Quote:
Originally Posted by BigV
Me.
I'm unarmed. I'm "defenseless" (by your tortured definition). I'm safe from violence. I'm not invisible, I'm not in hiding or in an undisclosed location. I'm not a sheep or a sheeple. This is FACTUAL, anecdotal, empirical, verifiable, first person evidence.
Will this turn your ridiculous argument? I believe it won't. Perhaps you are thinking of how to be safe from some hypothetical threat of violence. Well, in that* case, no, I'm not safe. But hey, I'm thinking of a different hypothetical threat of violence. Yeah, I'm safe from that one.
* There is ALWAYS some hypothetical threat that can be conjured up in your imagination or mine that could be prevented by having a firearm. It is equally likely that a different imaginary situation can be thought up where no firearm is needed. Just as it's equally possible to think up some situation where the firearm is present but inadequate. What. The. Hell. Ever. A far better, more rational, helpful, useful exercise of our intelligence is to think about where firearms *are* a good idea (protip, the answer is NOT everywhere at all times).
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You are ONE person - not "people". Your experience is the fruit of people who fought WITH GUNS, to give you a better (and yes, a safer), place to live.
Would we even HAVE a country, if we had no guns, and simply asked King George VI, "would you please leave us alone?".
How about those Kurds in Iraq? They had almost no guns, and when they displeased Saddam Hussein, he had their whole town killed with poison gas.
What about the Israeli's? Would they be alive today if it wasn't for their guns? Didn't they live without guns before the Holocaust? How did that work out, pray tell?
How about those 8,000 or so men and boys in Srebrenica? They had no guns. The Dutch army was there under UN auspices to protect them, remember? The Serbs just had too many guns, so they stood down, and surrendered.
The Serbs then demanded the Dutch uniforms to embarrass them, and took the men and boys from the city, into the forest - and killed every one of them.
Or go back a few years to an earlier massacre - same place (roughly), but this time it was of the Serbs, not the Bosniaks, who were slaughtered: Javor and Korita massacre's, 1941.
How about the Armenians in the early 1900's? They were pretty well unarmed. So the Turks slaughtered them by the tens of thousands.
How about the American Indian? Tomahawks, knives, and bows and arrows, were no match for guns. Did it work out well for them?
How about the Aztecs? Cortez just killed them off, lickety split - because he had guns and metal swords, and the Aztecs didn't. About the same, for the Inca's. No guns, you die.
Rosicrucians? Knights Templar? Jews in the UK, in the 1600's? All slaughtered or driven out.
You could fill up an entire encyclopedia with all the different groups that have been massacred because they didn't have guns (or have enough guns, or know how to use them well, etc.).
We didn't outlaw airplanes after 9/11 -- and we don't outlaw spoons, knives and forks, because of the obesity problem. That would be stupid.
Same with guns. Guns allowed us to be free, in the first place.
To be people - not sheeple.
You've simply been lucky, but disarming is a very dangerous decision.
Looking back and using history as a guide, it's been a fatal decision or circumstance, for millions.