It's a simple philosophy.

2hsnp9.jpg (click to show) They are like Fire Extinguishers. I'd much rather have on just in case.

By owning guns, citizens prevent the government from doing any kind of unconstitutional totalitarian action. If no citizens owned guns, eventually the government would do something totalitarian. Might not be this generation or the next, but it would eventually happen. That was the founders thought process.

Regardless of statistics of gun and knife violence, suicide and homicide rates across the biggest cities and most densely populated countries....there remains one unchangeable truth. If someone out there wants to kill someone, you can be damn sure they'll find a way to do it. No matter how many bans or restrictions any government puts into place or on what...they cannot legislate or put on a ban on human nature. We know that there are bad people out there, regardless of race, age, gender, ANYTHING. We all share a common human nature. This is not to say there should be no law. But it IS to say that pointless squabbling over how someone is killed is, in no uncertain terms, is missing the mark. There will always be people killing one another, there has been throughout all history, barring all morals and codes, this is the way it is. But when one suggests that the evil of these bans and indeed, the evil of gun violence, is somehow a power struggle, or a derivative of identity politics, is utterly sickening. The evil of these events and laws is the lack of understanding of human value. Being a human, sharing human value, being a participating member of the human race, is the most sacred of treasures. When people try to suggest that the evil of these laws and debates and such is no more than constitutional right or advertence of the evils of murder, it is wholly unAmerican. Where is it that you think the founding fathers and writers of the constitution found the inspiration for such laws and statutes? They made these laws to begin with because they understood that the value of life came at a cost. The price to practice and understand these values was the result of a hard-fought war, in which American and British blood was much spilled until at last, the first Americans won the right to protect, by gunpoint, their kin and country.

Gun deaths in all of Japan are shockingly low (10 per year in a country of 125+ million) and it’s because they tightly regulate guns.

Lowest overall homicide rates in the rich world as well.

Turns out when you keep these brutally efficient instruments of death out of people’s hands, fewer people die

A simple but uncomfortable truth

https://imgflip.com/i/3rtq49

A simple but uncomfortable truth

Knife deaths in all of Japan are shocking high And it's because Murderers will kill you with a knife when you take away their guns.

Lowest overall homicide rates in the rich world as well, Everyone can afford a knife.

Turns out when you take a brutally efficient instrument of death out of people’s hands, People pick up another brutally efficient instrument of death, People still die.

A simple but uncomfortable truth you ignore, Because it doesn't fit your narrative.

Overall homicide rates in Japan are some of the lowest in the world.

So no: if guns are restricted, people don’t pick up knives, hammers, or any other lethal weapon at the same rate.

My narrative remains intact — yours needs some work though.

You won't move to Japan, According to you Japan is racist. LOL.

Guns were restricted, Stabbings increased, People do pick up knives, hammers, or any other lethal weapon at the same rate.

Your narrative is a lie, You refuse to accept it

Once again, You strut around like you won, on the basis on the same failed talking points, Copied and pasted arguments. Links to biased liberal sites. rinse and repeat over and over ad nauseum.

Waste another day of your life embarrassing yourself on every Meme that triggers you. Your imaginary wife won't mind. Your fake law practice won't suffer. You will make everyone laugh at you, So you have that going for ya.

Neither agreeing or disagreeing, but according to this article, https://www.seeker.com/why-japans-crime-rate-is-so-low-1968210079.html, we can't just look at the low crime/murder rate in Japan solely based on the availability of either guns or knives. There is much more to it than that in terms of culture and societal factors which play a huge role as well. I was curious why their crime rate is so low and therefore thought I would shed some light on what I learned from the article.

That article is over 3 years old, so apologies for not providing something more current.

Everyone agrees it's the Japanese culture that makes the difference, Everyone except the anti-gun liberals using Japan as a model for low gun violence. I can't seem to find any graphs/charts and information showing how many liberals live in Japan, That has to be a mitigating factor.

Guess this meme made an impression on you!

You still haven’t changed your ways though — sad!

