Gun Control and British Terrorism



I didn’t write about this immediately because it seemed insensitive, but I want to ask a couple of simple questions about the various terrorist attacks in Britain.



If you’re a “more guns equals more safety” type of person, do you honestly believe that the knife attacks in Britain would have been less deadly if guns were easy to get in the country? So, let’s say that it’s fairly easy to get an AR-15, multiple Glocks, and plenty of ammunition. Would the same terrorists armed with the same weapons (instead of knives) have done more or less damage?



Before you answer, let’s assume that some decent percentage of the population is also armed with a Glock or equivalent. Let’s say 25%, which seems high even for the United States.



Now, given both sides being armed in this way, would there be more or fewer deaths and casualties as compared to there being very few guns, i.e., so few that terrorists attack with vehicles and knives.



My intuition is that there would be far more damage, and far more deaths and casualties.



It seems to me that you’d need a population of 50-75% undercover cops before you’d be able to accurately take out attackers before they could do more damage than they could with a knife, and those are numbers that aren’t realistic.



To me this is a case in point of the gun control side being more right. Of course, it’s a whole separate matter of whether it’s possible to get gun numbers down to British levels. The argument is moot if they’re already saturated in a society as with the U.S.



Anyway, curious if you guys see it differently.


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Published on June 23, 2017 00:26
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