Being unlikely to need something is not, by itself, a reason to forego it. I just paid my homeowner's insurance bill, although I figure that the odds I'll ever make a claim are nearly negligable. But not quite negligable.
am I wrong that the incidence of successful self-defense with a handgun is very low?
My memory, without a source, is that the percentage of police who fire their guns in the line of duty in their careers is weirdly low, like only a couple of percent. Which would suggest that you're right, that the odds of successfully defending yourself with a handgun are pretty small.
(Unless civilization has collapsed. In which case Bambi is going DOWN!!)
I will never understand all these people who get hard-ons fondling their guns. Ugh. There are certainly self-defense situations where it would be useful to have a gun. However, if you have a gun in the house it's much more likely to be used to kill a member of the household, e.g. husband and wife get in argument and one blows the other away (or father and son -- see "Gaye, Marvin"); depressed family member commits suicide with gun (I'd probably be dead now if I'd ever lived in a household with a gun -- of course some would consider that as an argument in favor of guns); or kid playing with gun kills self or sibling.
Caliber matters when one really wants to stop someone who is just about to do something, such as pull out his/her own gun, or reach you with that cleaver. A person can keep going, and going, and going even after being hit several times with a .22, unless the shooter gets very lucky.
My apologies. I misread you. I thought you were talking about whether there were rational reasons for carrying a gun for self-defense, alluding to the whole calculus of risk thing.
Apparently we all suffer from multiple small-caliber gunshot wounds. Or is the question, why do we all suffer from multiple small-caliber gunshot wounds?
DOJ did some statistics on this 10 years ago or so, and their results seemed to indicate it was relatively safe.
The problem with smaller calibers is that the other guy won't be stopped, it's that he's going to stay in the fight longer. The larger calibers like .45 ACP drop people quick. If your assailant is also armed, if he's capable of continuing the attack for even another 30 seconds, that's a long 30 seconds when someones trying to stab, shoot, or whatever.
If you have the money, I'd recommend taking a look at the HK's as well as the Glocks. The HK's are pricey, but worth it. If you're not going to carry it concealed, HK USP Tacticals are about as good as it gets. If you're going to carry the USP Compact might be a better bet.
Probably a handgun wouldn't kill a deer, though, I don't think.
I spent five years reading Outdoor Life and Field and Stream (Mr. Breath's niece was selling magazine subscriptions as a fundraiser, and I'll read anything. Outdoor Life is actually surprisingly entertaining and well written -- F&S less so.) and people do buy handguns for deer hunting. I think, although I'm not completely sure, that they're a 'put the wounded deer out of its misery' tool, rather than something anyone uses as the primary hunting gun, but they do have some deer-hunting use, IIRC.
8: It's true. A .22 is not a fearsome weapon. The news article has expired, but I linked to a story last May about a guy who shot himself three times in the head and twice in the chest before he gave up and drove ten minutes away and jumped off a bridge. None of the three shots to head managed to penetrate his skull.
Thanks, gswift! I have no desire to carry a gun, and if I ever buy one, I probably won't even keep it at home, but at the range or something. Mainly, I don't want to be a knee-jerk guns are gross and evil type.
Every time I am the target of an attempted mugging, I find myself possessed of an uncanny mastery of the martial arts. Whether the mugger has a gun, a knife, a saw (chain or conventional), a cudgel, a broken Miller High Life bottle, or a rolled up Chicago Sun-Times, I wrest the weapon away from him with relative ease. I punch him lightly to stun him, then launch into a horrifying Dragon Upper Cut, followed by a twirling Hurricane Kick!
One of the common complaints with the 9mm issued to the military and a lot of police is that it doesn't drop people quick enough. The .40 Smith round was developed in direct response to this. They were shooting for a round that would pack more punch than a 9mm, but still retain the high clip capacity. A lot of the .45's used to only hold 7 or 8 rounds. That's not such an issue anymore. There's several models of .45's holding 12 or 13 like the Glocks and the HK's.
17: thank you, apostropher. I was googling, but the best I'd come up with was a law enforcement officer opining that often moose and caribou walk away from .22 shots.
So if you're being attacked by a moose or caribou, maybe you need something bigger than a .22. I don't know about elk or deer, but I'm pretty sure that a .22 will drop a charging bunny rabbit in its tracks
Huh, if you follow gswift's link to the DOJ stats, there were an average of 82,000 (!) incidents each year in which people used or threatened to use a gun to fend off an attack.
As someone who, while sneaking into the house late, was nearly shot by her own, usually very careful, rational father I applaud ogged's instinct to keep the piece at the range.
Unfortunately, keeping the piece at the range obviates all the self-defense arguments for owning a gun. Do gun-ranges not have rentals?
People do hunt fairly large game with large bore handguns. Typically they're using something with an 8 or 10 inch barrel so they have a decent accurracy at longer ranges. Smith and Wesson for example puts out this .500 Mag Hunter with a sling and a scope base already mounted.
To be honest, if I were going to go through the bother, doubt, and fear of getting a gun, I wouldn't be buying a mother-of-pearl enameled .22 small enough to holster in my garter, no matter how sexy that might be as a fleeting fantasy. The only time I tried shooting (a rifle at tin cans, with the goal of making us city kids capable of scaring off grizzly bears), I was unequivocably shitty at hitting my mark; if I were to shoot at an attacker, I'd want a serious-looking gun and an impressive *bang*. I'm not sure how much actual damage I want to inflict, but I certainly wouldn't want all of my liberal qualms to have been overcome for the result in Tweedle's link.
When I'm not pretending to be a character from Street Fighter II, I always figure that my having a gun would be more of a danger to me than to any hypothetical assailant.
Where's Ash? I bet he could answer the gun question.
Cringing and dreading the deluge. I was overly pessimistic. So far.
Anyways, I endorse everything gswift said, just about.
I suspect (and I say all this despite the fact that I actually kinda want a Glock 38) that the euphemisms signal some sort of deliberative seriousness, meant to distinguish the talk from swinging dick bloodlust.
Ok, there are guys who buys guns to caress. Unless I am missing it, that would be you. Then, there are actual gun nuts who differ little in many respects from people who collect Barbies. That would be one of my best friends. Then, there is the much larger group that owns guns, that doesn't do any of that stuff.
[Redundant, sorry]
the other side is the need for a powerful, decisive cartridge.
Decisive here means: 'If I shoot someone, when I shoot someone, I want them to goddamn die, or explode like a pinata with a grenade inside or at least fall down or spin around or something, jeez. I am trying to kill them.'
a radically reduced version of the first that limited both its terminal effectiveness due to the far shorter barrel length and its reliability.
I don't know which meaning he is using here. He might be using the meaning just above or he might be referring to the ...uh... technical concepts involved in how hard it hits. 'Terminal effectiveness' would then == 'how much kinetic energy is delivered to the target'. Which is actually a long-pondered subject in law enforcement and the military.
Or maybe he's just feeding some red meat to the base, although it doesn't seem like it to me.
Now, if the audience for this article is law enforcement and the military, this is all fine, but if we're talking about regular joes and their guns, am I wrong that the incidence of successful self-defense with a handgun is very low?
There are lot of people who have been cops, been in the military or are closely related to such people. In the US, that quickly adds up to a lot of people who share a common terminology, just like Professors of Philosophy and Barbie collectors.
Almost all of the people described are 1> basically peaceful (or things would really be in the shitter) 2> nevertheless have heard about this kinda stuff all their lives. Or experienced it! So they're going about it the same way you would decide what kind of computer to buy. ('Does it work? Does it work real good?')
for just about everyone who buys a gun, it's just never going to be an issue, and I have a hard time imaging situations where one would require a gun for self-defense in which the caliber would matter.
Guns are most successful when they're just waved around. Check. I reinterate, if you have to use it, you want it to work. And it's a lot easier to be convincingly threatening when you've got a gun that you know will knock somebody down.
I'm just spouting liberal orthodoxy
I replied to an Emerson comment on BOP leads into (and provokes) this response here: I can think of maybe eight definitions of Liberal that are purely political and none of them apply. I think the liberal you mean translates to "orthodox to the (sub-)culture common to the upper-middle class and upper-class urbanites of the major metropolitan cities who tend tostaff the non-business institutions". ("Conservative" as commonly used is the same class and locality, generally, as the "liberals", but refers to the ones primarily operating of corporations.) Your reaction seems standard that group (both groups, really), but that group is not nearly as large as the group thinks itself to be. Dude. The group "everyone else" tends to at least have some experience with this stuff. Whether they would be bugged by the guy's description or not, I don't know, but I expect not.
Or to put it another way, there is some actually lurid gun pr0n out there, but I don't think this qualifies.
ash
['I generally don't read that kind of stuff, though.']
if I were going to go through the bother, doubt, and fear of getting a gun
Apparently gun ownership is a rare thing in this crowd, so I'll give my standard recommendation for potential owners.(for handguns, rifles are a whole other ballgame)
In my opinion automatics are not a good choice for first time, inexperienced shooters, especially for defense. They're harder to maintain, clean, and most people don't realize how difficult they are to load compared to a revolver. Capacity concerns are for military and law enforcement. You are likely only going to either just point it and scare someone, or fire a couple rounds at most. The attributes to look for are ease of use, sufficient power, and reliability.
Assuming most people will never carry the handgun on their person, a good choice is a Ruger GP100 .357 Mag.(that middle pic is the exact model I bought my wife for Christmas a couple years back)
The Ruger's can be had new for around $400. They're extremely reliable and durable, and shoot well right out of the box. The .357's are nice in that you can load them with .357's for defense, but can also use the cheaper .38 Specials for target practice. Conversely, if you put the hotter .357 loads through a gun designed for .38's, you're going to beat the hell out of that gun.
With it I'd also recommend getting a few of the appropriate speedloaders. They're handy at the range, and they give you the option to have the gun unloaded in storage, yet have it loaded quickly if the need arises. Even in the dark it's fairly easy to open a revolver and push a speedloader into the cylinder.
And if anyone is considering buying a gun for home defense, don't get sucked into the shotgun trap, even if you're a poor shot. Shotgun rounds typically don't start spreading until after about 20 feet or so. When using a gun in self defense, especially indoors, odds are it's going to be at a much closer range, so shotguns aren't really an advantage at all. Additionally, you want to check your house, or whatever with your gun in one hand held back while you use your other hand to open doors, etc. The last thing you want is to be going around a corner with a shotgun in front of you and all of a sudden find yourself wrestling with someone for control of the gun.
a radically reduced version of the first that limited both its terminal effectiveness due to the far shorter barrel length and its reliability.
