The Politics Test: #10

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

Strongly agree.

Gun ownership should be a privilege, not a right. Furthermore, a buyer should have to demonstrate a reasonable need to own a gun.

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

I know that the "right to defend myself" argument is intuitive, but it is an emotional argument that doesn't jibe with the statistics. For every instance of a gun fired in self defense, there are 2 fatal unintentional shootings, 32 criminal homicides using guns, and 80 suicides with a gun (guns amount to over 50% of suicides). Never mind the fact that for the price of a gun, you can buy a home security system which is more effective.

The glut of firearms and the awful culture we have around guns in our country fuels crime. Over 200k guns are stolen ever year, 170k of them during burglaries. Every firearm we add to the equation makes us less safe. It's a higher probability that another gun ends up in crime through a theft or corrupt dealer or straw purchase, or another misfire, or another spur of the moment rampage, or another irrevocable suicide attempt. The only real solution is to reduce firearms, but that is so hard to obtain because despite all the stats, people just "feel safer," with a gun. And to top it all off, the whole problem is compounded by a sizable, irrational segment of our populace that has an insatiable gun fetish.

The great irony of the matter is that by arming our entire country, it only made us less safe.