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No, I don’t think the Yidden could have outgunned the Germans- I didn’t think it through carefully. I was trying to bring some cases where automatic weapons could have otherwise helped innocent people so I chose an example of a government going after its own citizens (the Holocaust) and an invading country going after a specific part of the population (the Jordanian attack on the old city). The point was that these are cases where the oppressors’ couldn’t use air power on their intended targets without killing large numbers of those that they didn’t intend to cause harm to.
Keep in mind though that Yidden weren’t the only targets, the sheet number of civilian victims and that Germany was involved in a full blown war with many allied countries. Had there been a very significant number of heavily armed citizens they may not have had the extra resources at the time to deal with it.
You commented earlier that there’s NEVER a valid reason for an individual to have an automatic weapon. Period! All I needed to do was to bring a situation, regardless of how rare, where an individual could have benefited from having an automatic weapon and your statement would have been proven false. For example- if you claimed that there’s not a single person on the planet taller than 8′ and it turns out that there are a handful- your statement would be false, even though the number is probably less that one in a billion.
What do you consider “reasonable”? In my example with the mob I specifically didn’t mention guns- I mentioned baseball bats. There have been numerous smash and grabs in the news in the past year or two with a dozen plus thugs who could have easily killed innocent employees or shoppers with their bare hands if they felt threatened. Do you think they would have raided a store if they saw the owner inside with an automatic weapon and his hand on the trigger?
There’s cases besides mobs (again these are exceeding rare as well) where one may need to protect themselves with an automatic weapon. I agree that automatic weapons are ineffective against attack planes and nuclear weapons but let’s say the country decides that there’s a certain part of the population that they want to decimate- they’re not going to use attack planes or nuclear weapons as it will kill much more than those that they want to get rid of. You mentioned earlier that a lot can change in twenty years and brought in the smoking rate as an example- I think the country is much closer to another civil war than we were twenty years ago (I hope I’m wrong about this). I don’t recall the same number of riots and protests 20 years ago and there’s no sign of it slowing down.
I keep explaining why I think the US has such a high rate of gun violence but you refuse to acknowledge it. In my opinion the US teaches people at a young age that you don’t need to take responsibility for your actions and there’s practically nothing discouraging people from committing crimes. When they commit petty crimes and they don’t suffer any consequences they up the ante until they commit murder. It’s usually not the first law that they break. Why should someone be afraid of carjacking someone if they know that if they get caught they’ll be released without even having to post bail? Now imagine the scenario if they don’t even have to worry about the driver having a gun to protect themselves.
You’re correct that if certain guns are banned and confiscated there will be less guns. The problem is that the guns will be removed from the hands of innocent people that had them legally and the remaining guns will be the ones obtained illegally. (You still didn’t mention how the illegal ones will be confiscated and how new ones will be prevented from coming across an open border.) Even if it’s only one one hundredth that are smuggled in (which I don’t believe) a crazy person with the intent on carrying out a mass shooting will be able to get one (it may take longer but they will get one).
I realize that guns are dangerous- I’m terrified of them and never held a loaded gun in my life- but I’m more terrified of the legally owned guns from responsible neighbors being taken away. Like I said earlier on- guns were always known to be dangerous (unlike cigarettes) and the people who obtained them legally considered them to be a necessary evil.
Hopefully you’re enjoying this dialogue as much as I am (and thank you for being respectful) but you seem to be ignoring some of my questions. Would you be able to specifically answer the following questions that I asked in earlier posts?
1) There are probably millions of illegal guns out there- how do you think the government can go about confiscating all of them?
2) If the innocent people have to surrender their guns- what’s going to stop the criminals (armed or not), who until now refrained from breaking into a house because the home owner may have been armed, from burglarizing the house?
3) How should the supply of dangerous weapons flowing across the open southern border be curbed?
4) Which statement of mine was near-verbatim to a statement from the NRA?
5) You seem to agree that it’ll take many years (if at all possible) to get rid of all the guns- it’ll also take a long time to get all people with mental health issues the help that they need. Do you agree that the government should try to get them the help that they need or should the rest of the population have to suffer?@dr-pepper Very well, there are circumstances where an automatic weapon is useful.
Now let me ask you a completely unrelated question: Are there circumstances common enough to warrant an individual civilian to own an automatic weapon (specifically an automatic, not a pistol, or shotgun)? Follow up to that: If the answer is yes, does legalizing automatic weapons do more good (like in the situations in the previous question) or more harm?
