Come one, come all: Gun Control revisited, revisited

Great Debates
221

Would be difficult to use the pool I agree! Maybe empty it and throw them in?

On the other hand, in the real world, have you ever actually seen anyone defend their home with a gun?

  1. Chances are you and anyone you know will never actually need to do it your entire life.
  2. If you don’t like to take that chance and do have a gun, next chance is you won’t reach it in time.
  3. The majority of people will let the aggressor take the gun off them and use it on them rather than shoot.
  4. If you do reach it and are not trained for REAL situations, you will probably miss “the bad guy” completely, and/or shoot yourself, and/or shoot one of your family.
  5. All too often “the bad guy” is unarmed, and is your neighbor looking for their cat in your yard. They get injured, you go to jail.

This is the reality. Sitting in the warm living room, beer in hand watching Arnie blow away the bad guys, everyone thinks it’s easy to shoot an intruder. Faced with the guy right in front of them, many simply cannot do it.

The home defense idea too often stems from outdated handed-down frontier thinking, violence dramatized on TV, insular thinking and really sad paranoia. Too much time watching emotive stuff like “America’s Most Wanted” and “Cops” can induce the above reactions in otherwise relatively stable and intelligent people.

I do not favor outlawing guns, it would not work in American society as they are now endemic.
I do wish that people would think through their motivations really really carefully. Unbelievably, people typically debate harder about getting a tattoo than buying a gun.
Dos and don’ts

  • Don’t make the decision to get armed while drunk, watching The Terminator, watching Bruce Willis, watching Charles Bronson, while listening to an NRA representative, when angry, or any combination of the above.
  • Do think out why you REALLY want / think you need one.
  • Do then think through the possible consequences if it goes wrong.
  • Do then after all that, if you still think it’s a good idea, for the sake of yourself, your family and friends, get some SERIOUS PROFESSIONAL TRAINING before bringing a deadly weapon into your home. Then follow the damn training.
    Lecture over, for now at least.
222

I’m too slow of a typist to answer long posts like yours.
I will try to sum your statements up if I may.

Do I know the difference between real life and play acting? Yes I do.

Am I willing to accept the consequences of my actions? Yes I am.

Am I willing to let someone break into my house ,no matter how small the chance is,No I’m not.

Will I shoot someone who tries? Well thats the chance they will have to take.

Your gun control stance, as I see it, takes the option of my last statement away from me.

I will have to use a ball bat or something else to defend myself. It is hard to fire a warning shot with a pitchfork.

223

Sorry for the long blurb.

I’m glad you do, but you are probably the exception. How about the next guy - d’ya trust him?

But am I willing to accept it if you make an accidental mistake with that weapon near me? No I’m not.

Agreed, but it’s harder to put the innocent guy’s brains back in their skull than to sew up a pitchfork hole and say sorry.
There is no single answer to this and I don’t want to rant any more. I just hope to invoke some thoughts about responsibility and training in potential gun owners.

224

Deep Thought
You’re right. There is no one solution but may I offer this suggestion to those who would listen.

Help those people that live in violent and drug ridden areas get good jobs. Not minimum wage jobs. That is for high
schoolers that do not know how to work. I consider it an insult to be offered a job for minimum wage. And believe me I have been out of work many times.
That way they are off the streets.

And if you know of an employer that pays really good send him to my town.

225

(Do I need to? I don’t think so) I just wanted to call your attention to the current issue of Playboy, which has an interview with the guy that wrote a book about America’s gun culture and how it came to be. VERY interesting reading, for those on both sides of the debate.

I am still reading it, but one thing that leapt out at me is the fact that basically, the whole idea of America being founded by people who owned guns is pretty much horseshit.

As for the Second Amendment… please. What part of ** * WELL - REGULATED MILITIA * ** don’t you understand? Oh wait… I know: none of it. Because if you did, you’d have to shut the hell up about your goddamn guns.

Stoid

226

Max Torque - I don’t think there is much mileage in quoting from articles found on the internet edition of The Guardian. To state the obvious, for every newspaper article favouring one point of view, one can find a counter-example.
The Guardian enjoys no great reputation for accuracy, and the report cited is qualitatively poor.

