perplexed by the fear of guns

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

How many people in the average American’s home town have been killed recently by artillery pieces or warplanes? How many people collect artillery pieces and warplanes and go out and pretend they’re killing stuff?

The reason mhendo can’t explain it to you is because you’re being deliberately obtuse.

When you’re negligent with an automobile and someone dies, you’re causing it to do something it wasn’t designed to do. When you’re negligent with a gun and someone dies, the gun has done exactly what it was designed to do.

22

The reason is very clear, pure and simple. People fear what they don’t understand. People fear what they’re not familiar with. Most people are not familiar with guns and don’t understand them; the only experience they have with guns is seeing them in movies and on TV, where they are invariably being used either by heinous criminals or by superhuman heroes. You didn’t have people terrified of guns in the 1700s or in the 1800s; you don’t have people terrified of guns in rural areas where the majority of people hunt or use guns to kill animals who are disturbing their farms (or both.)

When I was a little kid, Chinese people scared the hell out of me. Sometimes my parents would take me to a Chinese restaurant and the Chinese cooks behind the counter would scream at each other while tossing around pots and pans. I swear, I was absolutely petrified of them. They were like monsters, aliens, something totally strange and bizarre. It wasn’t until I met other kids my age who were Chinese that I got over this fear.

23

Nah, i just figured that the dramatic and completely obvious difference in context between actually handling a gun for the first time, on the one hand, and walking by a monument that has stood in the park for decades, on the other, might register in the mind on anyone who was actually thinking about the issue.

Even something like military aircraft isn’t the same, because the sheer proximity is not the same, and nor is its cultural place in our daily lives. I live in a place where fighter jets flying overhead constitute an everyday occurrence, and when they’re flying around up there they just look like planes. A bit different from your average Boeing, but still just planes. Their killing power is more distant, abstract, even ephemeral; quite different from holding a gun in your hand and knowing the consequences of pulling the trigger.

And i’m not sure why you felt the need to observe that guns can’t do anything on their own. I never suggested otherwise. I was merely pointing out that this fact does not make a fear of guns incomprehensible to me, even if i don’t share it. The fact that something might not be completely rational doesn’t make it beyond comprehension; it doesn’t even make it unreasonable. Human beings are creatures of reason, but not only of reason.

If it’s incomprehensible to you, fine. You might truly not get it, you might simply lack empathy. I dunno.

24

No, I’m not. His explanation is that things that are designed for killing are inherently frightening. Obviously that’s easy to demonstrate that that’s not the case.

What? This is logically absurd.

If you press the gas pedal on the car, and it drives forward and hits someone, it’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do. It’s your fault that you used it in such a way that you hit someone.

If someone takes a gun, disarms the safety (if applicable), points it at someone, and pulls the trigger how is that any different?

The gun wasn’t designed to negligently shoot an innocent person any more than the car was designed to run over a person.

25

Well played, suggest I may be sociopathic because we disagree on the issue.

I’m just saying I don’t buy “people are rightfully inherently afraid of things designed only to kill” as a logical explanation in and of itself. I think a more apt explanation is that people who are ignorant of guns generally see them as somehow inherently dangerous, as if they were a crudely made bomb that could go off at any moment.

I do understand why some people react hysterically to guns - they’ve been trained by our culture to view them as inherently evil. The act of a good and decent person carrying a gun is still seen as unusual and threatning, and hence no one does it, and people aren’t exposed to it.

The media often reports murders or negligent discharges by saying “the gun just went off”. It refuses to portray the good that guns can do in the proper hands and sensationalizes them when used for evil.

People treat guns as if they were somehow inherently evil. Many people think that gun ownership or advocacy is a mark that you’re a terrible person.

There’s a pervasive anti-gun current running through most of our culture.

Being thrown into a panic attack because someone you trust is in possession of a piece of metal - or even that piece of metal just sitting on a table, is completely irrational. When you explained it, it sounded as if you were trying to justify it, to say that it isn’t inherently irrational. I’m not lacking an ability to understand why people react as if they do, I’m saying it’s wrong and unjustified, and ignorant.

I wasn’t born a gun rights advocate. There were no guns around when I was growing up, and I grew up in an anti-gun culture in general. But the more I was exposed to them, the more comfortable I became with them. When I became well versed in gun safety rules, I realized that only through gross negligence could I cause harm with them. I met gun owners and gun enthusiasts and realized by and large they were good people. The more exposure I had, the less fearful I became.

