Handguns are more likely to wound or incapacitate than kill. Is that what you are looking for?
Gonna go out on a limb here, since what Chronos said kinda resonated with me. My guess is that when he envisions someone picking up a gun with the intent of potentially defending themselves with it that it also means they also logically think defending themselves may include, hopefully not, but might just include killing another person. Since that can happen when you shoot someone, you know. And that a person could do this every day is a little chilling. Today might be your lucky day.
I bet you might give me some bad vibes. I kinda fear guns since they are pretty god damn dangerous. Like fire I treat them with the proper respect they deserve. Both can be totally awesome and useful, but can also really ruin someone’s day.
Why do you have to insist on carrying around a weapon around the rest of us projecting your fears and insecurities that you (most likely won’t) get attacked, and need to shoot someone? I’ll leave the penis reference up to you if you still feel it needs to be said for some reason.
It’s honestly not that simple.
It’s abhorrent to me to kill someone, or injure them. But if I’m attacked again, or an innocent is, and my life or health and/or an innocents is seriously threatened, then yes people like me will do what is necessary. To sum it all up as planning to kill someone is a bit insulting and not recognizing the facts.
In conjunction with that, the law, in my State, backs me up, as do the findings in Heller decided by the USSC. The legislature and the Attorney General feel that I’m a good enough person to have issued a carry license, and to have the right to use deadly force to defend myself and others. The USSC has confirmed that I may use a gun, even a handgun, to do so.
In short, I have the right and the training and the means to try to prevent myself from being a victim of another beating, another robbery, and another sexual assault. To do that I have to be carrying my gun, or else what’s the point of trying?
Lest you continue to read too much into it - I think Projammer was trying to express (and failed to do so) that there is a large hobbyist (read: gadget) culture among gun owners, and many of them love to drone on ad nauseum about the latest gun they have, what ammunition they’re using, what sights, what holster, what cleaning solution, etc. Most of this is not focused on killing and death - even though the topic is ironically about a deadly weapon, I know, hard to believe - but something I’d ascribe more to the same sort of thing people do when they stand around and talk about a new tweak to their car engine, their latest special 4-iron, or what kind of riding mower they have. This love of talking forever and tweaking gadgets is something that while not unique to gun owners, is highly prevalent among them.
Why does the concept of self defense make you uneasy? In many of the situations in which a gun would be handy, it’s either kill or be killed. You can take your pick but I’ll be choosing to defend my life, as it’s the only one I have.
It’s sad to see such a primal instinct to preserve one’s life is gone in so much of the population.
The implication I got from that post was that people who legally carrying are strapping up looking for a fight, or in your words, hoping it is a lucky day and they get to kill someone. What is chilling to me is that anyone would question another person simply because they are prepared to take a life to defend their own or that of their family. It would most likely haunt me for the rest of my life should I ever have to use my gun in self defense. It would kill me a thousand times a day if I allowed those in my charge to be violated because I was unable to stop someone from doing so. That is a responsibility that I take every day. I’m not mental and I know that the best way to survive an encounter is never to be there in the first place.
I bet… no… I am sure that should we meet in a coffee shop or at the grocery store, I would be as unassuming as the next 6’2 250 lb white dude. I don’t have a Clint Eastwood or John Rambo vibe by any means. I, like 99.9% of all CCW holders, are just regular folk with mortgages, minivans and kids that love them. Please don’t take my earlier remarks as a some sort of flippant attitude regarding gun safety. The difference is that I know that given the proper safety procedures, guns are harmless and nothing to fear. They have enormous potential for causing tragedy, but not of their own doing.
I project nothing as I already stated. Unless I wanted you to see it or let you know I was carrying, you would never know it. My concern for my safety is just that, concern, not fear. I know that I have ultimate responsibility and accountability when it comes to protecting my family. Is that so difficult to comprehend?
Regarding the penis statement, it usually comes up by now around these parts. Just wait for it…
If it’s a political statement, I don’t think a kid’s soccer game is the appropriate place. If it’s because she actually thinks there’s a non-negligible chance she’s going to need to defend yourself with deadly force at a kid’s soccer game, well, I guess I’m glad I don’t live in that neighborhood. If people want to try to establish open carry as normal behavior, fine, knock yourselves out. But kids’ sporting events are not a good place to start.
