No, I think that’s hogwash. Way back in the Dark Ages, when I was in college, I took a self-defense course to fulfill a P.E. requirement. It was taught by a hand-to-hand combat instructor from (then) Fort Benning, and was aimed primarily at women – I was the only guy in the class.
Every self-defense technique taught by this big, tough Army instructor ended with “…and then run away as fast as you can”. Towards the end of the course, he had a couple of lessons about defending yourself with a knife, but his attitude toward weapons was that they were strictly an option of very last resort, and that if the situation had deteriorated to that point, you were going to get hurt; the best course was to minimize the damage as much as you could.
Anecdote ≠ data, but he was clear that adding weapons only made things worse, and that staying alert, carrying yourself confidently, and being aware of your surroundings were much the best tools for self-defense. They have the added benefit that they can’t be turned on you by your attacker. He did tell us that if we really felt the need for a weapon, a three-foot bamboo stick was safer and easier than a gun or a knife. But the notion that more guns or more knives = safer population is … well, let’s be charitable and say “unsupported by evidence”.
On the other hand, if you’re walking the streets of, let’s say, Manhattan, and a grizzly bear attacks you, you’re unlikely to be carrying a .460 Magnum, and your 9mm will only amuse him.
Problem is is that also puts them in the hands of people who are not using a socially sanctioned degree and kind of violence.
That’s not really where the debate bogs down. IME, most people who want more weapons in society aren’t doing so to decrease the violence in society, they just want to be able to carry weapons in society.
And any sort of control over the kinds of weapons that people carry in public looks like disarmament by pacificts by people who want more weapons carried in public.
Right, but of course, since people don’t carry a sign that they are criminal or sociopathic, the only way you can tell what they are carrying a weapon for is after they use it.
So, you wouldn’t fire a gun in a car either?
What if his friend has a gun? What if he’s got 10 friends? I mean, we can what-if all day and come up with more and more absurd scenarios in order to find one where your pocket knife will do you any good.
But, I’m not sure what your pocket knife will do against the friend outside the vehicle. You brought up the scenario to make a point, and I’m afraid I really don’t get it.
It’s also the worst place to use a knife or a gun. Only difference is that bear spray is much less likely to kill anyone, including yourself.
You’d think otherwise with all the talk of deterrence and such from other pro-armed populace advocates. But on this, I am glad that we agree.
Firing a gun in the car will deafen me, but I’ll still be able to act.
The big difference is that using a pistol or knife in close quarters won’t leave me incapacitated. Although it’s not ideal no matter how you shake it. My attacker is behind me in close quarters and that’s a big advantage.
Since that appears to presume that lack of disarmament is the problem, the implied corollary is that disarmament could ever be effective, which I doubt for the following reasons:
First, the extreme asymmetry or hysteresis between making weapons contraband and actually getting rid of them. The textbook example is Mexico which restricts knives as well as firearms. IMHO this falls under the “hey, at least we’re trying” fallacy. A policy which doesn’t even come up to the standard of imperfect and arguably is actively counter-productive in terms of public safety. In Mexico (or Chicago, or Los Angeles) there would be literally nothing to lose by abolishing all weapons laws; it might make things better and could hardly make them worse.
Second, even if you could somehow by magic make all dedicated weapons vanish, you’re still left with the reign of the young over the old, the large over the small, and the gang over the lone person. Weapons are equalizers, to the extent that a real risk of injury or death is a deterrent to would-be attackers.
Going by your responses, you appear to be of the opinion that the majority of people who believe in going armed in public are essentially yahoos, playing out a tough guy fantasy. Because of course () defensive weapons are ineffective, so of course choosing to go armed must be irrational. ()
That’s prejudiced to put it mildly. Frankly, an example of the worldview that led to the coining of the term “hoplophobe”.
I gave a speed safe to mrAru for Christmas about 2 years back [I think it was, maybe 3 I hate the time screwing effect of Covid]
I tend to startle people because I carry a 1.5 inch knife clipped to my bra strap. I had someone ask me why, and I pointed out I could access it easily enough to do a nice amount of damage to an arm around my neck from the back. I know I was taught how to manage the hold without a weapon, but a knife is nothing more than a force multiplier - why should I struggle when I can cut tendons and muscle, cause pain and make escape easier on myself. It is also handy since post cancer my finger nails shred like paper so I use it to open packages, cans and bottles instead of ripping my nails to shreds.
And the other half of the population demands they should have unfettered access to guns, switchblades, nunchucks, and ninja stars to protect themselves from other “nuts”.
I grew up in a bad neighborhood and spent some time as a street kid/juvenile delinquent. When I was in about fifth grade I was attacked by a kid with a switchblade. I was a bit faster and grabbed up a half brick and got to him first.
My switchblade is mine by right of combat. It is right here on the desk, and I use it as a letter opener.