I don't know which meaning he is using here. He might be using the meaning just above or he might be referring to the ...uh... technical concepts involved in how hard it hits. 'Terminal effectiveness' would then == 'how much kinetic energy is delivered to the target'.
In my experience they're usually referring to that 1970-1990 period where you basically had two options, a high capacity but relatively weak 9mm, or low capacity strong .45. Those old school 1911 style .45's had 5 inch barrels. I think he's referring to the reduced ballistics of a shorter barrel, and the reliability reference is likely about smaller frame automatics being beat to hell when chambered for the .45 ACP.
52: I work for a business, and I'm liberal as all heck. Lots of liberals around me, too. Lots of conservatives, for that matter. Kind of a free-for-all. Fortunately, guns are banned on the premises.
gswift & ash pretty much said it all. 'Terminal effectiveness' is meant euphemistically; this isn't about being a cowboy any more than talking about the latest processor means you think you're Bill Gates. (That is to say, there's some overlap, but this is just basic information; is this gun good for you? What do you want it for?)
This isn't gun porn. Gun porn would have mentioned the second amendment, the thrill of taming the West, and the American way.
The difference between the smaller and larger calibers is like the difference between trying to stop you from chasing me by whipping a baseball at you or by whipping a bowling ball at you at the same speed. I don't have to kill you with either one, but I'm probably going to have to throw a lot more baseballs.
I am amused by this post and the previous post together. In a calamity we'd all become quick shots and shoot the bears coming after us by raiding hunting stores? I've at least fired a gun. (Dad was a gun nut; have known basic safety/cleaning since I was about four.)
See, that was why I was talking about getting a big dog. I know roughly how dogs work.
(And I will cop to being entirely ignorant about guns -- it's a city thing, I think, more than a political affiliation thing. There's no such thing as casual recreational gun use in a big city -- you're either a serious hobbyist who goes to shooting ranges, or you have a gun for the purpose of shooting people, for good reasons or bad. The rural 'target shooting at tin cans' or whatever it is teenagers in the country do with .22s just isn't an option for urban types.)
Pretty much. If you grow up in a rural area, chances are you either went hunting a lot, or needed a gun to shoot gophers, or shot tin cans for fun. If all you see is guns on TV, you think 'guns are for shooting people, duh'.
I suspect this is why policy discussions are hopelessly confused; for the rural gun enthusiast, the idea that it's dangerous and meant to shoot people may be completely foreign to him.
I lived with a gun nut. Hence I am deeply dubious about the whole notion of gun ownership and agree with Kotsko about its effectiveness. My favorite statistic about guns is that in 2000 roughly one woman every day was murdered with a gun by a spouse or boyfriend. Most women are killed by people they know, not the big scary stranger in the alley. So guns for women, anyway, are not actually a helpful self defense tool unless she thinks she can shoot her husband/lover.
And if a woman can calmly consider doing that maybe she should move on to greener pastures.
How often do you go to the range? Unless it's a lot, I would think it would be more fun to rent different ones each time.
My Montana-gun-nut-militia uncle (by marriage) takes me out shooting whenever I go visit. He's got some pretty amazing large-calibur stuff in his collection, including a 50 that literally knocked me on my ass. It's fun to do on occasion, especially because it pains him that I'm a good shot but generally anti-gun. Wasted talent and all. He got me a membership in the NRA for my birthday a few years back, which got me on some bizarre "girls and guns" mailing lists and has made checking my mail an interesting adventure ever since.
My aunt and uncle both carry concealed weapons, keep others in their cars, and have an entire "gun room" in their house with dozens and dozens of them. Weird for my family, but not that unusual for their area of Montana. Still, my uncle's pretty hard-core: when he read that the investigation into Ruby Ridge was triggered by a purchase of 10,000 rounds of ammunition, he went out and placed a 10,000 round order just because, goddamnit, you should be able to do that. Any man marrying into the family has to go on a hunting trip with him as a hazing rite. If they come back alive, they're allowed in.
am I wrong that the incidence of successful self-defense with a handgun is very low?
I would guess you are correct about this. In theory, having a firearm available would aid in self defense- even if it was only to wave around. However, how many people really have the clarity of mind to effectively use a gun when confronted with a sudden attack? I think military and law enforcement people (and perhaps some others) have had training to help them anticipate and/or react appropriately to such unexpected, violent situations. I suspect the average gun owner has not had much more training than one basic course. Consequently, I think any self-defense advantage to the average gun-owner evaporates the instant they are surprised by a real attack.
Sure, it's less crime if you consider a woman burning her boyfriend's toast a crime, or a kid playing with something he's been told not to touch a crime, or a man who can't cope with the loss of his job a crime!
As I understand, high-caliber high-velocity guns knock people down and stun them even if they don't kill them. Whereas someone hit by a 22 might keep going for a bit even with an ultimately lethal wound.
Where I grew up (rural MN) everyone had guns (except my dad, an MD and WWII vet who cleaned up after the gunowners), but it was almost always one of about 5 different hunting rifles and shotguns. But while I was in HS a kid I knew went down to Texas for a couple years and came back dreaming about blowing people away.
Gun ownership is separable from violent fantasies, but the gun nuts I've ever run into were almost all riddled with violent fantasies, fearfulness, and various sorts of systematic anger and hatred. There are fucked-up places where owning a gun for personal protection and home protection is pretty reasonable, but gun nuts prepare themselves for self-defense even if they don't live in those places.
There are places where gun-ownership is widespread (e.g. North Dakota) where there is virtually no gun violence. On the other hand, I doubt that there are any places where gunownership is low which would be safer if gunownership were higher. (An exception might be a place where an armed population dominates a disarmed population, but this is a kind of political domination and only will change if there is an actual revolution.)
Rational discussion about guns is very rare in the US. Liberals can be ignorant, but gun nuts can be scary.
My favorite statistic about guns is that in 2000 roughly one woman every day was murdered with a gun by a spouse or boyfriend.
How many of them shot back? I can't make this out to be an anti-gun ownership for women unless their boyfriends all used the woman's gun.
I don't own a gun, and have no plans to, but this area is pretty much where all my right-wing sympathies are. I know how to shoot. I know how to take apart a gun and make sure there aren't any bullets in there. I don't see the point of a gun safe in which to store your gun for personal defense, presumably only needed for emergencies (what, you're going to have time to enter the code? excuse me, mr. thief, I need a minute.)
Mmm. There seems to be some irrationality on both sides -- ignorant city types like me don't so much get what anyone legitimately wants guns for, and those who are fond of guns really appear to overestimate their usefulness. Even though I wasn't raised that way, I'll totally buy into the "Guns as inoffensive pieces of sporting goods -- shooting range? Fun! Hunting? Fun! Knocking over tin cans? Fun!" view of guns. It's not a hobby I'm likely to pick up for logistical reasons, but there's nothing wrong with it.
The self-defense stuff, though, seems a little irrational. Given the low levels of violent crime in the US, and particularly the highly class-segregated nature of the violent crime that exists (i.e., I, and other upper middle class professionals like me are particularly unlikely to be victims of violent crime); the risks added to ones life by gun possession (accidental shootings; risk that a criminal will take your gun away and use it on you; risk that an altercation that would not otherwise have become lethal does so because of the easy availability of a gun); and the reasonably high level of skill and training necessary to successfully use a gun in self-defense, it really seems as though most people who have guns under the theory that it makes them safer have got to be either irrational, or at least wrong.
Well, most people. But conceivably fun + large amount of training and education in how to use the it could make you safer. Also, although I don't own a gun and don't foresee the need for one, there are circumstances (crazy stalker ex-boyfriend, e.g.) in which I'd conceivably want one.
and the reasonably high level of skill and training necessary to successfully use a gun in self-defense...
I think this point is key. Most gun nuts I know like to imagine they would morph into Steven Seagal or Dirty Harry, complete with cool one-liners, and blow the evil attackers away. It is an easy fantasy that justifies buying a gun. In reality, I suspect most of these people would instantly piss their pants and beg for their lives in a real situation- and that Glock 38 would remain stashed safely away in the safe.
My brother married into a gun nut family. They talked the talk about respecting gun, and they had strict ritualized rules for handling guns, but even so my niece came reasonably close to getting blown away on the shooting range. Guns are intrinsically dangerous the way most other things are not. A small mistake can be lethal.
The weak- willed and "Prissy" European in me is flabbergasted by this thread. Amused also, but deep down alarmed.
Asked not so much as an academic exercise in semiotics but as one in civil liberty: What does a gun symbolise? Better still, what does possession of a gun symbolise?
I've only ever fired a gun in the boy scouts. I went into the experience with a typical Li'l Liberal attitude (gun control was in vogue at the time), and came out thinking, "I've been all turned around on this!" Fifteen minutes later I had a "hmmm" moment.
So I've always sort of felt the same way about guns as I do about drugs: they're too inherently awesome to be approached objectively by their users. Ideally, everyone should be free to use them responsibly, but some can't and produce problems for the rest of us. The solution, as always, is massive government regulation.
The closest I've come to real gun nuttery was my mom's recent boyfriend, who was a devout Harley enthusiast. Which, at the fringes, is similar to being a gun nut in many ways (e.g. obsession with minor mechanical details; weird theories about Jewish conspiracies). I'm pretty sure he wasn't allowed to own any guns, or else he probably would've been into them, too.
This is such an interesting issue. In my experience, more than just about any other political issue, a given person's feelings on it depend almost entirely upon where that person was raised (I'm speaking more urban/rural, although regional factors are important also). I grew up in semi-rural/suburban Texas, shot quite a few guns recreationally, was taught about safety and responsible gun handling, and therefore (like Cala) tend to think that gun ownership is not in and of itself a big deal. Most everyone I've met who was raised in similar circumstances feels the same way, and most everyone I've met who is for strict gun control has had little-to-no exposure to firearms themselves (the obvious exception being people who live in places plagued by violent crime; these tend to be mostly anti-gun, for obvious reasons).
There are clearly some insane paranoid gun nuts out there. But like Emerson said, there's not a lot of rational discussion about this on either side.
As a sidebar, parents who own guns (Jesus, I almost typed "child-owners") should keep their guns locked in boxes within safes within trunks. Because for kids? Guns = SO COOL. If kids find guns, kids are going to play with the guns.
I make no apologies and have no shame for being anti-gun. I recognize that people enjoy them, that hunting is probably fun, and that most people who own guns are not evil bastards. Nonetheless, the things are dangerous and have one purpose, which is to kill. Target shooting is just practicing for killing (even if, in fact, that's all one ever does with it). They're too damned dangerous to have in a civilized urban society, which we basically are. I'm sure they're fun and all, but cost / benefit analysis: find another hobby.
And home defense? Forget it. If you're sneaking around corners trying to catch someone in your house, you'd be better off climbing out a goddamn window and calling the cops from the neighbors.
