Just that one does not need to go to a custom ammo shop to find a (different, yet effective) common hunting cartridge that will stop a bear.
Anyway, would any of those be allowed in any national parks? Hunting would not be permitted in a wildlife refuge.
The poster I was responding to was talking about a specific gun he owned that was chambered for a cartridge he (correctly) assumed isn’t that easy to find any longer. It wasn’t a question of whether he could find a gun / cartridge to kill a bear with.
You go to the range and shoot targets without guns?
Can we not get into the gun/car comparo? You don’t need a licence to buy a car, or to own one, just to drive one on the public highways.
Yep.
That’s a yes I agree and I will actively promote such a program. But that will be a hard sell because keeping and bearing arms is a right, whereas driving is a privilege. You don’t need a license to operate a gun but you do for a car.
I believe a person needs to be well trained to own and operate a gun. But I am biased because of my Marine Corps experience.
One caveat is that it also depends on how many deaths and injuries are caused by negligent discharges as compared to injuries and deaths caused by other gun events (for want of a better word).
ETA - @DrDeth I saw your post after I wrote the above. Yes let’s move away from that.
For my purposes, if a bear were to attack me I would use a powerful handgun. It’s reasonably accurate out to maybe 25 yards, if not farther, whiich means I’d have to be very quick because a bear can close that distance very quickly.
Bears don’t frequently announce they are attacking you hours in advance, in the heat of the moment you’re going to need to use whatever you can–it’s actually counterintuitive, but studies have shown people who use bear spray come away with fewer injuries in a bear attack than people that use guns.
I’ve never read exactly why that is, but my guess is because well-aimed bear spray just inspires the bear to leave and go somewhere else, but getting shot (even mortally) might send the bear into a state of agitated “fight to the death” sort of mentality and while the bear might die, it might do a whole load of damage to you before it does.
I agree with @chela on this.
@Crafter_Man how will fewer gun restrictions help the gun violence problem? Perhaps it may enlighten us better by asking, how do you define “the gun violence problem”?
While yes we do need to provide better resources for mental health, drug dependency, and the needs of children & teens, I refuse to accept that that is the best we can do.
Far from it.
Thank you for your sharing your experience. I now know that I have other good options besides shooting directly at the bear.
Not to go much further with the bear discussion, but I’ve had a lot of quasi-nuisance black bears, once they get to a certain point of habituation they are about as easy to remove as nuisance raccoons (meaning–not at all.) I haven’t had any real dangers from nuisance bears, again–eastern United States here so we are talking black bears not grizzlies, black bears actually evolved as animals that were in the middle of the food chain so still have a lot of prey behaviors (i.e. their default is usually not to confront any animal they perceive as serious, which most will perceive humans that way.) While bear attacks are extremely rare across the board, black bears most of the time are responsible for more bear attacks / deaths in a given decade than grizzlies, which I think is a function of black bears having greater populations that overlap with dense human habitation.
My hunting camp has enough black bear activity we practice various forms of bear safety in terms of the storage and disposal of food.
I believe there is a general right to bear arms, but there is nothing in our constitutional or national history that leads me to believe that right cannot basically overlay with my conceptions of responsible gun ownership. Most of our rights have regulations and legal responsibilities associated with them. Property rights in general, which no one seriously contests we have, are riddled with complex regulations and rules.
It seems like it would be really difficult to get a critical hit on a charging bear. Plus a bear lacks the cognitive process of “oh I’ve been shot, I may have serious injuries that aren’t immediately evident, I should take a beat and re-evaluate before I get shot again or bleed out.” Bullets often have a delayed stopping action, is what I’m getting at, and may not be ideal for a big angry animal.
Contrast with pepper spray which easily induces pain and the effective loss of sight and smell. It’s a very effective distractor.
The OP only hinted at this, but when one is camping far from civilization, it’s not the animals you need to worry about. People are the most dangerous thing in the forest. A woman ended up with her head in a dumpster not far from here because her dog wasn’t enough protection against a murderous weirdo. I personally don’t carry at all, but I won’t judge people who carry on the trail.
