[_menelaus]

Don't you think the populace needs to be armed though? I think its a given that eventually the government will be intolerably corrupt and a revolution will be necessary. Nobody denies that less guns -> less shootings. The logic is that some amount of shootings are tolerable to preserve democracy, and that if our goal is to reduce mass shootings, social reforms intended to improve mental health are the correct choice.

Imagine you are in charge of a monkey enclosure. The monkeys sometimes go crazy and kill each other with rocks. You can:

A: Remove all rocks. Monkeys stay suicidally miserable but can't inflict harm as easily. Problem solved?

B: Mitigate conditions that make them suicidally miserable. Some say its impossible, but then again, just a generation ago the monkeys had rocks without frequent violence.

[WhyOhWhyQ]

Why is it that only our country needs to be armed, but none of the others do? Do Germans need to be armed? Do Indians need to be armed? Maybe you could argue that Chinese people need to be armed, but every Chinese person I've met seems to like their government right now and is content with the levels of surveillance. Maybe arming the Uyghurs could have helped but somehow I doubt it.

[_menelaus]

All populations should be armed. The current democratic, liberal order in Europe is just a side effect of America's dominance, the same America that is the product of the revolution of a well armed population. Your counterpoint might be the U.K., which has arrested 12,000 people for social media posts recently.

The catch is, it only works with an enlightened, well educated population with philia and a sense of civic duty. Arming inner city Chicago has been a disaster.

That's tough to maintain that state, but we have to try, because if a population doesn't fit that description the country turns to shit and you won't want to live there. To disarm is to admit we can't be an enlightened country anymore and we won't try, and after that its just a matter of time until there is nothing special about America and its just another mediocre third world dump.