What the fuck? I’ve already made it. You’re just trying not to get it, and looking for bigger cherries to pick.
Anthrax kills few people because few people are exposed to it. However, it’s exceptionally dangerous because the number of bad outcomes per exposure is high.
It’s stupid to construct a comparison to automobiles or alcohol based simply on the number of bad outcomes because the exposure to cars or alcohol is simply vastly higher. You’re just being obtuse or stupid.
I’m being snarky, sure, but I don’t really have strong feelings about the issue.
I’m surprised to learn I could mount a 50mm on a turret. Could the turret be in the back of a Ford f-150? What happens if you try to drive around like that?
Not sure what to think about cannon. Gives a whole new meaning to ‘get off my lawn’, that’s for sure. Is it legal to muzzle-load it with flechettes? How about ball bearings?
I don’t know what the limits are. My point is that any new regulations on guns will probably be based on current regulations. If flechettes aren’t allowed, maybe the same reasoning could be applied to automatic weapons also, as a matter of degree.
But to make the leap to, “we are going to take away people’s handguns” seems absurd to me. That is a difference in kind, not degree, and I can’t see people being persuaded to accept it. Are handguns designed to kill people? Yeah, like the guy breaking into my house.
Personally I don’t see the excitement with guns or share the fear of dangerous intruders some people seem to obsess about, but then again people don’t share my interests either. We may see some kinds of ammo or certain kinds of guns banned, maybe, but to really take gun violence away from the US population as an option would require going way further than that, a proposition so outlandish that it seems almost not worth discussing. If people think that is a nutty opinion, I’m willing to patiently consider why.
Ah, well, this is not the position I guessed, because I assumed the position you would take would not be totally ridiculous.
The fraction of American households that own a gun (~40%) is very similar to the number of American adults who are regular drinkers (~50%). So the average American’s exposure to alcohol users is fairly close to their exposure to gun owners, or people with easy access to a gun.
Thanks to the OP for starting this thread. I seriously considered starting it myself. Those two posts were shocking. I am appalled by them.
I own guns. I enjoy shooting them. I enjoy hunting and shooting cans. But if I knew that a ban on guns for everyone would prevent any future gun deaths I would happily forfeit mine. Magically hypothetical, of course.
The difference between this situation and some of the other hypotheticals offered in this thread is that the only reason Crafter wants gun is to prevent assaults against himself. If of the threats against him, the ones involving guns are removed and he still is fearful enough of life that refuses to give them up under those circumstances, he is a sad pathetic man indeed. But then this is a man who feels the need to proudly wear a sidearm strapped on while grocery shopping.
Well, that *is *the place where one’s most likely to be attacked with fresh fruit.
As I recall, he’s a libertarian of the Social Darwinist variety, which is close enough to sociopathy for most practical purposes. Scrap the FDA, EPA, OSHA, emergency services and so forth and if people die from tainted food or bad medicine or whatever, they deserve it for being weak.
It sounds like Crafter_Man is the kind of person we should not ignore, lest he be one of those we’re quoted about. You know, like “Yea, he was always kind of odd, but I never imagined he’d do this”
So not obtuse, but very stupid. Okay, good to know.
Yeah, all the parties I go to, people love to pull out their guns. And the tailgating before Steelers games, people love to grill and shoot weapons. Then they get in the stadium and keep shooting even at stadium rates.
You’re nuts if you think alcohol use and firearm use occur at the same rate in the US. Absolutely moronic.
About twice as many as there were around the time England banned guns.
Cite: Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade | Daily Mail Online
You might want to review correlation’s relationship with causation. Seems you don’t have a good handle on that quite yet.
Der Trihs: Fighting strawmen since 1973 (it’s taking longer than he thought).
He’s the one. Pro-cat drowning, among other things.
So says the person who agreed that “the weak shall perish” was a good idea. When you agree with omnicidal killer aliens, perhaps its time to consider that your personal philosophy may be flawed.
:rolleyes: Troll on, buddy, troll on.
Many many things can be enablers of crime, especially these days. And guns have non-criminal uses, where as I cannot think of one useful thing comes from getting stoned of your gourd, particularly as a routine thing.
Legal drugs aren’t cheap, what makes you think the illegal ones would be? And the folks using the highly addictive ones would probably not be able to work, so whether or not they were cheap would be immaterial.
Actually, I believe that opium dens resulted in quite a bit of crime, and the amount per does of heroin sold back then was very small.
Alcohol is not as frequently addictive as many of the illegal drugs are. Also, there are many functional alcoholics out there - alcohol simply isn’t as big a problem as illegal drugs are in terms of people ruining their lives.
Well, I think cigarettes should be illegal so you are preaching to the choir there. Gun related wounds are not near as common as problems with booze, cigarettes and drugs.
No, a person standing around holding a gun doesn’t have to lead to trouble, but the average person addicted to drugs is going to be an issue for society in some way - crime to get money to buy, inability to work, violent responses to some drugs, etc. There are a heck of a lot of drugs out there besides heroin or LSD.
Guns make it easier to kill someone if you are of that bent, but they certainly don’t make it likelier that the person who owns it is going to kill someone. There are three guns in this house, there have been guns here since at least the early 80’s and none of those guns have even injured anyone.
But the people in that house are more likely to die from guns than they would be if the guns weren’t there. Accident or murder with those guns is more likely than you being killed by a criminal; they make people less safe.
Alcohol use and firearm ownership occur at the same rate, and those are the appropriate rates to compare. Guns are still dangerous even when you are not actively shooting them.
I was a 110 lb more or less young female person traveling alone by car long distances. As it turned out, the only time I had to threaten anyone with a gun was with an empty shotgun, and the only time I had to protect myself all I had was a metal dog bowl so I clocked him with that. So, several years carrying a handgun, shot no one.
I understand that one can find out how to make a bomb rather easily on the internet.
I’ve never actually seen any of those studies, so I have no idea if the people involved knew anything about the guns they had, where they were, etc. Also, we have three shotguns and no handgun (anymore due to CA’s laws), and none of those guns are loaded.
I actually don’t think that most burglars carry a gun, so I’m not particularly worried about one killing me, and we don’t live in an area where home invasions are likely, so the shotgun sitting near the door is only there because the husband hasn’t gotten around to taking it upstairs after it came back from repair. But if some troublemaker showed up I could still threaten him with the empty gun and if he didn’t take the hint, club him with it.
No they aren’t. An unloaded gun is no more dangerous than a transistor radio with no batteries in it, to pick a random common household item.
I meant in the statistical sense. Hentor seemed to be implying that we must compare the rate of alcohol consumption with the rate of gun use in the US, when obviously it is gun ownership that is the relevant statistic for the kind of risks we are talking snout.