Less than it sucks to live in the fear that armed bandits can to bust in at you at any time so need to be always armed.
And less yet than it must suck to be so mentally ill as to think that’s a more realistic possibility than that of your gun being used to kill you, or one of your family, or an innocent stranger.
And yet I’m not the one so scared I feel like I must carry a gun around for protection. Imagine that.
In fairness, ISTM the Stranger Danger argument is mainly a rationalization for the pleasure of wearing a strap-on. The purported fear is a result, not a cause.
This “fear” angle is really something that needs to be addressed, though. We know that the majority of gun deaths are suicides, and the majority of the remainder are gang-related. The CDC says that in LA it’s roughly 65% gang related for the 19-24 crowd. I’m not in that age group, but if you look at things that are likely to kill me based solely on my age, there’s about a .004% chance that I’m going to be murdered with a gun in a given year. That’s only slightly higher than the odds of me dying from coronary heart disease (.003%). That doesn’t take into account accidents or injuries from guns, but it’s safe to say that I don’t stay awake at night worrying about being taken out by an armed attacker.
Taking that into account, I’m perfectly content to point and laugh at CCW holders who carry every day thinking that they’re going to be a hero. Statistically they’re wasting their time, and they’d probably be better off carrying some quick clot and a CAT, with maybe a defibrillator in the car.
But those same statistics also say that I have nothing to fear from gun owners. If everyone is armed, it’s unlikely to affect me in any way. I think the massive number of guns in this country is a problem for society, because of suicides and gang violence, and I think both issues would be improved if there were just fewer guns around. But that’s a rational decision not made out of fear.
I think fear is just a word thrown around for people, mostly gun owners, to feel masculine, as if having no fear makes you more of a man.
I fear being shot by my own gun. I also fear being bitten by a dog, or falling into an open pothole, or accidentally putting my hand in a boiling pot. Some of those are rational, some are not, but it does absolutely nothing for anyone’s argument about anything to state that I fear those things. Pro-gun people want to characterize everyone else as cowering chipmunks masturbating into a maxi pad while crying but that doesn’t change the odds of being shot by their gun or anyone else’s (unless someone has something against crying and masturbating chipmunks).
Pro-gun people are afraid of being helpless in a situation. Terrified, even, so much that they risk their own lives to carry around dangerous items that is statistically more likely to hurt them than someone else. And anti-gun people are afraid of being shot by those with guns. Its the same fear, just directed towards someone else. We’re all afraid, that’s why there’s a debate to begin with
Good post, Yog. I guess a lot of it boils down to the fact that humans are notoriously poor at calculating proabilities.
Is it?
I carry a gun around and I don’t feel scared at all.
Mostly anti-gunners in this thread throwing the word around.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16903081&postcount=3389
Hentor projecting again, I guess.
Thanks for making my point for me.
Your point is?
I should say that I meant when fear is used by pro-gun people, I think those are its intentions. When the same word is used by anti-gun people, we have different intentions. The common caricature of a gun establishing or saving manhood is not unintentional. Guns are a penis substitute for a lot of male gun owners and the gun manufacturers know that and market to it.
Your position on strict liability and the death penalty for negligent storage/handling accidents with guns seems a bit anti-gun…
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=16799229&postcount=3231
But I believe that you consider yourself a supporter of gun rights and would protect basic gun rights
I’ll add that we will never have the sort of evidence in this area that people like hentor demand before he considers it persuasive. Not because we demand this level of certainty in other areas of public policy but because he looks for every excuse to ignore the data that we do have.
All you have done is come back to me with reasons why the studies are not conclusive proof of my position (and I accept that) but ALL the evidence points to large numbers of defensive gun use. You have presented NO evidence that the number of defensive gun use is small or trivial compared to the number of gun murders by legal gun owners.
:dubious: So I’m a gun owner that supports licensing and registration while you support an Assault Weapons Ban even after its retardness is explained to you and youthink I’m being irrational about guns?:rolleyes:
Here’s the thing. Putting aside the constitution, I would reconsider my position if you could provide credible evidence that legal gun owners commit more crime and violence with guns than they prevent with guns. It would be more compelling if you limited the universe to registered gun owners with carry permits.
