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Winterwind, you seem to think that a national objective to lower crime rates IS MORE VALUABLE than protecting the right to individual competent defense, or protecting citizens from tyrannical government.
This is simply not the case.
Our governments first priority is SUPPOSED to be protecting our rights IN LAW, not removing them in an attempt to attain better national statistics.
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But there are real lives at stake. The governments first priority should be first and foremost to serve the people. When the people are being killed by guns, it is the responsibility of the government to act to end this somehow. Protecting rights is only a means to serving the people. But you have to weight the costs of deaths with the cost of having to trust government, which doesn't come easily, especially not to a country that rose to existence in the fight against a overly powerful government.
I think you have a point with the tyrannical government argument, and yet the political culture of America is one of rights and freedoms, much more so then most modern democracies where the political culture is of equality. Neither is better then the other, but in a climate of such a fierce defense of freedoms, don't you trust the people to nip tyranny in the bud?
It's a subjective, but it asks a question more then gives an answer.