Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests

> 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".

I think it is unfortunate that so many Americans don't know about the history of the Black Panthers. In US public school system, we are taught that the Civil Rights Act was won through peaceful marching - this is not the whole story.

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.

> 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...

Owning a gun makes it 2-3x more likely someone in your family will die by a gun. So it makes you less safe, not more. https://slate.com/technology/2015/01/good-guy-with-a-gun-myt...

And it definitely makes it less safe for the rest of us in society.

If you have a gun in your house and are responsible with it, nobody will be at risk.

That argument is pretty much a "no true Scotsman" type argument.

You can't discard datapoints you don't like because they're not "responsible" firearm holders.

No, you can. Owning a gun for self defense is an individual decision, so individual responsibility must be considered.

You can’t say that the Americans who want guns for self defense are better off without them because statistically, across the population, they increase danger.

Why can't you say that? Every decision you make is an individual decision. Whether or not to vaccinate yourself is an individual decision, owning a gun, driving a car, looking both ways. All can have consequences for others besides yourself.