THIS RIGHT HERE is a major reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem in America. Both sides being extreme and not learning how to compromise.
I am reading about the journey Australia traveled to see if and how we can apply some of it here.
The 1996 Port Arthur massacre:
All the time.
For the most part I like your answers. I would suggest a modification to one of them:
Yes, you can lend a gun to your hunting buddy (or your spouse, or your under-age child you are teaching to hunt, or anyone else) so long as you are held legally responsible for what s/he does with your gun.
Edited to add: but once you transfer ownership to that person, including the required FFL interaction, background check, and required waiting period, then s/he becomes legally responsible for what happens with that gun.
It depends on what the purpose of the discussion is supposed to be. If it’s to congratulate the OP on his “reasonableness” and willingness to make compromises compared to more rabid gun owners, then fine, I endorse that. I appreciate the good intentions.
But I think the point that some of us are making, especially those of us with experience of gun regulation in other countries, is what gun control that is truly effective has to look like, so that it would reduce the outrageous epidemic of American gun violence to something more in line with the rest of the civilized world. Most such countries, for instance, have extremely strict requirements on the possession of any handgun and many types of long guns, such that very few people are allowed to possess them; these countries also have very strict laws on the transportation of any gun. Any kind of open or concealed carry of the type widely practiced in the US in most circumstances would immediately get you arrested.
I concede that in the present climate very few gun owners would accept this degree of gun regulation, but that this is what it would take is a point worth making. For some perspective, as I mentioned a couple of days ago in another thread, the US just experienced the 239th mass shooting this year, in 155 days. Two days later those figures are already outdated, Most other countries had exactly zero mass shootings during the same time period.
Now if the US enacted some of the OP’s proposals and rigidly enforced them, it might optimistically reduce the number of mass shootings and overall gun death rates by, say, 35%. That would still mean more than one mass shooting on average every single day, and many of them would be school shootings, not to mention the continuing carnage of ordinary one-on-one homicides.
Compared to the rest of the civilized world, a 35% reduction would still be a rate of gun deaths that is off the chart. Is that good enough? Does anyone believe that weak half-measures that gun owners would be happy with would actually reduce US gun deaths to the rates of the rest of the civilized world?
That’s all I have to say on the matter. Gun control advocates who favour much stronger regulation than typical gun owners are willing to accept are not the unreasonable ones; they’re the realists in the room who understand what meaningful gun control looks like. Those advocating things like mental health checks or age restrictions are simply avoiding the real problem and deluding themselves into believing in a magical panacea that will still let them play with their guns as much as they feel like. As I’ve said before, every “responsible law-abiding gun owner” is responsible and law-abiding until he isn’t. It’s the nature of the human condition.
Lots here in your post, @Tired_and_Cranky …
What I propose applies to handguns and long guns.
There are too many out there now (assault weapons) to do anything about. If we limit magazine capacity, we can at least slow down the rate of deaths in mass shootings and make buying new assault weapons less appealing.
I think measures can be taken. I do not accept that we cannot do anythiing about the problem because there are too many out there. To start with, stop new sales or transfers coming from outside the USA. We can prevent more for being out there, as a first step.
Agree, about a mandatory waiting period for the first gun, and then reduced waiting periods for subsequent guns.
What evidence do you have that this is true? (about me owning and responsibly handling my gun will keep me safer)
My evidence is my common sense and knowledge, as well as the fact that to date and after tens of thousands of rounds fired I have never, ever, had a negligent discharge.
I would feel safer if you didn’t have a gun. Why is my feeling less important than yours?
It is not less important than my feeling. You may continue having that important feeling, it’s no less important than mine is.
@Tired_and_Cranky why would your feeling be more important than mine?
But there is also evidence that hunters release them into the wild so they have something to kill later. For example, agweb.com explains how genetics show that wild pigs are spreading by car. These aren’t entirely “wild” populations just growing uncontrollably.
