“Scared” might be a bit harsh, but I saw this article just an hour or two after your post:
This happened 40 miles from where I live. A virtually identical incident occurred a few years ago in CT near where my wife lived at the time. Last year (2017), an elderly man sitting on a front porch about six blocks from us was shot when he yelled at some kids who were trying to break into a car parked in front of his house around midnight. He survived with a relatively minor leg wound.
This does happen.
it’s sitting in my (locked, bolted to the wall and floor) gun safe. I’ll take it to the range every so often. Big deal.
And sales are way down since, too. I was mocking the common claim from when there was both a (A) black and a (B) Democrat in office, and AR-15 and other assault rifle sales were booming.
Agreed. He’ll adopt whatever position will gain him the most flattery. But that’s another thread, or, rather, many threads.
Just used as an example, to make a point.
Cool.
Yes.
As I stated upthread, it has nothing to do with fear. You are free to disbelieve that at your leisure. And I’m quite comfortable actually. I’d really like to live on a little more acreage so it would be legal for me to target shoot in my backyard, and I’d like a tree that grows money, but other than that I don’t have any complaints.
Yes. I thought that’s what I said, the relative value of the benefit increases with the disparity in arms, and conversely decreases as that disparity flips the other way. This evaluation is specific to a situation of course.
I need more time to respond to these 2 posts so I’ll have to write more later.
ITA. I find it very cult-like.
The writing on the wall says that mental health services will somehow, vaguely, be tasked with making the public safe from the armed and angry, led by conservatives bent on stripping funding for everything “public”. This is how you get dead mental health workers. Thanks but no thanks.
Gun control arguments are just as apt to lose sight of scale, though. From the macro level, the overwhelmingly vast majority of those 300 million guns will never be used to commit violence. Public policy targeting all of those guns will necessarily be hugely over-inclusive. Compare, for instance, a hugely over-inclusive ban on immigration from Muslim-majority countries, based on fear of violence from a very few individuals.
As for the Kent State discussion, positing a scenario that didn’t happen is not really persuasive.In arguing that the OP is relying too much on positing scenarios that aren’t going to happen.
What weapon would be sufficient to effectively counter a bad guy with an AR-15? Are you not concerned about what essentially may turn into an arms race? I’d argue that America has already entered into just that with the introduction of high capacity magazines and the re-introduction of the AR-15 platform rifle. Many people investing in multiple weapons and convinced that they need to CCaW.
The discussion of this thread is not, I think, primarily how rational or irrational the risk assessment is, but slipping into that rabbit hole just a little …
Some things happen, fairly infrequently. Rational personal decisions are based on more than anecdotes, IMHO.
Given that specific anecdote, how would that elderly man sitting on his porch with an AR-15 platform weapon have changed what happened?
How that would have turned out if he was shot at with an AR-15 platform weapon?
I don’t think anyone is claiming that the risk of various bad things is zero. Shark attacks happen. People get salmonella from eating a runny egg. People die riding bicycles. Airplanes crash. People die from bee stings never having had a reaction before. People choke to death on a bite of steak. Babies get mauled to death by a pet shepherd-type dog (recent news report). All these things do happen.
The questions at the personal assessment level are always how much risk and cost is it worth to take on to address risks that are very small but that are generally newsworthy when they occur sometimes precisely because of their rarity, and how effectively do those risks and cost decrease the risks of those bad things? And it is here that individuals in these debates vary greatly in their assessments of the facts.
Bone I appreciate your wanting to be thoughtful in your response. It seems to me that your goals would be best served by a high barrier to owning an AR-15 platform weapon. A barrier that you can meet but that the average “bad guy” or average person who might get angry or desperate during times of civil unrest (of whatever cause) would be deterred by. You want that disparity, don’t you?
I have no desire to be in Zimmerman’s shoes. I also don’t want to be in Dr. William Petit’s shoes. The shoes of the young man in Oklahoma seem about right to me.
I grew up in a kinda rough neighborhood in Atlanta, in a house that would get broken into all the time–one time when the family was fast asleep.
As an adult, I’ve lived in some rough places. Newark, Miami, Richmond. And I take risks. I walk home from work at night all by myself, even though I have a slight build and wouldn’t be able to fight out an attacker if my life depended on it.