This whole discussion is making me feel like I should be an asshole and quiz every adult who invites PK over to play with their kid: "do you have a gun? Yes? Sorry, no play date."
Thats what amuses me most... I am aware that the term knee- jerk liberal response was used earlier and I m guessing very hard that I fall into that categoryof people whose knees jerk, instinctively. So I am amused at myself and interested in the attitude of you guys as mostly liberal types to the theme. I think most Europeans have an inbuilt horror of the idea of private ownership of side-arms. I ll grant that hunting rifles and shot guns might be a moot point.
I am flabbergasted by the coolness with which the theme is viewed. I m prepared to admit that Im being prissy about it, but the idea of being in the same room as a device whose sole functional purpose is to kill makes me queasy.
I think gun control has gotten to be a less hot issue for ignorant urbanites as violent crime has dropped. While we still find gun culture alien it makes them easier to regard as "Odd rural type of sporting goods, like ATV's. I don't get the appeal, but no one ever said I had to understand everything." I still kinda think that gun owners have an odd weighting on the risk/benefit equation, but it's not the kind of thing I need to get into a political fight about.
(And based purely on that five years of reading Outdoor Life, and on the couple of hunters I know, I have to think that hunters as a class are a possible pickup for the Democratic party on environmental issues, if we could cool the gun thing down.)
I'm with you Austro. And I object to the whole "knee-jerk" label, which is a rhetorical device used to dismiss a perfectly rational position out of hand.
They're too damned dangerous to have in a civilized urban society.
Urban society isn't civilized, except etymologically. Guns are not too dangerous to have in a civilized rural society like North Dakota. Guns exacerbate other problems; they're like gasoline.
I think most Europeans have an inbuilt horror of the idea of private ownership of side-arms.
Except, notably, the Swiss. The afternoon I arrived at my Swiss host family for a summer's exchange, my host-father had the army-issue assault rifle on the dining-room table for its periodic cleaning. It lived behind the front door.
I have to think that hunters as a class are a possible pickup for the Democratic party on environmental issues, if we could cool the gun thing down.
I think this is the reason that gun control has been played down recently. It's not that people stopped caring about the issue, it's that it's too much of an electoral liability (that, plus questions of efficacy). Here in DC, though, whenever congressional Republicals decide they ought to make a bold second amendment statement by repealing the district's very strict gun laws, it becomes a pretty big issue.
What does gun ownership symbolise? Is it purely a functional thing, like owning a fire-extinguisher, or is there a higher symbolic value to it? If so, what is it?
Unfortunately I need to get home to the family and I shall not be around this evening to follow the thread. I'd be curious to know though.
In a totally agreeing with comment 85 sort of sense, I don't know what ownership of a gun symbolizes, but the importance of the legality of gun ownership to civil liberties is that the state sometimes fails to protect you (having worked at a rape crisis center and spoken to a not-insignificant number of women who were being stalked and harrassed by boyfriends they had taken reasonable steps to separate from, and seen that the police did nothing for them, I'm convinced of this). Given this failure, it would be nice to be able to protect yourself. However, I have no illusions about my current competency to own a gun or successfully use it for self-defense. Heck, the one time I tried fencing I had a bunch of Spanish kids standing around me yelling "Ataca" because I refused to thrust, and then when my opponent accidently speared me in the boob, flustered, I yelled "Dulce" (sweet) instead of "Suave" (smooth), prompting lots of eight year old giggles. If I were in the crazy ex-boyfriend situation I know I'd need a lot of training to achieve competency, and I'd be happy if massive government regulation mandated that I get it.
Politically, why can't it be a local issue? I'm thrilled that handguns are illegal in NYC. Let the people in each community decide what's right for them, say I.
Bitch, my point is that if ours were a civilized society, guns would not be a problem. American cities are full of violence and conflict, and guns make the violence worse.
Yeah, I often think about the stats on Canadian gun ownership vs. their rate of gun violence (as per Bowling for Columbine). Plenty of guns, very few gun crimes.
Does Switzerland have mandatory military service? For some reason when Swiss came up in this thread my mind jumped to mandatory military service but I think I am mistaken. Does Switzerland even have an army?
Tia, were you learning to fence in Spain? Or what?
This was written by the owner of the gun store in my small, otherwise idyllic hometown. The author is a pugnacious sort, as demonstrated by the rest of his blog, and he at times seems to exhibit the violent fantasies and fearfulness Emerson was describing above. I grew up around guns and around people like this, but some time ago transitioned to being one of the insulated city-dwellers. My opinions on gun control have changed accordingly. The mindset of the author in the linked post are what unnerve me about the pro-gun lobby at this point. I think for the most part that those are and were the people fighting gun control, and the attitudes revealed in that anecdote are and were their reasons.
I think Emerson gets it largely right in 78, as does everyone who thinks there's a dearth of rational gun policy debate in the U.S. I've found myself on both sides of the issue, and I still have no idea what such a discussion would sound like. I don't find it surprising that it's largely off the platform.
And home defense? Forget it. If you're sneaking around corners trying to catch someone in your house, you'd be better off climbing out a goddamn window and calling the cops from the neighbors.
That's not really when you're most likely to want one. Shortly after my first daughter was born, someone kicked in a window in our duplex in middle of the day and came in. My wife was home alone with the baby. The duplex a split level, so the upstairs bedroom my wife was in with the baby was quite a ways off the ground. She called the police immediately, and was trapped in the upstairs bedroom desperately trying to keep the baby quiet while she could hear the guy moving around downstairs. Thanfully, he'd taken long enough to get in, and a police unit was close enough that he heard the approaching sirens and left before he had a chance to come upstairs. But if he had, she was trapped with no avenue of escape.
I already owned a couple guns when we got married. I'ld told her that as we had guns in the house, she needed to take a course and be at least competent with one for safety if nothing else. She'd never even handled a gun before, and had been resisting. Needless to say, her interest sharpened a bit after that.
It turned out she quite enjoys shooting, and now has her own revolver.
Men in Switzerland are required to own and maintain their militia weapon, but there are restrictions on what they can do with them.
I'm absolutely convinced that a large proportion of gun nuts have underlying psychological issues. They live their whole lives thinking of events like home invasions which are very unlikely ever to happen, especially in the all-white neighborhoods where many of them live.
They also have fantasies of an armed populace resisting the government. That kind of thing is just symbolic, though. Randy Weaver, the Montana militia, and David Koresh were sitting ducks, militarily speaking. They survived as long as they did because of the rule of law and because Koresh and Weaver were hiding behind children. In an actual state of civil war, they all could have been wiped out by one soldier with a shoulder-mounted missile. Their weaponry was a joke.
In an actual civil war the most important question by far is which way the military goes. The funky homemade militias are jokes, theough they will be able to terrorize their neighbors.
I understand what you are saying, but in my opinion you are being a little extreme.
Here is my theory - people enjoy exercising power over their enviroment and especially power at a distance. For example, it is fun to knock over a tower of blocks, and even more fun to roll a bolling ball and watch the pins fly.
In target shooting the gun is not about killing or practicing killing it is about exercising power at a distance.
Certainly for some gun nuts the thrill is about killing or imagining killing but not for all gun owners.
I have no data to back up my assertions but this seems right to me.
why get a gun - why not just get a pepper spray - something incapacitating but usually non-fatal - if you want self-defense?
the standard liberal position is still "outlaw automatic weapons and handguns, which have no functional purpose other than to murder a human being; hunting rifles are okay."
really. guns at shooting ranges is fine, i'd be curious to do it myself, but what is the need to own your own gun?
it is a personal policy of mine to cut off all interpersonal contact with anyone who i learn owns a gun (other than a hunting rifle). i had a handgun pointed at me once and have no need to ever relive that situation, or meet people who enjoy the fantasy of playing God.
Wow. Here's how I know none of you are bonafide gun nuts: Not one person has mentioned New Orleans.
When social order breaks down, the government will not be there to protect you. If you are unarmed, you will depend entirely on the mercy of those who are. You will need to rely on yourself and your family.
Learning to shoot is potentially as useful as learning to turn a puddle into potable water. It's like learning first aid.
Lay in a few weeks of food for you and your loved ones. You might need to hole up for a while. And you might need to defend that hole.
(And all of this is to say nothing of what happens when the police mistakenly kick in your door while executing a no-knock warrant on the wrong address-- a situation in which more than one person has defended himself with a gun.)
The Swiss have a mandatory national defense army. All men serve for two years at around 18 or 19, and then do regular service stints for some years after that. (As far as I can tell, the Swiss defense strategy remains essentially unchanged over the centuries: pull down the mountain passes and defend from above.) Since almost all men have army-issued arms, the guns would seem to be pretty damned controlled, though.
They also have fantasies of an armed populace resisting the government. That kind of thing is just symbolic, though. Randy Weaver, the Montana militia, and David Koresh were sitting ducks, militarily speaking. They survived as long as they did because of the rule of law and because Koresh and Weaver were hiding behind children. In an actual state of civil war, they all could have been wiped out by one soldier with a shoulder-mounted missile. Their weaponry was a joke.
In an actual civil war the most important question by far is which way the military goes. The funky homemade militias are jokes, theough they will be able to terrorize their neighbors.
(And all of this is to say nothing of what happens when the police mistakenly kick in your door while executing a no-knock warrant on the wrong address-- a situation in which more than one person has defended himself with a gun.)
In the most recent such case of which I have read, the person in question is now (unjustly) sitting in jail awaiting execution -- which makes this seems to me like an unconvincing argument in favor of keeping a gun in your home.
Weren't you following the news? All the crazy violence that was supposed to have happened didn't. Who in New Orleans was better off because they had a gun (links to news stories would be appreciated)?
(And all of this is to say nothing of what happens when the police mistakenly kick in your door while executing a no-knock warrant on the wrong address-- a situation in which more than one person has defended himself with a gun.)
And this is just nitwitted. Oppressive and awful as such no-knock warrants often are, there's pretty much no situation where shooting a cop is going to leave you better off, or where pointing a gun at a cop makes him less likely to shoot you. Google "Cory Maye" for how this one plays out in practice.
LB, I agree about the Cory Maye point, but I think we ought not to call the newbie's points "nitwitted" -- keep that kind of language among the regulars.
#115: If you have a kid in the house, the gun is way more dangerous to the kid than the risk of someone breaking in, in the vast majority of cases. If you keep a gun locked up so that the kid is safe from it, it's even *less* useful in a defense situation.
Install a fire ladder in the upstairs bedroom.
