Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Just playing devli's advocate here- if the status quo is that most people have guns - then there is philosophy of mutually assured destruction that keeps an equilibrium in the society.

I guess that's where the saying "If guns are criminalised, only criminals will have guns" comes from.

after living on this planet for almost 50 years, i still see no benefit in possessing one or many. i want a flamethrower though.

It's definitely a tough question. I couldn't come up with anything either. I asked this question specifically because there are no conservative talking points (that I am aware of) that confront this question. It's always interesting to see what people say (or don't say) when there aren't talking points to fall back on.

I'm not pro-gun in the slightest, but I always find it curious when the rallying cry of "MAKE GUNS ILLEGAL" starts up after every tragedy, as if that would magically and instantly solve the problem. I think there are societal factors at play that run deeper than whether or not guns are legally available. Maybe I'm completely wrong, but I suspect that you could make guns illegal in the States right now and it wouldn't do all that much to reduce the gun fatalities over there. I mean, how's that war on drugs working out? You guys don't have a drug problem anymore, right?

What about the revenue that is generated from the industry itself? This would include $$ associated with the manufacture and sale of the weapon.

This thread is about value, not legality. The drug comparison is a poor one, considering you can't grow guns in your backyard.

I guess you could build one, but that's a different discussion.

As with all things, it's not necessarily a law change that need to happen. Laws don't drive the zeitgeist, the zeitgeist drive laws (or should).

People need to be dissuaded from wanting to have guns. In Europe, people don't really want a gun, and don't even see a need for one. Sure, there are hunters and they have guns, and sure you can get one if you're in a dangerous area with bears and shit, but actually getting a gun is when you're hunted by mafia or something like that and you're desperate. Why would you ever want to walk around with a gun? I don't really get it.

Perhaps people have a fantasy about being a hero, where they shoot the bad guy. Everyone has that as a kid; most kids also grow up.

There's something deeply satisfying about firing a gun - power at your fingertips. Control. Maybe it's a control thing. People don't like to be out of control, with a gun they always have something to fall back on to control the situation.

Maybe it's a macho thing, although women carry guns too. I don't know the statistic of it, but I would imagine more men do than women. Men are intrinsically destructive while women are creative - it's our nature. We men beat up our rivals to gain access to that sweetest fruit of all: peach. Perhaps it's an extension of power; an penis extension. Don't pull the trigger, squeeze it tenderly. You are the gun; look down the aim at your target and fire.

Maybe there's some brain vs brawn in it. I would wager good money that as intelligence goes up, gun ownership goes down. No statistics to back it up, but I'd love to see if it's true. Brains are taking over everything - it's the decade of the Nerd. Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams could get all the girls and gets all the admiration in the big world, while Dick McKickaball failed to make the team and married Candace the exotic dancer his friends hired for him on his 21st birthday. But at least he could shoot JJ Abrams in the face with his 4½ inch death stick.

Society doesn't really gain much from guns does it?

It has its own market and thus gets people to move money around with someone around to skim the top. dft said this in point 2 as well. This could be done for worse stuff though - snuff porn has a market; heroin has a market.

Mutually Assured Destruction is always a fun acronym to throw around. If everyone does eye for an eye, the world will go blind, I've heard somewhere. Probably a shitty western or something.

Feelings of security? If I have a gun, do I feel safer from the people around me that may or may not also have guns? I would feel safer in my home, I think. If I feared home invasions. Home invasions are a weird thing; very rare in europe to the best of my knowledge, even though we don't have guns. Seems like something that would only happen if there was an enormous disparity between poor and rich, making the poor desperate (and lazy) enough to want to do a home invasion. If Brian the Aryan Man-God makes 10 million billion $$ a year, and Rommel the Dirty Mexican doesn't get anything because he has to pay child support off his social security and also cover his meth addication, then the chance of Rommel doing a home invasion is greater than if Rommel makes half of what Brian does. Maybe we need to raise the floor, instead of raising the ceiling on the extrema of wealth to lose the desire of guns.