I carry a Kershaw Leek with assisted opening almost every day. My pocketknife is not a weapon, it is a tool that gets a lot of use
That would be a pretty poor reading of what I actually said.
It may be, if it were remotely related to how you have chosen to twist my words. But as that’s not what I said, all I get is that for some reason, you choose to change what I say into other things that you can then play offense to and call that a win.
I think that this conversation has exhausted any potential benefit at this point. I wish you a good day.
But I will agree that those who coined the word “hoplophobe” were probably were just about as loose at interpretation of the words of others.
Eyyy, Kershaw Leek EDC represent. I use it every day. There was a successful push to legalize switchblades a few years ago, the “NRA of Knives” (without the corruption) has a summary of laws they’ve overturned. Now switchblades are legal, I don’t care to get one, but somewhere I have the shitty plastic one I bought it Tijuana at 12 and smuggled tucked in my belt. But even California hasn’t touched Kershaw Speed Safe as far as I know, it’s maybe a “loophole” but seems inherently better and more sturdy.
Having talked to a doctor who treated children who suffered gunshot and knife wounds, he said while both can obviously kill, knife wounds are much easier to treat/heal while gun wounds are very destructive and add in a thermal component, and kids bodies are small, so vital organs are very close, so a gun wound can easily damage multiple organs and blood vessels, far more then in adults. So I’m not so sure knifes are as much as a problem to consider a ban. Yes knifes can be misused but so can a screwdriver. Add to that the utility a knife has, and I’m not seeing it.
Then you seem to be agreeing with me. The number of people killed by a gun, in the USA, is effectively none as a percentage of all deaths. Added sugar is a vastly larger killer.
Chasing that last little bit is ridiculous. The perfect is the enemy of the good, so what’s wrong with staying here at good?
At some point, you need to balance competing interests. There’s an interest in reducing murders. But:
Reducing guns might not reduce murders. You’re free to look at homicide rates by nation and try to guess when they banned weapons and see if you can spot the change. I can’t. And, as best I can tell by running a linear regression across nations by different factors, the primary reason for high murder rates in the US compared to European nations is the gini coefficient. Reducing the amount of guns was predicted to increase homicide rates.
People have an interest in being able to defend themselves.
Governments tend to be less murdery when their citizens can go politician hunting in their free time.
Guns are a source of affordable food for a not insignificant number of people.
There might be less intrusive ways to accomplish the goal, without having to violate the 2nd Amendment and item #3 above.
I gave no ban.
Papers around the world have volunteered to hold reporting on certain topics, based on research showing that the reporting just amplifies worse effects (e.g. suicide, copycat killers, etc.)
They should voluntarily test whether holding back on reporting this subject causes the numbers to go down. And, if the numbers do, they should take that to heart.
Did you really just use “guns make it easier to assassinate politicians” as an argument in their favor?
I hear that assertation often from gun people, but never backed up with evidence. Do they really think that if some law enforcement agency wants to detain them, that their AR-15s and Desert Eagles are going to hold them off? Didn’t work for Randy Weaver, didn’t work for David Koresh, didn’t work for the Bundys. The gummint always has bigger and better guns, and more importantly, trained men and women that know how to use them. Pols worry much more about citizens’ votes than their arsenals.
Unless of course they’re terrorists who thinks that violence is a legitimate political tool. In which case they’re exactly the people who shouldn’t have access to guns.I don’t think you are, but that’s the implication of “guns keep politicians honest”.
The government always wins, but that doesn’t mean the guns were futile or only brought more trouble down on their owners’ heads. Arguably armed citizens forced the government to be far more conciliatory than it otherwise would have been. In particular, it was the memory of Waco and Ruby Ridge that led to the government being far more cautious with Bundy and his supporters if only because the government didn’t want to make martyrs of them.
Rebellion is futile but armed civil disobedience sometimes isn’t.
Not everyone injured by a weapon is killed. Many people also have their lives destroyed, left maimed and crippled. Weapons are even used to extort and threaten without ever actually being used to physicaly injure.
How many toddlers die from added sugar a year?
It’s not a “little bit”, and I don’t think that we’ve made it nearly anywhere near good yet. If we were leading the world in lack of weapon violence, then I’d say we could it on our laurels and call it good. As we are a leader in weapon violence, I don’t think we are there.
But not that much interest in reducing murders, as you go on to explain.
Never know till you try. Quitting smoking might not reduce chances of lung cancer either.
That’s because most of them had common sense regulations all along. They never had to make such a change. That’s why you can’t see where they banned guns by the murder rate change, because they didn’t. They simply have had a lower murder rate all along, and fewer guns.
Gotta admit that I kinda like your idea of blaming violence on the wealthy, but I don’t know that it really holds up. Now, if you want to talk about poverty itself, then sure, poverty tends to create crime and violence.
The problem here, though is that the same people who want more weapons on the street are also the same ones that want a higher gini cooeffcient, cutting taxes for the wealthy at the expense of programs for poor and working classes. If a party was against all forms of weapon control, but for wealth redistribution and expanded mental health care, then at least they could make the argument that the latter will reduce violence.