#118: I'm being a bit polemical, as is my wont. But I'm not saying that people like guns *because* guns kill; I'm saying that the function of a gun, as opposed to, say, a water pistil, or a nerf gun, or a bow and arrow, or any other thing with which you can shoot targets, is manifestly to kill. Target shooting is just an interesting alternate use of the thing. It's not target shooting, or even violent fantasies, that I have a problem with: it's the fact that a gun is a lethal weapon with no other real functional use (unlike, say, a car). I don't think that the fun of target shooting with a gun is important enough to society to justify having guns lying around.
#120: Actually the "New Orleans descended into lawlessness" thing has been pretty much shown to be myth. The dangerous lawlessness was on the side of the authorities (who had guns), not so much on the side of the people (who were mostly just trying to survive). If anything, New Orleans is evidence *against* the pro-gun argument.
Periodically I get an unsolicited phillipic from one of my pro-gun colleagues about how we all need guns to fight off the gummint. They have no inkling just how alarming that makes them sound. I'm convinced that the NRA and its members actually, by this means, provide the main impetus for gun control in America.
Yes, gswift, NYC is actually safer than other large cities.
Of course, since guns can easily be smuggled into NYC from places where they are legal, the situation is not as good as it might be. But even so, the NYC police have leverage on armed criminals even before they do anything.
John Emerson said: Gun nuts have this saying, "An armed society is a polite society". And yeah, Somalis are wonderfully polite.
This really gets at the heart of the issue for me. It always sounds nice to talk about the gun as self-defense in the abstract, but in any real life situation where social order and the protections of the state break down enough to make it necessary, an organized militia or mafia will invariably spring up and will always outgun you. And you can be pretty much guaranteed that they're not going to arm themselves purely for purposes of "self-defense."
129: While in general I agree with you about kindness to strangers, my respect for my fellow man requires that I point out when someone else's grasp of publically available facts (rather than the conclusions to be drawn from such facts) is that far off.
I mean, Brutal Hugger -- I'm sure you're a lovely person with all sorts of illuminating perspective on things; it's just the two factual issues you opened with seemed severely loopy. Feel free to call me names in return if you've got some basis for thinking I'm wrong.
I do know the difference beteen "pistil" and "pistol," by the way.
The "there's no point in making guns illegal, because then only criminals will own guns" argument *is* nitwitted. Talk about your race-to-the-bottom arguments.
why get a gun - why not just get a pepper spray - something incapacitating but usually non-fatal - if you want self-defense?
Because it isn't very hard to shrug off pepper spray. Learning how is standard training for a lot of law enforcment personell. It's common for them to have to learn how to take a direct blast from pepper spray, then turn, draw their weapon, and hit a target.
the standard liberal position is still "outlaw automatic weapons and handguns, which have no functional purpose other than to murder a human being; hunting rifles are okay."
If you're in your house when someone forcibly enters and is coming at you, using a handgun isn't going to feel much like murder.
it is a personal policy of mine to cut off all interpersonal contact with anyone who i learn owns a gun (other than a hunting rifle). i had a handgun pointed at me once
Oh Jesus. And if you'd been threatened with a knife? Would you be swearing off the company of people who own pointy objects?
really. guns at shooting ranges is fine, i'd be curious to do it myself, but what is the need to own your own gun?
For the same reason many bowlers or golfers own their own equipment - in may be cheaper in the long run and customized to suit your personal preferences or abilities.
Projecting power at a distance are part of the appeal of bowling, golf, and target shooting.
Other sports may have similar appeal, but they also contain the appeal of exercising power over one's own body and over other people.
Re the "civilian gun ownership is useless against a mdoern army" argument: private ownership of automatic weapons was legal and basically universal under Saddam Hussein. So gun ownership of a much more serious kind than even imagined by the NRAers isn't even an effective deterrent against repressive government, let alone a plausible means of resistance.
In target shooting the gun is not about killing or practicing killing it is about exercising power at a distance.
All of my sisters and I were on our high school rifle team. One of them captained it and led the team to a regional championship.
My sisters and I are not the sort of person one would expect to find when one thinks 'sport shooter'; fairly liberal (excepting one), petite, they're cute, etc. And trust me, none of this was going on while we thought in the back of our minds how well we'd do if the Gummint came chasing us down or about how we'd have to shoot terrorists. It's really about the mental control it requires to put holes in a piece of paper perfectly.
Maybe we're the freakish exceptions where knowing that my dad kept a gun in the house never made any of us feel we needed to show off with it.
Part of the urban/rural divide on guns is, I imagine, related to what kind of response and protection we expect from the government/police. In less densely populated areas, where the police (or neighbors) might be ten or even twenty minutes away, it makes a lot more sense to have a gun. In a city, you crawl out the window (or just scream) and somebody is there (we hope) to call the police or give you some protection.
w/o guns, rural america would be overrun by clay pigeons. chaos.
do people really believe that whole "2nd amd = freedom from tyranny" thing? i mean, other than instapundit and wayne lapierre? you'd need an awful lot of "terminal effectiveness" to take out that B-1 bomber, methinks.
I mean, it's not like knives have scads of non-lethal uses.
Also, it's not like guns would be considered for any reason at all to be more threatening. You know, like giving you lower odds of being able to run away successfully as a defense?
The "there's no point in making guns illegal, because then only criminals will own guns" argument *is* nitwitted. Talk about your race-to-the-bottom arguments.
Well, yes and no. Two Canadian friends of mine were lamenting that Toronto's recent stricter gun control hadn't worked in part because guns were easy to smuggle in from the U.S. I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence. NYC hasn't become less violent because of handgun laws, last I checked, because it's easy to get them from well, the rest of NY state if you're inclined.
With perfect, severe enforcement, perhaps this sort of smuggling could be stopped. But that's going to be hard in a relatively open nation.
I don't think that the fun of target shooting with a gun is important enough to society to justify having guns lying around.
Well, as I've been saying a lot lately, it depends. I'm not real big on government denying us our pleasures. I think the burden of proof should be on the government to demonstrate a very good reason for the prohibition.
In urban areas where population density is higher there may be a bigger reason then in rural areas. Even in that case I'd lobby for allowing private ownership of firearms which are kept in locked cabinets at the firing range. You'd have a problem, though, if the owner wanted to transport the gun to some other legitimate location such as another firing range or competition.
really? you do? i thought that was just being extra-snarky.
do you mean that in a more psychological way, like gun owners being more vigilant, or tyranny's agents will be less likely to kill people who resist? or do you mean in the red dawn sort of way?
Because it isn't very hard to shrug off pepper spray. Learning how is standard training for a lot of law enforcment personell. It's common for them to have to learn how to take a direct blast from pepper spray, then turn, draw their weapon, and hit a target.
ah. i am going to be fighting off the police??
If you're in your house when someone forcibly enters and is coming at you, using a handgun isn't going to feel much like murder.
first of all, i have to agree with previous comments that this has got to be one of the LEAST EFFECTIVE ways to successfully defend yourself, especially in a city.
second of all, it surely would feel like murder. i, like the police, prefer crime be stopped WITHOUT the loss of human life, including the lives of criminals. i have no desire to have the experience of killing someone, particularly when it is unnecessary, and i believe this experience would also affect you much more strongly than you apparently realize.
it is a personal policy of mine to cut off all interpersonal contact with anyone who i learn owns a gun (other than a hunting rifle). i had a handgun pointed at me once
Oh Jesus. And if you'd been threatened with a knife? Would you be swearing off the company of people who own pointy objects?
Jesus yourself. Handguns have no purpose other than to wound or kill a human being. That's why they are built the way they are. That makes them different from knives, as well as a host of other things.
I don't own a gun because I cannot imagine being able to shoot a mugger successfully, and that's probably what I'd need it for here. (He can take the $20 I probably have on me. His life ain't worth that.) In a city, two blocks away from the police station, I'm probably okay without it given the risks & responsibilities of carrying.
Out in a rural, isolated area? Not just climbing out the window and hoping I can walk three miles to the neighbors in time.
I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence.
Are you kidding?
No, I'm not; to clarify I'm not talking compared to the U.S., but Britain post-recent law change vs. pre-law change. If you have stats I'm open to being convinced, but the military historian type I've talked to says that it's been less than effective in ridding the streets of guns.
It's really about the mental control it requires to put holes in a piece of paper perfectly.
Yes, but I still maintain it is about projecting power, too. The first time I ever knocked over a can with my low powered BB gun I thought 'Cool!'
I don't think it serves anyone's purpose to deny that thrill. We need to acknowledge it and then discuss it in the context of a civilized society, and a big part of my reasoning is along the lines of 'if it doesn't hurt other people or animals or the shared environment' then it should be allowed.
The Dakotas and Vermont are at the bottom, NY is in the middle. The worst are mostly western and southern, plus Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, and DC. The correlation with gun ownership is probably non-existent.
tyranny's agents will be less likely to kill people who resist?
Pretty much that. I figure the government is somewhat less likely to send the troops into the streets if there's a chance that there'll be armed resistance. But, really, everything post 9/11 has made me think that tyranny doesn't come from "the government" so much as from our fellow citizens (most of whom, in this particular tyrannical incarnation, are also in favor of gun ownership, ironically enough). So, I'm no longer so very convinced. I'm still buying several if I move to Idaho, however.
Handguns have no purpose other than to wound or kill a human being.
If you would have said 'few' I would have agreed with you but making a blanket statement that is easily rebutted does your cause no good.
Here is one other purpose for handguns - target shooting. Here is another - collectibles. And one more - as a symbol of adulthood. And one more - to impress your friends.
I agree that most people purchase handguns for the purpose (God forbid) of wounding or killing humans but please do not say 'all.' It weakens your case.
Britain post-recent law change vs. pre-law change.
Here you just know more about the facts than I do, but weren't there awfully strict laws before any recent change? If I'm right, all you're saying is that an incremental tightening of tight laws doesn't improve matters much.
Canada's an interesting outlier. Lots of guns, especially in the praire/western provinces and nowhere near the level of gun violence. Given that we're unlikely to reach Japan-like levels of handgun ownership, if we have to emulate someone, I'd like to see what Canada's doing.
And trust me, none of this was going on while we thought in the back of our minds how well we'd do if the Gummint came chasing us down or about how we'd have to shoot terrorists. It's really about the mental control it requires to put holes in a piece of paper perfectly.
Maybe we're the freakish exceptions where knowing that my dad kept a gun in the house never made any of us feel we needed to show off with it.
That's exactly right I grew up in Los Angeles, and my Dad, while not really a gun nut, owned a couple, and I learned to shoot quite young. With me, my siblings, and my friends who also were familiar with guns, taking a gun out and playing with it seemed dangerous and stupid rather than exciting.
