David, agreed up to a point. Your primary weapon is not your gun, it is your awareness. The objective is to read the situation early and give yourself enough time to react appropriately. Most situations have very clear precursors and signals. The trick is to see/hear/feel/smell them in time.
Now, I’ve never been mugged, but if I were, I think my first thought at having someone wave a gun in my face would be, “We need fewer guns in this country,” not, “We need more guns in this country.”
But I guess I’m screwy like that.
I think the momentum on this point has already passed, but I was referring to the tendency of the gun enthusiast to respond to “why do you carry/feel the need for a gun?” with some variation of “I don’t need to tell you shit.” (Charmingly reiterated in this thread by Catsix.)
Unlike, say, a kitten, an angora sweater, an iPod, a red wool beret, or a Popeil Pocket Fisherman, a handgun or rifle has the distinctive ability to cause instantaneous death to living things in its vicinity, not excluding its owner. Not everyone feels the desire or need to carry around a potentially lethal device, and therefore it doesn’t strike me as outrageous to wonder what someone’s personal motivation is for doing so.
Airman responded reasonably, I thought, and characterized what I called “arrogance” as defiance, born out of a perceived constant attack on his rights. Call it arrogance, or defiance, or whatever you wish. That the attitude exists does not appear to be in dispute. Outside of the question of legality, though, “fuck you, it’s my right” doesn’t really help someone like me, who isn’t particularly interested enamored of guns and doesn’t care to own one, understand the fascination and adulation some have for them.
Damn, it was time for another pit gun control thread? where does the time go?
He’s a high-profile person, so it’s not unreasonable to think that perhaps a nut might try and take a shot at him to gain some form of fame. Or perhaps he’s angered a good portion of the Virginia electorate with his anti-Bush remarks. Or maybe he just feels safer with a gun. Who knows? But it’s certainly not irrational for him to carry a gun.
He seems pretty sensible, so I’d say probably.
Not necessarily. Congressmen don’t have much in the way of protection outside of the Capitol complex. They don’t have bodyguards (unless you are Hillary Clinton) or the Capitol Police giving you protection wherever you go. At times, I’ve even known of Congressional staff to have guns when accompanying their bosses.
Senators and Representatives don’t have to go through metal detectors in the Capitol and they are legally allowed to have a gun in their offices, so there are probably more Congressmen and Senator with guns than you think. I remember reading in Warren Rudman’s autobiography that he had a gun in his desk.
Of course, but developing a useful awareness calls for a relatively intensive and length training period that most people don’t have and can’t afford.
Actually, in my opinion, we survive as long as we do purely because the probability of anything bad happening to any particular individual is quite low. If it weren’t we wouldn’t be here to worry about it.
I can’t see making extensive, expensive and elaborate preparations for something that in all likelihood will never happen.
I take normal precautions. For example, I don’t go down to dangerous parts of cities, day or night. I had to drive through the streets of Compton, CA because a section of freeway hadn’t been built yet and I was quite uneasy. However, again, things like that are rare and a gun wouldn’t have increased my safety measureably. I don’t use ATM’s at all, and certainly not at night, and other stuff like those examples.
I have no interest in guns, am not enamored of them, and don’t care to own one. But I don’t think that someone who DOES want to own one is necessarily “fascinated” or has “adulation” for them. A gun is a tool, and some folks have reason to believe that it is a necessary tool for them to own. I do not understand the leap people take here. It’s like saying that since I own a car, I must have a fascination or adulation for cars. No, I just need to get to work every day. I guess some people are crazy about cars, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that just because you have a reason for owning one that it means you are in love with them.
It could be that someone saying “fuck you, it’s my right,” is responding to the idea that anyone who wants to own a gun is a gun nut.
Nope. Do you doubt them?
