There are what I would regard as satisfactory middle grounds on gun rights. But if it’s all or nothing, put me in the ‘nothing’ camp. I’m not in favor of it, and I think it would be a really wrongheaded place to wind up at. But what we have now is, IMHO, unquestionably worse than an outright ban on guns in civilian hands.
So if I’m given a choice between either magically assuring that either (a) today’s gun laws will remain in force indefinitely, or (b) that every gun in civilian hands will disappear tomorrow and stay gone, then (b) it is.
Here’s how a trap works (for larger game like foxes and coyotes.) An animal stumbles into a foothold and finds themselves unable to move. Less than 24 hours later as required by law, a man comes up to animal. He removes a pistol from his pocket and shoots animal in the head so that it dies. There really is no other good option. The only other ways to dispatch said animal are generally not kind and also rather dangerous. They generally involve beating them to death from a distance with a stick or throwing rocks at them. Such things are largely undesirable for many reasons.
As for people working on the lines in bear territory. Generally speaking, when you see a bear begin to charge at you, there is not a significant amount of time in which to call 911 and have a government specialist come out and deal with the problem. There are other methods that serve as deterrents, but they aren’t fool-proof. There’s a relatively famous video of a grizzly charge where it gets shot in the face with a shotgun, rolls on the ground for half a second and then charges again. In certain parks (looking at you Torngat Mountains) they recommend that you hire armed guards before venturing into polar bear territory because of how dangerous they are. It’s nice that you live in whatever city you live in and don’t have to worry about such things, but forbidding it to people that do is quite frankly homicide.
But when they say these things, we should remind them that this is probably* the safest time to be an American police officer since the 19th century.
FWIW, traffic stops are “[o]ne of the most dangerous tasks police officers do, in terms of how many of them die in the process” mostly because they probably do way more traffic stops than everything else they do. But over the past decade, firearms-related loss of life by police comes to ~50 per year. Even if half of those occurred in traffic stops, that’s out of how many millions of traffic stops per year? On any given stop, the level of risk is at the lightning-strike level.
‘Probably,’ because while outfits like nleomf.org keep good current and historical tallies of officer fatalities, AFAICT there’s no good data on how many law enforcement officers there have been in America at any given time. So it’s a numerator without a denominator. We know that there are fewer police fatalities in terms of actual numbers than there have been since the early 1960s. And if there’s been even modest growth in the number of LEOs over time (hardly has to be proportional to population), this is the safest time to be a cop since sometime before the Civil War.
(IOW, there’s no good justification, even now, for cops to keep themselves safe by shooting others. Police are expected to assume a certain degree of risk to keep the rest of us safe. Police who are keeping themselves safe by shooting those of us they’re charged to protect have reversed that equation, and need to find new careers.)
Another non-vote saying this poll is only offering two ridiculous options. It’s like asking which we would prefer: allowing everyone to drive a car - including drunk people, pre-schoolers, crazy people, blind people - or banning everyone from driving a car. Those are two really dumb extremes.
The smart policy is the one we have now. People are generally allowed to own and operate a car. But we do have regulations and we do prohibit some people from driving. That’s the model I’d like to see adopted for guns. We should treat guns the way we treat cars.
I don’t have any issue with your stand; honest. And cases differ from person to person. But if what I am looking to do is murder one of my last choices would be a firearm of any kind. You are just too likely to get caught. Knives are much better for something like that; or maybe a car. Bombs of course are always an option and firebombs have the added attraction of a more lasting visual effect. But a gun? Only to those lacking the actual will to kill and the creativity to make it happen.
And even if it wasn’t an outlier when it comes to mass shootings, mass shootings make up only a small number of gun homicides in the United States, and even if we aren’t first in violent gun death, we’re definitely near the top of the list:
So why did you bring it up in the thread? If you’re claiming that the US Military is a threat to citizens of the US because at one point they killed quite a few US Citizens, leaving out that those citizens were traitors and terrorists is a pretty major detail to omit.