A couple of kids I went to elementary and jr. high with had a different experience. They found one of the dad's .380 automatics laying around. Neither of them knew how to tell if it was loaded, or proper handling, or anything. They started tossing it back and forth, pointing it at each other, etc., and Jaime, my friend, accidentally shot the other kid in the forehead. He's a vegetable now.
But that kind of behaviour would have been inconceivable in my family.
But, really, everything post 9/11 has made me think that tyranny doesn't come from "the government" so much as from our fellow citizens (most of whom, in this particular tyrannical incarnation, are also in favor of gun ownership, ironically enough). So, I'm no longer so very convinced. I'm still buying several if I move to Idaho, however.
Yes, this. It's interesting; the people most worried about tyrannical government (to the point of arming themselves to the teeth) have the least to fear, since the guns are not likely to be turned on them, but on me. Like Emerson said, it depends on which way the army goes, and I have no illusions about the army fighting for my side. I'd likely be someone who's hunted down.
Despite what social scientists wish, causes are pretty hard to find in social life. So if we're going to wait until we have an ironclad proof that Britain's and New York's historically-strict gun control laws have something to do with their relatively low crime rates, we'll wait forever.
If I were a New York policeman, I'd be glad I had that tool. New York is usually used in this argument because it existed in peoples feverish TV-infested minds as a pesthouse of sin and crime, but actually it isn't, granted that it IS a city, and not North Dakota.
In many or most rural areas the inaccessibility of the police, if it's a fact at all, is made up for by a tighter community, no anonymity, and often by less violence in general. "Rural" usually means small-town; only about 5% of the population lives away from all concentration of population.
gswift, I don't know what to do about such cases. Playing around with a gun is like juggling kitchen knives; so foreign I don't even know how to address it.
Require mandatory gun ownership responsibility? Sounds like a start to me, but what if (say) LB's non-gun-owning-family has a kid who comes over to play with your kid, and while your kid is responsible, LB's kid just thinks its cool and fun and has no idea. Not the kid's fault or LB's, but it's still a problem waiting to happen.
i can sort of see that point, but i've never been much persuaded. i think the likelihood of armed resistance makes it more likely the troops get sent out. see eg ruby ridge.
i'm interested in your increasing doubt - to me, the emerging meme of "whiny ass titty babies", or whatever subtle phrasing atrios et all are using, is possibly very powerful, as all of these former small-gov, libertarian, etc types are suddenly expecting gov to protect us all, in a very different sense than traditional national defense. if gov suddenly tossed the 2nd amd out the window w/ the 4th, would that get people more concerned?
also: idaho, bastion of freedom! i hear coeur d'alene is very welcoming to people of color.
My opinion now is that gun ownership per se has little or no effect on crime one way or another, but that it can make an otherwise-bad social situation worse. But for an individual, given a already-bad personal situation, it might be a good choice. I don't see guns as a social solution, but if there's no social solution, it can be a personal solution. But I don't see guns as intrinsically a problem either, if there aren't other problems. (Except the way that motorcycles are problems -- fun but dangerous).
My antipathy to some of the gun nuts makes me seem more anti-gun than I am.
I think the burden of proof should be on the government to demonstrate a very good reason for the prohibition.
Sure. And the evidence is there: gun ownership is dangerous, you're more likely to be shot by your own gun, blah blah blah.
Tripp, it is a fact that guns, unlike most other things that are also fatal, are for killing. That's why, as someone else said, they're built the way they are. The other purposes you offer as reasons for them are alternate uses, sure, but they aren't the primary use, and every one of them could be achieved using something that isn't fatal. I did *not* say that "all people buy guns to kill other people." I said that guns, as objects, are built for killing. It doesn't weaken my case to state a fact.
haven't read the thread yet, but i must chime in. if you want a gun for home defense, get yourself a fucking shotgun. looks scary, sounds scary, you don't have to hardly aim it, what could be better?
Speaking strictly within the realm of 'killing,' I think it is important to make a distinction between killing people and killing animals, and even between which animals are killed.
Also, a distinction needs to be made between handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Without that distinction "All guns should be outlawed' vs "All guns should be allowed' is extremely polarized. Either position leaves me thinking the proponent is either uninformed or radical.
What other things commonly found in the house can accidently kill people suddenly if a small mistake is made?
Medicines, lye, gasoline (with matches), automobiles, electricity, bathtubs. Medicines, automobiles, and electricity are regulated and licensed. I think that there are safety requirements for gasoline containers. Lye and bathtubs, less so.
The gun nut claim is that abolition and prohibition are the issue, but in reality it's regulation and licensing.
I said that guns, as objects, are built for killing.
You claim this for every single gun that is currently manufactured?!
I'm having a hard time believing you would make such a statement. I myself mentioned the underpowered BB gun I had as a child. It was a gun. It was not made for killing. It couldn't even be used very effectively for killing unless somebody tied down a mouse and you squashed him with it.
Tripp, I didn't say "killing people." I said "killing."
And I also didn't say "all guns should be outlawed." I think that, on the whole, we'd be better off if handguns were outlawed, certainly, and automatic guns, and military-type guns. You're implying that I haven't taken a nuanced position when I have taken pains to do so, and been pretty specific about what I have and haven't said. I'm not weakening my argument; you're weakening it by attributing to me ideas I neither have nor have articulated.
(Sorry if I sound stiff--I'm not ticked off, just being precise and rushing a bit.)
Ladders, stairways, flammables such as propane and natural gas, plastic bags, other poisons such as insecticides, fireworks, flash paper and flash powder (which I have as an amateur magician).
But I do agree that licensing and regulation are not the same as prohibition, there is not necessarily a slippery slope leading from one to to theother, and it is reasonable to talk about licensing and regulation.
The point is that if someone is enraged, or even particularly determined, that pepper spray isn't the deterrent you think it is.
first of all, i have to agree with previous comments that this has got to be one of the LEAST EFFECTIVE ways to successfully defend yourself, especially in a city.
second of all, it surely would feel like murder. i, like the police, prefer crime be stopped WITHOUT the loss of human life, including the lives of criminals. i have no desire to have the experience of killing someone, particularly when it is unnecessary, and i believe this experience would also affect you much more strongly than you apparently realize.
I'm not advocating whipping a gun out at the first sign of danger, but sometimes you get backed into a corner and there's not a lot of options. It would be nice if every time there was the option to run away, or just shout for help, or have enough time to run a fucking ladder out the window and put your baby in a backpack to take along, but that's not reality.
It sounds like precious few of you have experienced much violence first hand. Defending yourself (when you can't run away) is especially difficult for women, who are certainly going to be facing someone who is physically bigger and stronger. What the hell are they supposed to do if they have someone enter their residence and escape isn't an option? Calling the police is a good first step, but when the violent threatening ex-boyfriend has just broken in, the fifteen minutes it's going to take the police to arrive are an eternity.
I have no desire to experience killing someone either, but people who break into other peoples homes should accept getting shot as one of the perils of the venture.
"Guns as objects." I might more accurately have said "guns as a class" or something. Again, "not every single gun." Obviously people build guns that aren't intended to kill--toy guns, water guns, bb guns, and so on and so on and so on. You're really splitting hairs.
Having watched this debate for years, though, I've found that providing a single counter argument to a blanket statement is used very effectively in debates.
I think there should be regulation of firearms but making an easily refuted blanket statement does not help when making our case. The gun nuts will simply tell people 'they want to take all your guns' and now the opposition includes a whole bunch of people who might otherwse be on our side.
Ladders and stairwells are hardly dispensible in a house, however; they're dangerous because physical space can be dangerous. Likewise, gas is used for the necessary purpose of heating, and is regulated. Plastic bags is one of several things dangerous mostly for infants. Flash powder is not common in households, except yours (not that there's anything wrong with that). Fireworks are often prohibited.
Come on, people, it can't be that hard to have a reasonable discussion about this. The fact is, a lot of the factors that make having/not having a gun reasonable are contingent and logistical. How far are the police? What's the layout of your house? Where do you plan to keep a gun? Loaded or not? Kids in the house, or not? Are you coordinated, or clutzy? For some people, it'll make sense. For others, not. No?
Yeah, gswift, since mmf! is a woman who has mentioned having a handgun pointed at her, I think the "you haven't experienced much violence firsthand" move is misguided against her.
sometimes you get backed into a corner and there's not a lot of options . . . women, who are certainly going to be facing someone who is physically bigger and stronger
What? I'm a woman. I've never faced someone who is physically bigger and stronger who was threatening me, at least not in a situation where shooting them was my only option. I think the presumption that it's normal and to be expected that one will be in such a situation is weird.
Admittedly, there are times when folks are in special situations--e.g., the violent ex-husband--when owning a gun and knowing how to use it might be a damn good idea. But one of the major reasons that's so is because, duh, *the violent ex-husband might own a gun.* The violence is a problem, but guns aren't really a great solution, inasmuch as they merely make the problem bigger.
Tripp, okay. I will explicitly remove bb guns, water pistols, and other guns that are *designed not to be fatal* from the discussion. I will also preemptively remove toy cars from any future discussions about gas consumption, transportation, or highway building....
#191: I'm going to play the parent card and say that the problem with the "I don't have kids in the house" argument is that that doesn't mean kids aren't around, or might not be sometimes.
I think that, on the whole, we'd be better off if handguns were outlawed, certainly, and automatic guns, and military-type guns.
I'm more sympathetic to the full auto bans. I know you detest the whole, "if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns" argument, but in a country like the U.S. where we already have literally hundreds of millions of guns, a handgun ban won't impact criminal use as much as it will simply make it impossible for law abiding citizens to acquire one.
Attempts to regulate "military-type guns" is kind of a peeve of mine. First, advocates of regulating "military style" or "assault weapons" almost invariably have so little knowledge that the attempts to regulate them don't accomplish much besides pissing off collectors. It's often the same people who get us bizarre regulations like the one in the Brady Bill that limits the capacity of new magazines to 10. Because who hasn't had a gun pointed at them and thought, "Thank God he's only got 10 rounds in that thing"
Secondly, military style weapons are so infrequently used in crimes that regulating them has little to no real effect.
In my view, the rationale behind the Second Amendment is no longer viable in today's society. We do not live in 18th century America, and the vast majority of us are not confronted with the same threats as our ancestors.
That being said, I don't think the Second Amendment is going anywhere. However, I would like to see the "right" of gun ownership more thoroughy tempered by one or more of the following: high license fees (perhaps $2,000+ per year); titles for guns (similar to the system used for motor vehicles); mandatory personal liability insurance for gun owners; gun taxes; mandatory annual gun safety courses; and strict criminal & civil liability for any owner of a firearm- whether the owner actually uses the gun or not. No one says you can't have a gun, but you should have take personal/legal/financial responsibility for it.