It’s the primal instinct to survive that causes me not to carry a gun or have one in the house, as my loved ones and I are more likely to be the victim of accident, suicide, or murder if I do.
I agree 100%. It’s hard not to view a pistol-packing soccer mom as nuts. And a nut with a gun is not someone I want to be around.
So you take all other precautions to minimize risk as well correct? Helmets when you drive, no red meat or no meat at all, no water heater because having one makes one more likely to have it explode, no electricity as one is more likely to be electrocuted, blah blah blah. I couldn’t care less whether you own a gun, or like the fact that others own a gun. The touch of smugness in your reply is a bit much however.
A gun in your home is not going to make you suicidal.
Given precautions that you would give to any other device such as a food processor or a hair dryer, a gun will not cause an “accident”.
I think that people who carry weapons all the time, especially to places like kids soccer games, so vastly overestimate the risk of the need to use them in self-defense (not to mention the efficacy), I would question whether their overall judgement is sufficient to be allowed to carry a firearm at all. This has nothing to do with the legal right to bear arms or responsible gun ownership; it’s about paranoid freaks who might be more of a danger to society than the perceived threats to which they are so egregiously overreacting.
What a strange application of statistics. If you honestly think that the mere presence of a gun is going to increase the chance that people in your household are, for example, going to suddenly commit suicide, you indeed have a household which perhaps has some issues. I’m not trying to snark on you, rather I’m outlining how your belief in partial protection from suicide by not having a gun around ignores critical facts about suicide. You have a serious causality issue here.
Your point on accidents is more valid, I grant you that, but then, like that great sage of our times Smokey the Bear says, “only YOU can prevent forest fires.” In other words, accidents don’t happen, they are caused. A smart and safe gun owner takes care and steps to prevent accidents, the same way anyone who has any concept of due diligence takes steps. Whether it’s covering a swimming pool, putting away bleach, or locking up a gun when you’re at home (especially if one is like 95% of American parents, who have pretty much completely un-trained and un-disciplined children, but I digress), you get the safety that you give.
So by choosing to exercise your legal right with your legal weapon in a legal manner, you show you’re unfit to exercise it. Can we extend this to other legal rights as well?
To be fair, the comparison with a car did appear on the 1st page, and you are the only one talking about penises so i call bullsheet.
Well maybe next time it does outside of the BBQ Pit, all the gun owners on here who find it to be a sexist and offensive statement meant to deliberately and purposefully troll the SDMB should complain to the Moderators, and perhaps in time someone will get warned for it. And as I’m required to say due to my title, I work for Cecil, not the SDMB, so I’m not putting forth any official position on anything here.
How can I distinguish between a law-abiding person carrying a firearm, and a criminal carrying a firearm?
Daniel
The criminal will do something like point the gun at you and demand your wallet. The law abiding citizen will continue shopping, watching the game, or whatever.
I find two things strange so far. One is that Dan Blather said accident, suicide, or murder, yet both people who have responded thus far really only seemed to focus on the suicide part as if he hadn’t mentioned the other two.
The second issue I find strange is that the facts happen to back him up, even in the face of the assertions that the statistics are perhaps a bit ludicrous that a gun in a household could be said to lead to an increased likelyhood that it will be used to take one’s own life rather than defend it.
Just throwing this out there, but JXJohns brought this up first in this thread, and he seems to be arguing the same case you are. So it wasn’t anyone espouing an anti-gun philosophy or (hopefully not) trolling this time since he seems to be pretty legit.
And what I find strange is that you somehow missed this entire paragraph in my post:
Is that or is that not addressing accidents?
Actually … I think a good case can be made that the mere presence of a gun makes suicide more likely.
The reason isn’t so hard to find: many people who have suicidal thoughts are not, as a matter of fact, wholly committed to offing themselves. It is more an impulse of the moment caused by an acute depression which, if not acted on, can pass.
Moreover, two of the symptoms of severe depression - suicidal ideation and lassitude or inability to do stuff - tend to cancel each other out to an extent, in the absence of a really easy way to off oneself. Many suicidal people plan, roll play suicide scenarios, or make attempts designed to fail; owning a hand gun cuts through such equivocations.
The ability to access an easy means of suicide - press a trigger and die - thus makes actually carrying out of suicide more likely. Given some time to reflect, say be being required to work out an alternative method requiring more effort, suicide becomes less likely (remembering that depression is not, in itself, a terminal illness).