> Imagine if the US suddenly had a dictator
This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
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This is why we have the second amendment. And the constitution as the thing to which office-holders swear allegiance to rather than to "the party" or "the president".
Black Panthers carried guns to protect protests, and having guns created a situation where cops could not rush in and beat dissent into submission. There is a strong argument that without the second amendment, the Civil Rights Act would not have been passed, and we would still be living in an institutionally segregated society.
I don't own a gun and don't feel I need one because I'm a privileged urban white. Gun control has historically been used as a tool to disarm Black Americans: the NRA supported gun control in response to the Black Panthers! (https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-...)
Any discussion of gun control in America must account for the self-defense rights of Americans who do not have adequate protection from the police.
Interestingly, that would be most of them, with the supreme court ruling that the police does not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...
And it definitely makes it less safe for the rest of us in society.
If someone has threatened you with a gun or you live in an area with increased gun violence, I would expect that greatly increases the chances that you'd want to acquire your own. This cohort would already be at a much higher risk of gun death before they owned a gun as well.
There has never been a placebo controlled double blind study on gun ownership. Probably never will be because of ethical concerns.
It probably does increase risk, but I expect the effect size is much lower than 2-3x.
Until then, an attempt to ban all guns is not only a politically infeasible waste of energy, but also seems like a racist attack on the self-defense rights of the disempowered.