The Gun Topic - Move all gun laws/rights discussions here!

[Edmond Dantes]

Split so this wouldn't clutter up the "Little Things That Annoy You" topic.

Start cookin' popcorn, guys....

@ Edmond:

What's all this business about the anonymous post? Did you delete it or something?

Here. See the poster with the gibberish name? That's BareknuckleRoo. His original comment (before Wrath edited it) was "Why am I not surprised that a possibly autistic, manchild brony like you would post stupid shit?"

@BareknuckleRoo

First of all, thanks for advertising my review of that Pony episode. It needs more attention.

But I want to begin by jumping to this point:

The real goal is to try and change the culture's mentality to the point where guns are no longer so beloved so people stop wanting them, thus making them less available and readily accessible in general both to actual criminals, and simply irresponsible or mentally unstable people, like in countries where guns are so rare that shootings are a shocking, unusual occurrence, instead of simply being just another school shooting.

See, this highlights everything that's wrong with your (and maybe Skykid's) position.

Guess what? Those school shootings are a rare and shocking event in America too. Violence never gets less horrible, school shootings never lose their power to terrify and enrage a country. We do not, in fact, tune in to the news every day and see school shootings as a routine happening.

So far all I've seen from you is all these nonsensical appeals to emotion about how it'll be like Mad Max if we don't ban guns, turn society against them, whatever. Here, I got another one for you. this woman witnessed her family and several other people being gunned down in front of her. Funny thing: the experience turned her into a gun supporter.

But of course, in the book of BareknuckleRoo, she supports guns so she must be a violent nutcase.

Also, I annoy myself. I don't know why I'm dumb enough to get irritated enough by stupid responses to keep wasting my time addressing this ignorant nonsense.

Your obsession with me would be creepy if it weren't so hilarious.

[Ed Oscuro]

A little note for anybody who wants to wade into this that might be helpful:
Outrage against bad things is fine, and even good, but outrage cannot substitute for having a good policy based on reason and arguments.

Looking at that paper from Harvard right now.

I will point out that for many people, the moral aspect of the idea (of limiting personal ability towards self-defense below the historical level, not of bans or reasonable controls in general) also shifts the validity of a "saves lives" argument. If the only thing that mattered was saving lives overall, then clearly many things could be suggested - some ridiculous - and for this argument in particular, saying "it saves a few lives" isn't good enough if it comes at the expense of people dying due to an inability to defend themselves in routine circumstances. The benefit would have to be overwhelming, not just "+1 improvement." I think many gun control advocates recognize this, and in fact everybody who believes in armed police does as well.

Why does the morality matter? At least in the American Constitutional Law tradition, at the behest of advocates like Jefferson and others there is a focus on "natural rights." It seems incompatible with the idea that persons should be prejudged incompetent in a way that assumes a lack of basic character, or that people should forfeit the right to follow one's natural inclination towards self-defense.

Many gun ownership advocates have done a poor job highlighting (and it's safe to say some barely recognize, unfortunately) that in this context the main use of a firearm is for defense - rather like an army, except within the smaller (and actually restricted in a number of ways) scope I've written about elsewhere.

[Skykid]

Already had this thread:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... t=#p859839

Please see for sane arguments.

[Edmond Dantes]

Already had this thread:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... t=#p859839

Please see for sane arguments.

Saw that thread, and your "sane arguments" are exactly the same bullshit I called out two posts up.

I have honestly yet to see a compelling argument for banning guns.

[AntiFritz]

Already had this thread:

http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.ph ... t=#p859839

Please see for sane arguments.

Saw that thread, and your "sane arguments" are exactly the same bullshit I called out two posts up.

I have honestly yet to see a compelling argument for banning guns.

I'm yet to see a compelling argument for why we should allow them.

[Skykid]

Saw that thread, and your "sane arguments" are exactly the same bullshit I called out two posts up.

Keep calling me out.

I'm comfortable my existing arguments are accomplished enough and don't warrant repeating. I certainly don't have time to keep retreading old ground for the edification of fools.

