Guns and (relatively) freedom of speech (yes I'm aware it comes with asterisk) are the two big ones. If I left the USA it would probably be to a place with weak governance on these points in practice rather than on paper. Only Yemen, Iraq, Somaliland, parts of Pakistan, parts of Rojava and maybe KRG (Kurdistan), Idlib, and Palestine are only places I know of with looser (to me better) gun laws than America and out of all those I'd only really consider Somaliland & KRG & Rojava as places where a westerner could probably settle without getting their head cut off. Freedom of speech, IDK where, hard to find anyplace with looser speech restriction than America.
However if you are willing to go with de facto rather than de jure, plenty of places in Africa and Latam can be freer on these points, especially if you have a little coin.
Financially though, places like Dubai blow away the absolutely dystopic USA controls like FATCA and world taxation/filing, KYC, AML and other madness USA uses to keep an iron grip on traditional finance channels.
For me it was a factor to some degree. I am not a firearm collector. For me it was knowing that I was moving from a state that hates firearms and wants to justify law enforcement budgets by punishing anyone that defends themselves to a state that not only has very few restrictions on firearms and ammo but also actively and legally supports people defending themselves and their neighbors. That was just one of many factors however. No state income tax was also a big plus for me personally.
It seems so weird to even know which states "hate firearms" and which ones support them, let alone care. It's not something that would even appear on my radar if I had to move across the country to some new town. I'm worried about things like good schools, access to amenities, commute times, access to fresh air and nature, stuff like that. How gun-friendly the place is? It wouldn't even make my top 20 or even cross my mind. Do Americans really factor this into their decision when they move somewhere?
I take it as a given that being in America in general means you could be shot randomly, with a uniform, but low probability distribution. It doesn't really matter what the state's gun laws are. So outside of notoriously "unsafe" areas, it doesn't play into my mind at all.
Who would tell you they have them if you are in a country where it is illegal? For instance the fgc-9[] commonly seized in parts of Europe was invented by a German in Germany (ethnic Kurd though).
No one knew who he was until he was arrested and for the most part until he was dead. His european friends would be saying the same thing as you, "don't know anyone with guns..."
Lots of guns in Europe by people who aren't supposed to have them. Either because they are criminals thus don't care about gun laws, or if they are 'good' people then they should know not to pull out a gun unless their other option is to be dead -- at which point 'fuck the law' and better to be in a jail cell than dead.
At least in Germany they are legal in general, only highly regulated.
Most guns are owned by relatively few people. Nobody from the common crowd here thinks about owning fire arms, virtually nobody does. Maybe that's a cultural gap hard to imagine from an US perspective.
The question remains, against what and who are you even defending? Maybe it's different in Europe because it's densely populated, but people generally don't consider fire arms being a net plus to the security of themselves and that of their family.
It also just doesn't seem useful to move to a state with loose fire arms laws - it's much better to move to a state/city/neighborhood with low crime rate instead.
I've repeated it several times in this thread, but it absolutely helped those in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising gain hours to days, and a couple women who had their lives spared because the Nazi or Nazi-allied officers decided at least a couple of jews (see woman on right here for example[]) were humans with bravery rather than just more carbon for the incinerator.
Although I'll grant you, that took place in Poland, but it happened largely due to the German government.
Yes the last option, like a fire extinguisher or seat belt. It doesn't become useful until the very last moment, but you'd give the world to have only have learned how to use one when days were better, and also to not be trying to buy one at at time where everyone's house is already on fire.
In your example, virtually everybody died, even with fire arms.
So I still wonder against what / who you are really defending.
Needing a seat belt is much more likely than needing a fire arms, at least in Europe. Focusing on fire arms means focusing on the wrog things. It's about a feeling of security, not actual security.
To use your wording: You'd give the world to have focussed on something else instead of buying a fire arm.
You could live in Norway. Guns are very popular there for hunting, biathalon, target shooting, etc. you can even have silencers which are banned in USA.
Not a bad choice. I'd probably pick Greenland out of the European (Denmark I think?) jurisdiction territory. You can buy bolt action rifles like a hammer at hardware store. They are looser than the USA on that point, though I didn't initially include them because they are stricter on most everything else. But open carrying a rifle probably isn't frowned upon in Greenland, so it might not matter that you can't carry a handgun.
When was the last time that guns protected someone in the US from an ICE raid? Basically never. Now imagine ICE five years in the future as a much more ingrained police state when they actively start hunting citizens.