So if they pull someone over for going 90 in a 45 that’s harassment? If they pull someone over because they’re swerving across lanes and look like they might be drunk, that’s harassment? Let me get this straight: you’re FOR widespread gun ownership, but you’re AGAINST traffic stops?
Were you waving your gun at them when you interacted with them? Because that would tend to make them quite hostile, yes.
Why do we need to trap foxes and coyotes? If it’s because of overpopulation concerns, and they’re attacking your game, sounds like you should call animal control (and if your answer is “well in rural areas animal control can’t handle all the calls they’d get” then it sounds like we need a bigger animal control department). If it’s for furs – you can get artificial furs, or you can grow these animals on farms. We really don’t need you going out to kill foxes and coyotes.
Even if you do have a valid reason to go trap a coyote or fox – you really don’t need a gun to put the poor thing out of its misery. You could use some sort of low-power crossbow or bolt-thrower design, that would let you kill these animals humanely without giving you a tool that can also be used to kill a classroom full of children.
I’m not saying they need to “call 911” but like you said, you can have armed guards if you’re in bear territory if that area is truly that dangerous, whether you’re exploring a national park or doing maintenance on lines.
By the way, thanks for the perfect example, because Torngat Mountains are in Canada, where gun control is a LOT stricter than in the US, and somehow Canadians aren’t being eaten by bears in droves (or ARE they? Is that why Canada’s population is so low?)
But no, taking guns from people who live in these places isn’t homicide. Homicide is homicide, and out of every 100,000 people, 4 will be murdered using a gun each year. To me, that’s unacceptable. Meanwhile, in 2017, there had been 2 fatal bear attacks. I’m much more worried about “bad guy with a gun”, or even “good guy with a gun” shooting me accidentally, then I am about “bad bear without a gun” eating me.
I agree with you 100%, but sometimes facts aren’t what we’re debating – sometimes public opinion really does matter. And right now, despite the fact that being a cop is actually pretty safe, this is one of the most common arguments I hear defending police when they do something like shoot an unarmed black man. While I agree that this was inexcusable even today, I do believe that the relationship between cops and the populace isn’t really based on facts, it’s based on the views held by both cops and the citizenry. And right now, from what I’ve seen, cops really ARE scared of how prevalent guns are in our society, even if they shouldn’t be.
So yes, cops should stop shooting people willy-nilly, because you’re absolutely right – taking risks so that the rest of us don’t have to is literally in their job description. But at the same time, the amount of guns that are floating around out there is definitely not helping.
I agree in principle, but here’s the thing. A car is a very dangerous tool that can be used to kill a lot of people, but its intended use is to transport people and goods from point A to point B. As a society, we do a lot of transferring from point A to point B, so cars are immensely useful to us, so even though they do kill lots of people, their value to society makes them worthwhile. However, in the future, if self-driving cars are able to transport people and goods from point A to point B with a fraction of the number of accidents and deaths, then it would be in our society’s best interest and moral duty to ban manually-driven cars.
Guns, meanwhile, do not have a useful purpose like cars do. The purpose of a gun is to kill. As a society, sometimes we do need to kill. For example, if Canada invades the United States with the goal of enslaving Americans to work in Canadian maple syrup factories, then the US government will need to kill the Canadian troops attempting to do this. This is when a gun is useful.
But for a common citizen, there is no valid reason to own a gun, because you have no valid reason to kill anything. You might have INvalid reasons to want a gun (it’s fun to shoot targets, it looks good on my wall, it makes me feel more manly, I want to protect my home from invaders, when the government becomes tyrannical I want to overthrow it) but not a single one of those reasons actually overcomes the public harm that your gun is causing (go shoot airsoft rifles; put a non-functional gun on the wall; buy some Viagra; your gun is many, MANY times more likely to kill you or someone you love than some hypothetical intruder; you’re not overthrowing the government with your AR15, dumbass).
So that’s why I don’t think we should treat guns the same way we treat cars.
Agreed!
