[Empact]

You act like guns some weird anachronism, but from my perch, it seems that the need for civilized people to maintain firearms is increasing, not decreasing.

Consider that we have a documented justice system in many places that is repeatedly releasing violent criminals onto the streets, such that they are going on to set people on fire on the train, knife innocents on the subway, swinging and hitting elderly women with nail-embedded boards on the sidewalk. Note these crimes happened despite their lack of firearms. Should we not have guns to defend ourselves from these barbarians?

If the justice system were perfect, and crime rates far lower, then firearms would be less necessary, but never unnecessary, because civilization in a local phenomenon, and it only takes one barbarian to disrupt civilized order for the peaceful people of the world. It takes one civilized person with a gun to restore order.

In many places in the west, immigration policy has given rise to rape gangs in England, gangs that bomb in Sweden, etc. Should these peaceful people not have guns to defend themselves from these barbarians?

[thunderfork]

"I need my guns to defend myself from the (((barbarian hordes)))" is exactly the kind of rhetoric that leads the rest of the planet treats gun nuts like the nuts they are. Unfortunately for the US, the US valorizes this particular psychosis

[Empact]

In my world, a civilized person is one who upholds peaceable society, and a barbarian is one who uses force to upend that society. They're not hordes, but they are barbarians.

[bayindirh]

Allowing US style gun proliferation creates a chicken and egg problem:

How can you prevent these rape gangs from accessing the same weapons? They are not caught, prosecuted and banned from obtaining guns? Even if they are, there will be more guns to steal and circulate in either case.

The answer is laws, but you say they are not working perfectly. So rape gangs will be armed rape gangs next.

When I visited Stockholm ~17 years ago, all shops were displaying valuable items in steel cages anyway (e.g.: TVs were "locked" in heavy-duty steel frames to prevent "removal"), so the problem runs older than the immigration policy gained momentum.

[15155]

3D printers and cheap CNC mills and lathes thankfully obviate all of these "laws."

[archagon]

Fetishizing gun ownership also makes you a barbarian. An instrument of death should be treated with somber reverence, not giddy excitement.

[15155]

The whole concept of rights is to protect activity you don't agree with.

Who are you to really say otherwise?

[exasperaited]

> immigration policy has given rise to rape gangs in England […] Should these peaceful people not have guns to defend themselves from these barbarians?

I don't think you understand the nature of the "rape gang" problem —- what it actually refers to, how it works, and why arming a populace wouldn't do a thing to stop it.

Because the USA has this exact same problem (low-level organised crime gangs sexually exploiting naïve, broke or drug-addicted young teenagers in deprived settings) and gun ownership didn't fix it.

The "rape gangs" are not some roving crime phenomenon that turns up at your door and can be dissuaded by waving a gun.

So yes. Not only do we not extrajudicially shoot rapists because vigilante violence doesn't do anything useful, arming a whole population would not stop this problem in deprived environments in cities. It hasn't in yours.

[tastyface]

We (Americans) vote our rapists and pedophiles into power, so any concern over "rape gangs" is downright comical.