If you’re learning to use a gun, keeping track of the information you’re receiving can be very stressful. You want to be sure you remember everything. You are not concerned with the OP at that point; you’re concerned with your own ability to “do it right.” It’s a lot to absorb.
Simply untrue–my mom has lived in a rural area in central PA her whole life, except for a brief stint as a Navy wife while my dad did his enlistments, and it took literally years for her to be comfortable with the .22 that my dad eventually got to kill gophers/skunks that were destroying their backyard.
I believe I have posted this elsewhere but I was the victim of one deliberate attempt to end my life. I’ve had a couple in the course of being robbed but only once did someone set out with murderous intent. A person leaving a social club drunk thought I look similar to someone his daughter had run away with the day before. He knew it wasn’t me, just that we shared the same physical traits, but he decided in that moment to use his car as a deadly weapon with the intent of ending my life.
The gentleman admitted when questioned that had he not been drunk or been behind the wheel of a large untraceable (to him) weapon, he would not have made the attempt. He actually did have a handgun on him at the time but figured that with that there was too great a chance of his being caught.
We can discuss societies where owning or operating a car is an exception (the way Britain is cited in gun discussions); where simply being intoxicated is a crime. But to restrict either to the level that we want firearms restricted (yes - even a gun nut like me wants some controls) isn’t something either of us would like to see. Even though doing so would avoid avoidable deaths.
Somehow firearms are always different simply “because they are” ----- and I just don’t understand that.
You would have to marry a relative to really be at risk; we tend to support the national tradition and keep violence among ourselves. <G>
I’d be willing to get behind some kind of standardized test with a shoot/no-shoot decision portion. I’d want a psych exam (as distinct from something more practical) to be very carefully drawn up, though.
Does it count if one’s research is “what’s the best compromise between ‘stopping an intruder’ and ‘not shooting through walls and potentially causing damage to things on the other side that one can’t see’”?
Honestly, it’s statements like some that you and Ivan were making that encourage me, because you guys seem to be able to conceive of situations wherein gun ownership would be all right/nonthreatening/societally acceptable, and that’s something that’s often lacking in the debate at the national level.
And here I am with all these guns and no rage against anything. Sometimes life is strange like that. Yes, I am being a little flippant - but not terribly so. Different people with different purposes probably blamed video games or his favorite bands lyrics. Thank God he wasn’t better at the computer or he could have whipped up one Hades of a bomb without trying too terribly hard. After all, look at what a little rage, some online research and some improvised explosives did in OK City and on 9/11. Oh well, its an interesting debate none the less.
You didn’t go into too much detail here, but you did survive the attack. Perhaps if the perp used the gun rather than a car, you wouldn’t have been as lucky. The gun didn’t protect anyone in this incident, it just didn’t happen to do harm. Other times in other places it does.
Guns are different because their primary objective is killing, and they are very good at it. If we eliminate cars the world would function a lot less efficiently. If we eliminate guns things would carry on just fine.
You have bombers in your living room? Do you carry cannons in your pocket? It is not the same. How many kids have been killed by finding their dads hidden land mine?
If he had used a gun I probably would have dropped him on the spot before he had a sight picture. I’m a very dangerous person and when attacked I will defend myself. But where can I go to practice dealing with a Buick on a rampage? Any class you take teaches over and over that you never shoot at a moving target if it can be avoided; especially a vehicle. It just becomes second nature. This was a few years ago; these days I may have risked taking a shot if for no other reason than to startle him and get the attention of others. But I was younger then and healed at a fair rate so I took the risk and the hit.
<<Guns are different because their primary objective is killing, and they are very good at it. If we eliminate cars the world would function a lot less efficiently. If we eliminate guns things would carry on just fine.>>
Again, there are a lot of things designed just for killing and they are just as good at it in the proper (or improper) hands. And we’re not talking a world-wide ban on cars - un-inventing them, so to speak - just the civilian ownership and operation of them. The world will function just fine and goods still move as needed if the government has its vehicles and trucks and just keeps them away from irresponsible people like you and me. Plus our cities will be cleaner and we’ll all be healthier from the exercise provided by daily life. See? Forget about guns! Lets get rid of cars and all our problems will be solved!
I know its silly but to me the firearms debate often reaches this level of silly. Even if we could eliminate (or un-invent) guns we would just keep using whatever was handy. Moms driving their kids into lakes or slipping them rat poison. Husbands and wives and baseball bats. There are times when I almost wish I had the power to make firearms disappear for a few weeks; if for no other reason than to show a lot of people how little difference it would make.
How would you determine who is a criminal who hasn’t been caught?
To respond the the actual OP – I don’t think this has been mentioned yet, but I may have missed something in this long thread – guns scare me because they go BANG! Explosions are viscerally terrifying. The bigger the explosion, the more terror I feel.