[Casey120]

I can only remember one US style shooting here in the Netherlands a couple of years ago when a guy killed six people before he killed himself in Alphen .
He was a member of a shooting range club and after extensive training earned a gun permit,he had no criminal record .
After the shooting investigation they found he had a history of mental issues that his doctor and psych knew about but because of the law of privacy was not taken in account which was a mistake .

The laws for getting a shooting permit and owning a gun are much stricter now, any mental history and you're out, some permit holders lost their licence instantly and shooting clubs and members are watched better .


Could some trigger happy gun owners have helped here, I tend to think it would be even worse because it's no COD, there are no green and red triangles above the good and bad guys , in mass panic everyone would probably be shooting everyone in a minute .

Also mass killers are insane, a criminal doesn't start a killing spree for no reason.

[ZacharyB]

It's such a nicer thought to imagine people, in the grasp of civilization and nobility, rejecting killing weapons rather than accepting them, especially in the face of harm and threats. Imagining it the other way around feels like a wasteland of regressing hope for the empathy that makes us just a bare shred better than other animals.

In that case, I would pose it as an issue of morale, not morals.

[Weak Boson]

I don't really understand why some folks in the USA like guns so much. I wouldn't find making them readily available in my country at all reassuring. But I am aware that my personal experience only goes so far, so I am sincerely curious to hear the other perspective. It's just that it's difficult for me to see why they or need for them is in any way a good thing.

[Sly Cherry Chunks]

@BareknuckleRoo

First of all, thanks for advertising my review of that Pony episode. It needs more attention.

You should totally edit a caption into that review; "THIS IS WHAT GUN SUPPORTERS ACTUALLY BELIEVE".

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Funny thing: the experience turned her into a gun supporter

That's a reactionary opinion, not one based on actual research or statistics into whether or not widespread gun ownership would reduce crime. She's had a traumatic event and probably isn't in the position to see that the overall availability of guns only helps make them more available. And again, it's not about just premediated crime, it's about reducing gun deaths caused by accidents, stupid people using them in arguments, etc. Who knows if that violent event would have happened if USA had a different mentality towards guns. Like your love of ZOMG A HARVARD STUDY, one event does not necessarily mean the solution is for everyone to be armed, but you're unable to look at issues from anything other than the most emotionally and intellectually stunted view.

These points have all been made and ignored before. Clearly it's pointless to address them again and again.

[Casey120]

What other Country's also lack compared to the US is a multi-billion dollar dollar weapon industry pushing their agenda on every level and by any means telling you that you need more and better weapons to prevent or address danger and to defend your given right to keep buying their shit and ...........at least them alive .

[TransatlanticFoe]

...

[Ed Oscuro]

Well, I guess I should continue to enjoy my well-deserved invisibility in matters like this.

You know, the world can be horrifying sometime. That's life. Nobody says that a firearm will protect you all the time - but it is a tool that can be used for good or ill, like any others. I find the idea that we should all be able to tell others exactly what they need to be presumptuous and ignorant.

I think some of you should know by now that I consider myself a Democrat and I sign on to the project of liberal internationalism - cooperation between peoples, rather than starting out with the assumption that other nations' interests are invariably at odds with our own, that altruism is dead, and that there's only room at the top for one. At the same time, there's limits to how far cooperation can go; at some point you're going to find out that coercion is necessary. I leave it to you to decide for yourself what your plan is, but you should offer the same for others.

at the same time there's real value to be had in at least sitting down and thinking about what your plan is in case bad things happen. Avoiding bad places should work, although that makes an assumption not everybody signs on for - that you assume you'll never find yourself needing that particular tool. That's a gamble, statistically a very good one, but still a gamble that shouldn't be forced on everyone else. What about the people who can't avoid bad places? What about the people who help keep society going? Why is there an exception only for police (and in some countries, that rule is broken whenever an issue gains enough media attention, as seeing Metropolitan Police walking through the nighttime shadows surrounding the US Embassy in 2003 reminded me)? I don't think a person's right to think and act for themselves is decided by the primetime news lineup or by letter-writing campaigns.

