[QUOTE=bluemonkey]When has the right to bear arms ever been used to defend people's rights or prevent a corrupt police force/government? Strip clubs on the other hand provide a great deal of value.[/QUOTE]
Historically, any revolution including the American one, especially pre-democracy revolutions, at least in terms of preventing a corrupt police force or government. You can also reference the
Battle of Athens, Tennessee for a recent example within the United States.
As for protecting my rights, if someone is breaking into my home and threatening my family, are you seriously trying to contend that using a gun doesn't protect my right not to be violated in that way?
Back in the '90s, my neighbor was almost raped by an assailant, until she pulled a gun from under her mattress and shot him. Was she protecting her right not to be raped? Or would you say that she deserved prison time for owning a gun?
[QUOTE=bluemonkey]They provide entertainment for single people and couples in ways that improve those peoples' quality of life. The puprose of a strip club is to bring enjoyment, the purpose of a gun shop is to provide a means to kill and maim people. But then that's why the US has such a massive homicide and crime rate compared to other countries.[/QUOTE]
The purpose of a gun shop is to provide guns, which may be used to protect YOURSELF against those who have weapons of any kind and intend to harm you with them. You can try to spin it to all the legal rhetoric you've learned as a faithful subject of the empire if you prefer, but it doesn't change the fact that merely owning a gun doesn't make someone a criminal anymore than owning a knife or even owning cianide in your attic. And to act on them in a violent manner is a MORALLY BANKRUPT practice that is common among thug-governments and misguided (read: 'stupid') activists who hold non-realistic, even religious, notions on the origin and nature of criminal acts.
Making UK law an even worse proposition is how it protects criminals at te expense of their victims. He can only respond to an assailant with a gun if the criminal is "similarly armed". If an assaulted individual happens to have access to a gun, either through the scarce legal means or otherwise, he must sit back and let the thug have his way with him until a gun becomes visible, else suffer an even worse legal penalty than the criminal who meant him harm.
The UK will eventually learn this lesson, but not without costing a considerable number of innocent victims a bad experience if not even the price of their lives, a gradual increase in crime, and certainly not without labeling a considerable number of innocent individuals as criminals for the manufactured crime of carrying a gun. Like I said before, you can hide your violence within your institutions if you like, but it's still violence, with or without the Prime Minister's stamp of approval, and no amount of conglomerate mob rule will turn an act of barbarism into anything less than an act of barbarism.
The tired and continuously disproven "Guns cause crime" mantra is right up there with the "Porn causes rape" and "Games cause violence" condescending and cliched mantras. There is no metaphysical connection between guns and crime any more than there is between knives and crime. It takes a willing and acting human being with crime on his mind, every time.
