ohheyisayokay

As someone who literally just got my CSP card, this is not inspiring...

Oh she was great!

Fine, here's an upvote, dad...

With all the bajillions of satellites being put into space, and the ever-growing cloud of space junk already around our planet, how do you plan to go about doing what you're doing without creating more of a mess and altering the night sky, as people are complaining that Starlink will do?

That's a very passionate and anecdotally convincing argument, and I fucking hate that you experienced any of that. A friend and coworker of mine was jumped at a baseball game and the brain damage ended his life as he knew it. It's horrible.

But "we were victims of violence" doesn't mean a gun would have solved it.

Every scenario you just described, I could replace "then tell me you don't need a gun" with "thank Christ the attackers didn't have a gun."

This argument assumes that you're the only one armed, and you get to your gun before they do, and that you take them out before they can incapacitate you.

I hate to say it, but do you think that any of these surprise attacks would be stopped by a gun? 3 on 1, 4 on 1, 8 on 1. In a world where everyone has guns, none of these guys would be packing? None of them would think to restrain the arms? None of them would point a gun at you while mugging you?

I got robbed once, right on the street by two guys who were at a party with me less than an hour before. They told me they had a gun and if I tried anything or ran, they'd shoot me. They didn't have it drawn on me, but I couldn't keep both of them in my line of sight at the same time. Say I had a gun. How does that save me? I'm not Raylan Givens. If I draw there's no guarantees I beat them. If I draw on guy 1, and both of them are packing, either one might shoot me before I shoot. Or guy 2 drops me after I shoot guy 1. If guy 2 is the only one packing, and I draw on guy 1, I'm dead. The best case scenario is that guy 1 is the only one armed, cause then MAYBE I can draw and shoot him fast enough that he can't draw and shoot me, if I can kill him right away without aiming. Now double those guys. Now double them again. There are your 8. If even half of them are as armed as you, you're dead.

Your friend scared off a rapist with a gun. Mine scared one off with a fencing sword. Another is pretty fucking convincing with a taser.

But study after study has found that more guns doesn't equate to more safety. In 2017, a study found that rape rates were actually higher in states that eased concealed permit laws. Similarly, a study found that guns were used in self defense extremely rarely, and were about as effective as other methods, like calling for help.

Your argument depends entirely on the victim being the only person in the situation who has a gun and not being caught by surprise. It also completely ignores that the proliferation of guns into everyone's possession would mean that not only would the bad guys in all of your examples have guns and be much more ready to use them in these situations, but every drunken asshole at a bar, every angry driver, and every disgruntled employee would have a perfect tool for killing right on their hip. And when the situation got too hot, it wouldn't be fists that flew, but bullets.

Can you imagine a bar where everyone has a gun, the music is loud, and someone shoots? What happens next? Everyone just stand there patiently and wait? All those good guys with a gun, ready to stop the bad guy with a gun, armed with a full magazine, an empty drink, and only partial information? You think that's gonna go better than no guns being in the bar in the first place?

If you want to imagine a world where anyone can have a gun, you have to imagine how these scenarios play out if everyone has one.