Well, if you were the type of person who thought it was ridiculous to take responsibility for your own safety, it would just invite more ridicule to have it suggested that you could protect other people, too.
That proposition can go right back up whichever stinking orifice you ripped it from, jackass. I’ll protect my own safety and that of those important to me by not murdering them with a couple shots to the head and then demapping my own woefully inadequate self, how’s that?
I gotta admit, “Not being around known armed people of unknown intentions” is almost by definition an attempt to take responsibility for one’s own safety, regardless of whether or not you’d agree it’s the most effective strategy.
This is simply a gratuitously insulting strawman, and does not further your argument. Nobody thinks it is “ridiculous to take responsibility for their own safety”
HongKongFooey had a very good point - most of us see many reports of guns being used with a very poor outcome, and few reports of responsible gun owners successfully protecting themselves or others.
But its fun to paint your opponents as "loonies’, right?
Do you plan to have a gun while you’re not committing murder-suicide?
Since, presumably, your security plan consists primarily of avoiding armed people, it seems like the unknown “armed people of unknown intentions” you may be around through out the day is a rather large hole.
That makes the ridicule heaped upon someone who suggests owning/carrying a gun to protect yourself and/or others should the need arise somewhat hard to explain. Would you care to give it a shot?
Are you illiterate or just a moron? First of all, who said anything about “primarily”? Second of all, why the fuck are you responding to me when I’m an avowed gun owner and advocate of shall-issue carry permits in this very fucking thread? Are you SERIOUSLY busting my balls for trying to reach a middle ground with someone who’s been generally addressing my points and apparently understanding of the gun-rights perspective when addressed reasonably and without vitriol? Are you secretly some sort of ham-fisted anti-gun-rights shill doing a caricature?
Are you illiterate or just a moron? He said why right in the VERY POST YOU PARTIALLY QUOTED.
If you want to rebut this, I want to see some neutral sourcing or peer review. Those things work and are at least partially rhetorically sound–hell, Hentor the Barbarian was at least open to the idea that the current published studies don’t necessarily capture the entire picture and all I did was bother to cite state agency permit issue/revocation stats instead of another half-assed pile of partisan crap.
Barring that, do what I have been doing and be a sane, courteous advocate for gun ownership and carry who understands that people are scared of guns because they are, at base, deadly fucking weapons and they can be rationally feared if you don’t know in your gut that most gun owners are sane, courteous, and safe. Certainly, in the political realm, fight gun BANNINGS tooth and nail where they are ludicrous or poorly-conceived, but we are herein not debating with political caricatures but normal everyday people who could be our allies if we could only convince them that more gun owners are like me and a negligible percentage are like the violent idiots they see on the news.
On behalf of sane gun owners and advocates for relaxed gun laws, I’d like to apologize for 1010011010, who doesn’t seem to realize that some of us are having a sane, productive conversation here.
Thanks Zeriel for being a responsible gun advocate.
Why not both?
Basically, then, you acknowledge a way to close the observed hole is to be around armed people of known intentions (that are in your interests). You could accomplish this by having someone else act as a bodyguard, but this option may not be available to all people or all the time. Another method would be to arm yourself.
Why not both?
I suppose I am illiterate. Are you referring to the few sentences on sampling error and confirmation bias in the media? I suppose that could explain why one might, irrationally, ridicule someone for owning a gun. “It’s irrational.” isn’t a very satisfying answer, though.
Those would be the ones I’ve quoted. And it’s not irrational, because there are so far as I know no even halfway decently neutral-in-origin peer-reviewed statistics on gun ownership correlating with crime, except for the studies that show that gun ownership in general (regardless of legality, type, etc) correlates to a higher risk of the gun owner’s death by violent act. In the absence of data, how is working based on anecdotes an irrational response?
I mean, yeah, ridicule is ultimately pointless, all the rational folks can agree with that. I’m not seeing a lot of ridicule for the last few pages of the thread, though, I’m seeing a few people who are honestly (and, in the absence of data, rationally) scared of deadly weapons and who are engaging with me honestly about what gun owners like us can do to mollify their fears without sacrificing our Constitutional rights to firearm ownership and our typically state-given rights to carry firearms and use them in the relatively rare cases of legitimate self-defense.
The best way to preserve our rights as gun owners is a combination of factors:
- get people used to the idea that the average owner of a firearm is responsible, safe, and courteous in equal or greater measure than the average citizen in general–yes, this does eventually entail open carry and such, but done wisely and in places where the implied/inherent threat of a visible weapon is not overwhelming due to the presence of exacerbating factors (such as kids playing).
- get gun owners used to the idea that verifiable information on the safety of gun ownership is going to require more information and licensing/testing on their part, and that it’s probably not an “infringement” on one’s right to bear arms to require use/safety testing and registration–provided that said registrations are not used as a list of known gun owners to screw around with.
- peer-reviewed, rigorous studies must be conducted to prove the things a cursory examination of extant data seems to suggest–things like “concealed-carry permit holders, as a cohort, seem to be equally or less prone to felony crime as the average citizen”.
None of these involve engaging in screaming matches with radical ban-all-guns types or people–honest or trolling–who think all guns are penis extensions or symbols of fear on the part of the gun owner. Engaging these people the way we on the Dope typically do does nothing to convince the moderate left that gun owners are safe and courteous.
