this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
1 points (100.0% liked)
Greentext
6973 readers
1263 users here now
This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
- Anon is often crazy.
- Anon is often depressed.
- Anon frequently shares thoughts that are immature, offensive, or incomprehensible.
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
"She's probably right." "Dude was probably violent." "Easier to give up your guns than fight this in court" "Just give up your guns!"
Lmao wowww lemmy. Nobody here likes due process?
I think we just don't like guns.
I like guns.
but that's bc you are a bad person.
The comments here are a good example of how the gun control movement is the left-wing counterpart to the pro-life movement. It's origin lies in emotion, not reason. It's filled with fallacious arguements and when that fails to convince someone, the movement tends to move towards snarky comments and outright hostility.
Evem those that are trying to be reasonable by drawing conclusions based on data almost always are using cherry-picked statistics that was fed by those trying to manipulate them.
It's very amusing to read such things from outside the American hellscape. Well, "amusing."
Let's say eventually there comes a government overreach that a popular armed uprising puts down. Every day until that day, children die. Accidental death from firearms is one of the leading causes of death of children in your country. (Do you feel that pricking sensation in your neck and face or are you immune to shame?) If the rebellion doesn't come soon enough (or at all) then you are underwater in terms of dead children. So, how long is that runway? How long do you get to keep killing children until you have to admit, fuck, this is costing us more than it's worth?
HAVE YOU EVEN DONE THE MATH, or are you just working from feelings?
To compare dead children to the cost of failing to check government power, we can reduce both to life-years lost:
🔫 Current Cost: Child Firearm Deaths in the U.S.
- ~2,000 preventable child gun deaths/year
- ~60 life-years lost per death
- 120,000 life-years lost annually
- Over 30 years: ~3.6 million life-years lost
🏛️ Hypothetical Benefit: Preventing Tyranny
Assume a worst-case scenario:
- Authoritarian collapse kills 10 million (based on 20th-century examples)
- Avg. age at death: ~40 → ~35 life-years lost
- 10M deaths × 35 = 350 million life-years lost
Estimate risk:
- Without civilian arms: 0.5% chance over 30 years
- With civilian arms: 0.4% chance
- These figures are speculative; there’s no empirical support that civilian gun ownership reduces the risk of tyranny—many stable democracies have strict gun control.
In fact, high civilian armament may reduce stability:
- Greater availability of weapons increases the lethality of civil unrest, crime, and domestic terrorism.
- Armed polarization can accelerate breakdown during political crises, as seen in failed or fragile states.
- States may respond with harsher repression, escalating rather than deterring authoritarian outcomes.
📊 Expected Value Calculation
- Without arms: 0.005 × 350M = 1.75 million life-years at risk
- With arms: 0.004 × 350M = 1.2 million life-years at risk
- Net benefit of arms: ~550,000 life-years saved (generous estimate)
📉 Conclusion
Even with favorable assumptions:
- Civilian firearms cost ~3.6M life-years (due to preventable child deaths)
- And prevent only ~550K life-years (via marginally lower tyranny risk)
Bottom line: The ongoing cost vastly outweighs the hypothetical benefit, and high armament may worsen long-term stability rather than protect it.