Maybe I should look for and download onto my phone a loud recording of a shotgun being primed and keep it in my nightstand for self defense.
Will probably be as effective and safer for people in your household too.
I’ve got two ARs, two FALs, a .50 BMG rifle, shotgun, many handguns, and 43K rounds of ammo. Haven’t bought anything in about five years. I’m wanting to get a semi-auto 16 gauge or 12 gauge shotgun for home defense, though.
Me, too. Only I bought a $120ish air rifle two week ago. And I told the salesman I wanted something that was accurate enough to have a chance of shooting a chipmunk, but extremely unlikely to accidentally kill the neighbor’s dog if it suddenly ran into my yard. So it’s the sort of thing that you have to individually load each pellet, and break the gun to create the pressure.
I haven’t actually taken it out of the box, yet.
But it’s obviously not for self-defense, although it’s sort of to protect my property – specifically to protect my berries from being eaten by critters.
Yeah, but I figured it was close enough to mention it.
An article specifically about a first time buyer in the circumstances of the original post but with an unpleasant twist about the gun-buying experience.
Though Black Americans have a multitude of reasons for buying a gun – some new gun owners told the Guardian about stress related to the pandemic, others about the anxiety of seeing scores of armed white protesters rallying against lockdown orders or the election results – many had a common experience in the process of obtaining one. They were met with apathy, and in some cases disrespect, from white gun store owners, gun club members and at shooting ranges.
Italics added by me for emphasis.
This is me, too.
That’s hardly surprising given that American gun culture is largely driven by white fear of blacks. The NRA has a long history of using racist imagery and language to push guns.
The only ‘black’ I am concerned about, is Black Bears. I just like target shooting. It’s very relaxing for some of us. You really need to be in control of yourself and your environment. You need to totally remove yourself from the day to day part of life and concentrate on what you are doing. It’s nice to leave the world, the job and such behind for a bit.
I feel the same about learning the guitar.
Target shooting is a far cry from some of the fetishistic language used in this thread about guns. You would certainly admit that there is a bizarre gun culture in America built on irrational fears and Walter Mitty fantasies? The NRA embodies this mindset.
I am fully aware of the NRAs stance that gun control is great if it’s for non-white gun owners, just rather tired of the hypocrisy of the local stores and ranges. Sadly I know plenty of ‘good ole boys’ whose dream is to own their own gun store so they’re ‘ready’ when ‘s*** gets real’.
When you say “this thread” do you mean the one you’re posting in, or one of the other recent ones? Because I won’t deny that collectors, including gun collectors, can be slightly obsessive about ‘their babies’. But I don’t see much difference between in the language used by gun owners and that used by say, car collectors.
You can’t put all gun owners in the same bucket. That happens a lot.
Sorry. I do get upset by the subject. I will bow out.
I think that in this thread, people are making false claims that guns increase the safety of their home and families and are talking in fetishistic terms about their “babies.” It’s threads like these that have me scratching my head when people call the Dope far left.
That’s quite the interpretation. But no, I was speaking that reporting indicates that there was a large number of ‘first-time’ gun buyers, who were decidedly NOT part of the traditional demographic, and wanted to see because the board slants left, if any of the SDMB or their close ones were part of this.
I also speculated on the reasons for it, which were again, decidedly different from the traditional groups of gun purchasers, as I stated in the OP. I have speculated on other gun threads that 5-10 years down the line we could end up with a group of gun owners that otherwise skew liberal, and we could see some very different ideas, perhaps even ones that are willing to see past the traditional divides on the issues.
Sorry that the language offends you, but again, especially in this thread, I haven’t seen anyone use more the most mild enthusiasm for their firearms.
My family’s experience suggests that having a gun in the house makes your home less safe. But I don’t think calling the stuff you collect “your babies” is especially weird or fetishist.
BTW I notice the first instance in this thread of anyone referring to “their babies” was in post 51:
No actual gun purchaser/owner had themselves was referring to their firearms as his/her babies. ParallelLines was indeed making a reference comparing collector/enthusiast points of view.
And that was itself a response to the very first instance of a reference to “fetishism”, in the immediately previous post:
And IMO neither had I seen “fetishism” up until then. Up to that point, people were pretty much answering the question, with whys and why nots and some scattered comment as to pros and cons on the bigger-picture level, with the ocassional reference to what was the weaponry involved and how it would be used, with some pros and cons again. In fact, a few posts earlier there was a mod note directed at Ulfreida’s reference to “men getting super excited about the details of their guns”.
Heck, ISTM the only one so far that someone could accuse of “flexing” would be Crafter_Man – but I would so so only while smiling very politely, from behind cover 1800 meters away. Just sayin’.
…
Meanwhile… on the topic
No, not a post-disaster new owner. For some reason I never felt the dread that this was it, that somehow collapse of all order is at hand… and if it were, I can repel one mugger but any halfway organized gang with basic motivation and their own guns wouldn’t even slow down.
I had become an owner pre-disaster, though I’ve always been into the mechanical/technological interest, most of my life I’ve been fine with only using rented/lent/issued equipment when any practice opportunity arose, and lived where I’d rather not have one in the same household. No “babies” though, basic handgun w/o any fancy adjunct paraphernalia (that crap adds up dollars damn fast!) and I remained otherwise a liberal in just about everything including in not having objected to jumping reasonable legal hoops to own that object.
In a thread that recently went of the rails, I was noting a Pew study, which indicated that roughly 2/3 of all firearm fatalities came from suicides. I bring this up because it is a concern of mine when it came to the subject of the thread: we have a lot of people who are theoretically buying new guns because they’re afraid of what’s going on in the world, in a highly stressful political social and economic situation, with limited external contact.
That sounds like a terrible combination. Both from the standpoint of harm to others and to self. Now, admittedly, I am for the right to end your life, but all too often it’s a choice made at a moment of stress, rather than a result of a carefully contemplated decision.
Thankfully, according to multiple cites in various Q-Zone threads, suicides are down during COVID. But it is a valid concern for many: both the newly purchased firearms and the stresses of the last few years are going to be along for a long while to come.
Yes, i had one relative commit suicide in a moment of despair. Had there not been a gun handy, he likely would never have killed himself. And a distant cousin accidentally killed his girlfriend while cleaning a gun. At least, her family and the police were both convinced it was an accident, so I assume it was.
I don’t know anyone who has protected themselves at home with a gun, and i know two people who were killed because there was a gun in the home. I’m hopeful that my not-super-powerful air rifle won’t kill anyone, though.
I have no gun and have no interest in buying one. I don’t know anyone who’s recently bought one, or, for that matter, even owns one.
The only time I ever fired a “gun” was at a dude ranch camp with my Girl Scout troup when I was about 11 or 12. I won the bb gun competition. I was listening when the person directing this activity told us the squeeze the trigger. That’s all I can think of to explain it. I haven’t had any interest in doing target practice in all the many decades since.