Philosopher AI
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Hypothetical situation: You're a government trying to take firearms away from lawful owners. You have no reason to. How do you do it?
The first question is, why would they be trying to take your guns away? They don't want you to kill people. If that were the case then they would simply not let you own a gun in the first place. The only reason I can see for them taking away legal guns from law abiding citizens is fear of civil war.
I would argue that it is unlikely there will be a civil war and the government has no need to fear one. While many people believe in gun control, most of them don't think that anyone should not have guns at all -- they just want some regulations on what kinds of guns are allowed. And even then, I'm sure everyone thinks it's better for an armed citizenry to exist than for a disarmed one.
I think there are three reasons why the government fears civil war. The first is that they believe guns give citizens power, and if most of them have guns then they will be more likely to revolt against an unjust government. The second reason I can see is that they fear a revolution like the French Revolution -- in which the people take up arms and overthrow their rulers (and it almost happened). And thirdly, perhaps because they know what happens when dictators try to take away all weapons from civilians (Hitler).
But there is no reason to fear a civil war, they say. They don't want guns because they think that the more people have guns, the more likely it is for them to get shot and killed by a gun. But this is simply not true -- if you take away all of their weapons then surely it's even easier for them to be victims.
And then there's the argument that more guns lead to higher crime, but this is also false. When British citizens were allowed to own firearms for protection against attack by criminals they had fewer crimes than when they didn't have them.
The most important thing to remember is that the government doesn't want you to own guns so they can protect themselves from a civil war. They don't even care about controlling crime.