BareKnuckeRoo's complaint about living constantly in suspicion sticks in my head. That is, naturally, a complaint that goes both ways. Unless there is some success in the movement to eradicate viciousness from human beings (which, as a practical goal, I think is both impossible and unwise, given that being vicious as required has kept almost all modern animal species alive), we're going to have to live with the possibility that other people are going to make poor decisions. No doubt the NRA and other organizations have a strategy that's not working to inform the public and their own about the duties that go along with gun ownership. At the same time I can't help but feel we've seen this film before - police in New York City during the Giuliani era were thought of as trigger-happy and out of control in searching citizens. Well, under Bloomberg, the searches have gotten more frequent, but just changing the outreach has changed that relationship between police and the public pretty fundamentally. With private gun owners, there's few people pointing out the care that many responsible gun owners take, if anything they're quicker to point out that many people conceal their weapons to save the feelings of others, despite still being in fact armed in public.

I find the idea of arming myself to be absolutely horrifying. The thought of needing to do so for my own safety, even more so.

I am having hilarious visions of you pantomiming make-nice scenes against raging bears and rampaging Huns throughout the ages. Ever since the earliest abiogenetic origins of life, living things have had to protect themselves.

Frankly, it's horrifying that we have nuclear weapons, but that genie's out of the bottle, I'm afraid. That we rightly demand compliance with a system that controls certain levels of response does not invalidate the need to have more local, immediate responses for private individuals. A firearm is somewhere in the same continuum of responses with a vicious tongue-lashing, fisticuffs, and calling in orbital strikes. Naturally, people need to know when to use what. According to opponents of self-defense firearms, however, there should be a handgun- or rifle-sized hole in that chain of potential responses, just because self-defense is icky, as best as I can figure it out. Well, I'd like to get rid of nuclear weapons, but try as I might I really don't see how it's a strategy for success.

[BulletMagnet]

I have honestly yet to see a compelling argument for banning guns.

I'm just jumping in halfway here, but has the primary argument here really been for an all-out banning of guns, as opposed to more limited measures to make them harder for shady/dangerous types to obtain (i.e. closing the gun show loophole, whose existence renders the "just enforce the laws we already have" argument totally null and void), or otherwise harder to use for criminal/psychopathic purposes (limiting how many guns can be bought at once, making manufacturers build more mod-resistant models, deep-sixing excessive ammo expansions, etc.)?

I'm definitely no gun nut, but I'm not in favor of an outright ban; I definitely do think that some manner of so-called "common sense" changes are needed, and I seem to recall reading that a majority of gun owners feel the same, but it seems to be the "every convicted criminal has the Second Amendment right to carry a loaded bazooka over each shoulder into any day care center he pleases" fringe that determines where the debate goes (or, more accurately, doesn't go).

I don't know, is everyone else on "this end" of the spectrum that much more radical than I am , or merely being characterized as such?

[evil_ash_xero]

Fuck guns.

[Ed Oscuro]

I'm just jumping in halfway here, but has the primary argument here really been for an all-out banning of guns, as opposed to more limited measures to make them harder for shady/dangerous types to obtain (i.e. closing the gun show loophole, whose existence renders the "just enforce the laws we already have" argument totally null and void), or otherwise harder to use for criminal/psychopathic purposes (limiting how many guns can be bought at once, making manufacturers build more mod-resistant models, deep-sixing excessive ammo expansions, etc.)?

Hard to know what anybody's saying when nobody will actually engage with what others are saying.

I am pretty sure that Edmond agrees that background checks are a fine idea (once bitten, twice shy).

Edmond earlier said that "gun free zones" are a silly idea, and as a matter of setting public policy they can impugn on the rights of individuals. However, I do think that local communities, not to mention private owners of businesses, have the right to restrict access to firearms as a matter of preference. That private owners can restrict access to individuals with weapons (with some exceptions; you can't say no to the police if they have a warrant) is not controversial, but I am sure that the idea of democratic choice within a governmental unit is, because of the inherent limitations on freedom and the Second Amendment. Personally, I think that a democratic decision to restrict access to certain public areas by private citizens carrying firearms should be okay, although there are still the concerns listed before, including a concern about ease of exit and coercion, and voice (i.e. the stuff A.O. Hirschman talks about).

Fuck guns.

The battle with the Deadites is won but there's no respect for the ol' Boomstick. Do Space Marines only carry a chainsaw "for close encounters?"

