Why I am NOT against Gun Ownership

Two reasons

I would like to present only two reasons why I'm in favour of gun ownership by whoever wants it.

Right to self defense

 Self explanatory. Once they were invented, guns cannot be *uninvented*. 

 Therefore, in order to be able to defend themselves and their property, men have the right to bear arms (because other people *will* have them)

The largest massacres and genocide episodes known to history were perpetrated by governments against citizens who did not have access to weapons

• Holocaust(national socialism, germany 20th century)

  • Lowest estimate: 4 million dead [HILBERG]
  • Highest estimate: 7 million dead [HILBERG]
    

• Holodomor (stalinism, 20th-century USSR)

  • Lowest estimates: 1.8 million dead [WHEATCROFT 2001]
  • Highest estimates 7.5 million dead [MARPLES]

• The Great Stalinist purge (stalinism, 20th-century USSR)

  • Lowest estimates: 950.000 dead [ELLMAN 2002]
  • Highest estimates: 1.2 million dead [ELLMAN 2002]

• Great leap forward (Maoist China, mid 20th-century)

  • Lowest estimate: 23 million dead [PENG 1987]
  • Highest estimate: at least 45 million dead [DIKÖTTER 2010]

• Armenian genocide (Modern-day Turkey, early 20th century)

  • Lowest estimate: 600.000 dead [MCCARTHY 1983]
  • Highest estimate: over 2 million dead [GENDERCIDE.ORG]

• Khmer Rouge (Cambodian communist party, 20th century)

  • Lowest estimate: 1.2 million dead [HEUVELINE 2001]
  • Highest estimate: 2.5 million dead [SHARP]

Side note

There still are many people who think that socialism/communism is desirable and/or a viable way to organize society.

I know that most of you are not bad people at heart and are, in general, motivated by the desire to help other people, which is fine.

I urge you, however, to rethink your position. Be extra careful when presented with over-simplifications of human behaviour and history.

People and their actions are so diverse and unique that simple answers are, in most cases, not the correct ones.

References

• [ELLMAN 2002] paper

• [DIKÖTTER 2010] Dikötter, Frank. Mao's Great Famine: The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62. Walker & Company, 2010. p. xii ("at least 45 million people died unnecessarily") p.xiii ("at least 2.5 million were tortured to death or summarily killed") p.333 ("a minimum of 45 million excess deaths"). ISBN 0-8027-7768-6.

• [GENDERCIDE.ORG] website

• [HEUVELINE 2001] Heuveline, Patrick (2001). "The Demographic Analysis of Mortality in Cambodia." In Forced Migration and Mortality, eds. Holly E. Reed and Charles B. Keely. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.

• [HILBERG] The destruction of european jews wikipedia page

• [MARPLES] David R. Marples. Heroes and Villains: Creating National History in Contemporary Ukraine. p.50

• [MCCARTHY 1983] Justin McCarthy, The End of Ottoman Anatolia, in Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire, New York Univ. Press, 1983.

• [PENG 1987] Peng Xizhe (1987). Demographic Consequences of the Great Leap Forward in China's Provinces. Population and Development Review Vol.13 No.4 (Dec. 1987). pp.648-649.

• [SHARP] website

• [WHEATCROFT 2001] Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2001a). "Current knowledge of the level and nature of mortality in the Ukrainian famine of 1931–3". In V. Vasil'ev. Komandiri velikogo golodu: Poizdki V.Molotova I L.Kaganovicha v Ukrainu ta na Pivnichnii Kavkaz, 1932–1933 rr.. Kyiv: Geneza.