Your explanation of US violence rates is amateurish and in direct contradiction to pretty much every study ever done on the topic. Furthermore, your criticisms of US policing and prison should apply doubly to liberal European countries like France and England. And yet those have less violence than the US and a lot less gun violence.
The problem is that the guns will be removed from the hands of innocent people that had them legally and the remaining guns will be the ones obtained illegally.
If I could point and go “NU!” I would be doing so. That’s the NRA rhetoric I’m talking about. Their unofficial motto since forever has been “If we criminalize guns, only criminals will have guns”. Time and data have proven again and again how false this statement is. If there are less guns, less criminals will have guns. One reason the US has so many mass shootings is that it is so easy for criminals to get guns. Sure, if someone was really intent on committing a gun crime, they would find a way to do so illegally. But as things stand, they don’t have to be really committed to it, they just need that spur of the moment desire to shoot up a school and they can have their weapons in hand within minutes.
I question the statement that “people consider guns to be a necessary evil”. Every piece of gun propaganda out there, from magazines I see in Rite Aid to Deep South Congressional testimony speaks about the “right” to own a gun. As if it’s something that everyone must have and is required to have. I’m not scared of people having their legally owned guns taken from them. Why should I be? Fakert, I would welcome it. These people sadly bought into the ridiculous pro-gun narischkeit and are so utterly convinced that they need their guns that any attempt to limit the danger is seen as equally evil as genocide.
Now on to your questions:
- It would be a long and slow process to get all the illegal guns off the streets and into scrap piles. The government should start programs to destroy any illegal gun or any used in a crime. Then they should start severely limiting the number of guns allowed to be manufactured, bought, and registered. It would take years, even decades, but over time the number of guns will hopefully drop to a level where a criminal will have a hard time getting one
- First off, I have my doubts if criminals refrained from breaking into homes out of fear of guns. Break ins happen in trigger happy cities too. Second, mace, tasers, baseball bats, and alarm systems work fine. I would even possibly consider that a small caliber limited capacity pistol (.22 with less than six bullets before reloading) would be useful. I see no logical reason why anything more is necessary
- How many dangerous weapons are flowing across the Southern open border on a daily basis? More or less than are bought legally at gun shows?
- “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”. “If we criminalize guns, only criminals would have guns”. Don’t you understand how serious this is? You didn’t even realize it, but at some point in you educating yourself about firearms you’ve absorbed literal corporate propaganda into your psyche and are convinced that you came up with it on your own!
- It’s not a zero sum game. You can take guns away from people and help with mental health. In both the long and short run it would help. If you think that you need an AR-16 machine gun to protect yourself from someone with BPD having a bad day, then that says a lot about the state of both mental health and gun control in this country.
@yserbius123
It took you over one week to finally admit that there can exist a case where an automatic weapon would be useful. I wasn’t asking you to agree that the pros outweigh the cons- just that an instance can exist. While you seem to be indoctrinated by the far left liberal views and having a hard time thinking for yourself you accuse me of being absorbed in literal corporate propaganda and convinced that the ideas that I thought of on my own were actually put into my head by them without me knowing about it. (All this, without even bothering to explain why the logic I came up with on my own is flawed or incorrect.)
To answer your question- Are there circumstances common enough to warrant an individual civilian to own an automatic weapon (specifically an automatic, not a pistol, or shotgun)? In my opinion the answer is yes. That doesn’t mean that anyone should be able to walk into a store or show and purchase an automatic weapon. If it was up to me I would require extensive background checks, proof of responsibility of safe ownership and operation of the weapon and proof of a secure method of storing the weapon when not in use. I would also make the purchaser be legally responsible (both civilly and criminally) if the owner didn’t safeguard the weapon and it is used in a crime (e.g. a teenage son knew the combination to the safe, the safe was left open, it was left in a locked car but not in an approved safe…).
If you think my explanation of US violence is amateurish please use some logic to explain why, I really don’t care what “studies” (or “statistics”) show. You know good and well that most of the “studies” that you read on the topic have the conclusion decided beforehand. Do you believe AOCs study that the smash and grab robberies of luxury items is due to the thugs being hungry? Do you believe the study from the DA who said that putting people in jail increases crime because then they’ll lose their job and home and become more violent? They knew what they wanted their outcome to be beforehand and concocted a ridiculous story to fit in.