It bought quite a few people some extra hours or days during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. And a couple women their lives, since one of the officers that saw them fight decided a few of the Jews were people with courage rather than just more trash for the incinerators and actually went out their way to send a couple of the brave fighters to the work camps instead of the gas chambers. (See woman on right here[], for example)
Sure but bearing arms is a lot more restrictive in Switzerland. I'm not claiming you can't have guns in other countries, hell you can have a gun even in places like Japan in a limited capacity with the right permits.
Where I live in Arizona you can 3d print a handgun, load it, stick it down your pants, and walk around with it around town all day doing basically whatever (as long as you don't go to a school, jail, or courthouse basically). All with zero background checks, licenses/permits, or even needing to carry an ID. Can I do that in Switzerland? I doubt they would let you do that even with a long rifle, unless you are going to/from some sort of approved activity.
The only euro-controlled place I know where you can basically do that is Greenland, as long as it is a bolt action rifle. Greenland is actually looser than USA in that regard, you can buy a bolt rifle like a hammer from a hardware store in Greenland with zero checks or license (IIRC, even as a foreigner) whereas in USA you could only do that if you bought it privately or made it yourself.
If I'm not allowed to have guns, then I am physically unsafe, because someone from government will use violence against me if they both discover it and have the ability to do something about it. I wouldn't feel safe anywhere violence is used for malum prohibitum 'crimes.' In fact I don't feel safe basically anywhere a government exists because they all do this; this is part the reason why I live in a rural area with basically no government services, no police, no public utilities or anything like that with involvement by the state beyond the bare minimum possible in the USA.
Your proposition also relies on the place itself not changing, and my and my offsprings atrophying their practice of skills of self defense and therefore not needing them when moving elsewhere. But sure if you had a magic wand and could trade 'no guns' for anyone for world peace, I'd take it.
Are there any examples of someone in the US successfully defending themselves from “government violence” using a gun? I mean, examples where it ultimately worked out for that person?
Yes, American Revolution. More recently, Battle of Athens[0]. Also see the Bundys who are still (as far as I know, to this day) ranching on the land they had an armed standoff over the BLM with in Nevada [1].
Ok, I guess you’d be the first in ~100 years. Crazier things have happened. But the much more likely outcome of meeting government violence with lethal violence of your own is that you are now dead. That’s a scenario that plays out all too often in this country; no need to reach into the distant past for examples.
Kudos for engaging civilly and earnestly on this even though the majority here seem to disagree with you. It’s rare that I encounter someone coherently articulating a belief system so wildly divergent from my own.
Oh wow! I wonder what must have happened to you that you feel so threatened. I only have positive experiences with government and police interactions. In multiple situations they made me feel safer and protected. I would however not feel safe around a gun, regardless of who owns it. Too much can go wrong.
>> I am physically unsafe, because someone from government will use violence against me
And how your gun can prevent this now? If you are allowed to carry a gun police will act like you have one lane shoot you. While in other case they will just beat you with stick.
i myself am a maximalist about this and i don't feel safe unless i carry some strains of ebola with me. it would be nice if you could support my ebola open-carry efforts (dm me for details).
(coming from a country where having guns at home or seeing a civilian with a gun is very very strange and an huge emergency so maybe my question is stupid)
IF the government decides to use violence against you do you really have a chance with a gun? or 10?
I'm not claiming you'd be safe even with a gun. I'm not claiming there is any real government you are safe living under given a long timespan (maybe longer than even your own lifespan, but still these skills are passed down in families so breaking the chain during 'safe' times is still harmful).
To your specific question, probably not, but the better question is whether you have more of a chance with or without a gun? If you look at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising for example, having a gun bought those people hours to days, which is better than nothing. Of course if you look at places like Chechnya, it bought them outright years that they were able to obtain independence from the brutality of Russia (even if not from their own brutality) as a result of militia activity in the first Chechen war.
(don't know why you were downvoted for an honest-sounding response)
If I understand correctly, the reasoning is a kind of long-term best-practice thinking?
And that best-practice is a high enough priority that it would prevent you from moving someplace that was otherwise better than a place that would let you have guns?
Is it only reasoning, or it there also a psychological component, like you'd also feel unsafe without guns, maybe due to past or current threatening situation (e.g., physical danger, or economic)?
My reasoning is that if firearms are banned then the underlying threat is that violence will be used against me for obtaining them. I consider myself unsafe if 'legitimate' violence will be used against me despite the fact I have deprived no one of their life, liberty, or property.
Thanks, I have a better idea where you're coming from.
If I understand correctly, you have both practical (near-term or long-term) and also philosophical objections, to the power imbalance between citizen and state, when citizens can't have guns. And it's a high priority.