I respect what you have to say, and I’m sure that your strength of feeling on this issue derives from more than re-hashed Guardian articles. I’ve visited Texas, which seems to be your home, and I had many very thought-provoking discussions there with people whose views seemed akin to yours.

Given that ‘reality’ seemed to be a word you wanted to throw back in my face, let me just add a few points. I know what the article said, but I actually live here and have first-hand knowledge of things which to you are just references in a paper - such as Notting Hill carnival and Essex nightlife. I assure you, nobody visiting these places expects to encounter a gun or has any reason to.

The first reason is that guns are extremely scarce in this country. The second is that those bad guys who can use them very rarely do, because this is the surest way to make themselves Police Target Number 1, with all the stops pulled out to find them, lock 'em away and melt the key. The third is that when guns ARE used by criminals, in an overwhelming percentage of cases the victims are other people engaged in criminal activity or known prior associates of the killer. Ordinary members of the public, not involved in crime, are so seldom involved it is equivalent to “never” for all practical purpose.

I said before that we feel at least as secure in our own homes as you, and maybe more, because we know intruders, should there be any, won’t have guns either. You retorted by quoting from the same article about young criminals owning or having access to guns. I can’t know, but I do feel sure, that you are capable of better logic than this. Even if I accept for the time being the gist of the article, that there are young criminals with access to guns, this is not to say they are the same people whose criminal activity revolves around breaking and entering. They are much more likely to be involved in rival gangs concerned chiefly with drug trafficking.

Those criminals who opt to break into houses are not armed. The main reason is this. If they are caught or apprehended, they will face whatever relatively minor fine or sentence they get. If, however, they are caught in possession of a firearm, they will serve at least 10 years in jail and probably more. That’s just for possession, never mind using it. Now, if you were intent on breaking into a house to steal some valuables, would you honestly take that extra risk when you don’t have to? The position over here is that 99 percent of intruders do not seek a confrontation. They are there to steal. If they are disturbed or confronted, they will go to another house where life is easier.

I’m sure your remark about us wearing flak jackets and acting as targets was meant flippantly, and it only makes sense as such. We don’t. More to the point, we don’t have to.

I do understand that the USA is never going to outlaw guns, since there is no collective mandate to do so and it would be impractical legislation anyway. And I also understand there is no point pretending we are comparing like with like. The main point of my original post was that both of the social models I described are practical. Ours is no weirder than yours. It works. The benefit we have is that (virtually) no innocent Brits get killed by guns, nor is this a concern. Yes, we have had our tragic exceptions, but rare exceptions do not generally make for sound argument. The point is, the level of incidence is so low that the population at large is presented with no threat whatsoever of encountering a gun.

We see this as a benefit, and we generally find it surprising that more Americans do not feel the same way. For one thing, there is NO incidence of a British child using a gun to kill, whether inside school or anywhere else. Whatever else our differences, can’t we agree this is a desirable state of affairs?

227

Deep thought, I’ve posted this link before, but here’s a footnote from the article:

Your points are valid, as a matter of fear that someone might not be able to handle the weapon properly and have an accident, injuring yourself, themself, loved ones… but that simply isn’t the reality when the vast majority of times it’s used to save the lives of those same people.

It really gets me going when certain people think that they are allowed to determine what others may or may not own, particularly when that ownership is something guaranteed in the Constitution.

228

Alas, he probably means it. Tra-la.

229

Stoidela said:

Speaking of pretty much horseshit…

I assume you’re referring to the book Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture by Michael Bellesiles, a history professor at Emory University. I haven’t read the Playboy interview, but I have read the book. I’ve also actually looked up the cites in his bibliography. So have other reviewers. I suggest you do the same, should you actually read it. A quick search should point you to several reviews online. Point is: lots of scholars think the book is silliness. Not because of Bellesiles’ ideals, but because of his data. It is, at best, very poorly accounted for, and at worst it is intentionally dishonest.

The Second Amendment language question could perhaps be cleared up by reading the thread–Just a bit. You’ll probably read some posts with which you agree.