Do England and France really release perpetrators of an armed carjacking immediately without having to post bail? If so, and they have less violence and a lot less gun violence then there must be a parameter missing from the equation. Maybe that parameter is the amount of illegal weapons which you still haven’t given a valid method of removing. The weapons are here already- banning them won’t remove them. You could’ve argued years ago, before the problem came so rampant, that gun purchases need to be controlled better but now it’s too late for that.
You could point and go “NU!” all you want- who’s stopping you? You still haven’t given a single explanation (valid or invalid) how forcing owners of legally purchased weapons to surrender them will force those who have illegal weapons to turn them in. It will reduce the number of weapons but not the number of illegal weapons. You can continue saying that it’s all NRA rhetoric but you may as well point to a mirror and start going “NU!”- it still doesn’t answer anything. I agree that it’s so easy for criminals to get guns but there are still way too many illegal ones out there and again – you haven’t given a valid explanation how to reduce that number, only to possibly stop it from increasing.
You question the statement that “people consider guns to be a necessary evil”. You only quoted half the statement but- fair enough. I think you knew good and well what I meant but let me reword it. Originally people thought that cigarettes were good for their health (or the pros outweighed the cons). People always realized that guns were killing machines and that hasn’t changed. Some people wanted to have these killing machines and some people purchased them as a necessary evil. As a Frum person I try to stay far enough away from the magazines at Rite Aid that I can’t even read the name of the magazine- let alone their stance on guns.
I am scared of the thought of those responsible people that have legally purchased guns from having them taken away. As I mentioned before, I personally am terrified of guns and never held a loaded one, but I do feel more comfortable knowing that some neighbors have guns (due to their professions). These neighbors are responsible people who keep their guns locked up properly when not being worn and have the restraint to only use it if they fear personal harm- not just loss of money. I think it keeps the neighborhood and shuls safer.
Thanks for taking a shot at answering my questions but I don’t think they adequately answer the questions being asked.
1) Saying what the government should do with illegal guns or guns used in a crime doesn’t explain how the government will get their hands on them.
2) Let’s break home burglars into three categories- a) those that are not afraid of breaking into a house with guns, mace, Tasers, baseball bats or alarms systems, b) those that are afraid of breaking into a house with guns but not mace, Tasers, baseball bats or alarms systems and 3) those that are afraid of breaking into a house with guns, mace, Tasers, baseball bats or alarms systems. You may not be able to decide which category a particular criminal belongs in or an accurate percentage for each category but unless you think the percentage of criminals in category b is 0- the number of break-ins will increase if the criminals in that category know there is no gun in the house.
3) There’s a law of supply and demand- if the demand for illegal weapons smuggled across the border is low the supply will be low. If the sale of legal weapons is curbed the demand will go up and hence the supply will go up. Another danger of that is legally sold weapons are regulated (i.e. a background check is done, the serial number is recorded…)- not so much with illegal weapons.
4) You claimed that I was quoting the NRA near-verbatim (i.e. close to word for word), you still haven’t pointed me to what I wrote that matched a quote from the NRA nearly word for word.
5) I agree that both prongs of the problem can be worked on simultaneously but I haven’t seen an emphasis from the government on the people with mental health issues getting the help that they need. On the contrary- the political party that wants to ban guns is promoting certain types of mental illness (even setting aside the entire month of June for this) at the expense of the rest of the population.@dr-pepper If there is a common use case for automatic weapons, then what is it? Because you have failed to mention a single instance in recent history where a civilian used an automatic weapon for good where a regular small pistol wouldn’t have sufficed. However, there are loads of cases where automatic weapons were used to murder. The only possible conclusion from all of this is that automatic weapons in civilian hands are a net bad thing.
You say you want automatic owners to prove responsibility, background checks, regular checkups, etc. Great. I would like to add a few criteria to that: They need to prove that they need a gun each time they buy one and there needs to be at least a one week waiting period for any firearms purchase. If we can have those laws, we will be a long way to being a lot safer.
“THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE GUNS WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE HANDS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE THAT HAD THEM LEGALLY AND THE REMAINING GUNS WILL BE THE ONES OBTAINED ILLEGALLY.”
This previous statement of yours is a distillation of several NRA quotes and ideologies.