Oh! The Second Amendment! I keep meaning to bring that up.
There are arguments that the second amendment was born out of rhetoric about "defending oneself against the government" that was actually just cover for "wanting to kill Indians."
I mean, if one wants to be a strict constructionist...
From what I know -- not a lot -- I also agree with 198. I might prefer if our gun ownership situation was more like Britain's, but it's not, and passing British gun laws won't make it so. That's why I'm for local control, or licensing and regulations.
Ogged's pretty much got the balance of questions/risks/concerns right in 191. And I think we'd all be safer if we never had handguns in this country, but given that they're here, the costs of securing all handguns, tracking them all, closing the borders effectively is so high, and so likely to be done incompetently, that we're better off with more regulation aimed at safety and oversight.
Not sure about $2000 licensing fees though. Yearly? What about collectors? $100,000 a year to maintain a collection of antique pistols? (This isn't a strawman; my uncle's got a collection of Civil War - WWII rifles and handguns.) It also looks like an excuse for cops to raid poor neighborhoods to me. But I think a yearly safety refresher is a good idea.
Perhaps hard to get through though; lots of the gun nuts Emerson don't want the government knowing who has the guns.
Shooting Indians' rationale or not, the text is there in the bill of rights. We've taken 'freedom of the press' to include private individuals; I'm not opposed to a reading of the second amendment that does the same. (Though I think there's room for plenty of common-sense regulation before it becomes infringement.)
in a country like the U.S. where we already have literally hundreds of millions of guns, a handgun ban won't impact criminal use as much as it will simply make it impossible for law abiding citizens to acquire one.
Now, see, this is an argument I am perfectly willing to entertain, and may even decide I agree with.
It's often the same people who get us bizarre regulations like the one in the Brady Bill that limits the capacity of new magazines to 10. Because who hasn't had a gun pointed at them and thought, "Thank God he's only got 10 rounds in that thing"
Straw man. Please show me a single advocate of the provision who argued for it on the basis of an assailant shooting at just one person.
In fact, the magazine-size limit was imposed in the context of a number of mass-casualty shootings.
Even I, who thought the military-style weapon ban was poorly thought out, believed that the magazine-size limit was reasonable.
191: All true, but as a matter of my sense of the facts, I'd say there are very few people for whom the answers to those questions net out to "A gun in my house will make me safer."
How far are the police?
As Emerson points out, most people live in populous regions; that's why they call them populous. For most people, help is pretty close.
Are you coordinated, or clutzy?
And willing to devote a reasonable amount of time and training in picking up a new skill.
One you didn't ask, but I will:
What's your baseline risk of encountering violent crime?
For most people, this is quite low. There's not all that much violent crime, and what there is is heavily concentrated by class. What gswift said: "It sounds like precious few of you have experienced much violence first hand," while it sounded like a put-down, is pretty much accurate. While his wife was around during a burglary precisely calculated to allow for sensible gun use, most people aren't. And a complicating factor here is that some of the factors that place you at greater risk of being a victim of violent crime are not reasons to encourage gun ownership, e.g., being a violent criminal oneself.
Now, there are some people for whom the baseline risk is high: jewelers, or other people known to be in possession of serious valuables; people against whom credible threats have been made; I'm sure there are other categories I haven't thought of. But most people don't fall into those categories.
Do you have kids?
Note that this increases the cost (accidental risk to kids) of having a gun, and decreases the benefits (the methods you're going to use to keep your gun safe from your kids -- locked, unloaded, in a box -- are going to make it more difficult to use for home defense.
It's not that no one's better off with a gun for self defense -- I just have a hard time believing that many people are.
#203: Oh, I agree that it's in the Bill of Rights. I'm just saying that the usual argument, that it's there to protect citizens against tyranny, not only doesn't hold water in present circumstances, but may well never have held water. And that using that language might be really problematic.
Try this: it sounds to me like you haven't been blown in awhile.
Oh relaz. I'm doing just fine in that department.
193
Yeah, gswift, since mmf! is a woman who has mentioned having a handgun pointed at her, I think the "you haven't experienced much violence firsthand" move is misguided against her.
Possibly. But in my experience, people who take the "I'll just run away" and "I couldn't bring myself to kill someone" largely haven't experienced much violence. I'm glad it's uncommon. But I think because so few people have experienced a violent attack firsthand, it's easy to be a bit naive about your options.
One could live in a very populous region, but in a neighborhood where police response time tended to be slower, because the majority of the residents were poor and/or not white. Not to disagree with LB, just pointing it out.
I suppose a $2,000 annual fee for antique guns would be excessive. Perhaps some distinction could be drawn between antique/collectable guns and modern guns. After all, I don't think many people would invest in flint-locks for self defense (or to commit crimes) just to avoid higher fees.
Dr. B, I agree it is always amusing how Originalists (Scalia et. al.) often ignore inconvenient historical facts. Sometimes ideas that made sense in a world lit by fire do not play well today.
However, I would like to see the "right" of gun ownership more thoroughy tempered by one or more of the following: high license fees (perhaps $2,000+ per year)
What, only rich people have the right to shoot muggers and burglars and crazy-stalker-exes? If there is any argument at all to be made for gun ownership it's the need for self-defense, and in general poor people are more exposed to danger than the well-off.
Hmmm. The Glock Model 38 or the Yamaha Silent Violin? So hard to decide! Do I want to destroy my neighbors, or spare them?
in my experience, people who take the "I'll just run away" and "I couldn't bring myself to kill someone" largely haven't experienced much violence
You say that as if it's a foregone conclusion that this makes those people wrong. But one might also point out, for instance, that children who haven't experienced violence are less likely to *be* violent. So maybe the people who take those positions are better than people who, having been trained by violence to see violence as an easily-defaulted-to-position, are more willing to consider it.
Straw man. Please show me a single advocate of the provision who argued for it on the basis of an assailant shooting at just one person.
In fact, the magazine-size limit was imposed in the context of a number of mass-casualty shootings.
You make it sound like mass casualty shootings are some kind of weekly occurence. I frequent the gun shows and shops, and pre ban high capacity mags are more expensive now, but can be had pretty much everywhere. If someone has planned to execute a mass shooting, and has gone to the expense of acquiring weapons that take high capacity mags, he's going to be deterred by what? The couple hundred extra in mag costs?
While Genovese's neighbors were vilified by the article, in truth the idea of "38 onlookers who did nothing" is a misleading conception. The article begins:
For more than half an hour thirty-eight respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman in three separate attacks in Kew Gardens.
This lead is dramatic and factually inaccurate. None of the witnesses observed the attacks in their entirety. Because of the layout of the complex and the fact that each attack took place in a different location as Genovese attempted to flee her attacker, it would have been physically impossible for a witness to have seen the entire attack. Most only heard portions of the incident without realizing its seriousness, a few saw only small portions of the initial assault, and no witnesses directly saw the final rape and attack in an exterior hallway which resulted in Genovese's death.
LB, I know how the link begins. But many neighbors witnessed part of the attack and did not intervene, not because they were bad people, but because of bystander effect/pluralistic ignorance. I linked to KG because she's the most famous example of neighbors not helping out, but I'm sure there are others. "The neighbors will help," is a pretty unreliable self-defense strategy.
B, I know polemical is your thing and all, but it's worth remembering that a large segment of the guns-as-fetish-objects crowd really grooves on finding out-of-touch liberals who just don't get the rural way of life, etc., etc., to validate their feelings of persecution and need to be well-armed. I tend to think that backing away from the gun control wars is not only good politics but good policy, in that pursuing gun control legislation creates more scary freaks than it disarms.
What? I'm a woman. I've never faced someone who is physically bigger and stronger who was threatening me, at least not in a situation where shooting them was my only option. I think the presumption that it's normal and to be expected that one will be in such a situation is weird.
It's certainly not to be expected, and most people in the U.S. won't experience it. What's normal is that if you're attacked as a woman, your attacker is going to be bigger and stronger. It's just a consequence of violent crimes being overwhelmingly committed by males in the 18-40 range.
You make it sound like mass casualty shootings are some kind of weekly occurence.
No amount of quibbling about the actual frequency of mass-casualty shootings (which took a curious dip during the magazine limit days) excuses substituing a fake argument for the ban for the real one.
I frequent the gun shows and shops, and pre ban high capacity mags are more expensive now, but can be had pretty much everywhere.
Now I wonder if you are a fake gun nut. There is no need to buy pre-ban high-capacity magazines. The provision expired more than a year ago. I happen to read some gun and hunting magazines; if you really are into the gun culture you couldn't have missed all the hoopla about the new no-longer-limited magazines when the ban ended.
DaveL, I think Bitch, Ph. D. is already perfectly situated to serve as a straw (wo)man for various right-wing ideologues. It would be kind of disappointing and not, I think, particularly useful, for her to back down on this issue out of dplomatic considerations.
I see your point. However, I don't think $2,000 is cost prohibitive (keep in mind that figure is arbitrary). In my experience, if someone wants something bad enough, they will find a way to get it.
In truth, we expect "poor people" to pay for all kinds of things they need, many of which are more important than gun ownership- auto & health insurance; various license fees; rent; taxes; transportation etc. Why should we keep guns cheap and not health insurance?
And Tia, my 227 works great -- better, even -- if you substitute "failed to act out of indifference" for "should have acted". IOW 227 gets it exactly right.
"We've taken 'freedom of the press' to include private individuals"
As well we should. Ben Franklin, himself, the individual, owned a printing press, and printed an awful lot of political (as well as non-political) content. His right to use in precisely that way it was being protected. The relationship between the 1st Amendment in 1787 and in 2006 is much closer than that of the 2nd Amendment across that timespan.
That said, obviously only cretins really think that we can run our current society on simplistic readings of a hand-written, 220 year old document. It just so happens that, as of next week, 3 of those cretins will be on the Supreme Court.
#230, 236: I may be easily turned into a straw woman, but it isn't *my* responsibility to preempt that; I mean, pretty much any woman with strong opinions is easily turned into a straw woman. And in fact, come on: if you listen to me with a halfway charitable ear towards trying to understand my point, it is in fact pretty nuanced and reasonable. To wit: I will freely admit that I long ago gave up worrying overmuch about people who don't try in good faith to understand what I'm saying.
#233: Sure, stronger and bigger, maybe. Although I do think that the strength / size differential between men and women is exaggerated in our minds, much as the danger of violent crime is. But I don't agree that the only way to fight off or escape someone who is stronger or bigger is to use lethal force. For instance, aggression counts for a lot: I have made much bigger men quail, simply by getting in their face about it. Kind of the way a dachsund can scare off a doberman. This is, of course, a big part of the logic behind self-defense classes.
pursuing gun control legislation creates more scary freaks than it disarms.
