@phantom

When did "white Christians", gay marriage and abortion come into play when talking about the second amendment? My line on individual freedom and liberty was to be applied to guns in the context it was presented. People who pull the "white Christian" card are the true racist. Don't start talking to me about race, implying America is a racist nation, we are the most accepting country in the world. The only difference is, we expect you to pull your weight. We like hard workers and people who are willing to sweat. That's why immigration boomed in the US during its foundation. Immigration today is based off of a nanny state mentality where illegals are using the welfare meant for our own citizens. The majority of immigration today is for the promise of free citizenship and a financial safety net meant for US citizens.

People who use race in arguments are the actual racists. Ok, my tangent tossed to the side.

Bullshit.

Why? Let's get to that. First of all, America is not the most accepting nation in the world. We are more accepting in some ways than other nations and less so in others. Take same sex marriage. We were not the first to legalize it. That goes to the Dutch. We weren't even the second or third. Nope, we were the 17th to do so. We do better in some ways not so much in others. And no, most immigration today is not for freebies the way you seem to believe. It's for the same reason it's always been: a promise of being able to make a better life. Illegal immigration is wrong and it should be addressed but I hardly see how the US is using a nanny policy on immigration. That is just straight up fear speaking.

Tell me how America is not the most accepting nation? Because we want people to apply through the proper channels and don't want to take in potential criminals when they cannot be vetted? Because we want them to wait their turn? I am sorry if we don't just blindly allow any sob story through our borders like the wonderfully diverse European nations do. I heard that's working out real well for them.

Guess what, immigrants are expected to assimilate, not the natural born population. If you think that makes me a racist, you need to take a look in the mirror. You keep arguing ideals and the morality of issues instead of the substance. You provide nothing to substantiate your claims other than opinions.

Resorting to name calling and screaming fallacy's, nukes the conversation and you shut your own argument down.

Immigrants are expected to assimilate? How? In what way? To what degree? When does it stop? As far as I remember, so long as you aren't hurting anyone else, there's nothing wrong with what you are doing.

There's no vetting? I'm pretty sure that there is. You've pretty much fed the line that many fearful people have been using over immigration.

Whats worse is that I have been discussing this with Australians, New Zealanders, English and a Canadian. All of which live in countries where they have been raised to not be familiar with fire arms(except maybe Canada).

Australian here. I've handled 9mm handguns, a 12 gauge duck hunting shotgun, a .243 deer hunting rifle (supressed), and a .22 w/ subsonics for fun. If I wanted a gun, I could easily buy one legally, as I have a clean record and would be willing to comply with licensing requirements such as keeping it in a gun safe responsibly.
"Banned" does not mean they don't exist. It means we've regulated them... Like cars.

Cars are very dangerous and responsible for a lot of deaths, so we regulate them, register them in a national database, have mandatory training and licensing, and give the state the power to confiscate registrations, licenses and even vehicles if they're used irresponsibly.
That's just sensible policy.

The fact that you're unable to apply this same sensible logic to guns, instead retreating into some emotional defence of "but freedom!", sums up the whole reason why foreigners just smack their heads at the US... If only you'd let yourself make that comparison honestly.

The big difference, besides the licensing of "basic" guns as we do for cars, is that we treat basic military hardware like you treat advanced military hardware.
In the USA, despite your right to arms, you don't let people own surface-to-air missiles as they're too dangerous and have no civilian use. These kinds of things are highly regulated.
We treat fully automatic small arms, and semi-automatic small arms with high capacity magazines the same way. They have no civilian use (unlike all the guns I listed above, which have legitimate uses) and are extremely dangerous. e.g. AR-15 variants are used in *so many* mass killings. It's a lot harder to gun down 20 people with a pump action that only holds 3 shells... We still have gun crime,but just as you don't have surface-to-air missile crime, we no longer have mass shootings.

You do have arms control at the top end, just like us. We both just draw the line for "military only" at slightly different places, and have completely sensible regulations at the low end, as every first world country does for trucks, cars, explosives, chemicals, etc...

Immigration today is based off of a nanny state mentality where illegals are using the welfare meant for our own citizens.

Tell me how America is not the most accepting nation?
...

If you think that makes me a racist, you need to take a look in the mirror.

1) "Most" implies number one... I'm saying that you are, at best, the same as every other Western nation i.e. we all let plenty of people in and all deport plenty. You are by no means the 'most' however.

2) Never mentioned racism. Well done defending a point that was never made and going for some kind of sympathy vote I guess?

You seem to have a problem with the USA not being number 1... I'd look in to that, probably point to some underlying inferiority complex..

Even the "liberal" democrats at this point are exclaiming, in the DNC, "we're the greatest nation ever built". They were even instructed to drown chants of "no more war!" with "USA! "USA!". It seems to me USArians, even the "liberal" ones simply can't operate if they don't believe they are "number one!".