You don’t care about studies or statistics? Then I guess we can just end this right now. So all you’re saying is that you’re opinion is the only right one and there’s literally nothing in the world that can dissuade you from that. I question your methodology also. I mean, AOC never actually cited any study that smash and grab robbers are “just hungry”. She was merely stating a fact without anything backing it up (in English we call that “lying”).
So what we’re left at is this:
You say that people deserve and need weapons to protect themselves against other people who have weapons. That there’s sadly nothing to be done to prevent criminals from getting weapons, so the only proper response is to arm the population.
I counter with this. The more guns there are, the easier it is for criminals to get their hands on them. Most criminals will still commit crime with or without a gun. If we make it harder for them to get guns, only the really committed ones will have them. This will lead to less innocent people being shot and killed.
Now I can cite you numerous studies, research, statistics, articles, laws, and comparisons but that’s all pointless because no matter what I say you will dismiss it with the all powerful wave of your hand “Well I don’t believe in that”. Problem is, facts don’t care about your beliefs or feelings.
Gun control. It’s the only way.
You seem to be missing the point again. Your statement was that there’s never a reason for someone to own an automatic weapon- I proved your statement incorrect by bringing an example- regardless of how rare it is (and you agreed to this). I never wrote that there’s a common use for automatic weapons and you know that. I never mentioned a single case in recent history where a civilian used an automatic weapon for a good reason where a regular small pistol wouldn’t have sufficed because I don’t know of any offhand and that’s not the point- the point is that there can be a reason. I always agreed with you that, for the most part, having automatic weapons in the hands of civilians is a bad thing. The problem is that they already exist- we both agree on that. What we disagree on is how to handle the situation now.
Yes, I want automatic owners to prove responsibility, background checks, regular checkups… I’d go a step further a require home visits as well- all at the expense of the owner- to make sure everything looks normal in the house and the safe is secure (and can’t be opened in less than 60 seconds by methods readily available online). I would’ve even gone further and required a 30-day waiting period for additional applications and background / social media checks (besides- relationship breakups and the murder / attack of a loved one can take longer than 7 days to get over). I don’t believe that a responsible person that meets all the criteria of safeguarding the weapon should have to prove a need but that’s a separate issue.
You still haven’t directed me to something I wrote that’s near word for word something from the NRA so unless you can provide that information, I’m going to assume that it doesn’t exist and you don’t want to own up to your mistake.
What I did write is something that to me makes logical sense and you haven’t been able to explain the fallacy. Let me try again- if there are X number of legal guns out there and Y number of illegal guns- how will reducing the number of X bring down the number of Y? It may stop Y from growing as fast as it’s been growing in the past but you haven’t explained how it’ll be reduced.
For the most part, I don’t care about no name “studies” and “statistics” that don’t make logical sense to me- like you’ve been quoting. You and I both know very well that they can both be used and abused. Would you reply on a “study” conducted by the NRA? What I care is about logic- please explain logically how the “studies” and “statistics” you’ve been quoting make sense. In my profession, even if I am relying on others for statistics and specifically state my reliance, I can be disciplined for using data that I can’t explain the story behind the numbers. (I need to go back to the source and get some clarification. I can only think of one case in close to 20 years where the numbers were actually correct and there was a valid story explaining that.) Since you haven’t been able to do that, feel free to end the conversation here.
You’re purposely ignoring the method I proposed to stop the criminals from getting / using guns. There has to be a strong deterrence to stop the criminals from getting / using them- I believe that’s the only way. (Again- you never explained how the number of illegal weapons out there will be reduced or how to stop new illegal ones from flowing across the border.) How about a 25-year prison sentence – no questions asked- if a criminal commits a crime and a firearm was involved (even if it wasn’t used or displayed).
Feel free to cite whatever “studies”, “research”, “statistics”, “articles”, “laws” and “comparisons” that you want- but please include your sources as well as a logical explanation for the conclusion (when it’s not obvious from the source itself).
Gun control- I agree! It may be the only way but there’s more than one way to go about it and I simply don’t agree that your way is the correct way.
Wishing you a Happy, Healthy and Safe Shabbos!
@dr-pepper Sorry for taking so long to respond, I usually use the internet during downtime at work so weekends I’m pretty quiet online.
For the record, I did not concede to your argument. I simply gave up trying to argue whether a fantasy scenario that literally never happens fulfills my criteria of “civilian use of an automatic weapon”.
We seem to be in agreement that a huge overhaul of gun control is needed, like who can buy a gun, who can sell a gun. Similarly with mental health. Good.