What would it take for you to reconsider your position? Would it even make a difference to you if I proved beyond a reasonable doubt that legal gun owners prevented more crime and violence than they committed?
Really? Aside from the statistics on gun deaths, what facts have you presented?
Here are some of the facts that you seem to be incapable of working into your analysis.
You ignore the fact that the majority of gun crimes are committed by a very small subset of the population;
you ignore the fact that defensive gun use vastly exceeds gun crime by legal gun owners;
you ignore the fact that the Assault Weapons Ban has no effect on gun violence;
you ignore the fact that getting rid of guns doesn’t mean that you would reduce the murder count by the number of gun murders in prior years, even those by legal gun owners.
I feel pretty safe. I live in a good neighborhood and I don’t think I will ever need a gun for self defense from other human beings or overthrowing tyranny.
So, show me a study that supports your position already. All you have is criticism for the studies that are already out there.
I live in Virginia and I followed his race fairly closely. I voted for Terry McAulliffe because guns are not important enough for me to not vote against somebody like Cuccinelli but there are people that will vote for Cuccinelli because of the gun issue.
He mumbled his way through every question about gun control until the government shutdown gave him a double digit lead in the polls. He specifically avoided answering questions about the assault weapons ban until he was up by double digits. He deflected questions about gun control with statements about supporting the second amendment (he might say something about supporting background checks at gun shows) but he didn’t confirm his position on stupid shit like the Assault Weapons Ban until he thought he had the election in the bag and even then he ended up winning by a fairly slim margin.
If you think that the McAullife race is an affirmation that gun control is a winning issue for Democrats then you either don’t know all the pertinent information or you’re just crazy.
Its been relatively flat since 1999. It is down a SHITLOAD since 1993.
I think that a good comparison should compare the number of gun deaths caused by accidents and gun murders by people legally allowed to possess a gun to the number of lives saved by guns. And I think the number of lives saved is greater. I think the number of lives saved most probably exceeds the number of all gun murders.
Its not their fault. A lot of them have been raised with a deep seated fear of guns and it has been reinforced by the media and those around them to the point it haas become an article of faith and a bit of a tribal marker.
Because, despite providing the links to the studies, you seem to keep forgetting that defensive gun use exists when you make statements that only present one side of the argument.
There is a reason why the only gun thread left on this board is in the pit and not great debates. You are applying unreasonable standards to defensive gun use studies before you will admit them into evidence. And when these studies are admitted into evidence, the policy rationale for banning guns becomes very weak. When you add the theory that a bun ban will not be observed by the criminals and you add the fact that most gun murders (and probably an even greater percentage of gun crimes) are committed by criminals, the policy rationale for a gun ban virtually evaporates. The only thing you have left is your visceral reaction to guns and you undying faith that banning guns would be good for us.
THIS is why I keep asking about defensive gun use. You look at the number of gun deaths caused by allowing law abiding citizens to own guns and stop there. You do not compare the number of gun murders committed by legal gun owners against the number of defensive gun uses.
/sigh
“[Hemenway] finds the NCVS figures more reliable, yielding estimates of around 100,000 defensive gun uses per year. Applying different adjustments, other social scientists suggest that between 250,000 and 370,000 incidences per year.”
NOW will you stfu and stop embarrassing everyone on your side of the argument?
Do you seriously want me to cite back to news stories during that time period when your side was pushing for an Assault Weapons ban? THIS is the sort of thing that makes people on your side of the argument cringe. You not only erode your credibility, you erode theirs.
Perhaps you have blocked that embarrassing period out of your mind. When the gun nuts explained that the Assault Weapons Ban was effectively banning largely cosmetic features on a gun and the tide turned against the gun grabbers.
IIRC fewer people favored and more people opposed the weapons ban 6 months after Newtown than 6 months before Newtown, largely due to better information about what an AWB meant.
