Its more than that, they have a distorted view of the cost benefit of having guns.
John Wallace, 59, August 24, 2011 Yellowstone National Park
Brian Matayoshi, 57, July 6, 2011 Yellowstone National Park
I believe these were both in Wyoming. I’m no expert on bears but I also get the impression that most bear attacks aren’t lethal. The way it was explained to me was that they don’t usually attack you because they are looking for something to eat, they attack you because they want to eliminate you as a threat or something like that. So a lot of times they leave when they don’t feel threatened.
Does every defensive use of a gun result in the killing or injuring of the assailant? If not then why is your statement a meaningful statistic?
Grizzly bear (brown bear) attacks are usually territorial or protective in nature. So the best thing to do is to play dead; the bear will usually stop the attack once it perceives you’re no longer a threat.
Black bear attacks, on the other hand, although much rarer, are usually predatory. That bear likely means to eat you, so it’s best to fight back with all available means.
There are are exceptions, of course. Like that photographer that got eaten by a grizzly in Denali last year.
A man’s gotta make his own decisions, of course. I, for one, am not going to let a bear of any species gnaw on me and count on statistics that say I probably won’t die.
I disagree. It’s the chicken and the egg thing. The anti-gun people first recognize their own inability to defend themsleves, THEN search out any available “evidence”, no matter how preposterous, that allows them to self-justify their own weakness. For some, not content to leave it at that, the following stages are jealousy, then hate. That’s how we get the hardcore gun banners that keep insisting that I, personally, would be better off if I disarmed myself.
Edit: Not to say that there aren’t some people that honestly do believe that guns make individuals, and society as a whole, less safe. But these people are the casual dupes of the hardcore antis, not the hardcores themselves.
If you are going to count every time a gun stoker shoots at a thief and misses, then I get to count every time a gunstroker mistakenly shoots at his children/spouse and misses. Apples to apples, gun owners are a menace to themselves and their loved ones, far more than toward legitimate assailants.
IIRC civilians are less likely to hit innocents in the exceedingly rare event that that they do fire their weapon.
It may be a lot easier to take you seriously if you can quit with the insults and childish name calling outside of the pit too.
Well, we have mountain lions, too…but they aren’t much of a threat to adult males. Mostly only women, children, and people from California are at risk.
No, you don’t. We are talking about the risks of owning a gun compared the to benefit of owning guns. So you get to compare the actual harm that guns cause in the form of accidental deaths to the instances of harm that are prevented by guns.
Suicide is not a risk, that pretty fucking deliberate. And unless you want to move the conversation to whether to not we should have the second amendment at all in light of the 400 million guns already out there, then start a new thread.
But I can keep referring to the two sides of the debate as gun grabbers and gun nuts, right?
A hungry mountain lion was beaten back from attacking two people by a dog once. I always thought mountain lions were badasses.