Sorry, but people do suck at assessing risk to themselves. Nobody who has an accident thinks: “well, I’m an idiot about this, and don’t know what I"m doing, but I’ll go ahead anyway”. They think “I know what I"m doing, and like the vast majority of people, I will never have an accident”
I see the hair you’re trying to split here, but he vast majority of people do accurately assess the risk because they don’t have incidents. What should be addressed is why the other small minority don’t do it correctly. Maybe they are idiots? Should idiots and small children be classified together and not allowed to own firearms?
A good outcome doesn’t mean there is no risk, and a person can go through a hazardous situation without realizing the danger they were in.
I’ll speak again from the pilot perspective. Those in aviation risk management will tell you that pilots are often at more risk not when they knowingly accept hazards, but when they are in a dangerous situation and don’t realize it. In other words, they made a poor risk assessment.
And this again speaks to the idea of having a minimum standard of training, which can be assured by licensing. As a pilot, my world is all about continual training and maintaining proficiency. I am forever baffled at the bizarre situation we have with firearms where the training and licensing requirements are so different from place to place. Yeah, yeah - states’ rights. But that doesn’t make it a good or effective system
I agree. But if government was truly looking out for its people it wouldn’t be worried about the small number of people being killed by firearms and would do something about the one time license a person acquires when they are a teenager to drive a vehicle. Requiring people to re-certify themselves as qualified to drive their vehicles would have a greater effect than banning guns outright. The issue with guns is because they are ‘evil’ to a large percentage of the population and thus easier for governments to pick on.
No, I’m defining risk properly. Let me put it this way. If there is a 1 in 10 risk of tripping over a hazard, and killing yourself, and 9 people walk over it safely, it does not mean that the 9 people assessed the risk properly. ALL 10 people assessed the risk poorly.
Yes, idiots and children should not be allowed to own guns. The tricky part is figuring out who are the idiots (eg who are the people with very poor risk assessment skills) I would like to see guns out of the hands of those who would go “it ain’t loaded, see? BANG!” I realize that this does not describe you or others in this thread, but there ARE people like this out there.
No, you are not. If the hazard is identified, and it is, then 9 of those people take steps to avoid the hazard. The other one either didn’t see the hazard, or ignored the hazard.
You could use your analogy to apply to the risk of driving vehicles. I’m far more likely to be killed in a car accident than by a gun mishap. Yet we aren’t banning cars.
No, they don’t take the steps to avoid the hazard. THAT"S MY POINT. People DO suck at risk assessment. That is why many people don’t take the reasonable precaution of using a seatbelt. “It won’t happen to me”.
No, we don’t ban cars. But they are relatively well regulated. We don’t just let anyone drive with no training. We licence drivers. We test drivers. We deny licences to people who don’t fulfill basic qualifications. We register cars. We try to mitigate the risks to society by regulating the “right” to drive. There’s no constitutional right to drive though, otherwise this might be different.
Perhaps I’m not explaining my metaphor well enough… I’m not suggesting that every single person out there sucks at assessing risk. Just “people in general”. enough of them that it is worrisome when it comes to a serious piece of machinery like a gun.
Let’s say there’s a 1 in 10 chance of a fatal accident when walking over a branch. 20 people set out. 10 of them assess the situation and take steps to avoid the hazard. 10 people suck at assessing risk and do not see the hazard. They cross. 9 make it. 1 dies. The 9 still suck at assessing risk, even though they did not die. They will uniformly think that they are just as good at assessing risk as the 10 who avoided the hazard, but they are wrong.
To put it another way - people who are incompetent at a task have something in common; they are also incompetent at assessing their own competency. They think that they know what they’re doing - but because they don’t even know what is going on, they not only suck at the task, but they don’t even know how to judge their own competency.
People are very bad at risk assessment.
We are however pretty good at responding to a risk once it presents itself.
So, you may not assess your risk of snake bite well and wander blithely into an area with many snakes. Once a snake is in front of you then your ability to assess the risk improves considerably.
Realizing that the only permits needed to own a gun are for handguns, I’d agree.
So convicted felons should be able to carry concealed weapons at will without any police authority to confiscate those weapons?
Of course you can use a gun to defend yourself. The law is so that the police have defined policing powers. For public safety.
A gun will do very little good against the threat of an M1 Abrams tank. For defense against that you should be able to acquire a missile system equipped with explosively formed penetrators without obtaining a permit as well. Hopefully, the likelihood of you having to face down a tank are almost nil, but the exaggerated scenario does illustrate the factor of the everyday threat level you find yourself in. Moreover, I argue that the brandishing of a weapon doesn’t so much as offer defense against an assailant who is similarly armed so much as result in a stand-off between two highly edgy strangers. Further still, if there is more than one armed assailant, the gun owner will again find him or herself at a disadvantage and will have escalated the situation to boot.
It seems to me that people who argue in favor of gun ownership are envisioning some sort of mugging, rape, intrusion or other kind of assault by a dangerous predatory assailant. I don’t dispute for a moment that some people live in seriously dangerous areas in which an equalizer can save one’s life; but in most places in the western world, the great majority of men, women and children manage to get through the day without firearms, which gives me cause to wonder how real the constant threat to one’s person really is.
Gun advocate and gun control advocate alike can agree that a weapon in the hands of an untrained novice is highly dangerous to the wielder as well as the target — to say nothing of any passers-by prone to be caught in crossfire. Given these factors, it’s reasonable to insist that possession of a weapon must be conditional upon demonstrated proficiency with it for benefit of all involved. I personally would favor training similar to the kind that the police force undergo, which would undoubtably include techniques for eliminating threats without the need for gunplay.
I don’t know what you’re imagining as police training here, but I know that many active-duty police officers would fail this gun-rights advocate’s proposed handgun licensing exam, and that scares me too.
If they’ve served their time they should be able to conceal carry.
Even someone who has served time for manslaughter because they shot someone during a drunken argument in the parking lot of a bar?
He’s done his time and paid his debt to society.
I would think at least a little time might pass in order to assess whether Mr. ExCon has truly reformed, renounced violent crime, and has rejoined civil society.
What about someone diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic?
Well, many State courts would certainly agree with you, as well as many citizens. Regarding people with mental illness - I’ve heard some say that as long as they have been properly diagnosed, and are on medication, that the State has no business denying them their fundamental rights, simply because they have a controlled medical condition.
This really does go a way to explaining why some feel that they want to be armed at all times. At this point in the discussion, I can’t say I blame them.
Remind me to cancel my plans to travel anywhere south of the 49th parallel though.
But most people do use seatbelts.
You take some training when you are 18. That’s pretty much it for most people.
BTW, don’t think for a minute that I’m advocating just walking into a store and buying a gun off the rack. I should have to take a course on safe gun handling. I should have to pass a test and I should have to do retests on a regular basis. You must know the risks in order to avoid them. But if I have done all that then I should be able to get a gun.
My point about vehicles is that they are far more deadly than guns and we don’t do anything to ensure that once you’ve passed your basic test you don’t have to prove you’ve remained competent.