Ack! No, I haven’t! Mellivora capensis expressed very well what I was saying, it’s just that you’re oversimplifying it. It’s not a matter of whether a person might feel like he needs a gun, and it certainly isn’t about gun control — a whole 'nuther issue. It’s simply about being able to empathize with another point of view. I used the mugging example because of my own personal experience. It was not a statement about New York or anything like that. If I were going to start from a clean slate, and make it very simple, I’d rephrase what I said something along these lines: I don’t think you (Quid) should call someone else’s perception screwey without having lived their life. For me, that applies to everything from guns to theology. Anyway, I can’t put it any plainer, and I’m pretty tired of explaining it over and over, so just interpret it as you will. Mellivora’s response at least assures me that there are people who can take the interpretation I intended.
The thing about the experience is that it brings the realism into contact with the ideal. You may wish the guy didn’t have a gun. But he does. And if you banned them, he still might. It’s probably fair to say that most muggers buy their guns on the black market.
These precautions are certainly wise, and easily implemented in many cases. But to be quite frank, there is a part of me that rails against the idea of being held hostage by muggers and thieves. 
Richard, I have no reason to doubt your word, I was merely curious how you arrived at your conclusion.
Of course, if there were no primary market for guns, there wouldn’t be much supply of guns for the black market, would there?
Mind, I’m not actually anti-gun myself. I just hate arguments that center on the idea that the other party would abandon their principles at the first hint of adversity or even personal inconvenience. The number of gun-shot victims in the anti-gun crowd alone puts the lie to your argument.
I guess that’s why they make ice cream in all those different flavors.
In my view, always being on the* qui vive* and feeling that you need to carry a lethal weapon in order to ward off ever-present danger is a form of captivity.
Hmm… I don’t think it goes like that. I mean, it’s not like fake Rolexes being sold by con artists. People buy guns on the black market because of reasons like: they’re criminals, and can’t buy guns over the counter; they don’t want their use of a gun traced to a purchase of one; they want to commit a crime using deadly force; and so on. In fact, I’d reckon that guns on the black market cost more than over the counter guns. And if you got rid of the over the counter ones, you’d still be left with the people who use them but didn’t buy them that way anyhow.
You’ve missed my point. If there is no legal market for firearms, who is going to manufacture the guns being sold on the black market? Unlike drugs or booze, manufacturing a .38 special isn’t something that can be done in an apartment kitchen with supplies from the local Rite Aid.
Of course, there are still millions of guns already on the street, but if there were no regular supply of new guns being introduced to the market, eventually the market will dry up.
(And, again, I’m not at all advocating that we outlaw guns, just that the natural reaction to being assaulted is not automatically, “I gotta get me a gun!” There are other perfectly rational responses to the situation.)
Sure, not a .38 special, but you can load your own ammunition and make a crude zip gun with a little knowledge and some cheap supplies.
Manufacturing firearms might be an American Institution, but it is not in any way an American Monopoly. The market for illegal guns is worldwide, and is served by multinational manufacturing and marketing, both legal and illegal.
The pistol I have is sixty years old. My one time roommate had seven revolvers, all made entirely by hand, in his shop, which was not primarily a weapon shop. (Not withstanding the absolutely beautiful knives and occasional sword he made there.) His day to day most frequent job was fabricating special order horse shoes!
The proposition that banning legal ownership would reduce the source of hand guns is very hard to support with hard facts.
By the way, Liberal never claimed that buying a gun, or even wanting to buy one was “the natural reaction to being assaulted.” He simply pointed out that wanting to buy a gun, or actually buying a gun was one of the “other perfectly rational responses to the situation” and characterizing it as “screwy” was a self serving condemnation of another person’s point of view.
Tris
Compared to a judge?
I imagine it would be an appealing market to several despotic and rogue nations as well as organized crime worldwide.
Which would still mean, at the very least, that someone would have to smuggle them into the US, which is yet another barrier (and cost multiplier) to their ending up in the hands of American criminals.
Sure, but how long did it take him to make each gun? Cheap, easily obtainable guns require a massive, dedicated industrial complex that makes guns and nothing else. If this industry did not exist, people would still be able to make guns in small machine shops on general purpose machines, but the supply would not be nearly sufficient to meet the demand, and the rarity would price your average street thug out of the market.
No, he said that wanting to buy a gun was the only reasonable reaction to being mugged, and that opinions to the contrary were themselves “screwy,” as well as “naive.”