Jim Jefferies makes the point brilliantly regarding guns for home protection. Either you have a loaded gun readily available at all times, which presents a far greater risk that your children will kill themselves or each other, or you have your gun secured in a safe, which means that it offers no protection!
Having guns to protect yourself or your property is a bullshit excuse as they do neither.
Ok so first off I am not in favour of guns. Just to put that marker down. But I’ve lived in Texas since 2015 so I’m probably sat in the very heart of the American gun culture. Every day when I pick my daughter up from elementary school there are people with open carry guns holstered outside school waiting to pick up their kids. I still find it hard to comprehend.
I would disagree with your last comment. Guns most certainly do provide opportunity to protect your home and sadly there are stories almost daily on the local news about both successful and unsuccessful outcomes.
In an ideal world there would be no guns here. As rightly pointed out the Americans are fanatically protective about their constitution but the amendment pertaining to guns is wildly outdated.
I have to say that I find myself torn and sat on the fence. I’m anti gun. But the horse has well and truly bolted. Hundreds of millions of guns are out there, many registered and well looked after in a safe, and many not. If you try to ban guns or do an amnesty the good decent folk may hand their guns in (but based on prisoners dilemma I doubt it) but the criminals certainly won’t. So it’s rather pointless. If a nut job or bad guy wants a gun they’ll get one.
I don’t have a gun but I’ve definitely thought hard about getting one to protect my family and home. (Interestingly more so after I watched the way Ukrainians were able to fight back against an imposing unwanted new “government”). I don’t because a huge proportion of people die at the hands of their own gun.
What I will say about Texas specifically is that most of my friends, including the liberal ones, have guns and are very responsible. (I recognize plenty aren’t). The hunting, fishing and outdoor culture here is a massive part of who they are and how they live their lives. They don’t want a Wild West they just want to go hunt deer. And I’ve learnt to respect that.
But also You won’t persuade a lot of people that there should be no guns for cultural reasons or because they also perceive the horse having bolted. It’s easy to have high morales and grand standing from the other side of the Atlantic but there needs to be a pinch of how you deal with the reality of the situation.
So really it’s a case of how do you start restricting the most dangerous issues. And the Supreme Court is conservative at the moment so it’s not about to happen. It’s desperately disappointing that assault rifles are so available, that anyone can buy a gun by just walking into the equivalent of sports direct and showing their driving license, or talking to someone they know who is selling one.
But I don’t see how you change the current reality.