I can’t relate to the fear expressed in the OP. Not even a little bit.
They’re reaching a different conclusion than I am, or perhaps their calculations are different than mine because the laws in some of those environs are different, or other circumstances. I’m not interested in condemning them because they decide a different course of action on this matter is better for themselves. There are too many factors that go into it for me to claim they got it “wrong”.
Given the sort of reactions I get on here from some Dopers I think that would be foolish.
Impossible to say with any certainty. I obviously think it would have improved my situation. I imagine some on here would disagree.
In that case, I’ve accessed my firearm in a few tense circumstances where I felt the likelihood of violent confrontation had increased, but I’ve not “drawn down” on someone or fired at anyone. I’m confident I didn’t violate the law in any of those circumstances, if that’s how were judging “a time of proper need”. The fact that it didn’t escalate further is probably confirmation for some on here that it wasn’t actually “a time of proper need”.
He articulated his position well, I would agree.
However, I think the very idea of possessing guns to defend against a very unlikely and novel set of circumstances, unlikely to confront the typical person, is partly what fuels gun violence in our society. By living in fear of things that occasionally do happen to someone, somewhere, but aren’t likely to happen to us generally, we live with an exaggerated fear of people and a distorted view of reality. That is not really the way we should make policy because, ironically, we’re making our society more dangerous when we follow this path.
Most of the defenses of assault weapons and other fringe views among gun rights advocates are premised on “having a fighting chance.” I admit that there’s a certain moral appeal that this position carries with it, but I’d rather make laws based on what’s plainly obvious: the volume of guns and the ease with which ordinary people can have access to them is a major factor behind what drives violence.
Could we apply this same logic to the fear of shooting sprees?
Is there anything in between? Is there anyway to just have him as an outpatient, having some talks with counselors and therapists, but otherwise leaving him as a free citizen,just with the caveat that we take away his guns until he shows signs of improvement?
Restrictions on what availability of guns wouldn’t stop shooters that already have the gun they are planning on using, correct, but it would prevent new spree shooters from getting guns. Over time, yes, responsible gun control will decrease the number of spree shooters.
How is increasing the guns in the populace going to work? Do you really think that that would have an effect on decreasing spree shooters?
It’s not an illusion of safety, it’s a rational risk assessment. Then chances of being victimized are very small, smaller than that of being the victim of an accident. The chances of being victimized by someone with a gun is still small, but it gets bigger as more guns are put into society, not smaller.
Which is why cities should be allowed to have laws restricting gun ownership and carry. How does that affect the rural areas?
If they are CPR certified and carrying a first aid kit, then I will believe that they have taken steps to react to a situation that ends with the least amount of harm to innocent lives.
I’ve also seen stories of robberies where the cashier or bystanders are killed. I’t not preparation, it’s being willing to gamble with your life and the lives of others.
This is a good example of when even trained and disciplined people reacted improperly with their guns. People running around in the wake of a natural disaster trying to use their guns to secure themselves are just going to make the problem worse, and end with more bodies on the ground.
Maybe it would, if vigilantism becomes legal. Now, with stand your ground laws being the way they are, it is likely that it would never make it to a jury. But, that doesn’t mean that you didn’t’ shoot the guy in the back because you recognized him from the other day when he picked your pocket.
Of course he shot first, he was up against an unarmed opponent. Were it not for stand your ground laws and only having his version of events to judge by, there is a very good chance that he would have paid a price for killing Martin.
That’s very sad. The article doesn’t go into detail, but I would assume that the invaders had guns.
Sounds like that area has a gun problem, if people are getting shot.
Are we thinking that it would have gone better if he started returning fire at them across the street?
Yeah, gun violence happens, and we need guns to protect us from the other people with guns.
And you could make your own calculations and do what you wanted to do if you would let me do the same. Unfortunately, the 2Aer’s fight against the states or cities making gun laws to apply to the people living in those cities or states, so, because of that, any gun laws have to be at the federal level, and therefore, have an effect on you as well as me.
Let states and cities have their own gun laws, and we can have our different calculations.
You survived the situation. Could have been worse.