Maybe it's all of the factors at once, and we have someone like the NRA pushing everyone to want all of them. I want security. I'm afraid. I have a small dick. Home invasions happen all the time. Schools get shot by crazies, I need to defend myself.

Bang!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

There... the demons went away. Guns are your friends.

To answer your question:

None


The end.


There are the bizarre arguments like mutually assured destruction, and the need for a militia just in case your government becomes so power hungry it sends in troops against you.

But both of those are rubbish.

guns have NO value at all. unless you're @choggies neighbour

You could ask the same question about fundamentalist conservatives. What ARE the benefits?

Alex Jones On Piers Morgan Part 1 has been added as a related post - related requested by dag on that post.

Benefits:
1. If a government did decide to crush it's citizens by way of direct physical means, then the citizens would have a marginally increased chance of defending themselves against small task forces.

2. If someone without invitation enters your home lacking any degree of friendly intentions, then having a small remote control sized devise to 'turn them off' could be beneficial to yourself and your loved ones, provided you knew how to use it safely and could analyze a situations quickly and calmly enough while rationally determining when to and when not to act with said device.

As a general statement about the item and not the skill or mentality of using the item, I think guns are a very effective, reliable, strategically advantageous and intelligently engineered tool for destroying a target from range while increasing your level of safety as best one can.

.. and it is for this core reason above while combined with others that I think civilians should not have them for a reason as illegitimately justified as 'I want one'.
Combine the high degree of effectiveness of the tool, while noting what the single effectiveness is (i.e. quick ranged destruction), with mental instabilities and you have a potentially negative and hard to control situation. Arming more people to act as defenders only further pushes the negative potential to higher levels as they are also subject to fluctuations of rational thought.

For those who want to 'shoot down' this above statement as a curable and treatable problem of mental health, you are inherently and naturally wrong. Emotions are not rational thought, they are effective survival mechanisms precisely because they can easily blind us to some logical thought processes that could otherwise get in the way of us doing what seemingly needs to be done, depending on which emotion is in question and any circumstantial details of the specific situation.
Emotions evolved over a long period of time and subsequently are not geared beneficially for all the challenges we face in this modern world, the result is byproduct effects.

In regards to my 1st stated benefit, if someone genuinely thinks that because they have a tool that can spit out 600 rounds of lead a minute with an effective accuracy range of 800 meters, that this is going to give them a realistically decent chance of going head to head and holding their own against an army of people who are just like themselves (i.e. standard human attributes) with the difference of this activity being the life they have dedicated themselves to professionally for years.. then that pro-gun human is grossly delusional.
The previous point doesn't even begin to touch on the sheer difference of resources in terms of quantity let alone quality, in that if you actually managed to hold your own for long enough, you would get bombed into oblivion without ever having a clue it was going to happen until at best a second or 2 before it occurred.

Re my 2nd stated benefit, if the intruder has already gained access to your house before you have your tool in hand and aimed at them, then there is as reasonable a chance they could get to you before you can defend yourself, at which point that tool could then potentially be used against you or you loved ones.

PS: crap, that was meant to be a short post.

I guess there's a benefit in teaching someone to use a tool that is capable of killing you. The respect and discipline involved is something of a life lesson, and can be extended to any number of potentially deadly things that we interact with more or less often.

When I was about 12, my dad and I went to a gun range in Florida for the first time, and he put his 1911 .45 in my hands, and showed me how to hold it, how to check if it was loaded, how to load it, and how to shoot it. He showed me how to respect the thing for the destructive life-taker that it is.

"Don't point a gun at anything you don't want to destroy" he said over and over again. I was terrified. I still enjoy shooting guns, even though I don't own any, and don't think I'll ever want one, but I can see the allure.

When you infuse an object with that level of emotional mass... it's like you can feel it in the room with you. The thing becomes more than a tool, it's a little gravity well of destructive power.

