No. of Recommendations: 5
Sound about right?
No. I mean, I know you're trying to be funny - but that's the same kind of willful mischaracterization of another side's position that makes your own side seem unreasonable and unwilling to have an actual conversation about these issues.
A short version of the Republican version is as follows:
Crime exists, is not infrequent, and our criminal justice system is geared almost entirely towards deterrence through after-the-fact punishment, not physically interrupting crimes before people get hurt. I am not scared of my own shadow - I have a legitimate, fact-based concern that someone may attempt a crime of violence against me or my family, and would like to be able to stop them in that moment.
Secondarily, the existence of an armed population is an important check against the democracy devolving into a security state - even if that seems unlikely.
Finally, the existence of an armed populace is protected by the Constitution, and thus needs to be ensured even if specific instances of it might have negative consequences (in the same way that the First Amendment protects Nazis). While you get specific negative consequences that can be quite bad (Nazis and white supremacists and other awful people can organize!), the general rule benefits society and its citizens (government doesn't get to decide what speech can exist). You can't have free speech without suffering some Nazis, and you can't have an armed populace without having gun violence - but the question of whether we are going to have free speech or an armed populace has already been decided by The People.