26

It happens more often with guns than say, a potato peeler. And the results are generally much more serious. I’m guessing that parked cars are more likely to harm someone than a rogue gun discharging, but then we can also debate the benefits of cars versus guns in terms of domestic utility.

27

I’ve been in “gun culture” for a number of years and that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of something like that. I’ve heard of plenty of cases of negligent discharges, where someone fucked up and shot a gun inadvertantly, but never before an accidental discharge where a mechanical malfunction caused a discharge. It’s such an improbable blip that it’s not even worth factoring into the discussion.

On the other hand, no one who knew anything about guns would own a jennings. I thought they were exclusively in the hands of thugs who didn’t know any better, so to hear about one being at a range is unusual. A home brew alteration on a bottom of the barrel quality gun leading to an extremely rare event isn’t significant.

28

I think negligent discharge can be a part of the fear equation. Most of the gun folks I know are good, responsible owners. If I go to the range with them I’m fine. But I know some other people who love guns that don’t fall into that camp or at least that’s my perception. I just find it disturbing that pretty much anyone can walk into Wal*Mart or Bass Pro Shops or wherever and get a gun, more specifically a handgun - rifles worry me less, maybe since most rifle owners seem like they grew up with them and respect them. It’s more the people who are allowed guns and what they could do with them than the gun itself that bothers me.

29

Not true. Someone shooting it into the air can hurt or kill someone, for example. Or some fool playfully pointing an “unloaded” gun at someone and pulling the trigger, and it turns out to be loaded. Or they can drunkenly wave their gun at someone they are mad at and accidentally pull the trigger. Stupidity or irresponsibility are quite sufficient; you don’t need intentional malice to hurt someone with a gun.

As for guns going off by themselves; I do recall a news story some years ago about a Chinese rifle the government wanted to forbid import of, and the NRA wanted allowed in. The government wanted to ban it because is was known to have a tendency to fire without being triggered if subjected to even minor jolts. The NRA of course just thinks that gun control is bad whatever the reason and fought it.

30

If you say that their panicking reaction is irrational, I can agree with you. If you say that it is wrong or ignorant, I must disagree. What the two women in the OP seemed to be experiencing, especially the first woman, is a phobia of guns. Phobias are always irrational fears because they are taken to extremes. It is not the gun itself that they are afraid of, but they will never believe you unless they have been able to work through the trauma associated with a gun.

On the other hand, my intense dislike of guns is not totally irrational. I have had more than one gun held on me by someone threatening to use it. I’ve had someone hold a gun on me who hadn’t decided if he was going to shoot me. I’ve had students removed from my classroom carrying loaded guns.

I didn’t grow up around guns and the guys that were my friends didn’t hunt. My father bought me a shotgun only after someone was seen looking in my ground floor apartment window while I slept. That was in the early 1970s. The gun has never been fired and I no longer have access to it.

My shrink told me that statistics show that any gun in my home is more likely to kill me or a member of my family than it is a stranger.

I a a pacifist by philosophy and I believe that the Second Amendment intended the ownership of guns for the purpose of arming militias. I don’t believe that with any kind of meanness or hatred or resentment. That is the only sense that I can make of it. I’m certain that you are just as sincere in your beliefs as I am in mine.

This summer two of my friends were shot in their heads with a .357 magnum. They were in their own home. The gun was registered to one of them. Their son has been charged with their murders. These were ordinary people – exceptional only in their closeness, intelligence, and leadership within the community.

If it can happen to them, it can happen to anybody. Guns make it easier to kill.

Within three weeks of their deaths, a local hero and someone that I had met briefly and was particularly fond of was killed – shot in the head and chest. The police say that his girlfriend did it then turned the gun on herself in an act of suicide. The gun made it easier to kill them both.

I respect your right to disagree with me, but no one should assume that our dislike of guns is always irrational.

31

Actually, they kill people when it’s not the intent of the person holding the gun, too.

32

No, they are tools. They kill food and defend life also. It is the criminals who use it to terrorize and kill people.

I can kill you with a hammer or a large enough wrench, and they are also simply tools.

