Ah. So you think it is “ironic” because it made the news.
Normally you don’t think a husband murdering his wife is “ironic,” because their vows weren’t shown on tv. Otherwise, total irony! She thought this guy would be the one person to honor and cherish her, LOL.
Correct me if I am wrong here… why don’t you think all wife-killings are ironic?
And normally you don’t think a gun owner getting murdered is “ironic,” because they didn’t make the news for wearing a gun in public.
Sorry, that isn’t what “irony” means. You think this woman was absurd for wearing a gun to a soccer game, and maybe (or maybe not) that perceived absurdity made you laugh when you heard she had been shot and killed.
But murder is entirely different from wearing a gun. You have to see that.
This woman never once said she was invulnerable to guns. She never once said that wearing a gun made her less likely to be killed by her husband. Perhaps she believed that while guns are a serious threat in the hands of would-be murderers, it would make no sense for her to disarm herself. It would be silly to argue that since she was not killed in public while wearing her gun, her wearing the gun was shown to be correct. But it is all the more silly to argue that it is ironic that she was killed by her husband at home.
She was not killed by a gun. She was killed by her husband. He used a gun.
If she had shot herself accidentally while parading around town wearing a gun, that would have been ironic.
Getting murdered at home by her husband? Not ironic. Except insomuch as you believe all wife-killings are ironic.
If she had a magical rock to kept tigers away, and her husband had a magical rock to keep tigers away, and her husband’s magical rock attracted a tiger that then bit her head off, would that be ironic?
Under the scenario you described, yes.
But a firearm is not a magic rock. It is an engineered, machined device that works by the known laws of physics. It is an inanimate object with no volitional will of its own to shoot, or not shoot. It doesn’t get hungry, sad, sick, or angry.
At worst, it can be poorly maintained, or perhaps bady designed and/or manufactured, and perform erratically (like, firing without having its trigger pulled, or not firing when the trigger is pulled). Even then, it performs as designed, manufactured, and maintained
If she had the handgun to protect herself from her husband, it might be tragically ironic, but absent any evidence that she had the handgun as protection from violent family members, then I would say no, her death is not ironic.
Just tragic.
This might have been a mildly clever statement the first time it was made, about a billion repetitions ago. It really isn’t anymore. It’s the “FREEEBIRD!” of gun advocacy arguments, and has become a very old, and very tired joke. I promise you that nobody ever has, nor ever will be swayed to your way of thinking upon hearing guns-don’t-kill-people-people-kill-people. Please, please just let it die. Or shoot it to death, if that’s more up your alley.
So you think her husband would have found it equally easy to commit a murder-suicide with a toaster oven?
Congratulations, you just won the thread.
Actually, no. That report doesn’t say a word about the increased risk associated with having a firearm in the house. It certainly doesn’t look at urban versus rural differences in that risk.
That’s twice you’ve posted that link without seeming to have any idea what the linked-to report is about. I’m a bit perplexed. Just FYI, that report summarizes evidence regarding the effects of gun laws on gun violence.
It’s kind of a different thing. If you’re still not getting it, I can walk you through the differences in more detail.
From the summary there:
It also doesn’t seem to talk about rural vs urban. So all in all, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean studies like that one.
No. I think you were an asshole in a GQ thread. It had little to do with the substance of your opinion, but with the fact that you were odiously expressing an opinion in General Questions, a forum for fact-based questions and answers.
I was an asshole in GQ a little while back, and got (appropriately) smacked by the Mods. But at least I had the excuse that I was drunk.
You were just a flaming asshole, in the wrong forum.
Now you’re just a flaming asshole.
Oh, and lest I forget…
:mad:BOOGA!:pBOOGA!:mad:BOOGA!
:mad:GUNS!:pGUNS!:mad:GUNS!
It would be ironic because the very thing her husband used to keep away tigers instead attracted a tiger which killed his wife.
Now, it would be ironic if the husband had asked the devil to enchant his gun so that it would never miss its mark, thus allowing him to better protect his wife, and the devil had placed a single magic bullet in the gun which was preordained to seek out and kill the wife. Is that what you were getting at?
Rest assured, I am not using it in that context. (Which I assume you know, but just wanted to use the “Freebird” line).
While its value as a run rights argument may be nil, it is nevertheless the difference between “ironic” and “not ironic” in this scenario.
If the woman had shot herself accidentally while parading around town wearing a gun, one might say she was killed “by” the gun, and it would certainly be ironic.
Instead, she was murdered at home by her husband. Not ironic, except to the extent that you think all wife-killings are ironic.
I know this wasn’t addressed to me, and maybe people have stopped paying attention to me in this thread, but I’ll try a new way.
Two sides are talking across each other here.
One side keeps saying, “She never thought having a gun made her immortal!”