It's quite sad and ridiculous really, the democrats have moved so right they're basically moderate republicans, and the republicans at this point, with Trump as their candidate, are just batshit insane.

Even the "liberal" democrats at this point are exclaiming, in the DNC, "we're the greatest nation ever built". They were even instructed to drown chants of "no more war!" with "USA! "USA!". It seems to me USArians, even the "liberal" ones simply can't operate if they don't believe they are "number one!".
It's quite sad and ridiculous really, the democrats have moved so right they're basically moderate republicans, and the republicans at this point, with Trump as their candidate, are just batshit insane.

Yep. American politics have devolved to the point where the sane party has to invoke ludicrous levels of nationalism to counter the almost unbelievable levels of ... fuck, I don't even know what Trump is anymore, fascism? Insanity? Deception?

If you really believe "America is the greatest nation on earth", you'be probably never been outside its borders.

But equally, if you believe America needs to be made "great again", you are fucking delusional.

That this needs to be explained to Anericans is equal parts bewildering and terrifying to most people.

Respond with force and killing them are two different things. Killing them purposefully because of an assault is just barbaric.

The thing is, you don't KNOW if it's an assault or an attempted murder... Why let them beat you to find out?

If the attacker isn't with a gun, how about using pepper spray or tasers to momentarily disable while you call 999/911 The police here in the UK largely use tasers and so far its been very successful

Tazers/pepper spray have a high failure rate. Also what if police are 10+ minutes away? Guns are an equalizer, it doesn't matter if the other person's stronger/more fit.

The fact that you're unable to apply this same sensible logic to guns, instead retreating into some emotional defence of "but freedom!", sums up the whole reason why foreigners just smack their heads at the US... If only you'd let yourself make that comparison honestly.

Guns serve a different purpose in the USA though, they serve as a means of resistance against the government. For example in Germany they keep their guns at shooting clubs locked up, which means if the government wanted to, they could simply raid shooting clubs to confiscate them.

This is why gun registration/licensing is opposed in the USA, currently the government doesn't really have a means to confiscate/census them. For example, I recently bought a benelli shotgun. My process was to go onto armslist.com (It's like craigslist), look within 20 miles of my zip code, and I saw a pretty cheap shotgun being sold. I emailed him, and we met/ I bought it the same day.

This is what the government (dramatically) refers to as a "ghost gun", but that's exactly how it was intended to work.

I guess you guys will love Obama now after reading those stats?

I'm voting Trump, and I voted for Obama twice (and I certainly didn't vote for Hillary in the 2008 primaries. I voted for Mike Gravel). But Trump's backpedaling on illegal immigration anyway, which is fine by me. The wall/deportation was probably the worst parts about his campaign.

The intention was always to flip on certain issues after winning the GOP primary though, which is why more conservative people in the GOP hate him. Next we're going to see him flip on de-funding planned parenthood (already partially done, really).

American politics have devolved to the point where the sane party has to invoke ludicrous levels of nationalism to counter the almost unbelievable levels of ... fuck, I don't even know what Trump is anymore, fascism? Insanity? Deception?

Trump isn't fascist or insane, however, he's extremely deceptive, essentially stealing the GOP nomination despite having very few ideological similarities with a large portion of their voter base. I'd say he's deceptive with an appeal to nationalist sentiment.

If you really believe "America is the greatest nation on earth", you'be probably never been outside its borders.

I wouldn't say it's the greatest place on the earth because I haven't been everywhere, but I've been to parts of Canada/Mexico/South Africa/Europe (much of North Western) and America's certainly an interesting unique place in terms of culture. If we're talking about factoring economic/military might, America's pretty much objectively the best country in the history of the world. I mean, we're deploying a railgun to active service, and already have lasers capable of burning weapons off of ships deployed

Guns serve a different purpose in the USA though, they serve as a means of resistance against the government.

Why exactly do you need guns to overthrow a government when you can just vote it out during the next elections?

Again, seems to work pretty well in other countries, but USA is, once more, "different".

Guns serve a different purpose in the USA though, they serve as a means of resistance against the government.

Why exactly do you need guns to overthrow a government when you can just vote it out during the next elections?

Again, seems to work pretty well in other countries, but USA is, once more, "different".

Take for example a country like Russia where Putin can get rid of term limits and rule indefinitely. That wouldn't work in the USA.

Guns serve a different purpose in the USA though, they serve as a means of resistance against the government.

Why exactly do you need guns to overthrow a government when you can just vote it out during the next elections?

Again, seems to work pretty well in other countries, but USA is, once more, "different".

Take for example a country like Russia where Putin can get rid of term limits and rule indefinitely. That wouldn't work in the USA.

Really? The person who would hypothetically attempt such a coup would assume control of the mighty USA military, but they would be stopped by civilians armed with shotguns? Or are you in favour of arming civilians with at least short-range missiles too, so they can at least be an annoyance instead of a non-entity compared to the military?