If you are cognizant of this, then why not abandon your anti-gun stance and take a waiting-for-further-information stance?
Guns are an important part of all our histories—hell, there is even a national flag with an AK-47 on it, and I’m sure you’re familiar w/ Mao’s remark that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. It seems more natural that being in tune with this thread of our history would be part and parcel of one’s life.
Guns don’t make atrocities happen: large-scale horror has been with us since people became organized enough to do anything on a large scale. Guns put into the hands of even some of the weakest members of society the power to meaningfully defend themselves in a way that knives, swords, and clubs could never accomplish. Recall that the saying is not “the pen is mightier than the sword,” the saying is “under the rule of just men, the pen is mightier than the sword.”
In today’s world guns can serve that very same role of putting the ability to defend one’s self in a manner that no other tool is capable of doing. It is simply preposterous to suggest that even a fit, large man would stand a good chance defending himself against a hardened, professional criminal. As for the rest of us, we are truly out of luck.
A gun is the only thing that improves a woman’s chance of surviving a rape encounter. A gun, merely displayed, will prevent many if not most violent encounters. And the more people like you & me carry guns concealed, the more benefit that goes to those who don’t—because a would-be attacker doesn’t know who is armed.
You may not personally wish to carry a gun, but that doesn’t change the fact that it puts real self-defense capabilities into the hands of people who would helpless no matter how much time they spend in the gym.
The simple fact of life is that there are bad people out there, and there will always be bad people out there. To take away from the good people the ability to effectively defend themsleves is, IMO, just plain wrong.
As noted above, shooting is good fun as well. (Like everything, it depends on who you go with, etc.)
Okay, I overlooked your infantile ‘small penis’ jab; but are you saying that there are people – say, some of those living in compounds in Idaho or Minnesota, or perhaps who formerly inhabited Waco, TX – who don’t believe that there are people in the government who want to confiscate their guns? :dubious:
Some people enjoy shooting, and they object to infringement upon their peaceable hobby. Get over it.
But you should have something against ad hominems. You’re smarter than that. Writing under a nom de plume (sp?) in order to avoid communication-blocking flaming is hardly an ethical breach, and letting one’s minor child post something under the same name because she asks to is not scientific fraud.
Lott raised the bar for empirical research and More Guns, Less Crime is a lovely application of Occam’s Razor. As far as I am aware, the only meaningful attacks on his research have centered on obscure statistical disagreements or outright misunderstanding of his arguments. Of the latter group, John Allen Paulos’s correlation-is-not-causation piece is textbook example.
I see Weirddave has already covered the basics of the response to your response to my response, Rebekkah, but allow me to elaborate.
First of all, yes, I did read your posts subsequent to the OP, which is the only reason I responded to the thread at all. The question as posed in the OP was fair enough. You were curious as to why people liked guns. The problem came when you got your answers – “because they’re fun”, “because I can”, “because I think they’re cool” – and you rejected those answers as being juvenile and beneath your standards for acceptability. Then you got another answer – “for self defense” – and dismissed that as impractical and equally unworthy of consideration.
My response to you was, in essence, asking why you felt entitled to have standards of practicality or “maturity” for reponses to what is, by your own admission, an entirely subjective opinion question. You can ask, sure, though as I mentioned in my previous post, the etiquette of doing so is questionable. But when it comes to the “quality” of the answers you receive, I reiterate the driving point of my last post: why do you care? What possible difference could it make to you whether somebody owns a gun because they live in a crime-infested area, or if they just like to shoot at cans in the backyard? What stake do you have in the answers to this question that you would dismiss certain responses as unacceptable to you?
Q: “I don’t understand how anyone liked Bruce Almighty. You liked it…why?” The person on the receiving end of this question could very well interpret it as rude – How could you possibly like that stupid piece of shit? – but let’s assume they took your query to be well-intentioned curiosity.