Come with some real information: rather than regurgitated right-wing talking points, vague gestures to made-up data, and insults, and then we can talk

Rofl, That Meme was made to describe liberals like you long before you crawled onto Flip.

You'll never change your ways, You're the Pigeon in the Meme.

All you have is the same regurgitated liberal talking points, Biased links, Copied and pasted arguments and made up data. You don't want to talk, You want to impose your ideology onto others, It's why you fall to acknowledge any facts that contradict your narrative.

I'm perfectly willing to debate in good faith with anyone who does the same. You were actually doing pretty well until you resorted to pigeon chess. Let's try to get this back on track.

Here's my chart again.

1. Do you have any way to dispute the information presented in this chart?
2. Can you explain why the homicide rate in America is so much higher than all these other countries? If not guns: What's your theory?

Note: edited for spelling errors. I hate typing on an iPad.

Just curious, how is gun control working in Mexico, or El Salvador, or the Philippines, or Venezuela, or Brazil, or the Bahamas?

It’s easy to cherry pick the data you want to demonstrate the conclusion you wish to draw. I read a book in grad school called “How to Lie with Statistics” and its ironic to see how much of the methods discussed in that tome are frequently used by the media and various special interest groups on both sides of literally ANY debate.

What’s much more difficult is to discuss each individual country’s unique culture surrounding the possession and use of firearms, its Constitution, its citizenry, and the regional issues within larger countries that cause people to use firearms to settle differences. Delete the data from five individual cities (NOLA, Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, and that famous”gun-free zone”, Chicago) from the US data and the numbers would paint a vastly different picture. The question is WHY are those five cities so violent ... and the answer is not “because they have guns.” Other cities have as many or more guns but those are not nearly as violent. Why?

If we could get beyond the intense desire of politicians to blame the guns rather than blaming the thugs pulling the trigger, maybe progress could be made. But until then, its just more typical rhetoric and carefully crafted charts that prove our cognitive bias.

The US is far from being ranked first in homicides as your chart seems to suggest. The top 3 nations are:

1. El Salvador- 108.8 intentional homicides per 100,000
2. Honduras- 63.8
3. Venezuela- 57.2

The US rate is 4.9, putting it way down the list at #94 out of 219. Remove those five cities mentioned above (and remove their total population count for an accurate comparison) and we drop down to #98.

Why don’t we focus on what exactly causes a street thug to illegally buy a gun and use it on the person who disrespected him instead?

Posting another country comparison chart that actually breaks out gun-related vs. non-gun related homicides, which is helpful.

1. Gun control vs. other factors: Indeed, gun control isn't everything. Poverty, drugs, and rule-of-law are a big part of this equation too. Because of that, I don't think it's proper to compare ourselves to drug- and gang-infested low-income countries (Philippines, Mexico, El Salvador, etc.) and certainly not to an economically crashing socialist dictatorship like Venezuela. Some of these countries may have gun laws on the books, but they sure don't enforce them.

Gun control that isn't enforced may as well not exist. Same analysis applies in the American cities you mentioned. Local gun control laws have proven sadly ineffective in a country like the U.S. awash in an estimated 393+ million privately-owned firearms.

I'm not aware of any data that shows some major American cities with higher firearm ownership rates have lower gun crime than others, as you reference. However, I am aware that in the case of St. Louis in particular, the crime data is a bit skewed because of a quirk of county border drawing (St. Louis City separated itself from St. Louis County in 1876, which means that St. Louis City is now mostly inner-city).

2. Cultural differences: You can certainly draw "cultural differences" between Japan and the U.S.; or South Korea and the U.S; or Iceland, Austria, Switzerland, etc. with the U.S. But guess what? You can just as easily draw "cultural differences" between Japan and South Korea, or Iceland and Japan, or Switzerland and Sweden, etc. etc. All of these countries are unique and culturally dissimilar in some ways. And yet: the charts I'm posting show that despite these countries' cultural differences, they've all managed to get their gun problem under control to a greater extent than we have here. Why? Simplest answer: More aggressive gun control.

What does aggressive gun control mean to you? What does that look like?