BTW, there was a great review of Toynbee’s Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England (1884) in this month’s Hot Slut Cum Lickerz :rolleyes:

230

Gee, I’m glad it’s not a big number of folks getting shot or anything :slight_smile:

Wouldn’t dream of trying to dicate that to you. Just asking (on behalf of all us unarmed people) for consideration and responsibility on the part of those citizens who choose to own lethal weapons.
General observation - because the law says we can own something, doesn’t mean we have to.

231

Quote from Deep thought

But am I willing to accept it if you make an accidental mistake with that weapon near me? No I’m not.
Then what the hell are you doing trying to break into my house

232

Are you trying to make the ridiculous assertion that Playboy is somehow an unreliable “lesser” source of information because it includes pictures of nude women?

I’m sorry, did you just join us from some other century? Or perhaps some other planet?

:rolleyes:

stoid

233

You do realize that 8000 deaths out of a US population of about 300,000,000 amounts to .0027%, right? Not high on the causes of mortality list, to say nothing of the 1.7 million lives saved.

234

Criticism for Bellesiles’ work may be found here
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=43141 and here http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=518

235

Guns kill more people than swimming pools. A better comparision is cars, but then look at all of the laws surrounding cars. Mandatory insurance, drivers are liscensed, cars are licensed, safety equipment required, etc.

Killings are generally things that happen for pretty ordinary reasons. Random strangers commiting abberational murders are pretty rare, compared to, oh, girlfriend and husband conspire to kill wife. Husband, wife, and either person’s lover, often a bad combination. Drugs, drugs come up, too. The average gun owner never gets drunk? Sure.

Except super-duper illegal doesn’t cost as much as extra double-plus super-duper illegal, and there are bigger penalties for carrying it around, or using it in the commision of otherwise ordinary crime, and he can’t just go to his brother and ask him to buy him one, and you get the idea, or you should, anyway.

All things being otherwise equal, people holding guns are more dangerous than people not holding them.

If guns don’t kill people, then why do you need them to defend yourself, again?

236

“No it’s not” appears alot, and Joe Cool historians hold forth

Libertarian Cranks. It’s like a creationist site, or a UFO cite.

here’s something from the miltia history FAQ, though.

"A There were two basic reasons for deciding that militiamen maintain their own arms, rather than the government providing all the arms. One was the fear that the government could give arms to some and deny them to others. The other was simply the cost of arming so many militiamen.
However, as time went on, fear of the former decreased, and willingness to bear at least a part of the burden of arming increased. A number of people in Congress during the period 1789-1807 argued that the federal government should bear the cost of weapons, rather than individuals. The main reason for this was socioeconomic–poor people were generally the ones who had to serve in the militia to begin with, and it seemed harsh to also make them buy weapons.

The 1792 law requiring that militiamen arm themselves really upset a lot of poor people, who had to buy expensive military weapons, which were easy for the rich to afford. What many of them wanted was something like a property tax, which would then be used to buy guns for distribution. That way, the rich would be making a contribution proportionate to the contribution of the poor, towards the defense of the country.

The Southern states and the Western states and territories had extremely severe shortages of weapons in the early Republic. They were hard to get, and expensive when they could be gotten. Southerners and Westerners tried to get Congress to buy weapons for the militia, or loan weapons to the militia, or to do something about the situation.

However, Congress repeatedly refused to do anything about the situation. They threw a sop to Southerners and Westerners in the late 1790s by purchasing $30,000 worth of weapons to sell to the states, but that was about it.

After the Chesapeake Incident of 1807, when a British ship fired on a U.S. Navy ship, killing several crewmen, then boarded it, the U.S. almost went to war with Great Britain. In the end, it decided not to, but it did make several improvements to its military situation. One was started by Congressman John Randolph of Roanoke, the conservative Virginian, who argued that the United States begin appropriating a sum–around a million dollars or so–each year to buy arms for the militia. The U.S. would then distribute the arms proportionately to each state, which would then dispense them to the militia. In this way, the U.S. government could not be said to be withholding any arms, etc. The sum got debated down to $200,000, to Randolph’s displeasure, but this was passed, and became an amazingly long-lasting piece of legislation.