[CMoon]

I assume this has already been addressed. If the data here is correct, I think we can agree that this is a problem. How one chooses to address that problem may be any number of things--including being anti-gun. Perhaps if America didn't have so many guns, we would have a similar graph but for knives or rocks or something.

Yet another graph...



I'm not going to pretend like I've really researched this or am vested in it, but from everything I've seen, we've got a lot of gun related deaths here in America and we have a lot of guns. My personal take is that we don't need so many goddamn guns, but I also don't get the romanticism with them.

Things I think might improve matters: make it harder to buy guns and have more gun buy back programs. Most people who buy a gun on a whim might realize down the road they'd rather have some cash--and that takes one gun out of the house for an angry teen to shoot up his school with. Beyond this, make a huge divide between hunting rifles, shot guns and multi-shot anti-personell guns. Nobody goes fucking hunting with a pistol or a semi-automatic weapons. Small, deadly fire arms don't have much of a purpose in my opinion and I think they should be harder to get. Need a gun for self defense (really?), buy a shot gun. LOL, wonder what the response would be to a baseball bat with rusty nails in it???

One passing thought I think you guys will get--America's romanticism with multi-round guns that are designed for killing people (lots of them!) makes no more sense to me than collecting sealed games. If you aren't planning on going on a rampage, what's really the point? Buy a replica (friends of mine do this), and goddamnit! play your goddamn games!

[CMoon]

Also, this video really makes my point about the type of gun. I really don't see a problem with rifles and shot guns. These are not the type of guns that are mowing down children.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LORVfnFtcH0

[Ed Oscuro]

The first graph excludes Mexico, which has a raging murder problem, but the second one includes it. The reverse is true for Chile.

You might also take a look at where North America rates on this graph compared to Eastern Europe. As the Harvard article I'll post in a bit notes, focusing on firearms deaths instead of crime rates (including homicides) is a ridiculous mistake - unless there is something mystical about guns that makes being shot by them worse than being hurt in another fashion (victims of handgun violence often survive due to the limited wounding potential of most examples of that class of weapons).

So to wrap up about those charts:
- "gun-related murder rates" worldwide - "the wrong question."
- "Civilian guns per hundred people" - this doesn't tie in with the previous graph at all, actually, since the other graph is already doing a per-capita.

What we really need to see (and what is unfortunately likely to be impossible to study) are probably these three things:
- "excess murders due to civilian firearm ownership"
- "additional lives saved due to civilian firearms"
- "successful conflict resolutions (including nonviolent) by a civilian with a firearm"

It also doesn't say anywhere in either graph that America has a problem with "guns mowing down children." Yeah, obviously one time is too many, but you've got to balance that against legitimate sporting and self-defense uses of that kind of firearm. Those statistics don't show that. It has to be noted that media attention is making one side of the issue very prominent, but not at all the other. As I've said on many issues, firearms involves choices. Any way you'd like to handle this, people will still die. That's just a fact.

This paper makes the point that a lot of the anti-firearms arguments imply or demand a belief that guns are, if not actually causal for increased violence, shifting the barriers of ability so that the easier ability to use firearms for suicide, murder, etc. gives effect to desires that would either be suppressed or failed with other tools. From what I've read so far, I think the paper's authors are hasty in dismissing that kind of argument.

Bottom line - what matters are the causes of crime, and while I don't know where firearms slot into that, I think as a society we've done very poorly in prioritizing our efforts. The ludicrous number of drug offenders in our prisons is a prime example of this. We don't need any more policies based entirely on emotive politicking, as opposed to sound research. I'd rather see a firearms owner deemed dangerous to have his weapon taken away while he remains a likely public menace, but if you can reform people - and better yet spend effort on people before they get to be at-risk for leading a criminal life, and intervene with those who do - I don't see why we have to assume that even they should continue to be risky. The argument for denying small weapons to careful, law-abiding citizens is even less convincing.

I note that commenters in that video are talking about muzzleloaders, a ridiculous proposition for self-defense. Yeah, a person intent on mass murder with a muzzleloader would be tackled or otherwise knocked out of the fight quickly, but the same would be true of a private citizen trying to stop multiple robbers in the dead of the night, or even a mugging (as the Tuller article "How Close is Too Close?" - I've posted it a few times - shows, firearms users can be at a disadvantage when trying to figure out what situations would prompt use of a firearm, and just imagine a pizza deliveryman trying to unsling a Brown Bess after getting fired on - or even attacked with rocks and knives - by a gaggle of drug dealers).