But, since they don’t, all they are doing is talking out both sides of their mouth.
Yes, we do. And a good defense is to prevent people from using weapons against other. If someone shoots me, my being armed doesn’t do me any good. If the person who would have shot me wasn’t armed, that would.
Ah, assassination threats. If a govt is murdery, they aren’t going to leave their leaders out where some yahoo with his AR-15 can get to them.
What I have seen is that govts tend to get more murdery when they have an excuse, the kind of excuse that an attempted or successful assassination gives.
That’s nice. Personally, the only way I see a total gun ban ever happening is if the gun rights side refuses to ever negotiate anything, and so finally when there is enough momentum behind a campaign against school shooters and toddler accidents, people are fed up enough to not let them finally come to the table, and instead it all happens on the most hoplophibic’s terms.
I’ve never been for a ban, and very few are. But, along with a solid majority of the country, I am in favor of reasonable regulations.
Part of that is that cities and rural areas do have different needs for guns. In a rural area, you may hunt for your food. In a city, not so much. And yet, cities are generally not allowed to make their own laws in relation to guns, so any laws that affect the city will affect the country as well. This was something that was pushed for by the pro-gun side, so it’s their fault if the desire to prevent violence in the city affects laws outside of it.
Those are what is generally discussed, but is often derailed by claims that what is actually wanted is a total ban. Claiming that we are acting disingenuously, and using the deaths of gun violence victims as an excuse to ban guns just because we don’t like them or are scared of them.
You said to stop doing these things, gun advocates often claim that the only way that we’d ever be able to reduce gun deaths is by completely banning guns and going house to house confiscating them, so what is your proposal to prevent any media outlet or any social media participant from talking about it?
Without a ban, all you will do is make sure that the more reputable sites aren’t reporting on it, while allowing less reputable sites to carry the narrative.
Are you saying that they shouldn’t be reporting on mass shootings at all?
What other stories should the media repress to avoid potentially inspiring a criminal? Should we not have movies because Taxi Driver inspired the attempted assassination of Reagan?
Do you think it is the media that causes someone to murder their domestic partner? That causes robberies and carjackings? That causes toddlers to find the guns in their home and kill their siblings?
What goal is it that you are trying to accomplish, and do you really think that gagging the media is the least intrusive method of doing so?
As long as we are talking about what they should do, then maybe we get people to voluntarily stop assaulting others. Then the news wouldn’t have anything to report on.
And personally, I’d say that if the media reported more on children finding guns and shooting siblings with them, those deaths would go down. Do you think otherwise? If so, why?
Well as long as we’re dragging in non-lethal effects, how about adding how many toddlers suffer from obesity, hyperactivity, poor nutrition and eventual health problems from sugar?
“Weapon” violence: one hears the refrain over and over “The USA leads the industrialized world in gun violence”. As if all of that violence simply wouldn’t exist if there were no guns. Violence is violence, and people are pretty good at finding ways to hurt and kill others. The “instrumentality” theory of crime and violence- that the presence of certain implements somehow spawns or ignites violent behavior- has been repeatedly debunked; yet weapons are still treated as if they’re somehow epidemiological vectors of crime and violence.
Which means that the presence or absence of guns is neither proven nor disproven to effect the murder rate. I am unaware of any example that can be cited to show that a previously violent society became less violent after guns and other weapons were restricted. See my doubts above about the instrumentality theory of violence.
The gini index specifically refers to the disparity between rich and poor, not the absolute presence of either. A country where you’re either the dictator or one of his cronies, or else a barrio dweller, is unsurprisingly going to have a lot of violence.
You seem to have a near-limitless faith in the power of prohibition to give you a prior guarantee of safety. I and others are convinced that the world simply doesn’t work that way.
And the first thing they do is ban non-government actors from possessing weapons. Which doesn’t speak well to trusting the government with a weapons monopoly.
That might happen if enough people were personally victims of such incidents. But it so happens that media sensationalism aside, they’re vanishingly rare statistically. You’re more likely to be in an airliner crash than you are to be shot by an anonymous spree killer
“Ban” doesn’t necessarily mean the absolute non-existence of guns (which is probably as unachievable as eliminating bathtub gin was during Prohibition); but it could mean a regimen of “reasonable regulations” so restrictive it would be easier to get a prescription for morphine. An almost purely hypothetical ability to be armed, like trying to get a firearms permit in Mexico, is of little use.
That’s no more disingenuous a claim than claiming that all opposition to gun control is from conservatives who champion the oppression of the poor and disadvantaged. Even today there are still liberals who hold with the original sense of the word as in favoring fewer restrictions and prohibitions. It must be a damned hard thing today for a women to be in favor of both reproductive and self-defense rights.
) defensive weapons are ineffective, so of course choosing to go armed must be irrational. (
