Just When You Thought Arizona Couldn't Get Stupider...

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With weapons? I thought you live in a free and democratic nation? I'm pretty sure the US and UK is nothing like Libya where violence is necessary. For a long time I believed I was living in a very socially advanced nation, still do.

You surely know my stance on freedom and democracy by now.

Ah-huh. You go do that.
Don't take it personally but, that sounded kinda...immature. 'I'm gonna get a handgun but I'll just stick to knives for now'. Can't help but look down at that. Sorry.

Unfortunately, I am beneath the age in which I can legally carry a gun (in alaska). If it is illegal to carry a knife though: so what, I will still carry a knife. I don't need to go through the black market to obtain a decent knife (whereas I would to get a gun right now, and it would be pointless since I couldn't take it with me when I move to the lower 48 in a few months).

Immature that I haven't gone to the black market despite having easy connections with it? I'll try to remember your bizarre understanding of maturity when discussing this nonsense with you

Ah-huh. Well I consider carrying weapons to be incredibly stupid.

I am so not expecting you to watch my back if I go anywhere with you at all.

Only for a while, till they lose them to the cops, pay a high fine and may even spend a lengthy time behind bars. The law is quite strict on carrying weapons, for which I'm thankful.

So your surviving crime isn't sloppy. You seem to think it is inevitable that the cops will not only find their weapons but also seize them. I find that highly amusing.

Then spend the rest of their lives on the run or behind bars. Plus he better do it right, If I disarm him, he'll be locked in a little room for months on end. Maybe even years.

You're going to link a knife wound to someone's unregistered knife now? Knife is a quick job if done well, especially if done unexpectedly. Why not simply spend the rest of their life more chelaxed for having taken a thing from your dead clutches?

The thing about crime is that it is opportunistic in nature... if you pick a poor target, you don't last long. Seems to me that all you catch are the criminals that are so because of poverty. You miss the truly 'depraved' people who make a living off of it. Of course it has nothing to do with your cops being unaccustomed to dealing with weapons

We don't need to take weapons out with us. The law is already quite heavy on anyone silly enough to carry a weapon with them. Could find yourself paying a £5000 fine and may end up in the slammer for a lengthy time.

Because heavy law stops crime, amirite? Wrong... it morphs crime. Crime doesn't heed law... it hides from law. I'd far rather pay a 5000£ fine and keep my sorry hide than be shot.

I meant no need for them when out in public. I have never encountered a situation where I thought "I could do with a knife" when out of my home. People who do have a use for them are allowed to carry them if their possession can be justified.

Bottle opener, box cutter, letter opener, cheese slicer, cut sinew and bones away from meat of a chicken, cut bandage if someone is punctured, pry something open with the flat edge, be on hand to stab someone shooting people in the street, stop a solo robbery of a bank cold, neatly cut a piece of paper out of a notebook, carve your initials into a tree with a lover, open a banana from the top with relative ease, etc?

Lots of uses for knives. Not so many for guns, of course, But for knives? I'd rather have one than not wherever I am.

Do you actively want the populace to have tanks? Drive around fully armed and ready to kill anyone else that has a tank that they might use against them? No? Well then you are against FREEDOM! Do you actively want the populace to all own tactical nukes? To protect themselves from other people who may have nukes? Because you obviously don't trust the government to protect you from them. No? THEN YOU ARE AGAINST FREEEEEDOOOOM!!

Our military should be putting our tanks to full use on the battlefield in foreign countries, so while I of course would like our populace to have access to tanks: it is not in the interest of either the people or the government to have these used in our own country. Same thing goes for a bazooka or a mortar missile. You wouldn't believe how messy these explosive weapons/tanks can be. I can see a use for tanks in surveying (clearing the line)... but something of that much power is better used clearing a line of enemy forces than a forest.

I am indeed against freedom, kiddo... but not when it comes to guns, swords, and especially knives.