Shotguns are fine for home defense. Sykes and Fairbairn (of the fighting knife fame) recommended private citizens get shotguns. However, a shotgun is no use on the street or wherever your travels may take you; even if you can get it out of the house without being stopped you've lost the element of surprise totally.

I should also mention that many people think that restricting private sales of body armor - which doesn't kill anybody! - would be good because, again, it's thought of as "emboldening" criminals. Well, this is why people bring up cars: If your conception of the use that is most likely involves criminal pursuits, you can make anything look bad. But daily familiarity with automobiles demonstrates to many people that cars are useful and people would suffer (well, at least in their day-to-day use, nevermind global warming) without them. That "romanticism" with guns works very strongly in the most rabid anti-gunners who often don't have familiarity with their use. We also see a strong presumption that civilians are less competent than military and police at defense, but unlike the military and police, the armed civilian is the only one who will be at the scene in all likelihood.

Saying we should "make a huge divide between hunting rifles, shot guns and multi-shot anti-personell [sic: personnel, two Ns, one L]" weapons shows hostility to the original intent of having weapons for self defense. Who do you think the self-defense is against, except persons?

The final thing I wanted to mention is short and dumb - gun buybacks. The recent murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in London involved an antique and actually valuable make of revolver, chambered with the wrong kind of ammunition. It wasn't actually involved in the murder.

Shit like that which should be in a museum is what gets bought back, along with probably a few real murder weapons which the police, to entice people to sell, promise will not be traced.

Some other random stuff:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013 ... .html?_r=0
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07 ... -camp?lite

Not everything has been well in the academic debate:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/200 ... -standards
and
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Lott_v_Te ... versy.html

[CMoon]

....

Sand in the gears, as a friend of mine likes to say.

The question is whether you accept that there is proportionately more gun violence in the US than we're willing to accept (whatever you think baseline should be.) Given that neither graph is perfect by any means, it is more than reasonable to argue with it if you think either point is invalid. The issue is that I think they are both valid. I think the US has too much gun violence as a developed nation and that we have an infatuation with guns.

You make some arguments at the end which I don't get at all. Yes, guns designed to kill people would be just as good at home defense as shotguns, but SO ARE shotguns (and yeah, misspellings abound, the more I drink the more I post) Home defense--get a shotgun. Out in the field, get mace. Jesus, how much self-defense do we need. Shot guns are too big to carry around convienantly, how 'bout some shoulder mounted turrets??? No seriously, except for a few states you aren't supposed to be walking around town with a firearm, so what is the point of owning handguns or semi-automatic weapons?

[Ed Oscuro]

Please read my post before responding. Firearms violence doesn't matter compared to other forms of violence with the same outcomes, if absent firearms means that the violence or homicides are simply carried out with other forms. The right question is whether there are proportionally more violent (injurious / deadly) attacks, especially homicides, and to what degree firearms are causal towards that violence and towards defense against other forms of violence / conflict resolution.

The last bit doesn't make sense to you because you've trapped our hypothetical citizen in their house, unable to go anywhere which might possibly be dangerous (where they have every right to be and where they might not reasonably avoid going to in the course of their duties - pizza delivery people, paper carriers, EMTs...) as if your right to self-defense is only absolute in your home. I think you should agree that's an oversight on your part.

I've already addressed the "how much defense do we need?" argument with the "nuclear weapons" question in the "little things" thread. To summarize, there are situations where it's overwhelmingly clear that only a highly accountable system - more than one person - can reasonably be entrusted with certain weapons (if at all - there always have been strong proponents for disarmament), but for the person in the field who is in a small-scale conflict, a handgun or a 30-round rifle may not even be enough, but it seems reasonable to draw the line about right there.