I’ve been to a shooting range a few times in my life and am a decent shot, for a rank beginner anyway, with smaller firearms. I can’t make myself shoot the big ones, though: it’s like trying to punch myself in the nose. When it’s nothing but a jarring, very loud noise, like with a small firearm, I can steel myself to it, but when it’s a bone-deep earthquake in my hands, it gives me the shakes. I desperately want to get away. It only gets worse if I manage to get a round off. I sincerely respect people who have a need to use substantial firearms and are able to do so calmly.
It’s not dissimilar to how I felt about automobiles shortly after the first (and so far, knock on wood, only) serious accident I was in when I was 12. It took a while to get used to getting inside something I knew could do that crashing thing they do. But I had a lot of pressure to overcome that fear, since Mom wouldn’t let me walk everywhere, and fortunately the cars I’ve been in since have had minimal crashing things to do. The only pressure I experienced to try shooting again was the internal voice calling me a wuss.
Were you wearing hearing protection? That makes a huge difference; for me, even firing a .22 without hearing protection is an uncomfortable experience. The most powerful gun I’ve ever fired without protection was a .45 pistol, and that was only once, to see what it felt like. It was very painful and I do not intend to repeat it. With a good pair of earmuffs, though, it’s just a solid thump.
Personally, though, I love the bone-deep earthquake of the really big guns. I guess it’s a matter of personal preference, like how some people just don’t enjoy roller coasters. I love those too. 
(New idea for an extreme sport: roller coaster trap shooting! With elephant guns!)
Actually, I agree with this 100%. There didn’t used to be any such thing as a “gun culture.” People had guns, and that was all there was to it.
What you are describing is - plain and simple - a backlash against anti-gun laws.
Would you rather live in a society in which you couldn’t own a gun or couldn’t a car? Anyways, I don’t think anyone would argue that murders, suicides, and accidental deaths would cease to exist the moment guns are gotten rid of. Certainly some would find other means at achieving their goal. And once in a while a gun saves a life instead of takes it. That doesn’t mean guns are a societal positive. Some arguments instead of ending in gunfire would cause only shouting matches or minor bruising. Some suicides wouldn’t occur. Some accidents wouldn’t happen. The aggregate of these things to me are enough any benefit guns provide, particularly in an urban enviroment.
No, there isn’t. As has been pointed out in the past, a reduction in crime rates has coincided with the growth in popularity of such games. Whereas gun ownership by its nature increases the chance of getting shot; I’m not going to accidentally kill someone with a nonexistent gun.
And as for actually handling firearms making you safer, I see no reason to think that. I see hunters shooting cows that have “COW” painted on the side, because they can’t bother to check their targets. I see people showing up with guns at political rallies to threaten their opponents. I see gun owners talking about fighting a civil war against their government.
Kopek says “I’m a very dangerous person…” but can’t understand why guns, and the people attracted to them, are frightening to the rest of us.
I find this a very common personality trait among gun owners, enthusiasts, nuts. They like to reference how they’re armed, they’re dangerous, unfailingly these words will eventually come out of their mouths.
And this, “I’d have dropped him before he could get me in his sites”, is exactly what makes us think y’all are a little touched. This kind of ill placed bravado is so common with gun owners it sends a loud and strong message that there is clearly more to this than any actual threat to your person.
It’s clearly a need to feel powerful and dangerous. In my opinion, people with these kind of issues are the very last persons who should be allowed to carry weapons.
And you know what? That weapon does make this sad individual feel powerful and mighty and dangerous. And enough time goes by and they get to thinking, (after perhaps years ideating about what they’d do if…), they ARE in a position to make a life and death decision.
Now they’re a hair trigger with a God complex who’s well armed.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Please document where and when you saw the cow killing take place.
The last time, about five years ago, I was wearing those roly-poly disposable foam earplugs underneath a set of industrial earmuffs, though neither fit as well as I would have liked. It helped, but not enough for the big guns. You feel those as much as you hear them.
The fear of guns isn’t entirely rational, but people are not rational about fear. The famous example is that flying is much safer than driving, but most people are far more afraid of flying than driving. Plane crashes tend to be well-publicized, spectacular, scary, the event is out of your hands, and it’s a luxury rather than a necessity. Overall that matches up with guns more than it does with household poisons or knives.
I’m not sure how you would do that in any kind of rational way.
There are different laws in different states and the differences can be very large, so I shouldn’t generalize. But I don’t think you have to prove you are a good shot to get a gun license.
Hear, hear.
More than anything else, it’s the statement, implicit and explicit, that “deadly violence is an option with me”. Not only do I not care to be around folks like that, I don’t want to be a person like that.