It’s getting late for me, I have to get up early tomorrow. This a worn out topic for me but I’ve really enjoyed discussing this with you. I’ll think about what you’ve said and respond tomorrow.
Someone who likes military explosives, and plays with them responsibly, could say the same about the average American gunowner.
The people who have this sign disagree with you:
Since I tend more towards your apparent view of the matter – guns don’t make for safety – I agree that publishing the names and addresses of gun owners is a mistake.
This is always a slippery argument to tread, because soon you get to “well, what about people who wanna own nukes?”
Obviously, no one feels that private ownership of nukes is really justifiable. However, the government is perfectly fine with ownership of “military explosives” assuming the owner cares enough to pay the tax on them.
I can own a live grenade, for whatever it costs + $500 tax stamp.
But, and at least in my opinion, certain grades of weapon obviously require more training to use than can comfortably be provided in a home environment. These items, it makes sense to have some sort of restriction on. I can teach you the rules of gun safety in a matter of minutes, and within a couple of hours you’ll be perfectly fine with one. I couldn’t do the same with C4.
You have no idea what kind of eyesight I have. Or how impulsive I am. Or whether I often misplace things it is important to have in a certain place. Or how angry I get. Or whether my children, or anyone else in my household, is at risk of suicide. Or whether I would buy and trade guns with strangers in parking lots. Or who would inherit my gun. Or whether I would be anything close to a good shot. And there’s no way you could gague any of that, except for the last, during a couple of hours when I’m on my best behavior.
The sentence of yours that I am singling out from your post can be compared to someone trying to convert me to their religion, except that that possibility of death is ratherer greater with a gun than with a Christmas tree.
If I could pick one gun control measure, it would be: No advertising.
Now, I support individual freedom of speech. You should be free to try to convert me to the gun culture on a forum like this. I just think it is a mistake.
I’m not trying to convert you to join the gun culture. Just want to make that clear. I’m debating an invasion of privacy and, by extension, the rights to gun ownership.
As to your first paragraph, the same could be said of anything. If I were to teach you the basic rules of guns, then you’d understand. Here are the four basic rules as commonly taught:
- All guns are always loaded. (Even if it’s not, treat it like it is)
- Never let the muzzle cover anything you’re not willing to destroy.
- Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are aligned with the target. (A common mistake in movies.)
4)Be sure of your target and its surroundings.
As you can see, I don’t care about all of those things. My job, as an instructor, is not to be your babysitter. My job is to teach you how to safely operate a gun.
I could teach you marksmanship on top of that, and find out if you’re a good shot. You, as an individual, take it upon yourself to inform yourself about the rights and rules of gun ownership, and the responsibilities therein. Seeking my training is only one step.
Note: I am not a trainer in any professional capacity. I use the first person simply to illustrate a point.
People infected with HIV could potentially infect others with an untreatable, fatal infectious disease. Making their names public provided public health benefits. Shouldn’t people have the rights o avoid known disease carriers? Or so the argument went in the 1980s. It parallels the argument being made here for publicizing the names of CCW permit holders (except the pro-publication side hasn’t so clearly stated what specific benefits they see in publishing permit holders’ names and addresses).
Of course, it turned out that publicizing the names of AIDS patients didn’t do anything good as far as public health was concerned, but it did cause harm. And that’san apt parallel as well. In the case of the CCW permit holders, the degree of harm is clearly less, but it’s there. So why make that information public, when it serves no useful purpose?
A false equivalency, given that the anti-CCW faction is not composed of religious fanatics with a long history of assaulting and murdering their opponents. This was in an era where AIDS was widely regarded as a good thing, as God’s Wrath on the sinners; something to be encouraged in order to kill as many homosexuals as possible.
Why is numbers in quotes? Are you implying that they aren’t numbers?
And what is the “numbers game”? Is that where I confound you with actual facts and figures supporting a hypothesis instead of just posting editorials from local papers I agree with?
From the same chart I referenced, here are gun related homicides (your link has numbers for all homicides):
Country Homicides per 100,000 people
Jamaica 47.44
Honduras 46.7
El Salvador 39.9
Guatemala 38.52
Swaziland 37.16
Brazil 18.1
South Africa 17
Colombia 10
Mexico 10
Panama 9.92
Philippines 9.46
Paraguay 7.35
Nicaragua 7.14
Zimbabwe 4.75
Costa Rica 3.32
Uruguay 3.24
United States 3.2
Argentina 3
Barbados 3
Chile 2.2
Most other modern Western industrialized countries have a rate of around .04 to 1.0 murders per 100,000 people.
So it’s not particularly clear to me that having the most guns per capita of any nation on Earth makes us particularly safe. Murder rates and overall gun death rates aren’t quite third-word levels. But they are pretty high and higher than any other country not in Africa or South America. What makes us safe compared to countries like El Salvador and Jamaica is that we have live in a representative Democracy, have a relatively strong and stable economy and respect law, order and individual rights. Guns has almost nothing to do with it.
I think it’s a bit more complicated than that. Military explosives like grenades, C4 or Semtex are considered “destructive devices” and subject to the National Firearms Act of 1934. That means you need a background check and approval from the ATF and local law enforcement.
I’d like to know where this whole notion of “gun owners wearing stars” even came from. Because that’s what sounds like right-wing fantasy to me.
Definitely fantasy, but triggered I think by the recent incidents of newspapers in a few places publishing names and addresses of CCW permit holders. It’s hard to see what legitimate news purpose that serves, so it’s not much of a reach to think it was intended as a subtle form of harassment.