This law had several important consequences. In one respect, it helped the militia, because it gave states a “carrot” (free arms) to encourage them to maintain their militias. On the other hand, once states started getting weapons from the federal government, they shut down state armories, like the one in Virginia, and stopped buying weapons themselves, which a number of states, including Maryland, New York, and Vermont, had done.

As time went on, less and less of the militia was armed. Even early on, western and southern militias had a big problem procuring arms. And as militia service fell into disrepute, it was easier for people to get away without having weapons. "
http://www.militia-watchdog.org/faq3.htm

Interested parties might examine the origin of the term “corn stalk militia.”

237

This is the most specious of all arguments made by gun freaks. The fundamental difference between guns and ANYTHING else, cars, swimming pools, knives, even, is that guns are designed to do ONE thing: KILL or MAIM a living creature. That is what they are FOR. Swimming pools, cars, knives…all have other primary uses and any injury or deaht resulting is peripheral to their primary purpose. The PURPOSE of guns is to DESTROY.

There is no other tool or product, the function of which is exclusively to bring destruction in and of itself.

It’s a ** huge ** distinction, ya know?

sigh…

238

Obviously you were not one of the 8000, or your family would be on here saying it’s 8000 too many and that guns should be banned (I’m not saying that). No guns would equal no gun deaths, no debate. Not 8000 or 3000 or 2, but none.
1.7 million lives were not saved, that is “lies, damned lies, and statistics” territory. Give me a little intelligence credit, please.
So, do you feel the 8000 lives were well spent in the cause?

239

Estimates of the number of guns in the U.S. vary widely, but most seem to agree on an ownership rate of just under 50%. In a nation of around 280 million, that would mean at least 140 million guns, although there are in reality many more, since many gun owners have more than one. Still, let’s run with that extremely conservative “140 million” number. According to the 1999 FBI uniform crime report, there were around 300,000 crimes in 1999 in which a firearm was used. Let’s assume that every single one of those crimes involved a different gun. Even given these extremely unfavorable figures, that means that 99.8% of the guns in America are not used in any crime.

So if the overwhelming majority of people aren’t using guns for their “primary purpose”, why are they purchasing them? A protective purpose, perhaps? Hunting? Sport shooting? Keeping coyotes out of the strawberry patch? (don’t laugh, it happens at my folks’ house.) I’d like to hear your theory.

The National Health Safety Council keeps track of such accidents. According to their 1998 statistics, firearms accidents are 9th on a list of 10 causes of accidental death. The only item below guns on the list is “poisoning by gases or vapors.” Causing more fatal accidents than guns are such public menaces as cars (#1, obviously), falls, poisoning by solids or liquids, pedestrian fatalities (getting hit by a car while walking down the street), drowning, fires, and suffocation by an ingested object. Again I say: get your priorities straight, and work instead to eliminate the menace of objects that suffocate when swallowed!

Safety training is a great idea. My father saw to it that my brother and I attended a hunter safety course by age 12. Problem is, someone has to pay for such training. People who don’t want guns won’t want to subsidize the training of those who do, so using general tax money won’t fly. Well then, you say, make the people who want the guns pay for the training!

And that’s where the argument seems to be going today, down the road that many gun owners dread: interpreting the right of gun ownership out of existence. Each new restriction that adds to the cost of gun ownership and makes purchasing or keeping a gun more difficult is a nail in the coffin of a right many hold dear. Eventually, it is feared by gun owners and hoped by gun-control advocates, law-abiding citizens will throw up their hands in disgust at the hoops they must jump through and stop trying to own guns. So good citizens, those not prone to crime to begin with, will be defenseless, and the criminals, who by definition don’t obey the law and were never impacted by the restrictions, will carry on as normal.

Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week.

240

I can think of a few Olympic medalists who would disagree with you.

So, if an intruder breaks into my home and threatens my family, and I point a gun at him, that’s a destructive purpose or use rather than a protective one? If he then flees, and no shots are fired, where’s the destruction?

Dynamite? Sword? Bow and arrow? Arsenic? How about plain ol’ alcohol?

I know that gun-control advocates can’t seem to grasp the concept that no inanimate thing is evil in itself. What makes a thing good or bad is the volition behind it.

If you keep making that face, it’s gonna stick like that…hehehe