Quote Originally Posted by Crazed Rabbit View Post
So killing people without cause is being compared to eating a tasty apple?

I think I need to reiterate something for our non-American friends: your doomsday scenarios and worrying about people going about shooting others because they can (just like others go about running people over with cars just because they can ) are totally without basis. We know this to be true because most states allow people to carry a concealed weapon with a permit. Some, Alaska and New Hampshire, allow anyone 21 or older to carry a concealed gun without any permit so long as they aren't a convicted criminal.

And still these states do not resemble your imagined dystopias.
To reiterate then, we do not need to make any assumptions about dystopias just yet. We merely have to observe a few key things:
(1) The probability of armed violence rises with the general availability of arms (and population size/density). Thus the absolute rates of violence tend to rise accordingly, as well.
(2) The non-violent (well at least not violent towards your fellow humans) use of arms are limited to a few specific settings; e.g.: sport.
(3) Those settings do not include the wider public space, not even the confines of a home.
(4) Violence using arms does occur in the public space.
Ergo, there is no pressing benefit particular to guns from allowing the use or possession of these in public space, but there is a definite cost to it.

In terms of self defense, the facts state that using a gun for defense means you're less likely to be injured.
Because the other person will be? The facts also state you're less likely to be injured in certain places where guns are de facto banned and self-defense using guns is therefore not an option. Vastly less likely, in fact; see the point I reiterated above.

And no one should be starving or sick in this world either. Let's not base policy on unattainable utopias, shall we?
Which isn't the case at all. The law/policy is based around the fact that people who want to enjoy guns for whatever it is about guns that fascinates them can do so on, say, a shooting range or a hunt, and that banning guns outside of that use improves the conditions for all. Funnily enough, it works.

Seamus, at least, admits that to him to interpret the right to keep and bear arms unconditionally is worth 21000 deaths a year. (That's what the stat of 7 per 100K works out on the USA population rounded down to 300M.)