That's how I see them anyway. The people who are nonchalant about them scare me though. Stupid kids pointing guns at themselves in facebook cover photos. These people are the reason we can't have nice things.

How might gun ownership help a society? Well, it depends on the society doesn't it? Take Switzerland, for instance, which doesn't really have a standing army but inducts citizens into the militia and requires them to keep their firearms at home so they can mobilize quickly in the event of a crisis. I'd say there's a pretty strong benefit to their society (i.e. defense of the nation) in that case.

But I think @dystopianfuturetoday was probably asking about the benefits to a society in the U.S., where gun ownership is optional but also so prevalent So I'll focus on that area.

1) As has already been mentioned, from an economic standpoint, society benefits from the sale of guns and their related items through both taxes and levies and through the provision of jobs for those who produce guns, sell guns, or manage gun ranges. I have absolutely no idea exactly how big or small this benefit is in the U.S. but it certainly exists.

2) Armed citizens can (and do) stop "dangerous situations" from happening long before first responders have a chance to arrive and in some cases before they even have a chance to be notified. "Dangerous situations" here refers not only to crime but attacks by wild animals in rural areas.

3) Deterrence. Certain types of crime become much more risky to the professional criminal if you have to assume everyone is armed at all times.

Given these potential benefits to society, the question really then becomes do these benefits outweigh the costs to society? And also, what of the benefits to the individual? Certainly these must be weighed as well. CNN contributor David Frum wrote an interesting piece last year exploring these issues. You can find it here.

I'm not the only person on this site who digs metal for metal's sake, just the rantinessst! Besides, guns will be around longer than I will and in the hands of some folks trustworthy and some not-n like gwiz665 said, we'll be able to 3-D print whatever we need once the polymers are in order and pirate guns off the internet just like YOU people pirate movies and software!

Oh and I'd be happy to be the last person in line to turn in their weapons of crass destruction!

We don't need gun control, we need bullet control.
I think a bullet should cost $5000...

I know it's a funny Chris Rock routine that you're quoting, but the reality of the situation is that you can make your own bullets for super-cheap. I guess they could start restricting the sale of primers as well, because they are a lot harder to make on your own.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=6ZuaihzGiSU

Part of the love of firearms comes from positive associations with firearms. If we grew up with them in a positive light, then we are more likely to see them in a positive light. But when someone else demands that they be taken away (or at least the appearance of taking away) access to certain/all firearms, its taking away a part of the person.

In regards to quoting statistics of gun related deaths, I think the focus should be more on the violent mentality behind the death. The scenario I picture is one guy angry at another guy, so he does what he can to hurt the other guy. If he has a gun, he'll use it. If he has a knife, he'll use it. If he uses the gun, he may have a much greater chance of killing the other guy before his anger subsides. If he has a knife, his anger may subside before the other guy is dead. Put simply, the gun amplifies the effect of a violent mentality, murders may go down, but aggravated assaults may go up. The underlying violence is still there.

(USA Statistics)

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl20.xls

-Firearms take the lead for murders. Note these statistics do not include "justified manslaughter" what the legal system deemed to be deaths that were justified (ie self-defence)

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl21.xls

-For robberies, they look like the play a significant part but are still shared with others (I didn't really get into it as the numbers are a bit varied and I wanted to keep the post focused)

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10tbl22.xls

-Aggravated assaults, firearms generally play a smaller role as compared to robberies or murders.

Updated the list

@Sepacore - In the case of Nazi Germany, The Taliban, 1970's Chile and the confederate south, the gun owners were the tyrants. I think gun owners are more likely to support a repressive government smashing it's citizens than stopping it. Even if you don't take recent history into account, guns don't do much against tanks, drones, helicopters, SEAL teams and stealth bombers.

@aimpoint - You make a good point about growing up with guns. To those who grow up in more rural/isolated areas, guns are a useful part of life - hunting, sport, defending your property from nasty critters, etc. Those who grow up in urban/denser settings see guns as things that facilitate crime - drivebys, robbery, murder, domestic abuse, etc.