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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (528880)	11/13/2009 6:38:14 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Respond to of 1576643

That would be an analogy, but a poor one in some ways. As the number of guns increases in the US, the likelihood that the potential victim can be defended goes up. That's particularly true in the mass shooting situations, which often unfold over minutes or tens of minutes, and would likely have been ended much sooner had people in the area been armed (notice how they happen in areas were people are not allowed to, or at least customarily do not carry guns). Only a relatively small number of countries have nukes. If you had a very small number of people with guns then preventing proliferation of guns would indeed reduce people's chances of getting shot. But guns haven't been rare in this country for as long as we've been a country. Also if guns where so rare, it would give a huge advantage to those who have the guns, and it would put people less capable of defending themselves hand to hand at a decided disadvantage. There's a reason for the old quote "God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal." Not that all people armed with firearms are equal but they are more equal with firearms then they are without them. A hundred pound woman who's not an unarmed combat expert (and maybe even if she is, if the guy twice her size also knows something about fighting, skilled and big, tends to beat skilled and small), would have a problem fighting off a fit two hundred pound rapist. Guns equalize the equation to a great extent. Nukes provide some element of equalization as well, but I'd see that as more of a bad thing than a good one, making North Korea or Iran more equal is a minus not a plus.