Gun control

Your first argument, saying that the strict regulations on guns in certain U.S. states is "...[an] infringement of the second amendment [and] is unacceptable to our human rights, makes America a target for terrorists (domestic or foreign), and leads to a totalitarian government, such as North Korea...." arises many questions from me. First off: How is regulating guns "unacceptable to our human rights"? According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, human rights are "...norms that help protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses." I fail to see how owning a gun counts as a human right. Many successful (democracy) countries have stricter gun laws than the United States, and they are not being accused of human rights violations. Examples of these countries include the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Australia. I'll go further in depth to their gun laws and more in a later part of my argument, but my point here is that the majority of people in those countries do not consider the lack of guns a human rights violation. I would like to hear more from you on this statement, however. In the same part of your argument, you mentioned that gun control laws lead to a totalitarian government, "such as North Korea." Guns are extremely hard to obtain in many different countries, to the point that guns are extremely rarely in citizens' possession. Countries that are like this include Sweden, the United Kingdom, and many other European countries, none of which are anywhere close to being as controlling as North Korea is with their citizens. Therefore, I think comparing the two is unfair and is a worst case scenario.(1) Most mass shootings are done with handguns, which you are saying should not be banned(2). Also, I'd like to talk about the whole notion that guns will protect you in the case of someone attacking you. Let's propose a hypothetical situation: Someone breaks into your house. Most people do not just have their gun lying around, loaded, ready to shoot. Leaving a gun out could lead to many incidents. If you lock your gun up and an intruder comes in, what are you going to do? Walk to the gun safe, unlock the safe, get the gun out, load the gun, and then, finally, shoot the intruder? By then, the intruder would have already done their damage. So, unless your gun is constantly on you, it isn't very useful -- the time that it would take to even retrieve it from another room would be too long. On your third point, I'd like to ask, if it was so hard to obtain a gun in California, how did the shooters obtain them and how were they allowed to carry them? On your final point, I'd like to reiterate that saying that simply making gun laws stricter will lead to a totalitarian government is a very, very worst case scenario way of thinking. That simple act will not immediately take away all the other freedoms we have. If we don't have guns, it's not like all of a sudden we will be relying on the government for every single other need. The majority of people who hunt animals do not rely on that as their main food source. Also, North Korea's totalitarian government did not begin with the banning of guns. When Korea parted at the end of WW2, North Korea went with Communist ideologies from the start, which included the banning of guns, but also included revoking many other freedoms from their citizens. In the end, the ownership of guns is not the single thing balancing the government and the people. We cannot simply rely on everyone owning guns to stop acts of terror. The government needs to take more measures to prevent these attacks before they even start. I apologize if this argument seems a bit forced, as I had to rush quite a bit because I have been busy all weekend and did not have the time to work on it. 1. http://www.pbs.org... 2. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com...