It seems our main disagreement is on what guns people should be able to acquire. Even if I would agree with your arguments, that civilians need guns to protect against criminals who also have guns, I still fail to see why civilians would need anything more than a small pistol that can shoot a maximum of six bullets before reloading.
if there are X number of legal guns out there and Y number of illegal guns- how will reducing the number of X bring down the number of Y? It may stop Y from growing as fast as it’s been growing in the past but you haven’t explained how it’ll be reduced.
Stopping growth is also reduction. Guns decay and break down with age, and with illegal firearms they can’t exactly bring it to their local Walmart to get fixed. One you significantly stop the growth, it’s only a matter of time before the number in the hands of criminals goes down too.
Here’s a statistic for you: The total number of prisoners in the UK makes up 0.088% of the population. The average sentence for violence is 18.5 years. By contrast, 0.7% of the US population is in prison, and the average sentence for violence is 25 years. In the UK, there are about 40 violent crimes per 100,000 people compared to 300 in the US. So it clearly isn’t prison keeping violent crimes at a high.
I would love to quote you NRA funded studies, problem is that very few of their studies are relevant. They are all about how better armor leads to less death and nothing about how less guns lead to less death. In fact, just the opposite. The NRA has spent a ridiculous amount of time and energy both supressing gun control studies and making sure that studying gun control is illegal. I work in healthcare data. Until Trump changed the Dickey Amendment, we were not allowed to use healtcare data to research anything regarding gun violence. Because the NRA was clearly too scared to allow people to see how dangerous guns are. So to heck with your NRA studies. I’m looking at actual data and drawing my conclusions from that. If that’s too biased for you, then I guess reality has a bias.
I’ve pointed out several of your sentences and paragraphs that bear a striking similarity to NRA talking points. I’m not going to repeat myself on that, just re-read my old comments.
Originally I wasn’t going to bother responding to your previous post but I decided to add one more comment to the thread explaining why this will probably be my last one. I’m finding it very difficult to have a productive conversation with someone who, in my opinion, purposely misquotes me, purposely misses the point, purposely ignores questions and attacks me personally in an attempt to discredit me.
Now I’m going to go through your post one point at a time.
For the record- you did concede to my opinion, here’s the quote, “Very well, there are circumstances where an automatic weapon is useful”. If you want to flip flop and take back what you said- that’s fine. To say that you never conceded is simply not true.
We’re in agreement that guns are out of control and a huge overhaul is needed- with respect to mental health I think we agree that something needs to be done.
What I strongly disagree with you on is how to go about this.
As I mentioned in my previous post I never wrote that there’s a common use for automatic weapons. I never mentioned a single case in recent history where a civilian used an automatic weapon for a good reason where a regular small pistol wouldn’t have sufficed because I don’t know of any offhand and that’s not the point- the point is that there can be a reason- even if it’s only one in a billion. I think it’s wrong to deny someone who can prove to be responsible the ability to defend themselves for that rare situation if they want to take on the responsibility (and consequences) of owning a weapon. Take for example the owner of a luxury store that is going through a smash and grab by a group of a dozen or more thugs who are high on drugs. How long will it take for an innocent bystander to be seriously wounded or killed if one of the thugs feels threatened? I personally feel that the owner of the store would be allowed to use lethal force with an automatic weapon to protect his employees and customers, something he may not be able to do with a weapon that can only hold six bullets. The knowledge (or a warning sign) that the owner has an automatic weapon and is justified in using it may be enough of a threat to keep them away altogether. If you don’t agree- there’s not much more I can add and we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this.
“Stopping growth is also reduction.” Sorry- I don’t agree with you on that one. Most things don’t last forever and when an illegally obtained weapon breaks the owner is not just going to give it to the government to melt down if they can’t easily get a replacement. They’ll get creative and come up with their own fix, purchase parts online, make the part themselves or repurpose the parts from something else. Did you ever see pictures of what cars look like in Cuba? In the US when a car gets old and too expensive to maintain, the owner scraps it and buys another one. In Cuba where new cars aren’t as readily available they get creative in keeping the old ones running. Besides for me not agreeing with you that this is an effective way of reducing the number of illegal weapons- you still haven’t explained how it will stop new ones from flowing across the border. (I explained how the supply will increase as the demand increases and the demand for illegal weapons will increase as it becomes harder to get them legally but you ignored that.)