I think the more important causality runs the other way. Scary pro-gun folks create more gun control advocates. Like our gswift. He's probably responsible for several new chapters of Handgun Control, Inc.
You say that as if it's a foregone conclusion that this makes those people wrong. But one might also point out, for instance, that children who haven't experienced violence are less likely to *be* violent. So maybe the people who take those positions are better than people who, having been trained by violence to see violence as an easily-defaulted-to-position, are more willing to consider it.
They're not wrong in the sense that avoidance is the best option. People are can be ridiculously confrontational, and you never know who you're tangling with. It's best to just walk away, give the mugger your wallet, etc. But some seem to think they're always going to have that option, and I think they're unrealistic in thinking they'll always have that degree of control over the situation
Jeremy in 236: I'm not suggesting B ought to change (God forbid!!), but after some of the earlier debate, her 204 kind of hit me as encapsulating part of why gun control politics are such a mess.
#219: Granted. But, on balance, I'll take that chance because I think that the risks of having a gun around are way greater than the risk that I'll be in a life or death situation where it'll come in handy. And I think that this holds true for the vast majority of American gun owners, whether or not they wish to acknowledge or realize it.
#248: I'm confused. Why? If anything my #248 was the *opposite* of what might be expected from the feminist/liberal strawwoman, no?
(I'll have to read your answer much later, as I must now run to a goddamn Friday afternoon meeting, for which I can't blame anyone but my own goddamn self.)
whur whur whur whur whur... rurrr.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:14 PM
Being unlikely to need something is not, by itself, a reason to forego it. I just paid my homeowner's insurance bill, although I figure that the odds I'll ever make a claim are nearly negligable. But not quite negligable.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:20 PM
am I wrong that the incidence of successful self-defense with a handgun is very low?
My memory, without a source, is that the percentage of police who fire their guns in the line of duty in their careers is weirdly low, like only a couple of percent. Which would suggest that you're right, that the odds of successfully defending yourself with a handgun are pretty small.
(Unless civilization has collapsed. In which case Bambi is going DOWN!!)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:21 PM
MHS, I didn't say anything about foregoing.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:23 PM
I will never understand all these people who get hard-ons fondling their guns. Ugh. There are certainly self-defense situations where it would be useful to have a gun. However, if you have a gun in the house it's much more likely to be used to kill a member of the household, e.g. husband and wife get in argument and one blows the other away (or father and son -- see "Gaye, Marvin"); depressed family member commits suicide with gun (I'd probably be dead now if I'd ever lived in a household with a gun -- of course some would consider that as an argument in favor of guns); or kid playing with gun kills self or sibling.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:24 PM
Caliber matters when one really wants to stop someone who is just about to do something, such as pull out his/her own gun, or reach you with that cleaver. A person can keep going, and going, and going even after being hit several times with a .22, unless the shooter gets very lucky.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:25 PM
2: "negligible"
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:25 PM
A person can keep going, and going, and going even after being hit several times with a .22, unless the shooter gets very lucky
Is this true? I've certainly heard it, but other than those involving people on PCP, I've never head of actual instances.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:27 PM
I'm still commenting, aren't I?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:28 PM
You too? What is wrong with us all?
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:28 PM
MHS, I didn't say anything about foregoing.
My apologies. I misread you. I thought you were talking about whether there were rational reasons for carrying a gun for self-defense, alluding to the whole calculus of risk thing.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:29 PM
Yeah, a very determined person *might* be able to keep going after being SHOT, but I kinda doubt that it's very likely.
Probably a handgun wouldn't kill a deer, though, I don't think.
Where's Ash? I bet he could answer the gun question.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:32 PM
How many liberals does it take to answer a gun question...
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:33 PM
What is wrong with us all?
Apparently we all suffer from multiple small-caliber gunshot wounds. Or is the question, why do we all suffer from multiple small-caliber gunshot wounds?
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:34 PM
Ah, a fellow liberal gun nut.
DOJ did some statistics on this 10 years ago or so, and their results seemed to indicate it was relatively safe.
The problem with smaller calibers is that the other guy won't be stopped, it's that he's going to stay in the fight longer. The larger calibers like .45 ACP drop people quick. If your assailant is also armed, if he's capable of continuing the attack for even another 30 seconds, that's a long 30 seconds when someones trying to stab, shoot, or whatever.
If you have the money, I'd recommend taking a look at the HK's as well as the Glocks. The HK's are pricey, but worth it. If you're not going to carry it concealed, HK USP Tacticals are about as good as it gets. If you're going to carry the USP Compact might be a better bet.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:35 PM
Probably a handgun wouldn't kill a deer, though, I don't think.
I spent five years reading Outdoor Life and Field and Stream (Mr. Breath's niece was selling magazine subscriptions as a fundraiser, and I'll read anything. Outdoor Life is actually surprisingly entertaining and well written -- F&S less so.) and people do buy handguns for deer hunting. I think, although I'm not completely sure, that they're a 'put the wounded deer out of its misery' tool, rather than something anyone uses as the primary hunting gun, but they do have some deer-hunting use, IIRC.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:37 PM
8: It's true. A .22 is not a fearsome weapon. The news article has expired, but I linked to a story last May about a guy who shot himself three times in the head and twice in the chest before he gave up and drove ten minutes away and jumped off a bridge. None of the three shots to head managed to penetrate his skull.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:37 PM
and I say all this despite the fact that I actually kinda want a Glock 38
What's the Persian word for "redneck"?
Yeah, a very determined person *might* be able to keep going after being SHOT, but I kinda doubt that it's very likely.
I can't believe it, but I don't doubt it. People who live rough are just nuts.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:39 PM
Thanks, gswift! I have no desire to carry a gun, and if I ever buy one, I probably won't even keep it at home, but at the range or something. Mainly, I don't want to be a knee-jerk guns are gross and evil type.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:41 PM
Every time I am the target of an attempted mugging, I find myself possessed of an uncanny mastery of the martial arts. Whether the mugger has a gun, a knife, a saw (chain or conventional), a cudgel, a broken Miller High Life bottle, or a rolled up Chicago Sun-Times, I wrest the weapon away from him with relative ease. I punch him lightly to stun him, then launch into a horrifying Dragon Upper Cut, followed by a twirling Hurricane Kick!
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:41 PM
Kotsko Maga!
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:41 PM
#8
One of the common complaints with the 9mm issued to the military and a lot of police is that it doesn't drop people quick enough. The .40 Smith round was developed in direct response to this. They were shooting for a round that would pack more punch than a 9mm, but still retain the high clip capacity. A lot of the .45's used to only hold 7 or 8 rounds. That's not such an issue anymore. There's several models of .45's holding 12 or 13 like the Glocks and the HK's.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:41 PM
umm... Read the link here.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:42 PM
I lead such a boringly non-violent life. Wait, I like it like that.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:43 PM
23: umm, I don't think that's the right link.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:44 PM
The link inside the link.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:44 PM
17: thank you, apostropher. I was googling, but the best I'd come up with was a law enforcement officer opining that often moose and caribou walk away from .22 shots.
http://www.anchoragepress.com/archives-2005/flashlightvol14ed6.shtml
So if you're being attacked by a moose or caribou, maybe you need something bigger than a .22. I don't know about elk or deer, but I'm pretty sure that a .22 will drop a charging bunny rabbit in its tracks
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:45 PM
It takes me to a Blogger sign-in page.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:45 PM
Oh... right. Oopsiedaisies.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:45 PM
Huh, if you follow gswift's link to the DOJ stats, there were an average of 82,000 (!) incidents each year in which people used or threatened to use a gun to fend off an attack.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:45 PM
I've never been mugged. Which is to say, my vial of pulverized Kotsko penis has never failed me.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:47 PM
Oh crikey, that story is hilarious, tweedle.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:47 PM
The funnier part was what I had tried to link originally.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:48 PM
Here we go, UPI version of the guys who shot himself five times.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:50 PM
For symmetry's sake, the determination of the time and manner of the death of a king ough to be called his coronertion.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:52 PM
Also queen, m.m.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:55 PM
What I love about the story tweedle links is that it has the best non-denial denial ever.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:55 PM
As someone who, while sneaking into the house late, was nearly shot by her own, usually very careful, rational father I applaud ogged's instinct to keep the piece at the range.
Unfortunately, keeping the piece at the range obviates all the self-defense arguments for owning a gun. Do gun-ranges not have rentals?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 10:56 PM
Do gun-ranges not have rentals?
They surely do. A gun purchase isn't imminent or anything, just something I think about. If I move to Idaho, however, I'll buy several.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:00 PM
#16
People do hunt fairly large game with large bore handguns. Typically they're using something with an 8 or 10 inch barrel so they have a decent accurracy at longer ranges. Smith and Wesson for example puts out this .500 Mag Hunter with a sling and a scope base already mounted.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:00 PM
Oops, 38 was me.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:00 PM
38: I guess not many folks get mugged at a shooting range, huh?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:03 PM
this .500 Mag Hunter
Good grief. I killed two deer just looking at it.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:06 PM
that's what she said.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:09 PM
To be honest, if I were going to go through the bother, doubt, and fear of getting a gun, I wouldn't be buying a mother-of-pearl enameled .22 small enough to holster in my garter, no matter how sexy that might be as a fleeting fantasy. The only time I tried shooting (a rifle at tin cans, with the goal of making us city kids capable of scaring off grizzly bears), I was unequivocably shitty at hitting my mark; if I were to shoot at an attacker, I'd want a serious-looking gun and an impressive *bang*. I'm not sure how much actual damage I want to inflict, but I certainly wouldn't want all of my liberal qualms to have been overcome for the result in Tweedle's link.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:22 PM
I was unequivocably shitty at hitting my mark
This is why I have just have a cannon loaded with grapeshot.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:24 PM
I was unequivocably shitty at hitting my mark
That's why I'm firing blanks. All the bang, less guilt.
Posted by Michael H Schneider | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:44 PM
As someone who, while sneaking into the house late, was nearly shot by her own, usually very careful, rational father
Why the qualifier "usually"?
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 01-12-06 11:57 PM
When I'm not pretending to be a character from Street Fighter II, I always figure that my having a gun would be more of a danger to me than to any hypothetical assailant.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:05 AM
Guns don't kill hypothetical people. Hypothetical people kill hypothetical people. Or would, hypothetically.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:08 AM
Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills people.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:10 AM
Where's Ash? I bet he could answer the gun question.
Cringing and dreading the deluge. I was overly pessimistic. So far.
Anyways, I endorse everything gswift said, just about.
