A genuine, actual answer is that when you’re being attacked, it is incredibly rare for a police officer to be standing there, ready to intervene. In life-or-death situations the police really only exist to take a report from whoever is left standing, and potentially make an arrest. There’s plenty of people out there who don’t have the strength to defend themselves in hand-to-hand combat, and even if they did, next to nobody has the skills necessary to reliably defend against a knife attack using their bare hands. That’s just plain how knife attacks work.
You can counter this with statistics that show that access to guns increases injuries and deaths, because they absolutely do, but pro-gun folks put the individual before the group on this issue. The individual, in their mind, should have the right to quick deadly force in order to facilitate defense of their own life, and other’s failure to handle that responsibility is not their problem and/or the price of that right.
There are always tradeoffs, in any policy you set for society. If you go the other direction there will be people who are victimized who would otherwise have been able to defend themselves. Which scenario is worse? How many victims of one type are worth victims of the other?
How does this turn into a knife argument? That’s just a distraction. We do already restrict certain types of knives, plus you can’t walk down a city street with a machete.
More importantly I can shut a door between myself and an attacker. Try that if they have a gun
A genuine, actual answer is that when you’re being attacked, it is incredibly rare for a police officer to be standing there, ready to intervene. In life-or-death situations the police really only exist to take a report from whoever is left standing, and potentially make an arrest. There’s plenty of people out there who don’t have the strength to defend themselves in hand-to-hand combat, and even if they did, next to nobody has the skills necessary to reliably defend against a knife attack using their bare hands. That’s just plain how knife attacks work.
You can counter this with statistics that show that access to guns increases injuries and deaths, because they absolutely do, but pro-gun folks put the individual before the group on this issue. The individual, in their mind, should have the right to quick deadly force in order to facilitate defense of their own life, and other’s failure to handle that responsibility is not their problem and/or the price of that right.
There are always tradeoffs, in any policy you set for society. If you go the other direction there will be people who are victimized who would otherwise have been able to defend themselves. Which scenario is worse? How many victims of one type are worth victims of the other?
How does this turn into a knife argument? That’s just a distraction. We do already restrict certain types of knives, plus you can’t walk down a city street with a machete.
More importantly I can shut a door between myself and an attacker. Try that if they have a gun