The right amount of defense is "just enough." What's "just enough?" Ask Murphy, he oughta know. Huh, Murphy says "overwhelming force." Sorry, but that's what's required. They say "only a fool trusts his life to a weapon" and it's true; if you trust a weapon to be "adequate" you're making a stupid risk it's not going to be enough. A gun with thousands of bullets is not a nuclear weapon; most of these mass shooters end up tiring as soon as their emotional rage fails them and they end up sitting (or slumped over) a bag full of dozens of loaded magazines, unused. It's just like the saying about artificial intelligence that we'd need something smarter than a person, because just making dog-level intelligence run many times faster is not going to get you complex solutions to problems we need solved (unless you know the right questions to ask).

The concept behind self-defense (and also behind "just war," as I understand it, as studied in the military academies) is that your ultimate goal is to convince the enemy to cease hostile actions against you. If you run outta bullets, you're done. If you kill them, they're done; but if they run away from the fight (which happens sometimes) that's good enough.

Again, this all needs to be understood against the backdrop of law. We don't have retroactive criminal laws for a reason; likewise, things which may be abused but which otherwise have completely legitimate uses need not be banned when there's already a legal framework for dealing with criminal offenders. How many of the mass murderers in the news carrying out spectacular attacks are still out there killing random people?

Mace, against Alaskan bears? That's not a serious suggestion. When your life is on the line you should not be held to "maybe works" defenses, especially if it is nothing you could reasonably prevent. I don't mind condemnation of people who spray or shoot bears due to their own idiocy, but that said there are many people who must go into the outback and don't have time to screw around with sprays - unless you would prefer that frontier rescuers hang up their boots and leave the dumbass tenderfoot to the bear, or the climber lying wounded, because it's too dangerous for the rescuer to carry a revolver - for the bear. Many states ban pepper sprays anyways, not to mention knives and other things determined to be Bad in one decade or another (the West Side Story decade in the case of knives, especially switchblades which are ridiculous because they have a design flaw, but banning other kinds of 'assisted opening' knives is ridiculous).

It's not the case that I don't care about wildlife. I think that we've got ample evidence that dumbasses with guns have severely harmed America's wildlife (although ancient hunters did much the same throughout Europe and the Isles in an era before firearms, now that I think about it) and hunted some species to extinction for nothing. I agree that getting rid of the firearms is one way to solve that problem - which I would like solved just as much as the mass murders - but it's not the only way, and it shouldn't be the first choice.

I'm not sure if I'm detecting a bit of the old "shoot the gun out of their hands / do anything but hope you don't kill them" optimism in some of your points. Of course it's great if you do that - but in self-defense you're not screwing around. Ultimately I think these kinds of responses are trying to push me towards making some kind of Utilitarian sacrifice, meaning that your rights are just accidental to the needs of society; these are beliefs which I loathe. If only things were so simple as torturing one person so 100 other people would be happy - that wouldn't be good but it would at least be more predictable than what we've got now.

[CMoon]

Please read my post before responding.

Now c'mon 'filibusterEd' , you know why this happens

Firearms violence doesn't matter compared to other forms of violence with the same outcomes, if absent firearms means that the violence or homicides are simply carried out with other forms. The right question is whether there are proportionally more violent (injurious / deadly) attacks, especially homicides, and to what degree firearms are causal towards that violence and towards defense against other forms of violence / conflict resolution.

I addressed this in my first post, that it might be worthwhile trying to unravel gun violence from violence in general and admitted the possibility that if you remove guns from the picture, Americans might still have a problem with violence, only with knives or rocks or something.

The question remains whether you think there is too much violence. That most of the violence is with guns might suggest the guns are a problem, but you can address it whatever way you want to. If you don't think there is too much violence, that's the issue you should argue.

The last bit doesn't make sense to you because you've trapped our hypothetical citizen in their house, unable to go anywhere which might possibly be dangerous (where they have every right to be and where they might not reasonably avoid going to in the course of their duties - pizza delivery people, paper carriers, EMTs...) as if your right to self-defense is only absolute in your home. I think you should agree that's an oversight on your part.

Again, I addressed this issue. First, states vary considerably on whether you can actually carry a firearm visibly or concealed, meaning that in many states it really doesn't matter how big or small your firearm is. Second, there are other options than carrying a gun. I brought up mace, there are also tasers, or just getting pumped at the gym--this will deter a lot of people (not bears though.) I also think running away is a totally manly option that doesn't require shooting someone in the face.