A: “I like Jim Carrey, and Jennifer Aniston’s hot.” Okay, reason provided. You’re perfectly entitled to think it’s not a very good reason. But it is a reason, so at this point, you either accept that your question has been answered or offer some counterpoint for discussion (Okay, but the writing sucked and the tone was smarmy and condescending.) It doesn’t make sense to just say “Well that’s not a good enough reason. So, why do you like the movie?” That’s utterly pointless; the question’s been answered, and, given that you had no particular reason beyond idle curiousity to care in the first place, debating the person’s subjective judgement is nonsensical.
One more thing: take it easy. This ain’t a personal attack. I don’t have anything against you for wanting to know why people like guns. It’s just a pet peeve of mine when people declare other people’s subjective opinions to be objectively wrong. That’s what it looked like you were (and to some extent are, though you’ve since refined your stance somewhat) doing.
Ah, so you know what makes each and every person happy. And you know for a fact that shooting doesn’t make anyone happy. You have some sort of list of hobbies that people are allowed to enjoy, and ones that they aren’t allowed to enjoy? I suppose that next you’ll be telling me that helicopters are too noisy, and that I should be prohibited from flying them? Or maybe you think that my motorcycle is unacceptable, so motorcycles should be banned? What’s that? You think that people can’t possibly enjoy Monty Python’s Flying Circus, so the tapes and DVDs should be outlawed?
Tell me, O Great Oracle, how do you come by these incredible powers of knowing what people enjoy? Tell me, O Great Legislator, whereby you obtained your authority so that I might not offend thee!
The big difference I have found between Canada and the US of A was explained to me by a Canadian couple I met and traveled around with my family on a vacation. ( fun story but. )
We had this same discussion about guns, politics and stuff and they said it more or less like this …
In the US of A, the people came first and the law followed for all practical purposes.
In Canada, the law came first and the people followed for all practical purposes.
Over simplification, probably, but that is an inherent difference in social outlook between the too countries and no where is it more definite than in the discussion of ‘guns’.
I am lucky that I was not taught to fear, hate or follow all social norms just because. I also was taught to not ask the question if I did not want to know the answer.
I think Rebec has gotten the answer. Now she needs to go see for herself.
I also do not ‘get’ golf. I went and learned. I still think it is silly. So what.
Then you’ve accepted an argument without thinking about. Bad form. You’re also investigating further. Good form.
You won’t get rhetoric here, just arguments that match the scope of your OP. Which means, “I feel like it”.
I personally want to expand my father’s collection to include more guns of historical and engineering significance. And I’ll shoot them, too. Sometimes. I don’t want to damage them. We do have a very old Civil War rifle and and a real honest-to-goodness Chinese army rifle from 50 years ago.
Then you’ve accepted an argument without thinking about. Bad form. You’re also investigating further. Good form.
You won’t get rhetoric here, just arguments that match the scope of your OP. Which means, “I feel like it”.
I personally want to expand my father’s collection to include more guns of historical and engineering significance. And I’ll shoot them, too. Sometimes. I don’t want to damage them. We do have a very old Civil War rifle and and a real honest-to-goodness Chinese army rifle from 50 years ago.
The Colonies were doing badly, money wise, but the revbolution wasn’t about that. England was willing to give stuff, but it wasn’t what they wanted. They didn’t want subsidies, they wanted to live by their own manufactures.
Yes, it could have been resolved without fighting. In theory, anything can be. But the Colonists were not willing to sacrifice their dreams and the English were not willing to compromise. Aside from which, the English continued to deny the Colonists legal representation of their own, which was not appreciated. And notice that the new Americans willingly allowed harsher tariffs and penalties in some cases, so long as they were able to complain and do something about it.
I just moved to Calgary, I grew up in BC and Germany.
I guess I’m trying here…
I’ave actually been told quite the opposite. I was always told that, while you should struggle never to be taken to a secondary location, fighting can get you killed.
Roland, I can’t believe you are actually offering this argument. Are you seriously suggesting that “because I can” and “because it’s fun” illuminates my knowledge level in any way? I could talk to a four year old if I wanted those answers.
I rather think these answers were given because the people who use guns were expecting an attack on the reasons they proffered, and got their backs up.