Here are eight stubborn facts to keep in mind about gun violence in America:

1. Violent crime is down and has been on the decline for decades. If you subscribe to the Freakonomics theory, it is due to abortion (don’t tell the fundamentalists)
2. The principal public safety concerns with respect to guns are suicides and illegally owned handguns, not mass shootings. Suicides account for two out of every three gun related deaths. But the US suicide rate is nothing compared to Japan’s.
3. A small number of factors significantly increase the likelihood that a person will be a victim of a gun-related homicide. Where do you live? Are you in a gang? Who is your partner? Those are the top three.
4. Gun-related murders are carried out by a predictable pool of people. Those with mental health issues, a history of domestic violence, and recidivism are your best predictors. Not cousin Billy Bob who likes to target shoot on the weekends.
5. Higher rates of gun ownership are not associated with higher rates of violent crime. Canada is ranked 12th in the world for the number of civilian-owned guns per capita and has one of the world’s lower homicide rates—but even some provinces have higher homicide rates than US. ... Culture again, eh?
6. There is no clear relationship between strict gun control legislation and homicide or violent crime rates. Great Britain has some of the strictest gun control laws in the developed world, but the violent crime rate for homicide, rape, burglary, and aggravated assault is much higher than that in the US. About 60% of burglaries in Great Britain occur while residents are home, compared to just 13% in the US, and British burglars admit to targeting occupied residences because they are more likely to find wallets and purses.
7. Legally owned firearms are used for lawful purposes much more often than they are used to commit crimes or suicide. In 2013, Obama ordered the CDC to assess existing research on gun violence. The report found (among other things) that firearms are used defensively hundreds of thousands of times every year. According to the CDC, “self-defense can be an important crime deterrent.”
8. Concealed carry permit holders are not the problem, but they may be part of the solution. Between 2007 and 2015, murder rates in the US dropped 16% and violent crime rates dropped 18%, even though the percentage of adults with concealed carry permits rose by 190%.

And here is my cherry picked chart.

The countries listed higher than the U.S. on your chart? Higher poverty, lower rule-of-law, and high gang activity/drug crime. All of which we both have already agreed are additional factors that contribute to homicide.

I note that many of those are Latino countries: so "cultural differences" are in play too. I can also play that game!

So, at this point I've offered a few short and simple explanations for why many countries have homicide rates higher than the U.S.

But so far, I haven't heard a great explanation from your side for the data presented in my chart. Why is the U.S. doing so much worse on this than equivalently wealthy and well-governed countries?

You were never debating, You were strutting around like a pigeon thinking you won by regurgitating the same talking points, Copied and pasted arguments, and biased links to propaganda sites you use in every debate
My disputes with you chart

1 It's outdated 2012-2014
2. It doesn't list stabbings in any country
3. Everything you post comes from biased sites
4 Explain why stabbings increased when guns were banned
5 Why don't you move to any country on your list, They aren't all racist, America will survive without you

Bonus questions
1 Explain why I am credited with 108 confirmed kills instead of my rifle.
2 I own my military grade sniper rifles, Semi-Auto rifles, shotguns and a variety of assorted small arms... Why haven't they killed anyone, Your statistics say there should have been a massacre somewhere.
3 Explain why you anti-gun nuts always blame the gun instead of the shooters.
4Why don't you blame the knife when there's a stabbing.
5 Why does everyone blame the terrorists for 9/11 instead of the airplanes they used.
6 How are people getting shot in gun banned cities like Chicago, It's as if murderers don't care if guns are banned.
7 Why are people getting shot in gun free zones, It's not like murderers would break the law.

Super bonus question
Why are you so arrogant you think you have the right to tell others what they can and can't own

Good questions! Here is another which I have for both you and Kylie since I don't own any firearms myself, but strongly believe in the right for others to own what they want. Why can't I take 2 9 mm pistols with a bag full of 15-30 round magazines, for reloading, into a gun free zone and do just as much damage as an AR-15? Is it the size of the bullet that is doing the most damage, the amount of times to reload, or the versatility of the firearm?

"1 It's outdated 2012-2014"
It takes time to gather and compile data from multiple countries. Charts like these are always going to be "out of date" to an extent. Regardless, these are real deaths that really happened in that timeframe. Why?