And this is wrong. It should be illegal, and it probably is. Does it being illegal stop them from doing it? Making something illegal doesn’t mean everyone will follow the law, but it will influence behavior.
You believe this is true but what makes you think that? Why do you believe that a gun is the best way to prevent being a victim of violent crime?
I said it’s one way. I did not say it’s the best way. Boy, you’re reading what you want to read and not what is written. That’s a major problem in this discussion.
I guess I should explain this:
If an intruder enters my house and I have a gun, then pointing that gun at them and telling them that I’m fully prepared to use it is one way to prevent being a victim of violent crime. And if s/he does not stop and continues to approach then my pulling of the trigger definitely prevented me of being a potential victim of violent crime. I say ‘potential’ because I do not fully know his/her intentions. But, I may choose to not want to find out either.
Violent crime is a much bigger problem in the US than in almost every other developed country and it seems to be tied to our prevalence of firearms.
Yes it is and that’s why I started this thread. I want to work on a reasonable first steps solution, and to achieve that solution. It may not be enough, but it’d be a start. Hopefully it’d be a good start.
I have been a victim of a violent crime. More than one, in fact. My subsequent life would not have been better if I responded with a gun.
But you may have been able to avoid being a vicitim of violent crimes in the first place. Depending on your skill level and mindset. I am truly sorry that you were a victim of multiple violent crimes. I could get into ways to avoid being a victim but I want to focus on the gun violence problem we have in America.
shrug I can’t stop anyone from talking about ideal solutions that nobody has sufficient political power to enact. But it is only that… idle talk. Without the votes, it’s dead on arrival. And worse, by telegraphing intentions in this way, you confirm to gun owners that all talk about “reasonable restrictions” is just a stalking horse to take everything once you’ve got enough power. And they will vote against their own interests to make sure you don’t get that power.
Don’t get me wrong, if I could wave a wand and make things as you said, I would do that. But the inescapable fact is that the numbers don’t exist now, and it’s likely that they never will. If it didn’t happen after Columbine and Sandy hook, it’s never going to happen. America will have guns and mass shootings forever. The only question is do we pursue politically achievable reductions? Or do we keep grabbing for the whole enchilada, thereby ensuring that we get no enchilada at all? I get that political pragmatism feels dirty at a moment like this, but it’s the only way any of this is ever going to get done.
Fair enough. As I said, it depends on the intended context of the discussion. And I agree with you that the NRA and other extremists would categorize the kinds of gun regulations that exist in all other comparable advanced democracies as an attempt to “take it all”, but that just isn’t true, and would be typical NRA scare-mongering. Canada, for instance, has lots of guns, just a lot of restrictions on who can own them and what you can do with them and where you can do it, and consequently far less gun violence.
I don’t consider my observation to be “idle talk”, though. It’s more like a long-term goal that will take many years of culture change to become viable. But such things happen. A few decades ago it would have been inconceivable that the Supreme Court would declare same-sex marriage to be a fundamental right. Go back further and you find a time when the right of Blacks to vote was hugely reviled, and further still, when it wasn’t a right at all. Nor could women vote. Many did not believe that Prohibition could ever be enacted as a Constitutional amendment, and afterwards fewer still believed that such a Constitutional amendment could ever be repealed, because no amendment had ever been repealed before.
Times change, and nations slowly evolve and gradually come to their senses.
Do we fix the problem, or placate gun owners while not fixing the problem?
I appreciate that we shouldn’t let perfection get in the way of good solutions, but the solutions gun owners will accept are shit solutions. Solutions that are worthless on their own, providing ‘proof’ that gun control doesn’t work. Bad gun control doesn’t work, we’ve been doing THAT for decades.
Violent crime has been on a downward trend for a decade or two. There’s a recent weird uptick in homicides in the last year or so, but overall violent crimes are way down compared to the '80s and '90s.