Mace, against Alaskan bears?

You know, earlier today I was delivering some newspapers and was jumped by some grizzly bears....

That's not a serious suggestion.

You are correct, sir.

My argument is really that MOST people don't actually need anything for self defense--but if they really feel the need, a shotgun will do. Everything else is just a machismo love affair with guns. All bets are off if you live in close proximity to grizzly bears. Jesus christ.

OK, I'm gonna take this half seriously because I'm an avid backpacker and spend a lot of time around black bears (which are total pussies compared to grizzlies):

It's not the case that I don't care about wildlife. I think that we've got ample evidence that dumbasses with guns have severely harmed America's wildlife (although ancient hunters did much the same throughout Europe and the Isles in an era before firearms, now that I think about it) and hunted some species to extinction for nothing.

I know a lot of hikers who don't feel comfortable going out without a gun, but here in CA, there is nothing (short of a snake bite) that is actually going to hurt you. I really don't know what I think about hiking in places (Alaska and Yellowstone) that still have grizzlies. I think part of the key is hiking at the right time and not doing things that are stupid. Yes, Grizzlies were hunted completely out of CA and I don't know what I think about it. I'd have to completely rethink the time I've spend in the Sierras if those bears were up there. Fortunately, the black bears can be chased off with waving arms and loud voices, and though I've heard about them bluff charging, I've never heard of them actually outright attacking a person.

I'm not sure if I'm detecting a bit of the old "shoot the gun out of their hands / do anything but hope you don't kill them" optimism in some of your points.

What you're getting from me is 1) Is there a problem (I think yes)? and can we agree on it (I don't know)? 2) I think a lot of Americans own guns that don't match their need (like owning a race car when you just use it to drive to work) and that some of the recent tragedies reflect on irresponsible gun ownership. Perhaps the types of guns and the ways they are made available should be adjusted to match both genuine consumer need and societal problems.

3) (and here's my optimism) I don't think the world is quite as dangerous as most pro-gun people think it is. The only time worth pulling a gun out is if you feel your life is genuinely at risk, and in doing so you may be escalating an already bad situation. Definitely not worth it for robbery or anything other than someone threatening to kill/rape you. How many times have any of us been at gun point or even really threatened in any way. The answer for me, at age 41 is none. I live in LA and have never had my life threatened except by bad drivers. I'm not saying there's no validity to the idea of self-protection, and I'm sure peoples' lives have been saved by it, but statistically I'm really not convinced.

[Ed Oscuro]

The reason I haven't jumped fully onto one view of the statistics picture or another is that, well, there's no certainty about what's right. If you follow some of the links in my various posts on this page (i.e. the bottom of the page) you'll see that there's been a lot of ink spilt over two cases of apparent academic misconduct - one academic each on the polar opposites of the issue. I definitely can't claim to know what the true picture is - even where the probabilities lie (this is statistics, after all). However, snuggled in amongst the various efforts to show how the data in those graphs is easily misread or doesn't provide the information you think it does was another piece of information - the link comparing homicides in the US and Eastern Europe (which has been relatively gun-free, so rabidly so that the Moscow City Court nearly imposed a lengthy sentence on an American pastor who unwittingly imported some rifle bullets in his luggage, and of course the bureaucratic inanity is such that you can of course buy bullets locally - like Prohibition, a lot of these "common sense" ideas end up being bludgeons against the hapless and unwary or those specifically targeted, and the exceptions to the rules carved out by obvious pressing needs call the whole effort of the law into disrepute).

I think a lot of video gamers (in particular! We've even been called out by Wayne LaPierre who thinks the rights of owning firearms are more important than freedom of speech, apparently) know that there are things which seem to, on the face of it, have some kind of indirect causal relationship to violence. "Desensitization" to games might be provoking some edge cases that might, absent factors like the vidyas and the nintendos, not blossom into violence. The same uncertainty applies to firearms.

