Yes, I’m aware of that. As I said, in a moment of laziness I assumed it was obvious enough that I didn’t need to use the “relatively” qualifier, but on a debate forum, I guess I deserved to be called out on it. Mea culpa.
“Abdicating responsibility”? Seriously? Your moral superiority is showing. If that’s what they’re teaching at the gun club, they should apply for religious tax exempt status. In the context of freedom, it doesn’t help your argument any. If carrying guns is a moral duty, and not carrying is a personal failing, it doesn’t sound so much like freedom any more.
Of course carrying a gun in public is great–for the gun owner. Look at the power it gives him. I’ve noticed that this is never mentioned by gun advocates. We hear “Freedom!” and “Liberty!” ad nauseum, but we never hear “Power!”. Carrying a gun takes away a level playing field for everyone else. Whatever power he gains, I lose. Virtually every modern country recognizes that and strives to create a level playing field. The U.S. is the outlier. Your Bill of Rights could to be amended to read, "All men are created equal, but men with guns are more equal.
Who do you believe is responsible for your personal security and defense should the need arise?
I believe each individual is responsible - that is what I am describing when I use the word “abdicating”. It does not necessitate carrying firearms but that is one way to enhance one’s personal security.
If I have no weapon and you have no weapon, who would win should I decide to take your wallet? The person who has the most physical strength. Which basically means that the strongest will survive. Those countries that make guns illegal for the average citizen force an uneven playing field. The strongest will survive any encounter.
If you look at something like rape, which is all about power, you have taken any equalizing force away from the person to be victimized. In general, women are physically weaker than a man of the same build. If the man is of a larger build, there is no way to get away once ensnared. A taser might help, but it’s a tool that can go awry (Thick or loose clothes, some reports of certain people being unaffected, etc). Pepper spray might help, but it has large splash back. If you miss the face (or even if you hit the face) you can incapacitate yourself in the attempt to push the attacker away.
To equalize the playing field, you need a weapon of some sort. Since every weapon except a gun, a taser, or pepper spray needs a physical advantage to use effectively, you can’t take the weapon with the fewest side effects to the person being attached out of the equation and then say that the playing field is level. You’ve actually shifted the playing field decisively into the hands of the attacker.
I’ve never carried in public, but I’ve gone hunting on several occasions and used to go to the range fairly often. There is something about having the power to kill anything you can see that could certainly be addictive.
Walking around in public, with the knowledge that anyone you see, you could kill, and that they are all at the mercy of you being on of the ‘good guys’ is probably a pretty good power trip. I’ve thought about getting a CCW just for that reason. A little peice of metal, and all insecurities vanish.
There is a very real addiction to the power that guns lend, and addictions never allow addicts to act rationally in respect to them. I’m all for guns, they are fun to shoot, they are better for killing deer than cars, and in the unlikely event of civil disorder or breakdown, they would be extremely useful. That said, not being addicted to guns, I can rationally propose and agree to some limits to the amount of destructive power a person should carry around with them, and certainly agree that there are going to be some people that can’t be trusted to use them safely, competently or ethically, and so should be denied access.
As a tobacco addict, I would fight vehemently against legislation to ban tobacco, not because it wouldn’t be in my best interest, and the interest of society as a whole, but because my addiction does not allow me to take a rational position on the subject. I could make all sorts of arguments about freedom and ability to decide what I do with my body, I might even be right, but it would all still come down to one thing, I am addicted, and don’t want the object of my addiction removed, limited or threatened.
It’s the same reaction for guns, an irrational fear that the object of an addiction could be removed, that causes disproportionate and counterproductive behaviors. There is plenty of room for compromise between no law or regulation on guns, and the complete removal of everything that goes “bang”, but through an addict’s eyes, any move to limit access is followed by complete confiscation.
I’m sure that there are some people that get a “high” from guns, but I’d be surprised if it’s even a 10/90 split. If people were “addicted” to the power, that addiction would require a constant fix.
Sure, you start walking with your CCW and you know it’s new and you get a rush from it. Okay, I can see that. What about two weeks from now? Two months? It becomes mundane. How can you start feeling power over somebody, then? Brandish? Well, that’s a jailin’ and a revocation of your CCW. Attempt to stop crimes? What are you doing? Being creepy in the worst parts of your area hoping to legitimately brandish? If that were the case, we’d have no open-air crime because there would be enough of the people looking for potential power trips (or “hits”) in downtown Chicago that we’d be able to host a “Bring Your Gold to the Street Day”.
Painting everyone on either side of an argument like this as “addicted to” or “trying to take all” is not useful. It’s like saying that all men want to be women and pointing to a cross dresser. I’m sure that there’s SOME men that fit this, but it’s hardly the norm.
Was not painting everyone on any side as anything. I was pointing out different perspectives, and why some of those perceptions exist.
If you’ve never had an addiction, you wouldn’t understand. Sure the rush goes away. I used to get pretty much high off a cigarette. 20 years later, I certainly don’t feel nearly the same level, most of the time I hardly notice that I am smoking. Take it away though, and yeah, I notice.
