,000 people, or 20x that of the US

Edited 4/19/2016 14:56:52

@Benjamin628

I know I read an article about that. As I said there is no national minimum wage, minimum wages may or may not be defined by each profession and sector.


@Imperator

No one was arguing that they had a small ammount of guns. I was just refuting the argument that gun control makes the country unsafe. Germany and France for example have restrictive gun laws, but gvt hasn't necessarily taken away guns from owners when the law become more severe.

Also, saying that Guns aren't as deadly because some of those gun related deaths aren't murders is a non-sense. It just proves furthermore the point that the general population shouldn't be able to carry guns because they're not responsible enough to have them. And that's my point. You can't have shitty education levels, a rampant poverty and offer guns to everyone because it "makes people safer", because the truth is that it won't.

People love to trow away data about countries who have worst crime rates then the US and still have gun laws and think that it proves anything. You fail to point out how shitty life conditions on those are, and that maybe, just maybe, guns were outlawed to try and fight against the crime problem.

Tunisia: 0.1 guns per 100 people => I seriously doubt this data is correct right now after the lybian civil war, but I'll point out that the country is getting severly touched by islamic terrorism.
Ghana, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Bangladesh, Sierra Leone, Rwanda => All of these countries suffer with misery, broken to non-existent states, most had civil wars on a near past and the ruler of the country is a mercyless dictator. I will again question if there's only that many guns per capita on these countries.
North Korea => That's a fucking totalitarian regime of the hitler/stalin style stuff. It shouldn't even be on this list... Also, North Korea has a 308.5 soldiers (both reserve and active) per 1000 population, so I'm pretty sure there's more guns per 100 people then you said.

I will however ask if you used data on guns owned just by civilians or the total data including gvt forces. Because if you did the second, there's no way any of it is true.

Oh, actually I see that you got your data from wikipedia, so I'll use the same data to give counter examples.

Serbia has 69.7 guns per 100 people
Yemen has 54.8 guns per 100 people
Iraq has 34.2 guns per 100 people

All these guns sure keep those countries safer.


Singapore has 0.5 guns per 100 people
Japan has 0.6 guns per 100 people
South Korea has 1.1 guns per 100 people

OMG, those countries are so unsafe, I can't even walk on the street without having a chance at getting killed at any moment!


And now, you can go and tell me that there's way more to put into account for the safety of those countries, but again, does it matter?


PS: I still doubt that the data used from wikipedia is totally accurate. I really think that it does at least excludes guns owned by gvt forces, and is probably highly unrepresentative of some countries reality due to the fact that this survey was made in 2007.

Edited 4/19/2016 15:25:45

Serbia has 69.7 guns per 100 people
Yemen has 54.8 guns per 100 people
Iraq has 34.2 guns per 100 people

All these guns sure keep those countries safer.

Yemen and Iraq are in the middle of civil wars right now, so It's pretty much an apples to oranges comparison to compare violence in countries that are in wartime to that of countries that are at peace.

Serbia actually has a relatively low rate of gun violence, 3.49 deaths per 100,000 people, which is 0.61 from homicides and 2.53 from suicides and accidental deaths. This is about on par with finland in terms of international comparisons.

Singapore has 0.5 guns per 100 people
Japan has 0.6 guns per 100 people
South Korea has 1.1 guns per 100 people

OMG, those countries are so unsafe, I can't even walk on the street without having a chance at getting killed at any moment!

It seems to be a cultural trend in far eastern countries to have basically no guns (See this image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/World_map_of_civilian_gun_ownership_-_2nd_color_scheme.svg), and it doesn't seem to have any effect on pretty much anything either way; On the one hand, you have crazy dictatorships like China, Vietnam, and North korea, and on the other you have stable democracies like Japan and south korea, all unaffected by their lack of guns.

However, I think it's worth pointing out that despite their lack of guns, South Korea, Sri lanka, Nepal, Kazakhstan, India, Turkmenistan, Japan, and Bhutan all manage to rank in the top 20 for suicide rates, ranging from 17.8-28.9 suicides per 100,000 people, which makes the 3.4 per 100,000 homicides from US guns per year seem pretty insignificant.

Edited 4/19/2016 16:12:23

And now, you can go and tell me that there's way more to put into account for the safety of those countries, but again, does it matter?

As I said, there's much more to put into account then just those rates. Read again my statement if needed.

Also, maybe, just maybe, civil wars broke out soo easily because of the huge ammount of guns there was already in circulation.


In the suicide case, guns alone aren't the only way to suicide yourself. But they make the task way easier to perform. I also find it interesting that these countries have a so high suicide rate, I've never got good explanations for this trend in asian nations other then Japan and South Korea (I've read an article on the last ones saying that it was related to a cultural as well as harsh working patterns).


