- Simply, guns are fun. Marksmanship is a serious sport of discipline and self-control.
- Hunting is also great recreation, is sometimes good for population control, and hunting is another reason for preserving and protecting nature.
- Self-defense. Sometimes, you need to use violence for self defense. Guns are a great way to apply violence.
- Independence. Partly, this ties in with self-defense above. Partly, this is about the government applying 'collective punishment' on all gun owners for the action of a very select few. Finally, some of this is about being able to resist a potential unjust government (i.e. the militia mentioned in the second amendment)
Now, all of these points have counter arguments. I think non of them hold up to the point of "we should keep semi-automatic weapons with 30 round magazines". But the arguments exist, and ignoring them isn't gonna help convince those that want to keep their guns.
On a purely technical level, I think the problem with the arguments you've mentioned are they don't generally stand on an even footing with the arguments against gun-ownership, except perhaps the one about self defense. Gun violence is a problem that costs lives, tears apart communities, and destroys families. For gun ownership to make sense, it needs to serve a similarly grave purpose. In that vein, only self-defense would fit the bill.
At which point, we break out the statistics - and it turns out that guns are kind of terrible for self defense. I think Americans would be better off just paying more taxes (with the money they would have spent on guns), and spending the money on police or social programs.
That said, many iconic possessions of western society are pretty horrible from a cost-benefit perspective. So I guess guns are just the most egregious.
There is a theory that democracy flourishes, when the Government is not that much better armed than its citizens. So, the idea that we need to be armed against tyranny.
There are a couple of problems with this, in present-day America. First, as citizens get better armed with greater lethal force, simultaneously, the police have militarized. So while people are better armed, authorities are too.
The other problem, requires some deeper understanding. Tyranny is always a threat, but the tyrannical government of the 21st century won’t bust in to take your guns. They don’t need to. The tyranny is more subtle, often financial, and when they control public opinion they don’t need to take the guns.
I also missed the argument "gun-ownership is part of my identity" it is not an argument that comes up, because people don't expect it to convince gun-opponents. But I think it is the main reason opposition to gun-control is so strong. Thank you for pointing that out.
Anyone who truly believes private citizen gun owners in the US could ever band together and overthrow the US government is deluded, at best. The US military would shut them down in record time.
Generally, convincing people isn't helped by immediately dismissing their entire position as trivially wrong and deluded.
Who's doing that, though? Seems like a very small minority of people say "there is no possible reason for owning guns" and then refuses to elaborate when presented with possible reasons.
Let's not hold the two sides to different standards of argumentation.
On the other hand, as a reasonable, intelligent adult who reads and understands statistics, I can say without any doubt they are awful for the USA as a whole. So, just like I'd ban leaded gas, selling alcohol to ten year-olds, and driving drunk, I'd ban guns. There are many, many less harmful things to go full-libertarian on than machines designed to kill people.
The check on violent government overreach are the moral compasses of individual soldiers, peaceful protests and a free media. If we get past all of these things, no "well regulated Militia" is going to stop the U.S. Army. The best chance would be state national guards. My point here is that fully automatic fire, tanks, artillery and air support make any resistance useless. Perhaps a guerrilla war could be fought, but to someone seeking complete control fighting guerrillas is an annoyance, not an obstacle.
This is mostly because the FDA tightly restricts ownership of 'destructive devices', which are the weapons needed to fight an effective war.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/03/3...
Likewise, given an active shooter at a school and armed teachers, how do police tell the difference between the perpetrator and the armed teachers defending the kids? Ya, they don’t.
What is one reasonable scenario of a thing the government may want to do, that we could stop because we have a firearm.
I have a gun, and I don't think the government really has a right to tax me for an unjust undeclared war. If I don't pay my taxes, I don't think the United States military or law enforcement cares that I may be armed.
This is completely unrelated to the Stanford experiment.
Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rR9IaXH1M0
Jim Jefferies on Gun Control, part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9UFyNy-rw4
"Defeating" the military isn't the goal, in the same way that the goal of Iraqi and Vietnam insurgents was not the goal.
The goal is to make the conflict so expensive and costly that they decide not to continue it.
For example, imagine if those hundreds of thousands of uninvolved civilians that died in Iraq were instead innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of a war.
This would be an extremely high cost to the ruling government.
Yes, even if the government is "evil", because real life entities are not comic book villains.
They are rational entities with rational motivation. And presumably one of those motivations of any government, even an evil one, is to not rule over a desolate wasteland of ashes.
Or in other words, sure the government could launch hundreds of nukes and kill all of its enemies. But it would do that, because the government is not a literal doomsday cult.
The point of an armed citizenry is to act as a DETERRENCE. It is to increase the costs to the government by saying "yes, you can win this... But only by killing millions, and since you are not a doomsday cult, this is a high cost".
It is a deterrence in order to stop the government from becoming an evil dictatorship in the first place, kinda like have a nuke pointed at your own country.