Actually, I said I didn’t understand the self defense reason, as it seem impractical to me, and I outlined some reasons why. I didn’t say “I think using guns for self defense is stupid, nyahhhh”.
more…
Pardon me for expecting that I receive reasoned and articulate responses at SDMB. I’ll head back to Asshats at Ernies now. I have no “stake” in any answer given, beyond serious curiousity and a desire to further my understanding of something I do not understand. I’ve not a fundamentalist… I can change my mind.
As I said, I’m NOT forcing anyone to justify shit all to me. Post if you wanna.
Q. I haven’t seen Bruce Almighty and the prevailing opinion in my circle of friends is that it sucked, so I’m leaning towards that opinion too. Can someone here tell me why it doesn’t?
See, I can play irrelevant extrapolation too!
I’m sorry, but I long ago claimed the title of Captain Condescendor for myself.
Since blowero apparently does not know of such a thing as a ‘search engine’, and since, by his request for a citation that there really are people out there who fear the government wants to take their guns, and since I really am such a nice guy, I’ve decided to help him out.
The guy who put up this website seems to think that the government wants to take away people’s guns.
The one who put up this website also thinks that there are people looking for a total ban.
In a nutshell: I said that there are some people who believe that the government wants to take away people’s guns. blowero indicated he didn’t believe it. Now, I never said that the government wants to confiscate firearms. I said that some people believe it is so. And there are a few cites to prove it.
So fuck you, blowero. Now it’s your turn to prove that there is no one who believes that the government wants to take away guns. Honestly, are you so fucking lazy you couldn’t do a search yourself? Or are you just so anxious to pick a fight that you have to take an easily provable statement and ask for a cite?
And as for pursuing happiness: Perhaps you would like to enlightenus as to what you define as the pursuit of happiness? Probably not, if your previous posts are an indication.
Yeah, it is. I can understand performing and defending the research under an assumed name to avoid hassle in one’s private life, but this is not the case. Lott pretended to be a separate person in order to, among other things, review his own book and attack his critics. He also lied in doing it:
How can this be construed as intellectual honesty?
I know what an ad hominem attack is, and I know what poisoning the well is too. Lott has a vested interest in being right as a member of the AEI, and his intellectual honesty is lacking. Gun ownership may well reduce crime, but I wouldn’t turn to his work to find out.
Sez you. I’ll stick with the statistician who says Lott’s conclusions don’t necessarily follow from Lott’s data.
Again, sez you. I don’t necessarily find the statistical arguments obscure (Lott’s assertion that only 2% of criminal encounters result in guns being fired defensively appears to be just plain wrong, for instance, unless you count bullets that are fired but miss their target, and who would consider a gun fired poorly to not have been fired?), and I’m not about to take your word for it that Dr. Paulos just doesn’t get it.
This was another thing my husband and I discussed thoroughly before I had the gun in the house. We went through several scenarios and what I would do in each one. One scenario might be that my husband is out of town, I am at home alone at night. My corgi starts barking, it’s the bark that means there is a person on our property, not the bark she uses when she sees a raccoon or deer in the yard, or the bark that says my husband has come home.
When I hear that, I would go to one of the several places we have guns stored, put the clip in, and hide in this spot where I would have a clear view of whoever came in the room, but they would not be able to see me. I have several of these spots picked out in each area of my house. If I saw it was a burglar, he goes straight for my jewelry box, or starts putting silver in a bag or something, I would just stay quiet and wait until he was gone and call the police. If he was searching the house looking in closets, behind doors, obviously looking for me, I would have the gun up and ready, when he got to close to finding me, I would shoot him before he had a chance to grab me. I would not shoot someone unless I could see them and determine they were a threat to me.
My mother had a neighbor who was raped and killed in her own home. The woman was 85 years old. The guy was someone just released from prison for rape and took an under the table job with the lawn service she employed. The guy must have figured that she would be an easy target and came back that evening.
We have had a lot of work done in and around my house over the years. I would like to think that the contractor we hire would do a background search on every person they employ, but I doubt that is the case. My fear is one of the workers might overhear that my husband is out of town, or going out for the evening without me and think I would be an easy target at home alone. I am 99.99% sure this won’t happen, but still, having the gun in my home makes me feel safer.
