I imagine this type of poll would over-represent the type of people that are very passionate about the subject. In this case, I would think gun owners are over-represented.
Thenyou got ripped off, $50 for a functional .22 is an insult, if you really wanted the gun gone, sell it/trade it at a sporting goods store that sells firearms.
No. Don’t have a use for them. I will go to a local range and shoot a friend’s from time to time.
Interesting topic: the apparent contradiction in libertarianism between property rights and contract rights. If someone hasn’t already, I’d like to start that discussion in Great Debates.
I guarantee it wasn’t worth $50. I don’t know guns, but I do know janky.
The second amendment sayeth that you’re allowed to own guns. (And that the explicit reason it’s granting that permission is so that when the state drafts you into a militia under the control of the president he won’t have to pay to arm you - though gun rights people tend to ignore that part.)
There’s no part of having permission to own guns that amounts to a reason to own guns, obviously. And now that the US has a well-supplied standing army and national guard, even the most patriotic of souls knows that there’s no need for them to personally stock guns to bring along when the president drafts them into a militia. So the second amendment doesn’t provide any reason for a person to own a gun.
Let’s not turn this into 2nd Amendment thread no. 3,139. Suffice to say, many people have logical arguments disputing that premise.
If the answer to “why do you choose to have guns” is “because 2A”, that’s not an answer, and there are not logical arguments that dispute that. They doubtlessly have other reasons for choosing to have guns, but “because they’re not prohibited” is not among them. (If it were, they would be crushed to death under the millions of other things they’ve accumulated solely because nobody stopped them from doing so.)
A person can have various reasons for choosing to have a gun. They can choose to disclose them, or choose not to. That’s up to them.
And yet a substantial number of the gun owners who responded are just people who inherited some old guns and don’t care about them.
Hmmm… I suppose we could get rid of the post office, since the Constitution only says that the government has permission to establish them.
Yes, we could. Is that in question? “We” in this case being the US government, who could quite certainly decide to shut down the US post office any time they liked. Similarly people can choose not to avail themselves of the services of the post office, even though such services are legally available.
Again, the question is not “are you allowed to have guns/mail letters”. It’s “Do you have guns/mail letters, and (optionally) why?” And we’re not talking about climbing mountains here, so “because it’s there” is not a credible reason, at least not on its own.
I know guns, I love guns ------- and I have two probably waiting for this years “Christmas buy-backs” when they happen. They were headed that way when I got them. One has breech damage and the other is missing key parts like the magazine. Yeah ------ I know, I know; I could get maybe $25 for the parts that are good and someone could benefit. But both are common as dirt and fifty bucks is fifty bucks. So unless a buddy has a need before then ------
The tale of how I became a gun owner is one of my favorite stories about my old man.
I was sixteen and living in suburban Atlanta the year I asked my parents for an air rifle for Christmas. Christmas morning, I came down the stairs to find…my dad’s old 12 gauge Mossberg pump shotgun, given out of some sense of father-son passing of heritage, I think. Gee, Dad, I appreciate the sentiment, but I was thinking more “plinking beer bottles in the back yard” than “fighting off the hordes of the undead.”
I told that story at family gatherings for about a decade, until the Christmas morning where I looked under the tree to find that my Dad had gotten me that year the pellet gun I’d asked for years earlier. My Dad is the best.
So, yes, I own a gun; I’ve probably fired it three times in the 35 years I’ve owned it. And yes, I am a very pro-gun control liberal. I’m not anti-gun per se, but I am very anti-gun fetish/gun worship, which seems to be a strong motivation for a lot of gun-rights defenders, at least the ones who are vocal online. And I’ll make assumptions about you based on your guns; you own a 12 ga shotgun and a 30-06, you look like you want to hunt deer. You own a Desert Eagle and an AR-15, you look like you want to hunt schoolkids.
I have one. I bought it about a year and a half ago. Its only purpose was/is to use to kill myself. That’s why I bought it and it’s why I have it and it’s nice knowing it’s there if I decide to use it.
I bought it because using a gun is more likely to work than, say, an overdose and because you can really just… waltz into a gun store and buy one and it’s a lot harder to procure most lethal drugs without a prescription (illegally, yeah, but I really am not certain how to go about finding someone who could sell me some. I used to know people, but I wouldn’t know how to get in contact with them). I haven’t used it yet in part because the violence of it is kind of horrifying- the idea of someone having to scrub my blood and brain off the walls and floor just seems cruel and unfair to them. More so than… tidier methods.
I’ve shot it at the gun range just to get the feel for it, but I can’t really imagine using it in self-defense or carrying it around. If someone broke into my house, it probably wouldn’t even occur to me that I have it.
I voted “no,” though it’s slightly more complex.
I do own a Mauser C96 (a.k.a. “broomhandle Mauser”). However, it was adapted by someone into a prop replica ofHan Solo’s blaster from Star Wars (which was based on the same weapon model); the person who did the modification (before I received it, as a gift) removed one or more pieces of the firing mechanism, and it’s no longer a functional gun.
I’ve never owned a working firearm, and other than one afternoon of skeet shooting, 25 years ago, I’ve never fired a gun.
I do not own one now, but I have owned one in the past.
Please tell me it was a replica and not a vintage original.
Some very horrifying things can happen when a person shoots themselves in the head but fails to kill themselves. I won’t get graphic but their lives don’t get better than before the attempt. You worry about someone having to clean your blood and brains up but not about someone potentially having to change your diapers or pay for your institutionalization, possibly for years or decades?
I’m not being judge-y, just suggesting that suicide by gun is nowhere near as foolproof as people think.
No idea; I don’t know the person who did the conversion, nor anything about the history of the “donor” gun, but I would guess “replica.”
On the one hand, I doubt that there’s many other approaches that have a better success rate/inconvenience ratio. On the other hand, why am I talking about how good it is to kill yourself with a gun??