Same goes for tactical use. Leave those in a military's capable hands, as you aren't going to be able to use it effectively.

I don't trust the government to not use tanks and tactical nukes on its own people. A quick glance at soviet russia should tell you what I think of what government can pull. Luckily, tanks and nukes can drastically hurt infrastructure, and it is rather hard to take out guerilla warfare with tanks and nukes (especially once your people start mining the roads).

Obviously I have exaggerated things to make a point. But I still think it's a valid point, you don't need or want tanks or nukes surely? Because nobody else has them, so you don't need them. It's the same here with guns.

A poor point, we don't have enough hands in the military to hold all of the AK-47s made. We do, however, have enough for all of the tanks and tactical nukes.

*I* want a tank. And I'd love to have the tactical nukes too. However, the people don't need a tank to deal with crime. I can see grenades by people who've handled them before... but it's hard to justify the amount of property damage an explosion causes. Oftentimes you risk damaging a thing being stolen, or the damage done to property is greater than the worth of the thing stolen.

I have already said I understand why you, in the U.S. feel the right to own a gun is important, and I have agreed with you. Here in the U.K. society has decided that nobody needs guns, nobody is pushing to own guns and nobody I have ever met has said they would want a gun, I'm all for personal freedoms but when a society sends such a clear message on an issue as serious as having the means in your hands to end countless peoples lives then I'm all for listening to what everyone wants for the betterment of society.

Nobody except the cops, of course? I know what corrupt cops in alaska who have guns have done to those without. An officer was arrested up here 6 months-a year ago for raping I think 8(?) different women under the threat of gunpoint after pulling them over. I think that would have gone down differently if all of those women had been armed.

Your ability is not to end countless people's lives. Don't over-inflate yourself and others. At my very best, i could maybe bring down a dozen unarmed people with a gun(s). And that's assuming I'm extremely lucky and I strike a place where nobody has a gun, and nobody rushes me with a knife (why do you think most of these mass shootings occur in hospitals and schools?).

Stop implying I or anyone who is against arming the populace is against freedom, It's incorrect and pathetic.

It is incorrect that you denying a freedom is against specified freedom? Pathetic, i might believe. But then, I also believe your belief that your society is better for having a populace unarmed to be pathetic

That said, thinking that anyone can carry a weapon designed to kill (even a combat knife has well known alternate uses) in public says that the:
a) The streets aren't safe.
b) The police cannot be depended on.
c) Someone is out to get me.

A and B are a governmental problem. Fix them.

C is purely in your head and is more akin to believing in a magic man in the sky (who's really that voice in your head). It is a sign of mental illness, mayhap, to think that carrying a weapon everyone does nothing but increase the available weapons in a population.

It doesn't say that the streets are not safe, it says we can respond to unsafe streets.

Why would the police be depended upon to protect you unless they own you? I contend that the police do not own me, therefore I must protect myself if I am to have any protection.

Someone could be out to get you, but this is unlikely. Also please remember that I am for people being able to take basic combat classes in "high school". Completely obligatory classes on how to defend yourself in a variety of situations.

Also, if we consider certain criminal tendencies to be mental illness, then it is even crazier to think that a sane populace is buying weapons to defend themselves against the insane, which by definition is defending yourself against an ambiguity as you have no way of identifying who, what, where or when, can't ascribe motive and certainly can't articulate who truly is after you because they ARE CRAZY. You can't predict crazy.

Luckily, we don't have to predict crazy... we can't do that even with an unarmed populace. The thing that an armed populace has that an unarmed one does not is the ability to respond to crazy.

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I disagree with the whole - "Criminals have guns, so we should have them too!". Muslim fanatics have bombs, should we also? No one would agree to carrying a bomb around with them.

Maybe you've never had a good use for an explosion, but I sure have. Not often in a city life of course... but out here? Lots of use for a bomb. Luckily, we have heavy equipment, so we don't need bombs (very often at all).