Eliminating guns won’t eliminate murder, you’re right. But it will reduce it – we can argue over how much, but even if every single person who WOULD have shot someone now tries to STAB someone (which won’t happen – shooting is, psychologically, MUCH easier than stabbing or strangling someone. There are many studies that show this) knives tend to be less fatal then guns, and the victim is more likely to be able to defend themselves against a knife attack than a gun attack.
They are trapped for their fur and make up a large portion of the income of many Natives in Alaska. You cannot kill them with a crossbow because a crossbow has difficulty penetrating the skull. A crossbow is generally aimed at the heart behind the shoulder just as a traditional bow is used. A shot behind the shoulder requires the animal to bleed out for one which isn’t ideal and two, it puts a hole in the fur resulting in a lower resale value. For many of the people who rely on trapping for income, such a situation is untenable. There aren’t a lot of employment opportunities for people living in these Native Communities so just telling them to get another job or what have you is ridiculous.
You’re right that Canadian laws are stricter than in the US (A lot stricter? I wouldn’t go that far. They have smaller magazine requirements and handguns are more tightly regulated. Long guns require a background check and gun safety course.) The question though wasn’t “Should we adopt stricter gun laws a la Canada?” If it were, I would be 100% behind that proposal. The question was ‘Should all civilian guns be banned?’ I am emphatically NOT behind that proposal. It’s nice that you think that people shouldn’t be allowed to trap or should have to hire armed guards in the employ of the government (after all, private security is civilian and not allowed weapons in this scenario) in order to fix a downed transmission line in Montana, I think that that’s simply ridiculous. Guns are tools with legitimate uses. Every single country in the world except for Hong Kong (and maybe North Korea) agrees with me.
I don’t think a specially-made crossbow would have any trouble penetrating the skull of a coyote or fox at point blank range. But to be honest – I don’t think telling them to get another job is ridiculous. The truth is, it’s 2018. There are jobs that don’t exist anymore because of technology, just like other jobs were eliminated in the past. And there are jobs that will continue to be eliminated, for better or worse. Cashiers and baggers at supermarkets are a dying breed, for example. If they can’t figure out how to adapt their profession to the 21st century, then that profession won’t exist anymore.
I’d be happy if the government tried to do something about that – for example training programs freely available to anyone who wants them in order to teach our citizens 21st century skills. But that’s an entirely different issue.
I do NOT believe that in order to protect the Alaskan trapping industry we need to accept almost 16,000 gun deaths last year, excluding suicide.
I agree with you, and if the question was “what does your perfect gun control law look like?” then I would be able to answer a lot more of your questions. (Not to get too detailed here, but I believe there should be a blanket ban on all firearms, with case-by-case licenses being available. So for example your Alaskan trapper would be able to present his argument, and if no viable alternative is found, he can get a license for a single-shot low-caliber pistol that will be more than sufficient to put down a fox or coyote. If this gun is used to commit a crime, then the owner is 100% responsible, in the same way that a getaway driver can be found guilty of murder even if he didn’t go into the liquor store he was helping rob.
But the question in this thread was, what’s better? No guns, or the current situation? And the answer is perfectly clear to me. Not because the “no gun” world is so perfect, but because the current world is so messed up.
A few years ago a deer was hit by a car and dragged itself into and across my parking lot at work. The animal’s hind end was paralyzed and it appeared to be in horrible discomfort.
I called the Pennsylvania Game Commision. They said they could kill the deer and haul away the carcass, but the soonest they could do that was in three days. Great.
Next, I called the PA State Police. My business is in an area without a local police force, so that’s who I had to call. A car arrived about 45 minutes later. The officer felt bad, but regulations did not permit him to discharge his weapon for this purpose.
So, I drove home (12 minutes away), got the .357 from my nightstand, and returned. I killed the deer, technically breaking the state’s game laws.