Not all addictions are the same, most will not need to escalate, or if they do, slowly and fairly sensibly.
Some gun owners are not addicted at all, simply wish to be prepared in case of emergency, or find a utility in hunting or target practice. Some control their addiction, and are happy with shooting at the range and nuisance animals. Some appease their addiction by buying more guns. Showing them off the friends also seems to give them a bit of a fix.
As far as keeping the high though, just like any addiction, there certainly are those who will escalate and do exactly the things you said. There was a poster here who was bragging about brandishing his gun in front of a home depot (he didn’t point it at the potential threat of course, but only at the doors to the store, where people go in and out.) Whatever the motivations behind zimmerman/martin, he did go looking for crimes to stop while wearing his gun. Some people just open up and start shooting people, it’s certainly not like we don’t have plenty of shootings and mass shootings going on.
So yes, your point is valid, in that as an addiction, many will need to find a better high to get their fix with their guns, hence, my concern.
I don’t think you have a very realistic understanding of the capabilities of most concealed weapons. They’re the equivalent of a Swiss army knife in the realm of bladed weapons. They’re generally small pistols in small calibers. It’s difficult to hit your target at any significant range and they often have minimal capacity. I suspect most CCers would have a hard time killing someone across the street with one.
I believe your concern is focusing on something that is fairly moot.
We should, in my opinion, concentrate concern on why we can’t get good mental health care in the country to help people instead of letting them build up until they lose it in a public display of destruction.
I’m not clear on what you’re proposing. The Navy Yard shooter certainly had options for receiving mental health care if he’d wanted to avail himself of them. He chose not to. There are lots of people in the same boat (could get help if they wanted to, but choose not to), and probably some people who do seek help, receive it, and still blow up anyways.
Not all CCW’s are actually concealed all the time. Most places you don’t even need a CCW to openly carry. Sure, purse poppers and derringers are actually pretty much the definition of self defense, you would have difficulty hitting anything that’s not close enough to threaten you, few shots, so it would be hard to use it offensively.
Many CCer’s carry 9mm, either open or concealed. Crappy as my gun skills are, I can hit a bullseye from 50’ consistently.
This is also part of my point of perception. Not necessarily that you can kill everything that you see, but that you could kill anything you see, even if it requires better skills and caliber than you actually posses.
My concern is that some people with guns will not be able to resist the urge to use them inappropriately . This would be moot point if people did not, in fact use guns inappropriately, and dangerously.
We can’t get good mental health care in this country for the same reason it is hard to get good healthcare in this country. That has little to do with guns, other than to be even more vigilant to ensure that they are not possessed by people who cannot use them safely.
In my experience, thats how you should read those words. Ask Bricker if you don’t believe me.
God made men colonel colt made them equal.
Guns are a great equalizer. That doesn’t mean we all need to carry one every day but the notion that it unbalances the palying field is arguable unless only that person is allowed to carry a gun.
:dubious:
:dubious:
Are you under the impression that we are operating under a condition of NO law or regulation on guns? I have a cocktail of regulations I would support and you have yours. What makes you right and me wrong?
Really? Hitting a bullseye (usually an inch in diameter) at 50’ consistently? Thats a lot better than most of the guys i see at the range. Heck most guys at the range fire their pistols at 20’ and can barely get 3 or 4 inch groups
I think you might be mistaken about the distance, the grouping or having as much exposure to guns as you think you have.
There are laws, sure. But there are no laws that actually give any burden of liabilty to the gun owner for being responsible with it. There are no laws that actually prevent someone from purchasing a gun that really shouldn’t. The few laws we have have trade show loopholes that pretty much make them ineffective. State level laws do practically nothing as it’s not very hard to go to another state to purchase a gun that you can’t in your own state.
My bad on that one, had a long rant about hunting that I realized was pretty irrelevant, deleted it and forgot I was still talking about handguns, even though I ended up linking the two statements into one. You’ll agree a bullseye at 50’ with a rifle isn’t too impressive.
Still, handgun wise I can certainly hit the target at 20-25’, may not be a kill shot everytime, but certainly a more effective way to kill someone than any other legal object I can carry.
I’m astonished at the number of anti-gunners who have posted in various threads words to the effect of “I couldn’t trust myself with a gun, I’d shoot someone the first time I got angry”. :eek:
I can’t help wondering if many anti-gunners are projecting their fears onto gun owners who don’t suffer from this problem.
I have long suspected that this is correct. Many antis know, I think, that if push came to shove, they could neither push nor shove back, and are envious of those that can. The envy turns to hate, and rather that raising themselves up to an admirable level of behavior, they attempt to bring every one else down to theirs. If they’re gonna cower in the corner, well dammit, everyone else should too.
Same with the misuse of weapons. They don’t trust themselves not to shoot themselves, or their friends, or other innocents. So they assume you can’t be trusted either.
I don’t think anyone has said anything even remotely like that. There have been however, many cites of people who have shot someone because they were angry, or shot themselves, or their friends, or even other innocents, so we assume that there are some gun owners that cannot be trusted. It is not hate or envy, it is rational behavior.