FWIW, I sympathize with vigilance. Though my own priorities around guns are different. I live in a fairly safe city, with good police. Where I live, the prevalence of citizen guns seems to create more problems than it solves. The problems I have don't seem to be solvable with guns. I might feel differently, if I lived in a less-safe place or in different circumstances.
> someone from government will use violence against me if they both discover it and have the ability to do something about it
This is a statement so far removed from reality that it makes anything else you say immediately suspect.
You appear to view "government" as an entity whose primary purpose is to bring violence against anyone who cannot resist that violence with lethal force. There is no possible justification for that as a blanket definition.
If you are omitting, perhaps, the fact that you are a wanted and dangerous person, who has, for instance, committed a string of murders, and that is why the government would "use violence against you", then that would seem to make anything you say quite inapplicable to anyone else's situation.
Simply owning or encountering a seat belt also 'increases' your risk of dying in a car crash. This is the kind of nonsense causation-correlation mix-up statistics you are operating on.
It's not, because most gun death are actually from the person owning the gun or people close to them.
It's much more likely that you shoot yourself or your kid shoots you or your husband/brother/other-troubled-man has a bad day and shoots you than a criminal shooting you.
The relationship between gun deaths and guns is not correlative, it's causative. Because, surprise! Guns cause gun death.
Generally, less guns = less gun death. Which might seem like such a simple understanding that it must be naive or stupid. But no, it's actually just that simple.
On a related note, less automobiles = less automobile deaths.
Show the evidence you have that it is causative rather than correlative.
>Generally, less guns = less gun death. Which might seem like such a simple understanding that it must be naive or stupid. But no, it's actually just that simple.
It does not assert what you've claimed. It found correlative association. They did not conclude that the gun was causative of the homicide.
Even thinking this through for a second, it makes sense someone expecting to be murdered by a family member or intimate partner might be more likely to keep a gun, as it might be useful in frustrating that effort.
I think it's just plainly true that guns cause gun homicide and obviously having more guns means more gun homicide. And suicide. And other stuff, too, like kids shooting themselves in the face on accident. Surprisingly common, which is why you probably should not have a gun in your home with children.
Look, it's just a simple matter of probability and being honest about the world. Bad things, like robberies, are very, very, very rare. Heat of the moment disagreements and accidents are not.
You're optimizing for something that you know, deep down, does not matter - and to do it, you're actively making a bunch of MUCH MORE LIKELY stuff easier. And even here I am being far too charitable to you - I'm assuming the gun would help you in the case a crime is committed. It probably won't, especially if you follow safe gun keeping guidelines.
My guess is sense of security. Although that just works if you ignore the fact that now everyone has more access to guns, including criminals! And they typically get to shoot first..
Switzerland is one of the best countries to be if you are rich, because it's safe and nobody will target you for driving a Porsche (probably the most common car brand in canton Zug), or similar.
So I'd be interested what he means too.
What is for sure better in the US: There is way more space.
It's a small country, relatively speaking. Rather dull cities, again relatively speaking. Rural land is hard to come by and expensive. Not a lot of sunshine hours either. Not English speaking, not an immigrant culture, and quite an insular society so if you're not born there it kinda sucks. The cities punch way above their weight, but in total the tech job market is still tiny compared to the US.
If you like being outdoors, Switzerland has one landscape, pretty much.
It's heaven for rich people, but a very specific kind of heaven.
...do you really need examples? In America, *if* you have money, everything is better than anywhere else. Maybe Dubai can compare but there are some strong trade offs.
America has the best healthcare. Not the best value, but the best healthcare. It has low taxes, lots of world class cultural institutions, and varied beautiful geography. It is the Rome of our age. Corrupt, amoral, and exploitative? Sure, but with money you can overlook that.
I have a chronic disease making over 500K dollars and I can tell you the US healthcare (from primary care to specialists) ability to help me stay on track or identify health issues has been null. If it wasn't because I second guess every recommendation, go and pay out of pocket tests (even though I gotta pay 4K+ in insurance premiums) I would have been dead by now. No, the US does not have the best healthcare not even close.
Scenario 1: You fall head first from a 10th floor. US healthcare has higher chance of saving your life.
Scenario 2: You are an average person that hopes to get preventive medical care. You will die in the U.S of the most basic medical condition.
It's likely that you'd have issues in pretty much any country in the world with your conditions. For example many european single-payer systems have tons of exceptions. Covering only basic tests/procedures/drugs (premium available out-of-pocket only), queues (jumping queue is possible by paying out-of-pocket) and incompetent doctors (longer queues at the good ones). And you pay a huge insurance for this, so there's not that much money left to pay out-of-pocket for most people.
