Not at all. That's obviously all you.
1) I don't think we have more deaths than any other first world country.
The U.S. mortality rate is probably on par or better than most.
2) That's not the question. Check the top of the page.
The question regards the cost of recognizing, respecting, and preserving the right to keep and bear arms. There is a cost associated with rights. Anyone who values rights must accept that fact. If the acceptable cost for protecting the human right of personal autonomy is millions of human lives when discussing abortion, then the discussion regarding guns--the personal autonomy appurtenant to having the most effective tools to defend one's life--deserves the benefit of the perspective of relative cost.
You don't understand that mortality rate is not the same as mortality rate due to gun violence?
Yes.
Do you understand that when you deliberately create the special category of "gun violence" so that you can simultaneously include violence that was not
caused by guns; and exclude violence
caused by people (but without using guns), you tacitly admit that you're
JUST FINE with all the violence in the world... provided no gun was involved?
Asserting that "gun violence" would be diminished by removing guns, is asserting the same kind of
meaningless tautology that asserts getting rid of boats would diminish drownings; the argument is specious, and it distracts from discussing a "violence problem" ... a problem that is not solvable by the gun-control laws typically proposed.
There is an abundance of reasearch, with an abundance of objective data, that CLEARLY demonstrate that there is ZERO causal relation between guns and violence.
Guns are clearly and irrefutably NOT the cause of any kind of violence. They DON'T cause it.
But we digress, yes?
The question you're dodging by changing the subject, is whether the cost of respecting our
civil, political, and constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is acceptable.
As I have already said, anyone who values rights must accept the fact that there is are costs associated with respecting and preserving rights. If the acceptable cost for protecting the human right of personal autonomy is millions of human lives when discussing abortion, then the discussion regarding guns--the personal autonomy appurtenant to having the most effective tools to defend one's life--deserves the benefit of the perspective of relative cost.
No sane person ever considered ending a human life to be their Right. That's a psychopath's notion.
Yet over a million defenseless human lives are electively ended every year, euphemistically under the umbrella of "healthcare." Protected as an exercise of a Right.
That is the accepted cost of preserving the human right to personal autonomy when we're discussing abortion using the best medical practices.
Over a million defenseless human lives.
I don't like that cost, but if that's what it takes to prevent the whole of society from turning human beings into brood animals, personal property, and the involuntary means to the ends of others, then its the price that must be paid.
I get that.
But when we're discussing preserving personal autonomy, through the right to possess the best tools to defend human lives from those with in possession of a perverse entitlement to violence against their fellows, the cost of a few thousand human lives--"gun deaths" if you really must--is suddenly unacceptably high. (Most commonly amongst the proponents of "choice".)
I don't get that.
Many of the human lives we lose were made defenseless by "common sense" gun control laws enacted by persons with their own sense of entitlement to violence against their constituency. I cite every "gun free zone," " mandatory waiting period," and prohibitionist owner/gun registration law as examples.
These are criminal acts perpetrated against all of us, and most particularly against those amongst us most likely to be the targets of the criminally violent. You know, like children, women, and gay folk.
I'd like to think we all agree that women folk (amongst others) possess the human right to defend themselves with the tool(s) of their
individual choosing, against the
aggressions of those (
and their elected proxies) who consider them property . I'd like to think we agree that said right--constitutionally--shall not be infringed for all the OBVIOUS reasons.
Because it's worth the cost. And the cost is what we're talking about, right?