LogFAQs > #890580180

Smarkil posted...

darkknight109 posted...

If gun ownership is supposed to protect the lives of the citizens, it's doing a really shitty job.

If you ignore the some 68k or so cases of self-defense with a gun every year and assume that every person who commits suicide by gun won't do it in any other way, sure.

To the first, guns are used far more often to facilitate crime than to prevent it; 6-8x more frequently, in fact. Again, if the goal is to reduce crime and protect the citizenry, guns are doing a really shitty job because they're causing much more harm than they're preventing.

To the second, while suicide is never completely preventable, it is quite often a spur-of-the-moment decision and the absence of an immediate method of committing suicide is often enough to deter someone from the attempt. This, again, is reflected in the US suicide rate. The US has a relatively high suicide rate (50th worldwide), particularly compared to culturally similar countries, and guns are frequently cited as an aggravating factor.
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Kill 1 man: You are a murderer. Kill 10 men: You are a monster.
Kill 100 men: You are a hero. Kill 10,000 men, you are a conqueror!