The bottom line is that, although we can trade stories for hours about what we do and don't need in countless enumerated situations in our lives, that decision is properly made by the individual affected, first and foremost; the presumption should be on innocence and the responsible use of a firearm by the individual - because I think we'll also find that the greatest preponderance of firearms and firearm owners coexist peacefully together with each other and with the population at large. It's not about demonizing inanimate objects or their conscientious owners, and it's not about making sweeping claims like "fewer guns = proportionally fewer fewer homicides," as if you could ever seriously reduce the number of guns held illegally faster than those surrendered peacefully, and whether there is something inherently good in declaring legally-minded gun owners outlaws for failing to surrender their weapons, rather than any actual transgression against the public or private good.

[Edmond Dantes]

Just popping in real quick to point out something.

I keep hearing about "Gun Romanticism." Who here has presented guns as anything other than a tool for self-defense? That is not romanticism, any more than presenting binders as a tool for organizing subjects is romanticizing binders.

Speaking personally, I don't like guns much myself--I'd rather have swords and crossbows (at least with the latter, you can recycle the ammunition)--but the fact is, guns exist, they are a part of modern reality, and no amount of law-making or social engineering is gonna change that. Once that is recognized then the math becomes simple: Anyone with a gun is stronger than anyone without a gun. To stand on equal footing, you need a gun of your own. Otherwise, when you get attacked, you might as well give up and let them do whatever they like.

.....

Also, someone earlier said something to the effect of "because guns are a billion-dollar industry, America is inundated with pro-gun propoganda." This is a blatant, bold-faced lie. Frankly, every time I turn on the television or read a book, I see anti-gun propoganda. Turn on CSI, it's anti-gun, turn on the Simpsons, its anti-gun. And of course, the various news networks are pretty much always filled with people calling for tighter gun regulation, with people who argue for the other side being given the shaft. You can't even turn on kids' shows without hearing anti-gun propoganda--Batman hates guns, Gargoyles has episodes where evil badguys use guns and are defeated by guys who use only their bare knuckles (and lets not forget the infamous ep where the cop lady gets shot by accident), and I'm sure if MLP brought the issue up, it would be anti-guns too. They're even trying to brainwash children!

In fact, the only American TV show I've ever seen come out pro-gun is that episode of Penn and Teller: Bullshit I linked to earlier. And the whole reason that show played on Showtime and nowhere else is because their politics are so against everything the media preaches that they're forcefully confined to a channel where they're not likely to get much exposure (and even then, Showtime started censoring the show, which included actually banning an episode from re-airing or DVD releases. Anyone who thinks there's no such thing as media censorship, this is your wake-up call).

Seriously, guys, name me ONE, JUST ONE mainstream American TV show that is pro-guns. Hell, name me a mainstream movie that's pro-guns, because there's rarely any of those either (WrathOfSeven has seen director's commentaries where said directors were actually told to "make guns look useless" to please the studio's political beliefs).

[Edmond Dantes]

Fuck guns.

Just make sure the safety is on and they're unloaded, or you might blow your penis off...

[NTSC-J]

Seriously, guys, name me ONE, JUST ONE mainstream American TV show that is pro-guns. Hell, name me a mainstream movie that's pro-guns, because there's rarely any of those either.

Seriously?

[dcharlie]

Please read my post before responding. Firearms violence doesn't matter compared to other forms of violence with the same outcomes, if absent firearms means that the violence or homicides are simply carried out with other forms

it's surely much easier to kill someone with a gun than any other method though ?

I'm not sure you can sweep away the effectiveness of guns out of hand that easy (?) - though i'd be interested to see how the figures stack up of Firearm homicide vs non-firearm.

[Skykid]

Seriously, guys, name me ONE, JUST ONE mainstream American TV show that is pro-guns. Hell, name me a mainstream movie that's pro-guns, because there's rarely any of those either.

Jesus, what a question.

I keep hearing about "Gun Romanticism."

And subsequently, your answer.

[Edmond Dantes]

Seriously, guys, name me ONE, JUST ONE mainstream American TV show that is pro-guns. Hell, name me a mainstream movie that's pro-guns, because there's rarely any of those either.

Jesus, what a question.

I keep hearing about "Gun Romanticism."

And subsequently, your answer.

So, a bunch of guys in THIS THREAD have used the phrase "gun romanticism" and this somehow proves that TELEVISION has a pro-gun bias. That makes perfect sense.

Do you just not think at all when you type up a post?