My husband’s cousin was killed by a burglar. In the middle of the night, he heard a noise in his garage went downstairs to see what it was, and the burglar shot him. If my husband heard a noise at night in our garage, he would get the shotgun, and hide in a concealed spot, and wait. If he the burglar started to come in the house, he would fire a warning shot, if the guy kept coming, he would then aim for him. Again, I don’t expect this to happen, but having the guns makes me feel more protected.
"The more of these I read, the more curious I get. The only class I made a point of attending in gym was archery, and I loved it... the targeting and the thrill of hitting the bullseye. Maybe I'd enjoy target shooting.... "
I would encourage you to give this a try. At first I was like you, very intimidated by guns. I didn’t even want to touch one. But after taking the class all the fear was gone, replaced with a healthy respect for them. I have found it to be quite empowering to learn to master a new skill. I am relatively small, 125 lbs, ( I was going to write 120 lbs, but then I remembered the witch hunt thread and thought I better own up to all 125 lbs of me) and when I first shot certain guns the recoil almost knocked me over, or about yanked my arm out of it’s socket. But with practice I learned how to prevent that and can now shoot just about any of them.
And as another poster mentioned, gun people are very friendly and helpful. I was afraid at first they would feel shooting was a guy’s sport, and not want a woman at the range. But just the opposite is true. They realize the fact that my learning to handle a gun safely will ensure I am not one of the careless people who have an accident. They even let me shoot their guns, if I express and interest in something I have not yet tried.
I hope this gives you some insight as to what some gun owners are thinking.
Well, I received a pump-action shotgun for my birthday last week. I am not at all your typical gun owner; I don’t hunt, I don’t follow any shooting sports, I only have one. Years ago I’d have been horrified at the gift of a gun, but I asked for this one.
A few weeks ago, I was alone in the house late at night and there was a horrible crash from downstairs. I was sure somebody had broken into the house. Like a dummy, I picked up the phone and went to investigate it (I should have just barricaded myself into my room). Turned out to be a falling tree-branch in the storm that broke a window. Scared me to death. We keep the dog shut up in the laundry room so he dosen’t pee on the new floor, see.
I wanted a shotgun because I don’t want to kill anybody, but if it’s them or me, I want to make sure I come out okay. The sound of the pump working is very loud in a quiet house. In our house now, I’m upstairs and they’d be downstairs. If I hear a noise again, I’ll shut myself in my room and call 911. If I hear anybody approaching the stairs, I’ll warn them and rack the gun. If they come after me aware that I’m armed and ready to shoot, then obviously I’m in real danger and will take action accordingly.
I hope to hell I never have to use it, although I intend to practice enough that it becomes second nature in the dark. I don’t have kids and there aren’t kids in the house often. If there were, I’d have to reevaluate the gun thing. As it is, I feel I’m a responsible owner and it makes me sleep a little better when I’m alone at night.
I think the most interesting form of self-deception of responsible gun owners justifying owning a gun is not just that they innocently believe that they will be guaranteed to be responsible at any time in their life. It is the idea that everyone will be responsible.
Also, another fine example is the one you gave yourself - the burglar shooting your husband’s cousin may very well have done so simply because he assumed that there was a good possibility your husband’s cousin had a gun, and the scenario was going to be shoot or be shot. Such a scenario pretty much never happens here in the Netherlands - burglars just run whenever they are detected. The 84 year old lady is another fine example. Can you really trust her with a gun at that age? Who’s to say she becomes demented without you noticing, and shoots you one day.
Basically, having guns around is adding more efficient means to the ‘means, motive and opportunity’ triumvirate. Sure, the motive is one of the prime reasons for crime to happen, but guns provide a means that requires a lower threshold for life-threatening violence to occur. It’s like this guy who got into some trouble standing in a cue for a disco the other night. He gets into a bit of a fight, gets scared and pulls a gun and shoots three times. One person has a bullet ricochet off his belt, one has one scrape his face, and the other scrape his neck. No serious injuries, but by sheer luck. It could have been three dead too, including, in that area, a lot of innocent bystanders.