This is turning more GD than Pit in its later pages, but I honestly believe and will continue to believe that, if and when produced, rigorous statistical study will eventually reveal that gun owners who are required/elect to register themselves for additional privileges tend to be safer and less likely to commit crimes than the average, and proof of that will go a long way toward making the gun debate in this country rational–not to mention convincing a lot of the fence-sitting types like we’ve seen in the last few pages that guns AREN’T something to be feared in the general case, if only because the guy with a gun on his hip is provably likely to be as nice or nicer than everyone else there.
So, folks who have a higher risk of death by violent act are more likely to own a gun. Not really surprising, is it? Would you expect a reasonable not to take any steps to defend themselves? Or causation could be interpreted to run the other way, depending on how it suits you.
It’s not that I think these sorts of conditions are a categorically bad idea, I just do not believe that we can trust, in perpetuity, that this sort of information and authority will never be misused or abused. The problem with “common sense gun laws” is that there are too many examples of registration or testing/training requirements being turned into confiscations or bans by subsequent authorities.
Terribly sorry if indeed you perceive that I have ridiculed you or anybody else for that matter for owning a gun. I think if you look back in this thread you will find that I have not.
I suppose it may possibly be simple error within the media in terms of reporting gun crimes vs. reporting the good deeds and heroics of gun owners. I don’t think so though.
Even this is kind of over-thinking it. Most anti-gun sentiment operates, when you get right down to it, on a very basic, instinctive level. Fear of the firearm itself, fear of the noise it produces, and unfamiliarity with the way it works. To a lesser degree, fear of gun owners as being dangerous, evil and/or racist hillbillies, but even this is a little too cerebral. I’m taking about showing someone a gun up close, letting them hold it, taking it apart for them so they can see how it works, and allowing them to fire it in a safe, controlled manner so it is taken off of the pedestal. Most anti-gun people simply have no experience with guns. Once the gun is de-mystified, it’s no longer intimidating.
I think if George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were to be sent forward in time to visit the present day, they would probably be scared to death of cars, and would insist that cars be banned and that we go back to using horses. The noise, speed, unfamiliar controls and confusing mechanics of automobiles would scare the hell out of them. But give them one week of driving lessons and they would no longer be scared.
“Most anti-gun sentiment” meaning elsewhere besides this thread?
I’ve fired guns. I know how guns work, what they look like, what they feel like, what they sound like. I’m not burdened by the superstition that they work via some kind of devilry. They employ explosions to fire projectiles at high velocity. When the projectile hits shit, shit gets fucked up.
It’s that last part that’s my problem. I don’t avoid sharks because I think they’re malevolent agents of Neptune, I avoid them because if they bite me it’ll hurt and I could die.
I think you’re probably in the minority, then. But it is, after all, just a thought.
A stupid thought. I know how knives work and I use them every day. If I see a guy on a city bus with a big kitchen knife sticking out of his pocket I am wary. I know the knife is not going to jump out of his pocket and cut me, but I also know the guy is probably off his rocker and is potentially dangerous.
ETA: I also think that cars should have legal titles that are transferred on sale, that cars should have keys, and only trained drivers should be on the road. Does that make me “anti car”? Does it mean I don’t know how cars work?
I enjoy hunting. Guns aren’t scary. Idiots with guns are scary.
Yeah. I grew up with guns in the house, know how to use them, have zero problem with responsible gun ownership, etc. I think the types of things Zeriel suggested make sense. I also think that while there certainly are cases where an armed bystander or potential victim were armed and prevented a crime, this notion is very heavily over-romanticized by many gun enthusiasts.
Count me as a plus one on this. I’ve also been hunting, skeet shooting, plinked away with the bb and .22 as a youngster.
I don’t like the idea of people around me carrying guns, concealed or otherwise. I don’t like handguns in general, and don’t see much need for them outside of law enforcement and range use - and (at least in the countries I am familiar with) I don’t see a need for a gun in the house as defence against the home invasion bogey man*
There are many people here that I would trust (on a personal level) to carry a gun, but how do you stop the border line cases? The guy that might be sane when he gets the gun but then spirals into depression, how do you guard against the “freak” accidents? In my own personal risk / reward scenario I simply don’t see any benefits to citizens carrying handguns with them as they go about their daily business.
- Yes its inflammatory language, but I have seen vanishingly small numbers of such crimes stopped by guns, but many many instances of things gone wrong because guns were in the house.
I am the first generation of my family not to own a gun. My dad owns a few, but they are never loaded. And, before that, they were only used for food.
Anyways, I’ve never seen the point of owning a gun for self-defence: by the time I’d legally be allowed to use it, I’d be pretty bad off. And I unfortunately have a quick temper. RIght now, it doesn’t last long enough to be damaging to anyone (other than myself), but, if I had regular access to a gun.
Oh, and while I see what other people mean by calling this irony, I don’t think it is. There has to be a high level of something being the opposite of what was expected.
Argent Towers, if you honestly believe your last post, I have to say that you are really a very stupid person.
Really, on many issues, if conservatives would stop and think for a moment as to whether their belief even makes any sense, they might end up being a touch more rational.