The other side keeps saying, “It’s ironic because she was an outspoken gun nut and got killed by a gunshot!”
Side one seems to ignore that side two never said she thought herself immortal. Side two seems to not explain what’s ironic beyond “gun lover killed by gun.”
So I’ll try to address side one’s question directly.
What makes the gun death relevant isn’t that she had a gun, or that we think she thought the gun was a force-field. What makes the death relevant is that she believed having guns ‘around’ made her safer. I know it was her husband’s gun that killed her, but she lived in a house that had guns because she and her husband thought guns made them safer. “But he was a parole officer,” you might fairly point out. “He’d have killed her with a gun anyway.” I know parole officers that don’t carry guns. Even if he is required to have a gun at work, why does he keep it on his person when he’s not working? What makes guns unsafe is the immediacy of their availability when somebody flies off the handle. The odds of somebody flying off the handle, who’d shoot you dead if they had a gun for those 5 minutes they’re boiling over with rage, are much higher than the odds of a home invader shooting you.
The irony doesn’t have to come from it being a home invader who killed her. It doesn’t have to come from it being her gun, either. She got killed by her husband with his gun. I get it. The irony comes from the lack of communication between the two sides - larger than the SDMB. Somebody could have told her last year that, “hey, you have a right to have a gun, but you have a higher chance of being killed by yourself or your husband now with a gun than if you didn’t keep guns around,” and I *think *both sides would agree that she would have disagreed with that statement. Now she’s paid the price for it.
That’s the irony. This is exactly what Kellerman and all those other ‘debunked’ studies predict, and when the demonstration comes, the ‘gun advocates’* see it as not predictable.
*I said ‘gun advocates’ rather than ‘gun *rights *advocates’ because I respect all Americans’ *right *to have a gun, but am not in the group I’m talking about. Americans have a right to have a gun; I just don’t think it’s smart to own a gun for the purpose of self-defense.
So the government-sponsored comprehensive review of 51 studies (at least one from a researcher that Hentor is citing) done on the effectiveness of firearms laws, that came to the conclusion that there is insufficient evidence presented in those studies in toto that firearms regulation has had any impact on firearms violence, is excluded because it doesn’t specifically cite an “urban vs. rural” study?
I was battered with a toaster oven by a fierce Irishman. Aside from a small scar, it had no lasting effect on my well being. Had he had a gun, I expect that I would be dead.
Remember, kids, guns don’t kill people, magical rocks kill people.
I am still paying attention to you, bup, but I’m running out of popcorn…
So you do need me to walk you through it. Okay.
One issue that we’ve been talking about is whether or not the presence of a gun in the household is associated in one way or another with one’s risk for homicide or suicide. A number of studies indicate that it is positively related with both. This is relevant to the incident at hand because it is an example of someone with a gun in the house being a victim of a homicide. I originally said that this incident is not an “argument” but it is an example.
A completely separate question is whether one can observe any changes before or after a particular gun law goes into effect, or compare different jurisdictions to draw any conclusions about whether differing gun laws are associated with differing rates of gun violence. The report you keep citing considers that question.
Furthermore, researchers do publish more than one paper. They may be on different topics, or different aspects of the same topic. The Kellermann paper in the list you noted is an example of this.
I know it’s unfair, but one might come away from this discussion with serious concerns about gun advocates’ ability to comprehend even the most basic elements of how science is conducted.
It’s not rocket surgery people!
I want to apologize for my idiotic error right now. It was Yosemite Sam that I was thinking of. :o
I don’t think of the woman’s death as haha ironic, just a tragic coincidence; an intersection of senselessness and blinkered attitudes about the responsibility inherent in the right to bear arms.
I also agree that local control of the issue would be better.
How can it be a strawman when I’m simply explaining that I don’t want your local legislation to determine what I can do under completely different circumstances. Perhaps I should have said “a condo in Connecticut” or “a duplex in Duluth.”
I still don’t understand what you’re talking about with Foghorn Leghorn. He’s the rooster in the cartoons, right? What does that have to do with guns, or with me? And how did I start it?
ETA: Ah - after I posted I saw your Yosemite Sam correction. That makes more sense. Still doesn’t apply to me (and I most certainly didn’t “start it,” but at least it connects to guns.
Let me turn my assertion into a question, then: Do you believe that studies of guns in urban areas are applicable highly rural areas (e.g., my county of 9,800 people)?
Okay. We’re in agreement on that.
I don’t have a problem with the cities. I will, indeed, thank them for what they’ve done in terms of keeping our highway system in Montana going. I just don’t want to live in one, and I don’t like it when the people who do consider non-city dwellers somehow lesser beings.
I agree that the extreme pro-gun people are every bit as annoying as the extreme anti-gun people.