I’ve been in a number of confrontations of various sorts of people for any number of reasons, and I’ve never had a gun with which to draw. None of those situations ever escalated to lethality.
Not really, as it is not myself that is concerned about being shot in a shooting spree. I mean, it’s possible that that happens, but it is unlikely. It is not a person fear that I have of shooting sprees, but a concern and empathy for others.
Now, as most gun violence is involved with people who in some way should be aware that gun violence is coming, gangs and the like, I am unlikely to be involved in any of those stats. I am relatively stable and enjoy my life, so I am unlikely to be included in suicide stats. There are no guns in my home to go off accidently, so it is unlikely that I will be contributing to that either. I don’t keep much money on hand, and I don’t think that many would look at my shop as being a really high cash business, so I am unlikely to be robbed, and in the case that I was, I would be happy to hand over the hundred or so dollars in cash that I keep on hand, rather than risk a shootout that risks my life, the lives of my employees, and in the best possible case scenario, puts me in a position where I killed someone over a couple hundred dollars, I don’t know that that wouldn’t increase my chances of joining that second stat up there.
So, the most likely way for me to be impacted by gun violence is through someone having an accident while CCWing, or through a spree shooter. And, while those chances are small for myself, that is also the most likely way for most of my friends, family, and extended family to wind up dead. Even there, the chances are not all that great that it is someone that I know that is harmed by gun violence.
Basically, spree shooters are the most likely way for someone to end up dead by violence who was just entirely minding their own business in their school or workplace or concert, most of the other ways to get dead by gun violence requires that you at least have gone somewhere or done something that you should be aware increases your risks.
What are you afraid of? If your anecdote is a good one that supports your views, using it in support of a debate would be the opposite of foolish. If it isn’t, then maybe it was foolish of you to bring it up.
But you were prepared to take a life, and were on the verge of doing so. Would it have been worth it? Was there a better way to handle the situation, and protect your own safety? Why didn’t you avail yourself of it?
Are you in support of arming teachers?
From all reports, neither the perpetrators nor the homeowners used firearms. This is also true of the home invasion in CT. Both incidents involved nearly-fatal beatings after an individual was forced to use an ATM to withdraw cash. In both cases, the house was then set on fire.
But I agree with another poster that I strayed from the primary topic of the discussion.
FWIW I think so. Shooting sprees are very much like terror attacks. Tragic events and the loss of life in each is both senseless and newsworthy. As individuals our (and our children’s) risks of being killed in one is trivially small but the fear they result in is outsized. I get that no matter how small the actual risk is (and whether or not his actual risk of harm from a gun is decreased or increased by his ownership) Bone feels safer with an AR-15 platform weapon in his possession and that sense is worth something. I also get that a large fraction of students are now feeling unsafe as are their parents for their sakes. Decreasing that anxiety is also worth something.
Is there a way to effectively address both of those sets of anxiety? Telling them the concerns are not rational will not work in either case.
Rural areas are definitely not 100% safe. Specific to intentional injury by firearms? Rural and urban run neck to neck. The difference is that the deaths in cities are homicide and in rural areas as often suicide. Overall more gun deaths are suicides than homicides. (Yes, just like one can murder without a gun one can kill oneself by other means as well. In both it just makes it easier and less likely to fail.) Also accidental deaths of children whose parents either thought would not play with the gun because they’ve been taught or who falsely believed their kids did not know where the gun was hidden (but not locked with bullets stored elsewhere). And overall safety? Cities are safer.
Rural areas are dangerous. The big risks are not homicide from home invasion. That’s way way down the list. And specific to gun related, the risk of homicide is overshadowed by suicide and then kids’ accidental deaths.
I’m all for gun-lovers working with us gun control types to try to find some sort of ‘sweet spot’ that does the most good while interfering the least with gun owners’ desires.
But if gun lovers want no part of that, then sure, the conversation about how to regulate guns to increase public safety is going to be strictly among those of us who are more likely to “lose sight of scale.”
I predict that the moment will finally come when the pro-gun folks are willing to work with us. That time will come after we finally have the popular support and political power to restrict guns any way we damn well please.
I don’t think that moment will come this year or next. But though I’m 64, I fully expect to live to see it happen. The status quo won’t change much, until suddenly it does.