They didn’t put the AWB in the manchin/toomey bill if thats what you mean but Feinstein had her own bill.
It failed by a vote of 60 to 40 in a Democratically controlled Senate.
Almost exactly the opposite. All the studies have numbers that the gun grabbers think are too high and provide some support for the position that gun ownership by law abiding citizens is a net benefit to society.
Controlling for all other factors is tricky business. You might as well control for all other factors in the study itself. What Zeriel’s statement about attaching a dashboard cam to guns points out is how ridiculous the level of proof the gun grabbers are going to demand before they consider the evidence.
You see, the thing is that the NCVS an ongoing study by the Department of Justice, says that armed citizens engage in defensive gun use 100,000 per year. Other estimates range from 250,00 to millions per year.
How many times do you think legal gun owners commit crimes (including murder) with guns?
You might believe that you have a sense of whats going on but you disregard data in favor of anecdote.
The most generous assumptions would give some weight to Kleck’s studies that place defensive gun use at around 2.5 million times per year. With defense of life accounting for 15-30% of those dgu’s. So under the most generous assumptions, guns save 300,000 to 700,000 lives every year while there are only about 12,000 gun murders every year right now.
now I’m not saying these are the actual numbers but you have this incorrect assumption that the numbers are so overwhelmingly in your favor that you don’t even have to take a look at them. Its kind of a foregone conclusion in your mind.
And a criminal never has to worry about an alarm shooting them in the dead either.
So how is an alarm cheaper and more effective than a gun and a dog? As far as I can tell, unless you pay a monthly subscription (and fee for a land line which can be cut or a cellular connection which costs more), an alarm is about as useful in detecting burglars as a dog and while the dog requires more maintenance, they provide all sorts of other benefits (and burdens).
The average response time from crime to police showing up at your door is very variable but is generally measured in minutes. Response times of 45 minutes used to be commonplace (at my family’s warehouse the response times were sometimes measured in hours), with modern techniques and best practices, 5-20 minutes seems to be more common.
Yog: Not just males, either. 
They market to the fearful, those who think they need an Equalizer because they fear they’re inadequate to facing life situations without one. Some people get their courage from a bottle instead.
What, like cops and soldiers?
Is that what you call it? “Data”?
We’ve never even *tried *a real one.
What do your neighbors think, though? They have a gun owner with symptoms of mental illness living near them. Are they safe from you? Or does that not matter?
Read.
If only we had more than what a crazy man “thinks” to go by on that …
A sane man, by comparison to you, has a very real and reasonable fear of getting killed.
Another of your insane lies. I acknowledge it every fucking time, Rain Man.
Asking them to reflect reality is “unreasonable”? A delusional person’s definition of that term is worth a laugh, but no more.
OK, you do have some connection with reality, even if it’s as tenuous as that one. 
No, as already stated, I ask that every single fucking time. You have no response except to claim that DGU’s do exist, therefore shut up.
[quote
Do you seriously want me to cite back to news stories during that time period when your side was pushing for an Assault Weapons ban?
[/quote]
The topic was Manchin-Toomey. It did *not *include one. Your obsessive compulsion on that point is more evidence of your mental illness.
All of them? Really? 
Yet that’s what honest researchers do.
Alarms don’t kill anybody unintentionally. Dogs can, but not nearly as much as firearms.
You’re a sick, sick person. Get help. And turn in your license. You’re a menace to society.
Marketing is different to the community of trained, (normally) responsible professionals.
We’re talking about “law-abiding citizens” here. Try to keep up.
Golly, and here I am all being a law-abiding citizen who got training as a responsible professional in the armed forces. However shall they market to me? I wanted to have a weapon ready then, and by coincidence I of course still want that now – and for the same reason both times, the one you just summed up as needing an equalizer because I feel I might be inadequate to facing life situations without one.
Please, relay the pitch I would’ve loved then and would presumably still love now.
Were you assigned to a procurement office in the Pentagon at contract time? Then you wouldn’t have been marketed to.
Why does that need to be explained to you?