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My 'fascination' has to do with not allowing myself to be a victim if at all possible. I believe in 'live and let live'. Don't bother me, and I won't bother you.
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Sure, so do I. Only I live in a society where guns are not the norm, neither among criminals nor among civilians. As such it puzzles me why they are in other countries.
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Originally Posted by desertgrandma
Or just die peacefully, knowing you didn't contribute to this 'fascination' with guns.
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No, I'm probably not going to die, I'm going to happily continue living in Europe, where gun crime (esp. with deadly results) statistically
just doesn't happen.
Which, NOFI, was pretty much the whole point I was referring to. Sure, guns might come in handy if you live near a drug cartel, or if you live in a low SES neighborhood, but they're hardly a solution, and I doubt that the fact that you need to carry them around in order to feel safe makes you feel safe.
The problem isn't really that criminals might resort to violence; the problem arises from the types of violence criminals consider acceptable, and how large the desire/need to become a criminal is.
Given that income disparity (between the richest, the rich and the poor) in the US is the largest in the world, and that you have a substantial amount of people living near, on or below the poverty line (somewhat higher than in western Europe (the UK excepted)), and the myth notwithstanding, fairly little by way of actual social mobility (due to the relatively high costs associated with getting a good education), I'd say fixing that would do more to lower crime rates than either giving everyone mandatory gun training or trying to outlaw them.
That said, this apparently goes against the whole "everyone has equal chance to make it, and if you don't make it it's your own fault" notion that is seemingly spoon-fed to everyone from birth, keeping people from supporting more equality of access to healthcare, schooling, etc., so it probably won't happen.
But it really isn't "socialism" to prefer creating or even paying for living conditions in which there is less reason for people to become disaffected with society as a whole..