If you would help to support legislation so we can easier tell who cannot be trusted to safely operate a deadly weapon and prevent them from obtaining it, then you could show us how responsible gun owners act, and the number of shooting deaths will decline. I really don’t see the downside for the responsible gun owners, if there are fewer shooting deaths, there would be less political traction for those who would more greatly restrict gun ownership. The upside for everyone is fewer shooting deaths.
Except that we as a culture try to hide all mental defects. We bury it. We dismiss it. A man comes home and screams at his family. Even if the police are called, they leave because nothing physical happened.
The wife apologizes for him. Everyone just leaves the situation alone and tell him things like it’s not his fault and he’s just stressed. When he finally completely goes over the edge and gets a weapon of any kind and does damage, who’s fault is it?
it’s not his because he chose not to. It’s everyone’s. From the police who just left him there, to the neighbors who stopped calling the police, to the wife who apologized for him.
Mental health care is sorely overlooked in this country. We really need to get asylums back up and running (in healthy order, like a real hospital) so that we can commit people even if we don’t have $500,000 a year to treat them. If it’s simple anger management and he’s out in 2 weeks? Awesome. If we catch someone who might have snapped and killed someone? Better than Awesome.
Nope, you can’t weasel out of that. Abdicating responsibility means just that–unloading personal responsibility onto someone else. It’s a pejorative term that carries a moral judgement, and indicates a certain self-righteousness I’ve seen in some gun advocates, like they’re somehow better because they have guns. I’d take issue with you for claiming I’m abdicating my personal responsibility, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you’re just mindlessly regurgitating some shit you’ve heard from other gun nuts that you haven’t taken the time and effort to think about.
“Who do you believe is responsible for your personal security and defense?” is a loaded fucking question if there ever was one. There’s only one way to answer without looking like I’ve “abdicated my responsibility”. Instead falling into that trap, I’ll tell you what I believe: I believe in my own personal safety, and my safety is threatened by assholes with guns who think they’re better than me.
No. The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not infringed upon simply because the government or any state or local government chooses to ban or otherwise control certain types. Take an assault weapons ban, like the one in California. That you cannot possess an unregistered AR-15 or one with certain features does not infringe upon your right to keep and bear arms simply because you can still possess a handgun, permitted rifle, shotgun, or any other firearm as permitted by law. To extend the analogy to something else, it’s like banning Ferraris but permitting Chevrolets. Both are cars, you just can’t have a certain type. That doesn’t infringe on your right to own and operate a car.
What’s at issue is not the absolute nature of the Second Amendment, because it’s not absolute and it never was. What’s at issue is the public policy debate about what should and should not be permissible. Blanket bans? According to the Supreme Court, those are not permissible. But more limited types of bans are, subject to judicial review. What we are doing now is determining exactly what the limits should be.
Exactly. The Constitution and Amendments were never supposedly to be cast in stone, nor absolutes. The government isn’t some separate entity in opposition to the people. It’s of the people, by the people and for the people. WE, as a society decide and shape what the Constitution and the Amendments mean, and how they are to be interpreted and integrated into our society. At this time, that means the debate is over which weapons should be allowed and which shouldn’t and how access to them can and should be regulated. That’s completely in keeping with the intent of the original FFs, who set up a system that could grow, shift and change with a changing society. That was their real genius.
I always feel torn in these debates. On the one side, I despise the radical anti-gun types who use every dirty trick in the book to circumvent the will of the people. Rather than accept that the majority of Americans really do want to continue to allow ordinary citizens to keep and bear arms at some level they want to go around that…for the peoples own good, which they clearly know best. I despise that attitude and I pity the fear that drives many towards that. On the other hand, we have the crazies who think that the Constitution and Amendments are some sort of fixed, never changing granite constructs…but that it’s their narrow interpretation of what those constructs are and where they get fixed that colors their interpretation of them. Somewhere between these two extremes there IS a middle ground, where public safety can be juxtaposed with allowing people freedom of choice. Personally, I think we’ve actually reached a good balance in what we have today, but both of the freaking extremes want to rock the boat and fuck up the balance in huge changes, instead of compromising to further refine what we have and make it even better with small incremental changes and perhaps some coherence and order instead of the mishmash we currently have.
And I think “Assault Weapon” is too vague. Instead of saying “You can’t own a Corvette” you say “You can’t own sporty cars.” Well…what’s “sporty”? How will it’s definition change in 10 years? Will it gradually expand to mean you can only own a Scion xB?
People use everything inappropriately. I saw a girl that would pop three or four birth control pills from a pack during a class in college. Asked her what she was doing and she said “They are mint flavored, so I like to use them to keep my breath minty.” Should we ban all birth control because there are some people that…are just plain stupid? No. A greater majority use them appropriately.
It’s the same with guns. Most gun owners use them appropriately. A minority are irresponsible. I don’t forgive the people who cause deaths, but I would actually do something to address them instead of “guns”.
It has a lot to do with violent crimes (All, not just guns), though. Most of the mass shooters had mental health issues. And a lot of non-mass deaths are caused by people who escalate previous violent patterns.