It is all the people yammering on about guns kill that scares people.

Although I would prefer to have people cautious around guns and learn gun safety even if they never intend to own or shoot, just so they dont make some error through fear and have an accident where someone gets hurt.

33

See, I’m not scared of guns. I’m not even scared of criminals with guns - I’m scared of idiots with guns. I’ll have far more of a chance to run into the latter.

34

Sure, but you’d better be able to sneak up next to me to do it. And you’d better at least incapacitate me with the first blow.

I like my chances against you better with a hammer or wrench than most guns.

35

A B-52 bomber or a nuke is also only a tool. Not all tools are the same. And guns are tools that make it easier for criminals to terrorize and kill people, not to mention for people to kill one another out of stupidity or by mistake.

No, it’s not rational to go into a panic just from seeing one. But it’s not rational to pretend that they are no different than a screwdriver, either. And frankly an attitude like yours is more likely to get someone killed than is that of the people who panic. They are rather less likely to treat a gun like it’s harmless and kill themselves or someone else out of carelessness, because it’s “just another tool”.

36

But to magically attribute anthropomorphic capabilities for a hunk of steel and plastic is just as bizarre. For “all intents and purposes” a gun sitting on a table will not do anything to you–it cannot act on its own, it’s just a tool. Add the ingredient of human intent, and now you have a dangerous weapon and person.

I think we’re agreeing, but with subtle differences. But I could use Kalhoun to go further into his statement though. They do kill, but only after human intent (slipped finger on a trigger, or not, you have to load the thing. . .)

Tripler
I don’t know of anyone who would panic seeing a B-52 though. . .

37

The presence of a gun in a social setting is, to me, an implied threat. In particular, it is a threat to my life. Intellectually I understand that this isn’t the case in many instances, but that is what comes to my mind. A gun in a gun safe-great. At a shooting range, I think that is wonderful. It is a great sport and I am impressed by people who enjoy the sport. Police who carry guns as part of their job. They have to go into harms way. I am not threatened by that. I notice, but don’t have any fear. But when the gun is carried in places where there is no expected use-it makes me fearful. Again, intellectually I understand that a) there is less to fear from a sane trained person carrying a gun and some random driver piloting a 2 ton mass of metal a few feet from my face and b) nothing I can do about it anyway. Gun laws and gun lobbies being what they are (I live in the south) guns are a fact of life where-ever I go. But it does make me uncomfortable and I feel less safe around them. I am afraid that I am not persuaded by the argument that a gun-toting friend will protect me from criminals. Those just aren’t threats that outweigh the presence of a weapon in a social setting. And if the OP has limited his area of concern to places like shooting ranges, I certainly am not afraid of the weapons in that setting.

38

I’ve fired a shotgun (clay pigeon shooting) and a .22 rifle (school shooting range).
And I don’t want any guns in my home, nor in the hands of the public, nor in the hands of the police on the beat.

I know that guns are easy to obtain, easy to fire and are the best handheld weapon for killing ever devised.

I realise that the US has its Constitution and that some gun owners get properly trained.
Nevertheless I know that (for example) there will continue to be regular school shootings in the US.
And all that does worry me.

39

Firearms would be lovely and a marvel of engineering if they were confined to museum display cases, but when they are combined with something with all the failings of a typical human being, they become death-dealing objects, and I wouldn’t even trust myself with one.

40

It’s not just that guns kill people, it’s that guns kill people easily. Find me some news stories about a mass killing with a wrench and perhaps you can get people as worried about wrenches as they are about guns. You can kill people with wrenches, but that is not their designed purpose, so they’re not nearly as effective as guns. A piece of artillery used in a statue in the park is also probably not going to kill anyone.

I don’t know why this is such a big admission that people argue about it. It doesn’t make gun owners bad people, it’s just a statement of the obvious. People can blame it on the media if they want, and that’s probably a factor, but mostly people are nervous about guns because they know what guns can do. You don’t need movies to tell you that guns can kill people more easily than most other weapons.

ETA: What screws up the whole discussion is that both sides are prone to making huge, insulting generalizations about the character of people on the opposing side. People on the stronger gun control side tend to assume most gun owners are angry nuts who are this close to snapping and shooting somebody, and many gun owners think they’re dealing with a crowd of Junior Hitlers.