You brought up a statistic- I’m going to describe what was going through my mind as I read that. First off- you quote a “statistic” without saying where you got it from or who conducted it- so as far as I’m concerned it’s irrelevant. But OK- let’s go on. You’re the one quoting it and I’m thinking that you’re only going to quote a “statistic” that agrees with your agenda so I don’t know how many other “statistics” you skipped over as they don’t agree with your mindset. But let’s look at the “statistic” itself. I’m wondering how “average sentence” is defined- is it the amount of time some actually spends in prison or the amount of time some one is sentenced to regardless of if they get out in three months? There’s also no definition for “violence”. Is “violence” when someone gets injured, when a weapon is used in the crime or even if a weapon is brought to the crime regardless of whether it’s used or not (i.e. is the threat of violence considered violence). Was the “statistic” combined from one “study” in the UK and one in the USA and the author merged the two (this can cause the same word to be used differently in each “study” but supposedly represent the same thing in the “statistic”). I find it hard to believe that the average violent offender spends 25 years in prison for violent crimes when many are repeat offenders (many times over) for violent crimes before they even reach 25.
But let’s say somehow the “statistic” is accurate. I think what you’re trying to say is that this proves that the extra violence in the US is caused by the large number of guns in the country compared to the UK. Fine- I’ll agree with you on this- but it’s too late, the illegal guns are here and, in my opinion, you haven’t come up with a reasonable way to get rid of them or even significantly reduce the number.
Why would you even bother to quote the NRA? I don’t trust radical groups on either side. The heck with my NRA studies? What’s that supposed to mean? Are you attacking me with false accusations to try and discredit me because you can’t answer my questions? You look at actual data and draw your conclusions based on that? You’re not fooling me- you look for data that fits the conclusions you want to see and discard everything else- then you make your conclusion. I know nothing about the NRA besides that they advocate for the right for citizens to arm themselves, I don’t ever recall reading an article published by them and definitely never intentionally quoted them.
I made an elementary comment based on my own logic (that you finally attempted to explain the fallacy but didn’t succeed) and you claimed that I was quoting the NRA near-verbatim. You NEVER pointed out which statement from any of my posts were nearly word for word from the NRA. You may have made a mistake and you had numerous opportunities to correct yourself but you didn’t. In English I’d call that a lie. And besides- even if I did accidentally quote them word for word (which I still believe I didn’t) – does that mean that I stand behind everything that say? You quoted Ben Shapiro near-verbatim (“facts don’t care about your beliefs or feelings”)- does that mean you agree with everything he says? (Do you know where he stands on automatic weapons?)
At this point- it’s been great conversing with you but unless you bring up something new I have nothing else to add.
As a parting piece of advice- if the only way you can defend your opinion is by misquoting others, missing the point, ignoring questions you can’t answer and making up false accusations about someone else to discredit him- it may be time to rethink your opinion.
Feel free to not respond or go ahead and respond to get the last word in.
Hatzlacha!
@dr-pepper I’m honestly sorry to see you go, it’s been a lot of fun. I’m sorry you feel the way you do about your conversation. I cannot recall an instance in which I misquoted you. I keep bringing up the NRA not because you quoted them directly, but because a lot of your comments sounds a lot like NRA talking points. “Guns will be removed from the hands of those who obtained them legally and remain in the hands of those who obtained them illegally” (sorry if that isn’t exactly what you said) is very much an NRA talking point worded slightly differently. You have made numerous similar comments.
The statistics I quoted are publicly available and undisputed. They are compiled by Statistica, Pew Research, and Our World in Data. You can look them up yourself. If you want to contest these statistics, or counter my conclusion from them, please do so in a logical and rational fashion instead of just assuming that they are all biased without even reading them.
To summarize my position on automatic weapons, the likely hood of them being used for bad is far greater than the likelihood of being used for good. Therefore they should be banned. According to everything you’ve said so far, we seem to be in agreement with it all except the banning. Why is that?
Something new to this conversation: Do you think our views on guns and weapons come from a Torah perspective or are entirely from sociological influence? Personally, I do not own a gun. The only frum person I know who is a gun owner runs a security company. No Rebbe I respect ever talked about owning guns or its importance. We did not have a firing range in Yeshiva. So I would like to say that my views are my own based on the influence of my Torah upbringing. But I don’t know, maybe, like you said, it’s “liberal talking points” all the way through? What do you think? How about your own views?
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