It certainly makes for a society with a hell of a lot more police among unarmed citizens. It also makes for tighter laws and sentencing rules as the presumption of innocence lets the criminals continue to wander the streets. You try and trade your liberty for your safety and you wind up with neither.
We don't have a lot of police but we have more than enough to create the impression they're gonna catch you, as is their job. If you're insured then you've covered your losses without killing somebody already. @added - though in reality that's a very laughable statement (over policing) coming from a country with a patriot act. You have way more policing than we do. We can easily turn that around though and say having a gun IS trading liberty for safety, all depends how you see it.
Insurance premiums are based on incidence of crime, unless the government is subsidizing them. Just like the criminals those rates flourish in an unarmed society. Explain it to me then, because I certainly don't see it that way. How is having a gun trading liberty for safety?
That's just it, we don't have a LOT of criminals as a whole, we have to make heroes of long dead ones to make up. Though we do have a lot of scumbags. In the last few days government's trying to push ISPs retaining web data for 2 years so ASIO has revved up its terrorist rhetoric whilst being picky and choosy on statistics, but crime on the whole is down and keeps going down. Okay let's go with the spiritual angle. Assuming you don't need a weapon to live such as farming and the myriad other reasons people NEED a gun. You live in a house in a suburb and shop at Walmart. THEN, You have a gun because you're afraid something is going to happen to you. Being afraid of something causes something to happen because we ALL get what we want. Chuck away the fear and you don't need a gun. Keep the fear, get a gun, because it's LIKELY you will need it, from something you created yourself.
Crime on the whole is down here as well. Conversely, incarceration is way up, which brings me back to my point. Are you saying you cause yourelf car accidents because you bought car insurance? Even if that were true, it would not be an argument for how gun ownership would be an exchange of liberty for safety. I think the pictures Pladecalvo likes to post of Israeli's teaching their children how to use automatic weapons sums it up nicely. Taking liberty from those people will not be easy.
If you bought car insurance because you knew you will crash, or knew it would get stolen, sure, the principle is the same, but people buy insurance for all kinds of other reasons, as well as out of fear. Fear is a safety issue imho. Even from a reality perspective, people with weapons get overpowered. When the weapon is taken off you it can be turned back on you. It can't be used against you if there's no weapon to take.
Sorry, but that still doesn't back the claim that fear of a crash causes the crash. How so? Sure, and incorrectly using a seat belt can make a mild accident fatal. I think a good principal with firearms is, don't buy one unless you are mentally prepared to use it, or it could make matters worse. If you buy one, and have wrapped your brain around the possibility of one day having to use it, you should also take the extra steps of learning to use it, maintaining it, and keeping in practice with it. Conversely, if you can't wrap your brain around killing an assailant, it would also be a good mental exercise to figure out how you are going to deal when an assailant breaks into your house, pistol whips you, takes everything inside the house, rapes your wife in front of you, and shoots one of your kids with the weapon he illegally possesses. Depending on where you live, the chances are going to be greater or smaller of that happening, but its always best to be mentally prepared in advance.
It does back my statement a little deeper, but doesn't prove it. Like I said people buy insurance for many reasons, including recommended by the neighbour, it was cheap etc. so we can't tie every insurance policy to a claim. As to fear of the crash... remember riding that bicycle heading for that pole as a kid...there was no way you could miss it..so you didn't. You hit your head a little too hard and became a conservative. All that room on both sides of the pole but you froze and you knew you were going to hit it, so you hit it. Fear of the pole caused the crash. No fear, you would likely have swerved. I believe if you're afraid then it would usually boil down to your, or someone else's safety is being compromised, even if it is by just putting the thought out there, imho. I guess what it boils down to is I believe there is a 'force' that connects all of life, and it works for each of us based on our thoughts. That same force is within every one of us and, whilst we're free to live our own lives, is receiving, gathering, sorting and delivering upon all of our thoughts. We are all one combined entity. Whilst the thought pool itself is indescribable to me, personally, i'm happy to call that pool God for want of a better name and I believe that is the same God spoken about in the bible, I Am. I believe you can give and take thoughts from the thought pool and that we are all constantly doing that, all the time. Some thoughts appear to come from nowhere but that is because someone else thought it up and it gets delivered to you because you're open to receive it. You also have the option to reject it or forget about it and let it pass on. I believe chanting, or praying, even 5 times a day, simply is there to remind you to communicate sincerely with the thought pool. The term 'look and you shall find' is apt I believe because all you need do is ask. You have wireless access to the thought pool and It will act upon your every thought, good and bad. You might be sitting there pondering life then think to yourself "what would I do if someone murdered my parents", you don't dismiss the thought, you may even go into more detail of the event in your mind and work out your plan of action in advance, but soon life goes on, you forget about it. Off the thought goes to the thought pool. Over the next month or so you might be presented with little trinkets to keep it in your mind, a headline here and article there, still, you haven't dismissed the idea out of hand. I believe doing that alone would compromise your parents safety. Then there's your parents, without you saying a single word to them, they suddenly get the thought "what if we get murdered?" They then might work on their plan, without telling you, they sort out their will and prepare for a "just in case the worst happens" moment. Now, I believe what you have both done is told the thought pool you're open to that idea. That's all the thought pool needs to know. Without alternative data or a definitive answer it acts upon what it knows. Then, we get, let's say a troubled teen. The life he's lived so far makes him mean in spirit and he just wants to kill something. He comes within actual distance of your parents and the thought suddenly hits him, I need to kill someone NOW! The force acts upon yours and others combined thoughts and brings them all together. Even though you might have never wanted it to happen you have inadvertantly opened up the idea without canceling the thought or rejecting the thought out of hand. Let me add I believe at any point along the way, up until the idea/thought has been collected by the teen that is, you, or your parents could have avoided the situation by dismissing the idea entirely, rejecting the thought and replacing it with the more pleasant thought of knowing they will never be attacked and picturing them living a long & happy life together instead (in the rocking chair on the verandah at 125yo). Given that context, that's why I believe weapons are a hindrance to society as a whole but I will concede some people need them. 100% Agreed. I have never been afraid to go out or been afraid of a burglar breaking in. Someone stole the back gate a few years ago but I think they needed it more than me. I am insured, never claimed the gate.