Anyways, the biggest arguments to have everyone armed on the country is:
=> That it makes the country safer, which is untrue, safety does not depend on how many people are armed on the country, but it's rather a very complex problem that can't be solved by distributing guns to everyone.
=> That it keeps the country democratic and free, many countries have low gun rates or restrictive gun laws, and they're still democratic. Plus you won't prevent a military coup with your guns if your army has tanks and nukes. Btw saying that we should distribute those weapons to militias in order to keep the country from this threat isn't a good solution for many obvious reasons.


So based on these arguments, guns are useless both to protect freedom and keep the country safer. Now I'll tell you that guns are liberticide. Why do guns take away people's freedom? Because of the abuse on their use. On my view the liberty of a person shall be total unless this liberty suppresses another person freedom. Therefore everytime we have a mass shooting, people are losing their liberty of not being killed at school, colleges and public places.

Guns will also be a problem when the economy and basic structures of a country start to fall apart, and people go back to the state of nature where it's a basic free-for-all like we've seen in so many countries like Lybia, Syria or Irak. They become then the only tool of power common people have, and it might be used to supress people's rights.


So, I'll tell you that, is it worth it to have guns under those conditions? Because one, they don't serve the purpose they're intended to serve, and they might become really dangerous in some situations.

Edited 4/19/2016 16:25:15

As I said, there's much more to put into account then just those rates. Read again my statement if needed.

Also, maybe, just maybe, civil wars broke out soo easily because of the huge ammount of guns there was already in circulation.

The civil wars broke out because of Ideological extremism. If they didn't have guns, they would be fought using Spears, swords, and bows, and in fact from this perspective, guns saved lives by shortening the war.

Practically every country has had civil wars, even big ones like China and the US, and they're always caused by extremism.

In the suicide case, guns alone aren't the only way to suicide yourself. But they make the task way easier to perform. I also find it interesting that these countries have a so high suicide rate, I've never got good explanations for this trend in asian nations other then Japan and South Korea (I've read an article on the last ones saying that it was related to a cultural as well as harsh working patterns).

Is there any point to this paragraph, or are you just saying that you have no clue what's going on?

So based on these arguments, guns are useless both to protect freedom and keep the country safer. Now I'll tell you that guns are liberticide. Why do guns take away people's freedom? Because of the abuse on their use. On my view the liberty of a person shall be total unless this liberty suppresses another person freedom. Therefore everytime we have a mass shooting, people are losing their liberty of not being killed at school, colleges and public places.

I'm sick of hearing people say stuff like this when they refuse to apply this logic to bigger problems, such as abortion, which I'm willing to bet you're completely hypocritically in favor of.

So, the 699,202 homicides from abortion in 2012 are no problem, but the 8,855 gun homicides in 2012 are the end of the world, in fact so much that guns should be banned.

Yes, it takes away people's liberty to be killed. This is obvious, but this isn't really an argument that you're in a position to make.

The point is, If you're going to be pro-life, be pro-life, don't be anti-gun and anti-life.

Edited 4/19/2016 16:45:20

The civil wars broke out because of Ideological extremism. If they didn't have guns, they would be fought using Spears, swords, and bows, and in fact from this perspective, guns saved lives by shortening the war.

Nope lol. Civil wars and war in general was way less fatal when fought with spears, swords and bows lol... If ideology is the reason for war, guns are the tools upon which one can enforce his doctrines.

Is there any point to this paragraph, or are you just saying that you have no clue what's going on?

It was probably a bad separated paragraph, the first phrase of it is where I defend a point. The second part is me wondering about it, and maybe waiting for someone to come and answer that.


Abortion on itself is another hard point you can discuss about. I'm in favour of choice, but I won't explain why I consider it's not that much of a liberticide thing to having an abortion, it would derail the thread and need me to make a huge text on it. But I will explain my position on it another time, maybe I'll make a new thread for it on the next few days.

although i dont like going to school myself , denying kids their most basic right is f'ed up

As I assumed you were. All I have to say is, if you're going to make a pro-lief argument, you'd better be prepared to be actually pro-life.

Juq give your source first before giving random figures as it is far from being accurate, and last but not least, your high figure is easy to explain: I know many people in France that have a gun (or more) in their home, see my family: my grandfather, my uncles, etc, they all hold a rifle in their home for hunting (since it is a national sport in the place I am from alongside fishing), this factor could alone explain why there is those hypothetical 17 million guns in France (which aren't illegal at all as I will show you just below)

Curb your enthusiasm, here it's. http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/france

You are also confirming what I say about gun registration and how it's not working very well in France.

But anyhow, I am saying gun bans won't work for most countries, so don't ban guns.

Edited 4/19/2016 20:14:09

As I assumed you were. All I have to say is, if you're going to make a pro-lief argument, you'd better be prepared to be actually pro-life.

If you're actually pro-life, then you better be prepared to wear gas masks for the list of your life, so that you don't kill innocent dust mites by breathing them, and be vegetarian, and never cut grass.