🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@trinsec

Well obviously we disagree. I hear of rapes in europe all the time and plenty of other incidents that I have no doubt most of which would have been prevented by responsible gun ownership.

Pretty sure the women raped in your urban centers would be a lot better off if they had had a gun.

@servant_of_the_anime_avatars @mur2501

@hansw If I were allowed to have a gun in my car in utrecht I would be just as eager to have one. Again its not out of a concern for safety its because it is responsible to do so.

I also keep packed away emergency ham radio in my car just in case there is a massive nationwide catastrophe and the cell networks were all to go down. That doesnt mean I walk around scared the cell networks would go down. It is because it is responsible to do so. Always be more prepared than you should ever expect to need, anything less is irresponsible.

Now I will say that while I feel exactly the same fear and necessity to have a gun in Utrecht as I do walking through my own city there are places I may feel legitimate fear and the necessity to to carry a gun out of fear. but those locations have nothing to do with the presence or lack of guns and everything to do with the economic despair of a particular location that I feel might lead to desperate acts.

@moderation Wait, we are blocking libertarian instances now too? Clearly I am not getting all my memos.

@mur2501

It would be extremely unusual for someone to have no mental health issues in their past, no violence, and no criminal record and then one day in their 40s just decide to go start killing people... While there will always be exceptions the vast majority of people who are going to take a gun and kill someone is going to have some prior history of more minor violence.

@trinsec

@trinsec

Yes a criminal could potentially steal a law abiding citizens gun. The argument here is not that no criminals will ever have guns. The argument is that because there is a significantly greater barrier for a criminal obtaining a gun than a law abiding citizen then the odds are always going to favor the the law abiding citizen being significantly more likely to have a gun than a criminal, putting criminals at a disadvantage and the superior defensive position being with the law abiding citizens.

We do occasionally have incidents of criminals pulling guns, however you'll find an overwhelming majority of such incidents int he USA take place in no-gun zones where law abiding citizens are not allowed to carry and thus dont. typically when such an incident takes place in the general public away from no-gun zones the good guys far outnumber the bad guy when ti comes to guns and the incident often doesnt progress very far

A prime example of this is attached in the below. A person in a public space in that picture tried to pull a gun with the intention of shooting up the place. However 7 different people with guns immediately responded and took down the individual without futher incident. Showing exactly what I mean where even if a bad guy does get a gun, which is relatively hard to do so most dont, they will be outnumbered significantly and unable to use it. In this case law abiding citizens with guns outnumbered "bad guys" 7 to 1.

@servant_of_the_anime_avatars @mur2501

@mur2501

No they dont. But by the time they are legally old enough to won a gun they have already went through a good portion of life and should they happen to be a criminal likely have already committed crimes by the time they are of age to buy a gun.

@trinsec

@hansw I answered that here: https://qoto.org/@freemo/105533551398862971

I have never carried a gun int he USA or Utrecht. The gun I own stays at home, its an AR-15. I have never felt unsafe walking home in either place unarmed.

@hansw

> But let me ask you a question. Do you feel safe if you walk home in the dark in Utrecht?

Yes I feel safe walking home at night in Utrecht.

> And how about when you are located in the US? Would you walk the streets without having a gun?

Yes I also feel safe walking home at night in the US without a gun, at least in my city.

The gun I own is a AR-15, not a handgun. It isnt a gun I can or would carry. I have never carried a handgun and dont really feel unsafe without one. Though I do plan to get one to keep in my car just in case, more out of preparedness than necessity.

As I said before I never saw anyone on the streets in america with a gun in my life, so never felt threatened by them.

@hansw

> I think the biggest difference with the Dutch and the US citizens is that people in the Netherlands grow up to find that a gun is not needed.

Thats probably not as much of a difference as you think. Most americans dont own guns, most americans have never really been around a gun really. Only a few feel they truly "need" one. Like I said I had no exposure to guns myself until I was much older and only after a lot of reflection, reviewing the evidence and the statistics did I ultimately change my mind. Not due to how I was raised or anything else I now am of the opinion that it is irresponsible not to own a gun, so I own one.

@icedquinn

Oh, that makes more sense :)

@arteteco

@icedquinn

They used my template in a class you took?

@arteteco

@arteteco Yea its pretty great for writing technical papers where you need some heavy hitting power but don't want the tedious nature of pdf EVERYWHERE.

I use it as a base for msot of my white papers.

@servant_of_the_anime_avatars

The other problem is, while a woman can learn martial arts, so can a criminal.. but a criminal isnt allowed to own a gun and has less access to them where a law abiding woman can.

Also good luck telling a woman to learn martial arts. My friend (a tiny woman) is learning right now and even her instructor says "do not engage you will loose and you will die even if you are trained.. i will teach you how to run away".. which is a great skill to have but not always effective. Not nearly as effective as a gun.

@mur2501 @trinsec

@mur2501 That has absolutely no relationship to legal ownership of tanks.. That was literally someone from the army who stole a tank from an army facility.. So if anything that proves my point rather than detracts from it, that the military in tank are a greater risk than the general population having legal access to them.

@icedquinn

I dont even think governments should have nukes. That has less to do with weapons ownership and more to do with weapons of mass destruction in general.

@mur2501

@mur2501 Someone in the USA exercising their right to own a personal tank to kill someone.

@trinsec

> "Guns are the great equalizer."
>
> I thought it was about freedom, not a 'level playing field'.

Depends, you cant take catch phrases out of context and expect it to apply.

When we talked about a "level playing field" you spoke about criminals having guns and thus requiring people to own guns in order to "keep up". In that sense, as we covered it wasn't valid since criminals do not have legal access to guns and thus there is a greater barrier to a criminal being armed than a law abiding citizen, so the idea of a "level playing field" or a need to buy guns just to keep up with criminal elements with guns was invalidated. The context is important.

However now we are talking about criminals having the upper hand not because they have a gun or a weapon but because a man is physically stronger than a woman. In that sense yes having a gun absolutely creates a "level playing field" but in a way that is completely unrelated to your earlier use of the term. In this case it allows a woman to defend herself against a stronger man and protect her from being rapped.

I'll give you a pass this time as you tend to debate rather respectfully, so ill take it as a slip. But please dont become one of those people who start using what someone says in a debate out of context in sound bite form just to try to get the upper hand in an argument. If we go down that route these discussions will become very unpleasant very quickly.

> Guess the argument I had the other day wasn't quite 100% correct. Everybody needs guns, apparently, in order to be able to defend themselves, or to even live normally at all.

You dont **need** a gun to defend yourself or live normally, not all the time. But it does ensure that if youa re at the mercy of a gang of people, or an individual stronger than you, or people with knives, that you walk away alive rather than dead.

> And it is terrible what happened to that woman in Germany. But would the outcome really be that different if they had guns? There could be deaths, and it might not even be the culprits who died. We don't know, so it's pure speculation at this point. It is also not a common occorence, thankfully.

While you may not know for sure how it would have ended would she have had a gun its a pretty fair bet she stood a hell of a better chance walking away without having known rape and with a dead rapist at her feet than walking away raped and traumatized for life. Yes someone would have probably wound up dead, and in all liklihood it would have been the someone who deserved death through their choice of actions.

@servant_of_the_anime_avatars @mur2501

@mur2501 having no incidents is pretty good evidence its safe.

@mur2501 There are a lot of americans who would have no problem not respecting or following the regulations around tanks.. yet somehow, not a single incident.

So yea, obviously the regulations need to be enforced, that is a given. But that doesnt mean an individual on a whim can violate them, its usually people in power enforcing it and ensuring they cant (hopefully).