1y ago

Question to those not in the USA, and who have lived outside the USA.

I've been thinking about something and want to check an assumption I have. I only hear directly from other people in the USA, and interract with the global community through memes. How are the gun regulations/laws different from yours in terms of strictness, and do you wish there was more or less where you live?

Not looking for a debate here, discuss cold drinks vs hot drinks instead. Appreciate either answer. ❤️

Edit: Thanks for the answers all. I'm super proud how productive eveyone kept this talk. I figured most of you had very different experiences than I. I'll share my most recent experience. I don't have a firearm, but have considered it after being trained enough. When sharing this with "normal" people around town, I had multiple people offer to sell or gift me a gun where the serial number was scratched off and non-traceable. I ofter heard, "oh man, yeah. You need a gun." I have literally never needed one. The fact that people offer to give me one when I don't have a liscence or training shows the mindset of the minority here and how much of a problem a few individuals can make to safety within the current system.

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160 comments

As a native commonwealther, guns are legally a no, but that offers no protection from those who would end up getting one.
Something that bugs me is... weapons wouldn't be needed for defense if booby traps were legal, but those have even less legality in the world than guns, almost as if the whole goal is to make things hard.
- Booby traps are not legal and should stay that way because they are indiscriminate and could hurt people you do not intend to, including yourself.
  Say you have a medical emergency and tragically die at home, and someone calls for a wellness check on you after weeks or months. If you have your house trapped for "protection," the first police officer that gets through the door ends up blasted by a rigged up pipe shotgun for no good reason.
  
  I'm not thinking of the kind of booby traps meant to kill, I'm thinking of the classic Scooby Doo kind where they're just meant to restrain.
  
  So the police would just step in a bear trap, got it.
  
  Since when has the mystery gang ever set up bear traps?
- But if course they offer protection as they prevent virtually all cases where someone would get a gun in the first place.
  That's the reason the US has so many gun related terror attacks: guns are ubiquitous, which means any problem can readily escalate to a gun attack. Getting a gun in most other countries requires a significant amount of commitment that most of these cases wouldn't ever have developed in the first place.
  
  Sure, it decreases the amount of gun violence to criminalize firearms, but if someone is dedicated, this can be circumvented with a black market or some tinkering, and when they do strike, people are more unprepared, giving the suspect almost the same advantage. We not only see this between the different states (since each US state handles firearms differently) but also other nations (the New Zealand and Australian shootings a year or so back were devastating).
  
  Sure, but you trade a lot of only slightly less bad shootings for very rare if bad shootings.

160 comments