Those two scenarios aren’t “in the same way” at all. In the liquor store robbery the getaway driver is an active accomplice. In the case of a stolen gun, the lawful owner is the victim of a crime. A better analogy would be asking what we should do to the owner of a car whose car is stolen and used as the getaway vehicle in a liquor store robbery, and the correct answer is “nothing”.
This is rural/urban divide stuff kayaker. You’re wasting your breath. Babale I’m sure lives in a suburb or urban area where there’s always a cop three minutes out and animal control half a mile away. Not a place where there are 2 people per square mile and it’s 45 minutes to the grocery store. I’m sure that he’s never contended with groundhogs digging out his foundation or deer destroying his corn crop or rabbits in his garden or weasels in his chicken coop or coyotes eating his cats. He’s never woken up at 5 am to feed the cows and had a bear on his back porch staring at him. To him, guns are evil and that’s the end of the discussion. In typical American fashion, the gun debate is either all or nothing. Instead of talking about common sense gun control that most people can get behind, we’re having a debate about North Korea vs the Wild West when both are inherently flawed.
So let me get this straight. You refuse to give the government funding to take care of issues that are best handled by the government. Then you demand access to dangerous tools that, frankly, I don’t trust you with, to do the job you refuse to pay for.
Makes sense to me!
The difference is that a gun is a tool for killing. A car is a tool for moving goods from point A to point B. There is nothing inherently wrong about using a tool to move things from point A to point B. Killing, on the other hand, is always wrong. Sometimes circumstances make it ok (if the guy you killed was trying to kill you, for example) but it still isn’t the RIGHT thing to do – just the least WRONG thing.
When you buy a gun, you are bringing the potential for a whole lot of death into our society. That’s the ONLY thing you are bringing into our society. A car can cause a whole lot of death, but that’s not what it is for. A gun is MADE to bring death to a target.
So if you own a gun, you chose to own that gun, and any death it brings about should be on you. If your gun is stolen and then used to kill, we should investigate the circumstances and if it can be shown that you were negligent in keeping your gun safe from theft, you should be held responsible.
That makes it a pain in the ass to own a gun. Hopefully it discourages people from owning one. This is a feature, not a bug.
Did you read any of my posts? Also, we’re not comparing North Korea to the Wild West. We are comparing modern America to an America with no guns. Try to be comprehensive.
By the way, I may currently live in a city, but I grew up in a small agricultural community, in a place that was crawling with very large and very angry wild boars. I’ve run into a pack of jackals while walking my dog, and I even briefly saw a wild leopard (though to be fair that was at a similar community an hour away, not where I lived). At no point did I feel like I would have been safer if my community was filled with tools of death. For what it’s worth, one guy in town had a gun, which he used to hunt boars to supplement his income.
I’m another non-voter. I don’t and won’t ever own a gun, but I’d never vote to ban all guns for private ownership. Having lived in Wyoming (#1 state in guns per capita) for as long as I did, I know trying to implement such a ban would lead to an armed revolt. It would get very ugly very fast.
There’s also no way banning private ownership of guns would NOT impact culture. Hunting is engrained in rural culture. It’s engrained in American culture, too, as any moviegoer over the age of 12 can tell you.
But we do need much stricter and more strictly enforced gun laws. THAT I’d vote for.
The only thing that’ll truly work is confiscation of the 300 million private guns in America, then passing very strict gun control so people can’t buy new ones.
Without both of those, gun control will largely not work. And I don’t see the second happening, let alone the first.
Plus a lot of guns aren’t registered, so there is no way to confiscate them.
Australia had the same issues, but at a much smaller scale. The only issue with implementing gun control is that the culture of the American people wouldn’t allow it, at the moment. But we’re coming to a tipping point, and the more the gun owners reject any sort of moderate gun reform, the worse the pushback from the rest of the public will be when we finally do hit that point. They’re afraid of a slippery slope, but instead all they’ve done is build a dam. When that dam collapses – because more and more reasons to ban guns are piling up every day, and it won’t hold forever – the gun reform that passes will be much stricter than it would have been if gun owners were willing to address the problem now.