They are numbers, but they can be misleading.
I did, a couple of posts later, quote the CDC’s numbers from 2010 on gun-related homicides. They are about where yours are (3.6 to 3.2). It stands to reason that a more gun-friendly country is going to have more gun-related homicides than countries with stricter gun control laws. The United States does have a culture that is more violence-centric than a lot of its First World contemporaries. However, gun ownership does not, I don’t think, contribute greatly to that. Feel free to correct me.
I did simplify that a bit. But you can essentially privately own military explosives, was the point I was getting at. I agree with the current system on destructive devices, as I think I pointed out somewhere in this thread.
I have no idea, and definitely don’t want to claim it as a fantasy. Now, people can buy Concealed Carrier badges (Amazon.com). I don’t agree with the practice in the least. If you want to carry concealed, then why are you announcing it to the world? If you want to carry openly, just do that instead.
Beyond that, it can be dangerously close to being accused of impersonating a cop. Just seems like an unnecessary headache. Not to mention, carrying a weapon is for self-defense, not for showboating.
Why would you be upset that you know he has a gun?
I swear, sometimes I feel like on another planet.
You wouldn’t feel like this was driven by animus? I’m not paranoid, I just think that people who do shit like that are assholes.
My side just killed the most inoffensive bill that was supported by everyone thats not a blood relative of Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent. I don’t feel oppressed at all, I feel like publishing someone’s name and address is a dick move because you don’t agree with their politics or because you don’t like things they own is a dick move.
I have a 2 hour safe. If you had enough time and a blowtorch, you could get into my safe. I’ve been looking for a good adamantium safe made from Wolverine’s bones but the best I’ve been able to find is a vibranium safe reinforced with unicorn horns.
cite.
I think he’s saying that your gun has a better chance of killing someone you love than saving someone you love.
As far as I’ve ever heard the stat quoted, it implies that a gun in the home is more likely to hurt/kill someone within the home than an aggressor or non-owned gun would.
Either way, it would go to the same logic. I own, for example, one pistol. Of every pistol in the world, what pistol is most likely to hurt me or my loved ones? Why, the pistol I’m around most often; i.e. mine. But that goes the same for every object in the world.
Really? Why? the only gun ads I see are generally on gun sites and gun magazines. Its not like they’re beer commercials.
You remember the 1980’s and 1990’s differently than I do. Where did you grow up? Wichita?
Especially when they contradict your position.
I don’t think I need to correct you since you are making my point for me. The whole POINT of the gun control debate is that being a gun-friendly, violence-centric culture DOES lead to more gun related homicides. What do you think pro gun control people are trying to stop?
The whole crux of the anti-gun control argument seems to be “I have a Constitutional right to own guns and increased gun violence and gun-related homicides are just a small price to pay for that.”
So why are gun people so opposed to any sort of background checks? What’s wrong with keeping firearms out of the hands of convicted criminals and mentally ill and imposing stiff penalties for people who use guns to commit crimes?
You are mistaken. The statistic makes no comparison between weapons, and your interpretation that it does is self-serving.
Background checks are already in place for the large majority of gun sales. Some gun owners oppose extending background checks to private sales as well because the law would be unduly burdensome on legal owners and unenforceable (and thus totally ignored) by those inclined to crime. (I am not one of those gun owners; I don’t care if background checks are extended to cover private sales. I’d only sell through an FFL dealer or to a person carrying a valid CCW permit anyway.)
Laws to do those things are already on the books. Why do we need to pass yet more laws instead of enforcing the ones we already have?
Maybe it’s time to try other approaches (like deglorifying violence in our entertainment, and getting serious about providing real economic opportunities for our poorer citizens) instead of reflexively passing more and more useless and unenforceable laws.
It’s a logical fallacy to take any general statistics and blindly apply them to an individual. You cannot factually state that my carrying my gun makes me or anyone else less safe.
No, just when they don’t provide the full scope. If you’d care to notice, I tried to provide a full scope of numbers in relation to gun deaths, and violent deaths, so that everything is fairly represented.
That pretty much nails the point. Gun owners are not proponents of gun violence, we’re proponents of rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution. I’d rather see a deglorifying of violence, and better opportunities for the poor that lead them to being less like to become violent criminals.
Lawful gun owners, statistically, are less likely to commit violent or felony crimes than the general populace. This is a printout of Texas Concealed Handgun License holders (CHL) vs general populace as reported by the Texas Department of Public Safety
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/RSD/CHL/Reports/ConvictionRatesReport2011.pdf
Texas is usually the most forthcoming state about their rates, but the trend is that less than 0.3% of all crimes committed in Texas are committed by CHL holders.
Then what does it compare itself to? Phantom weapons? “A gun in your house is more likely to hurt yourself or a loved one.” More likely than what?
While you won’t find a person more in favor of concealed carry than I (who is a CCH holder), you can’t lump in all lawful gun owners with CCH holders. We are a self-selected group which has additional hoops to jump through and bona fides to prove. I helped Cecil write an article years back where I analyzed the CCH crime rates of about a dozen states which published their records, and found what the Texas data showed: CCH holders are a very law-abiding and safe group. Although it horrifies anti-gun people on the SDMB to even contemplate it, one is statistically, speaking from a general standpoint, much safer around a room full of CCH holders than a random sampling of the local population.