2. "It doesn't list stabbings in any country"
The charts I've posted show overall homicide rates regardless of weapons used. Here's one that breaks it out by gun-related vs. non-gun-related. I'm not sure what makes "stabbings" more important than hammers, poisonings, intentional homicides by car, etc.

3. "Everything you post comes from biased sites"
I'm not sure how you'd even know that or what you'd personally define as "biased." I get these from Google searches, not any particular go-to source.

4. "Explain why stabbings increased when guns were banned"
I don't know what you're referencing here honestly. Guns have been heavily restricted in Japan for a long, long, long time.

5. "Why don't you move to any country on your list, They aren't all racist, America will survive without you"
Because I love America, as I've explained, I just think we can do better on this one issue.

I may address your other points when I have time

1 The data is incomplete by 6 years, But that doesn't stop you from regurgitating your narrative. Stabbing deaths really happen. But they don't fit your narrative so you ignore them

2 Weapons are your whole point, Guns only matter when they fit your narrative, You don't care about stabbings, hammers, poisonings, intentional homicides by car, etc
Because you don't care about the victims, Only your narrative.

3 You're Not sure why anyone would question you, I was barely able to type that I was lmfao.
You cherry pick. You use outdated graphs and charts, Copied and pasted talking points from the same sites that helped indoctrinate you.

4 Once again you refuse to answer a question a child knows the answer to. Honestly I knew you wouldn't answer, It doesn't fit your narrative

5 You won't leave America because you love it so much, You tear it down and praise racist Japan every time a pro gun meme is created.

Overall
1 Incomplete
2 Deflection
3 Ignorance and arrogance
4 Ignorance deflection, And incomplete talking points. A l long, long, long time. Japan banned guns when Dinosaurs ruled. ROFL
5 You love America so much, You complain about it.

You don't have time to answer the other questions, Shocker. You libs always run out of time when you can't answer questions or provide facts.

That graph is dubious at best. (And seriously? A homicide tracking chart developed by a bank?)

Realizing that it claims to be per capita, there's still no way Canada's "intentional" homicide rate is so high relative to the claimed rate for the US.

Canada has 1/10th the population of the United States, so in order to reach nearly half the claimed per capita of the US, I'm pretty sure Canada's homicides in real numbers would put it at one of the most dangerous places in the world to live.

Okay — Here’s a chart by the American Journal of Medicine. Go ahead and try to dispute that source.

You’ll find all these charts I’m posting look the same, because the underlying data is the same. For that reason, I can find new sources for my propositions with ease.

When it comes to reading the chart, you’re not doing your math properly. “Per capita” accounts for population differences already. Canada is not more dangerous than the U.S. and certainly not one of the most dangerous places in the world.

Yet Canada has a high immigrant population! Funny how that works. Maybe immigration and violent crime aren’t linked nearly as closely as conservatives like to believe?

Or maybe they are, and that why Canada's number seems so high?

And look, I can link a chart too, but oh my, the US isn't even in the top 20 for intentional homicides, even with "so many shootings".

You didn't even notice your data is multivariate, but you are making a single variable claim...it's not just "gun regulations" this data is limited to "affluent" countries.

But you didn't make a statement that accounted for multiple variables.

I later read the discussion you had with another person, where you did acknowledge this isn't a single variable problem, and you later accounted for socioeconomics and other variables.

If your claim is true, that tightly regulated gun ownership, reduces not just gun deaths but all homicides, then we should be able to see such things across countries with similar regulations.

The problem is, that doesn't happen upon examination of UNIDOC data.

The issue is more complex and reliant on multiple variables, such as socioeconomic condition of the country in question.

For instance, multiple central American countries and island nations have very regulated gun ownership, with many outlawing guns altogether. Yet we see these same countries have significant firearm homicides and high overall homicide rates.

To boil a complex issue down to a single variable (regulation) is misguided.

