You cannot buy a kitchen knife because people MAY use it cause harm.
It is like forbidding the use of roads because it MAY be used to <insert illegal activity here>. Uses (usage?) of roads are even more broad than uses of knives.
I think it is easier to argue in favor of knives (or against the prohibition of ... of knives) than guns, for this reason alone.
Yes I can. I have knives I bought recently in my kitchen.
How could you possibly believe that people in the UK can't buy knives? Do you realise how foolish that sounds?
You also can't carry one in public without reasonable cause - which in the end is decided by a judge.
The irony.
Just as foolish as these ways are to prevent violence.
These criminals might switch to forks, better get your Government get one step ahead of them.
And no, you cannot buy kitchen knives if you are under a certain age, it is ought to prevent a lot of crimes, I am sure.
A gun can be used for recreational shooting.
A gun can just be an historical collectors' piece.
A gun can be used in researching bullet proof vests and other equipment for a startup looking to sell to law enforcement/military.
There are many reasons for gun ownership. Ultimately, the reason should be that the individual is free to do as he/she chooses so long as he/she doesn't initiate a violent interaction.
The most often cited reason for banning firearms is the prevention of school shootings. For some reason, everyone is focused on the gun and not the fact that students wish to do violence at schools. What is it about the modern educational system that students wish to perpetrate violence in the schools to other students and teachers? Why isn't the mental health of the American youth at the center of this conversation?
Why is "wide range of use" being used as the metric rather than "societal good"?
While there are downsides, there's more to it.
No spray, no airgun, no folding mace, absolutely nothing can be used in self defense.
Except for the alarm.
Care to explain?
Additionally, it is OK for you, because it might not be of interest to you, but given that the UK is doing all sorts of absurd stuff, what would happen if they did something absurd with regarding to the thing you like?
Guns are more likely to cause accidental death or suicide than to save your life. Big cats and bears can be dealt with using sprays and other measures.
A bit of sport shooting isn't worth having to train kindergartners in active shooter drills.
Doubt. More like 70K. Far fewer than incidents where guns were used to cause harm.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/debunking-the-guns-...
It likely reduces knife crime. Much as denying sales of lighters and flamable fluids to minors makes fires started by children less likely. (This deeply offended me as an adolescent who enjoyed burning things.)
Is there a benefit to society of allowing minors to buy knives?
We don't have laws to make bad things like murder completely impossible. We do it to make them less likely.
Fires though, I can definitely believe it does prevent some arson.
> Is there a benefit to society of allowing minors to buy knives?
The default is "no ban". You need an argument the other way around. I think it is a silly question by itself. Is there a benefit to society of allowing people to skydive?
If a kid really wanted to hurt another, could have done it through other means. Could it be that more kids in the US have violent tendencies for whatever reasons? It would be nice to figure out those reasons.
In the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse stuff I remember Americans saying that going armed to a protest (not just that guy but others) was reasonable and routine because you might need to defend yourself if things go bad. In much of the rest of the west the general idea is that if you’re going somewhere you think you might need a weapon - you probably shouldn’t go.
But that's the point - if the courts have found that defense is lawful, then it becomes a question of why it's possession (not even use and proportionality) would not be. Then you end up in a weird state where people can make up reasons to have a hammer or something else on them rather than have something potentially more reasonable/effective like pepper spray. Allowing some limited non-lethal tool seems reasonable if defense is actually something to support.
Is there some research on this? Not just talking about guns, but even things like pepper spray.
"if you’re going somewhere you think you might need a weapon - you probably shouldn’t go."
I generally agree with this. I do wonder how this fits in the overall system. This assumes there are places that you could need a weapon, or where weapons could be used against you. It also assumes you always have a choice to avoid the area. If these high risk areas exist, how does the entire population avoid them? If that were even possible, the threats would also redistribute. Examples like Rittenhouse might be textbook for easily avoidable situations that turned bad (hence the news coverage), but I'm not sure it's representative of the full range of situations (the stuff that doesn't make the news).
It’s almost like gun enthusiasts are, conveniently, completely incapable of processing the concept of “force multiplication”.
[1]https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/polands-top-cop-accidenta...