I’m generally weary of statistics, but in this case, the statistics don’t lie. More guns mean more gun-related deaths. Look at all the western nations, look at how many guns there are, and how many gun-related deaths there are, and you’ll see the correlation is strikingly clear. Sure, some countries are more effective at controlling and monitoring gun safety than others, but always more people die where there are more guns. It is, really, that simple. The question is, are the benefits of gun possession worth those extra deaths? I don’t believe so. Certainly, there are areas in the US where you can live partly by hunting. Here you could do with some serious licence management, akin to driving licences with theoretical and practical exams, registration, periodical checkups and so on.
But in most other parts of the country, especially urban areas, guns really have no place in society other than in the hands of police fighting criminals. Even if only the criminals had guns, less people would die. Sure, you might be held up, but there is less fear driving a criminal to shooting you. Mostly, criminals would stick to shooting each other. And if everyone had guns, poor people would still need money, they’d just be less hesitant to shoot first, and they would still go for the old lady who if anything would be trembling too much to unlock the guncase and put that clip in. In short, I have yet to see one pro-gun argument stand to scientific fact, except that it sometimes works as a placebo - you feel safer. But the scientific facts also show that you almost always are less safe. And we’re not talking about small numbers here either. Almost as many people in the U.S. die from guns as from traffic accidents. Both tens of thousands each year. Both figures are high for any first world country.
That said, I can certainly see the fun in shooting. I agree, interaction with the environment like that is fun. I have so far been able to convince pretty much any girl of this simply by letting them play Point Blank with a GunCon on the Playstation. I like Gun games myself, occasionally a bout of Time Crisis is awesome.
We also allow gun-related sports here, but the gun stays locked up at the shooting range. Only after a year, you are allowed to own your own gun, but it still stays there. It makes a lot of sense - even then though, one of the gun related accidents we had (they all make the national news, as we have so few of them) was the boss of a shooting gallery. He was a teacher there, an ex-commando, who had an on-going fued with his partner, who was also the father of his ex-girlfriend. One day he just lost it, took two guns from the range and executed (I’m not exaggerating here) the father, the mother and the ex-girlfriend. You can train all you want, and if you’re brain is ok, you’ll get safer with guns as a result - but once your brain fails, your training can easily make you more dangerous.
There, I’ve said my piece. I’m sure I won’t change anyone’s mind, but there are so many lives being lost to guns each year, I can’t stand it. Why does it always have to take someone’s next of kin to get shot before people realise the truth of these words? (and not always even then, as this thread too demonstrates).
Well Rebekkah, many of us here come from the other side of the fence.
Why wouldn’t you want a gun, or at the very least know how to operate one? I think, just from a practical standpoint, it’s a good idea to know about guns.
And there stands one of the reasons that many people that own guns get their ire up. Many of the people that don’t like guns, don’t seem to know anything about them. It’s no ones fault really. There are plenty of things people don’t understand, don’t get ‘into’. But, the anit-gun folks get pretty vocal sometimes about a ban about something they don’t know anything about. It’s almost completely emotional. Almost as if they learn about guns, then they are one of ‘those people’
And yes, there are plenty of people that would like to see guns banned.
Now, I’m not suggesting that anyone in this thread is pro ban. And you genuinely seem to want to know why people own guns. The OP did not seem to be a general question, but more of a request for individual responses.
You’ve got them. Here’s mine-
I’ve been shooting since I was about 10-11 years old. I enjoy shooting. I also agree with the posters that enjoy the sometimes simple, sometimes complex but always elegant engineering that goes into a gun. Ballistics, in itself is a very interesting science.
A gun also provide the benefit of protection. Many of the anti-gun folks seem to think that a gun owner is just waiting for a fight. That’s just not the case. If it where, the 100,000,000 or so guns in the US would be causing quite a ruckus. No?
Sure, guns can be dangerous. Without proper supervision, common sense and education they are dangerous. That’s why there is an almost ritualistic caution that goes into handling a gun. Gun owners and ranges are MORE than happy to teach people about these cautions and rules.