I acknowledge those variables and did my best to control for them by picking similar-income countries

If you can think of a more sensible group of countries to use as a comparison, I'm listening

That is indeed the problem. You would need to have another large country, on that side Japan makes sense, but Japan also lacks our cultural and racial diversity. It also lacks a comparable incarceration rate, which would reasonably be a relevant variable to control and account for.

So we see the problem, we don't have a sufficient data set for comparison to draw any real meaningful conclusions from. You maybe correct that gun legislation may benefit, but you may also be incorrect, and I am not comfortable abandoning the 2nd Amendment over an analysis that's predicated on an insufficient dataset because "it's the best we got".

Well, I guess no country is truly comparable to the U.S. Canada's probably the closest. Australia and possibly New Zealand. Young, English-speaking countries with significant immigrant populations.

They've all gotten gun violence under control to some degree -- In Australia and New Zealand's case, quite well. And after implementing some tough gun buyback programs.

WE can regulate guns more than we do while still complying with 2A. It sets boundaries but we haven't reached them yet

This graphic is playing on emotions and offers little to the discussion. First we don't really have a gun death crisis. There are over 390 million guns in circulation in the country, and we have total gun homicides of what, approx 10,000 year? The death rate per gun doesn't even amount to 1% of half a percent. If there really was a crisis we would know it. Further total gun circulation has been increasing while homicides have been decreasing.

Secondly, Australia does make sense up to a point given the reasons you mentioned, but there a couple of issues. One, we couldn't institute their measures as they would violate the 2nd A. It was a mandatory gun buy back program. That is confiscation. Two, the gun deaths in Australia were already trending downward before the initial buy back program went into effect, which makes it irrational to attribute the decreasing trend to the aforementioned policy.

And why might you need it?
Is it because other people have decided that they also need one?

I'm not sure how it stands now, but let's not forget that last year, or maybe it was 2018, London, England actually surpassed New York City's homicide rate with just knife murders.

And England's gun laws are so strong that most of their police aren't even allowed to carry them.

New York's homicide rate is relatively low exactly because of stricter gun laws so that's hardly arguing in favor of gun ownership.

It is much easier to kill someone with a gun than it is with a knife and it is illegal to carry a knife with a blade over 3 inches without a valid reason in the UK.
It is not illegal to carry a gun in NYC.
It stands to reason that knife crime will be lower somewhere that guns are comparatively more readily available.

Police in England don't need to carry guns because other than a tiny percentage of exceptions, the public aren't carrying them.

"knife crime will be lower somewhere that guns are comparatively more readily available."... NO Shit Sherlock...

But the statistic is that Homicide via KNIFE in the UK out paces ALL Homicide in NYC

And that argument is relevant to everyone, is it?
Not just people living in certain areas?

The original meme: "to those who say NOBODY needs a gun".....

Your question: "why MIGHT you need a gun"..

My meme doesn't need to relate to everyone to be applicable in context.

So, can we pass a law that says you can just have one?

2A?

i haven't seen anyone say that. what i have seen a lot is you all making it sound like 'the Dems want all your guns!, trying to drum up anger on the right for something that isn't happening.

Pay attention to more of the news; maybe you should broaden your perspective by watching Fox News. And by the way, have you seen what’s happening in Venezuela ever since the government has taken the guns away from all the law abiding citizens? Maybe you didn’t learn your history lesson on what Hitler did regarding guns when he got into power before he started rounding up all the Jews.

you should think things thru before you post them, Runny. what if i was watching Fox News and someone i respect walked in on me?

i'm not anti-gun, Runs. i'm anti-dope. you're trying to push the idea that Dems want all your guns, and they don't want that. stop being a dope. try at least. every day.

Beto O’Rourke
Diane Feinstein
The constant barrage of unconstitutional laws proposed.
Where would it end?
Britain banned guns; now they want to limit what you can have in the way of a knife.
Once again I’ll say this; the problem is not guns. The problem is inappropriate violence. Gun free communities exist all across America. They are called prisons. Lots of acts of violence including murder occur there all the time without any gun being involved.

my apologies for interrupting your commercial.

No not all dems, but many do, and it is starting to happen.

your flat statement of factliness is unconvincing.

Who? What? Where?