Actually, from a logical standpoint, it doesn't back your statement at all. For instance, if we say a= b and b=c and c=d so therefore, a = d, then you have made a connecting argument. Your statement is more of an "a=d because I say it does" type argument. Actually, you described two different and real phenomenon. One is being frozen by fear, which has nothing to do with buying a gun for self defense, since buying a gun out of fear would be taking action, not freezing. The other sounds like something I heard in driving school decades ago, where drivers will quite literally involuntarily aim for things in the emergency lane, like cop cars and such. I looked around Google, but didn't see any write ups on it, but there are certainly enough videos of cars piling into police vehicles on the side of the road to use as evidence. In either event, I don't see how this backs fear of anything being a safety issue. I suppose obsessive fear could become a mental health issue, and then perhaps a safety issue, but fear is one of those basic emotions we possess for very good evolutionary reasons. In fact, fear, like pain, is a healthy and necessary thing to our continued survival. And here I had thought you were an atheist. My bad. Glad to hear you live in a nice neighborhood. I guess the argument here is for those who don't live in nice neighborhoods to suck it up? Even nice neighborhoods where the neighbors aren't tight and people are often at work are targets for crime.
In my mind i'm equating a with b; A=Fear & B=Safety are almost entwined. About 20 years ago I lived in a mansion up a fairly rickety old hill and had a family gathering. It had a cliff on one side & deep gutter on the other. I had an aunty freak out on the way up. Her fear of the gutters made her fall down it. About 5 years ago my neice hit a kangaroo whilst heading home after a day at my farm. It was in the middle of the road she panicked and aimed for it, frozen with fear. Couldn't avoid it. If fear isn't a safety problem then I mustn't know what is. There's two examples from personal experience. Fear makes you take risks you wouldn't otherwise. My point about buying the gun is simply you open a new train of thought, a road that often proves dangerous and in the context I gave where our thoughts control our lives, it would be much safer to simply not think about them at all, if you can. Here we don't really think about guns, only the serious crims have them and they only shoot each other, and I think that's a good thing. I have probably never claimed that title, I was brought up a Christian, now non-religious but closer to Buddhist if anything I guess. I know there is a God and I have nothing to fear, therefore I have nothing to fear. No, I would imagine they simply need to work towards making peace rather than arming themselves up to the teeth to create an increasing threat against one another.
The problem is that Rob and obamanation applaud the old man action (opposite attracts) but even with a gun in their hand they will pee their pants if they come face to face with a burglar. They are typical neo-cons who get pleasure of stories about someone killing another person or some prisoner or POW getting sodomized.
Gosh Julie... that's an entertaining little fantasy post. If only real life hadn't already proven otherwise. As rebutting your post only took 1 line, I'll fill the rest of this space with a picture of a dog in a hat.
So many ways to look at things. You say he's living in fear because he owns a gun. He probably thinks you are retarded for not owning one. Perhaps you are both right. Perhaps neither of you is.
We had a good discussion - he has a legal gun because he hunts innocent pigs. He also has the gun always at hand because of fear of the people around him. He is a retarded fear junkie bought up to believe that danger is all around. I am a normal Australian - "Stuff happens, get over it."
Guess the difference is some of us arent so afraid of guns that we pretend bad things never happen. Being prepared doesnt mean someone is fearful, just means they aren't living in denial. If sticking your head in the sand and humming a happy tune is preferable, by all means do it. If something bad were to happen at your place, let me know how well reasoning with 'em works out for you. In my experience, in that situation a good visual aid of the appropriate caliber is helpful. Maybe you think pleading is more effective. Good luck with it, just dont expect everyone else to do it your way. Thats the problem with liberals... Never content to do things their way, they want to insist everyone else do so.
Why would you think that people who don't have guns are afraid of them? Guns are an inanimate object same as a spoon. Absolutely nothing to be afraid of. It's the fuckers that own them.