I suspect (and I say all this despite the fact that I actually kinda want a Glock 38) that the euphemisms signal some sort of deliberative seriousness, meant to distinguish the talk from swinging dick bloodlust.
Ok, there are guys who buys guns to caress. Unless I am missing it, that would be you. Then, there are actual gun nuts who differ little in many respects from people who collect Barbies. That would be one of my best friends. Then, there is the much larger group that owns guns, that doesn't do any of that stuff.
[Redundant, sorry]
the other side is the need for a powerful, decisive cartridge.
Decisive here means: 'If I shoot someone, when I shoot someone, I want them to goddamn die, or explode like a pinata with a grenade inside or at least fall down or spin around or something, jeez. I am trying to kill them.'
a radically reduced version of the first that limited both its terminal effectiveness due to the far shorter barrel length and its reliability.
I don't know which meaning he is using here. He might be using the meaning just above or he might be referring to the ...uh... technical concepts involved in how hard it hits. 'Terminal effectiveness' would then == 'how much kinetic energy is delivered to the target'. Which is actually a long-pondered subject in law enforcement and the military.
Or maybe he's just feeding some red meat to the base, although it doesn't seem like it to me.
Now, if the audience for this article is law enforcement and the military, this is all fine, but if we're talking about regular joes and their guns, am I wrong that the incidence of successful self-defense with a handgun is very low?
There are lot of people who have been cops, been in the military or are closely related to such people. In the US, that quickly adds up to a lot of people who share a common terminology, just like Professors of Philosophy and Barbie collectors.
Almost all of the people described are 1> basically peaceful (or things would really be in the shitter) 2> nevertheless have heard about this kinda stuff all their lives. Or experienced it! So they're going about it the same way you would decide what kind of computer to buy. ('Does it work? Does it work real good?')
for just about everyone who buys a gun, it's just never going to be an issue, and I have a hard time imaging situations where one would require a gun for self-defense in which the caliber would matter.
Guns are most successful when they're just waved around. Check. I reinterate, if you have to use it, you want it to work. And it's a lot easier to be convincingly threatening when you've got a gun that you know will knock somebody down.
I'm just spouting liberal orthodoxy
I replied to an Emerson comment on BOP leads into (and provokes) this response here: I can think of maybe eight definitions of Liberal that are purely political and none of them apply. I think the liberal you mean translates to "orthodox to the (sub-)culture common to the upper-middle class and upper-class urbanites of the major metropolitan cities who tend tostaff the non-business institutions". ("Conservative" as commonly used is the same class and locality, generally, as the "liberals", but refers to the ones primarily operating of corporations.) Your reaction seems standard that group (both groups, really), but that group is not nearly as large as the group thinks itself to be. Dude. The group "everyone else" tends to at least have some experience with this stuff. Whether they would be bugged by the guy's description or not, I don't know, but I expect not.
Or to put it another way, there is some actually lurid gun pr0n out there, but I don't think this qualifies.
ash
['I generally don't read that kind of stuff, though.']
Posted by ash | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:10 AM
When I point at someone, I want them to pee there pants. Damn. I need to go to sleep.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:14 AM
Guns don't kill people; people kill people. However, people who kill people sure do seem to like guns a lot.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:15 AM
oh shit. Their pants. There pants. See? Sleepy time for tweedledopey.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:16 AM
I need to go to sleep.
The "there" gives it away.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:16 AM
there is some actually lurid gun pr0n out there
Links?
Posted by ogmb | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:17 AM
even sleepy, dopey beats apo.
Posted by tweedlesleepy | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:20 AM
It's a fair cop. 'Night, y'all.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:26 AM
What about Bashful, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent, and Doc?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:34 AM
#19
and if I ever buy one
#45
if I were going to go through the bother, doubt, and fear of getting a gun
Apparently gun ownership is a rare thing in this crowd, so I'll give my standard recommendation for potential owners.(for handguns, rifles are a whole other ballgame)
In my opinion automatics are not a good choice for first time, inexperienced shooters, especially for defense. They're harder to maintain, clean, and most people don't realize how difficult they are to load compared to a revolver. Capacity concerns are for military and law enforcement. You are likely only going to either just point it and scare someone, or fire a couple rounds at most. The attributes to look for are ease of use, sufficient power, and reliability.
Assuming most people will never carry the handgun on their person, a good choice is a Ruger GP100 .357 Mag.(that middle pic is the exact model I bought my wife for Christmas a couple years back)
The Ruger's can be had new for around $400. They're extremely reliable and durable, and shoot well right out of the box. The .357's are nice in that you can load them with .357's for defense, but can also use the cheaper .38 Specials for target practice. Conversely, if you put the hotter .357 loads through a gun designed for .38's, you're going to beat the hell out of that gun.
With it I'd also recommend getting a few of the appropriate speedloaders. They're handy at the range, and they give you the option to have the gun unloaded in storage, yet have it loaded quickly if the need arises. Even in the dark it's fairly easy to open a revolver and push a speedloader into the cylinder.
And if anyone is considering buying a gun for home defense, don't get sucked into the shotgun trap, even if you're a poor shot. Shotgun rounds typically don't start spreading until after about 20 feet or so. When using a gun in self defense, especially indoors, odds are it's going to be at a much closer range, so shotguns aren't really an advantage at all. Additionally, you want to check your house, or whatever with your gun in one hand held back while you use your other hand to open doors, etc. The last thing you want is to be going around a corner with a shotgun in front of you and all of a sudden find yourself wrestling with someone for control of the gun.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 1:22 AM
#52
a radically reduced version of the first that limited both its terminal effectiveness due to the far shorter barrel length and its reliability.
I don't know which meaning he is using here. He might be using the meaning just above or he might be referring to the ...uh... technical concepts involved in how hard it hits. 'Terminal effectiveness' would then == 'how much kinetic energy is delivered to the target'.
In my experience they're usually referring to that 1970-1990 period where you basically had two options, a high capacity but relatively weak 9mm, or low capacity strong .45. Those old school 1911 style .45's had 5 inch barrels. I think he's referring to the reduced ballistics of a shorter barrel, and the reliability reference is likely about smaller frame automatics being beat to hell when chambered for the .45 ACP.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 2:06 AM
52: I work for a business, and I'm liberal as all heck. Lots of liberals around me, too. Lots of conservatives, for that matter. Kind of a free-for-all. Fortunately, guns are banned on the premises.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:00 AM
Despite ogged's demurral, he does bring up the issue of #2 in the first sentence of the last paragraph of his post.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:03 AM
64: me. But you knew that already from my inimitable style.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:13 AM
gswift & ash pretty much said it all. 'Terminal effectiveness' is meant euphemistically; this isn't about being a cowboy any more than talking about the latest processor means you think you're Bill Gates. (That is to say, there's some overlap, but this is just basic information; is this gun good for you? What do you want it for?)
This isn't gun porn. Gun porn would have mentioned the second amendment, the thrill of taming the West, and the American way.
The difference between the smaller and larger calibers is like the difference between trying to stop you from chasing me by whipping a baseball at you or by whipping a bowling ball at you at the same speed. I don't have to kill you with either one, but I'm probably going to have to throw a lot more baseballs.
I am amused by this post and the previous post together. In a calamity we'd all become quick shots and shoot the bears coming after us by raiding hunting stores? I've at least fired a gun. (Dad was a gun nut; have known basic safety/cleaning since I was about four.)
Mmmhmm. DEAD.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:22 AM
See, that was why I was talking about getting a big dog. I know roughly how dogs work.
(And I will cop to being entirely ignorant about guns -- it's a city thing, I think, more than a political affiliation thing. There's no such thing as casual recreational gun use in a big city -- you're either a serious hobbyist who goes to shooting ranges, or you have a gun for the purpose of shooting people, for good reasons or bad. The rural 'target shooting at tin cans' or whatever it is teenagers in the country do with .22s just isn't an option for urban types.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:34 AM
Pretty much. If you grow up in a rural area, chances are you either went hunting a lot, or needed a gun to shoot gophers, or shot tin cans for fun. If all you see is guns on TV, you think 'guns are for shooting people, duh'.
I suspect this is why policy discussions are hopelessly confused; for the rural gun enthusiast, the idea that it's dangerous and meant to shoot people may be completely foreign to him.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:39 AM
I lived with a gun nut. Hence I am deeply dubious about the whole notion of gun ownership and agree with Kotsko about its effectiveness. My favorite statistic about guns is that in 2000 roughly one woman every day was murdered with a gun by a spouse or boyfriend. Most women are killed by people they know, not the big scary stranger in the alley. So guns for women, anyway, are not actually a helpful self defense tool unless she thinks she can shoot her husband/lover.
And if a woman can calmly consider doing that maybe she should move on to greener pastures.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:41 AM
How often do you go to the range? Unless it's a lot, I would think it would be more fun to rent different ones each time.
My Montana-gun-nut-militia uncle (by marriage) takes me out shooting whenever I go visit. He's got some pretty amazing large-calibur stuff in his collection, including a 50 that literally knocked me on my ass. It's fun to do on occasion, especially because it pains him that I'm a good shot but generally anti-gun. Wasted talent and all. He got me a membership in the NRA for my birthday a few years back, which got me on some bizarre "girls and guns" mailing lists and has made checking my mail an interesting adventure ever since.
My aunt and uncle both carry concealed weapons, keep others in their cars, and have an entire "gun room" in their house with dozens and dozens of them. Weird for my family, but not that unusual for their area of Montana. Still, my uncle's pretty hard-core: when he read that the investigation into Ruby Ridge was triggered by a purchase of 10,000 rounds of ammunition, he went out and placed a 10,000 round order just because, goddamnit, you should be able to do that. Any man marrying into the family has to go on a hunting trip with him as a hazing rite. If they come back alive, they're allowed in.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:41 AM
more fun to rent different ones each time.
Certainly makes sense from a shopping point of view, even if you were planning to buy later.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:46 AM
Okay guys, who's going to propose to Becks for the hunting trip with her whacky uncle?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:47 AM
I was just about to remark that that wasn't helping.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:47 AM
5: "If you have a gun in the house it's much more likely to be used to kill a member of the household."
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 7:49 AM
more guns, less crime!
Posted by mary rosh | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:02 AM
am I wrong that the incidence of successful self-defense with a handgun is very low?
I would guess you are correct about this. In theory, having a firearm available would aid in self defense- even if it was only to wave around. However, how many people really have the clarity of mind to effectively use a gun when confronted with a sudden attack? I think military and law enforcement people (and perhaps some others) have had training to help them anticipate and/or react appropriately to such unexpected, violent situations. I suspect the average gun owner has not had much more training than one basic course. Consequently, I think any self-defense advantage to the average gun-owner evaporates the instant they are surprised by a real attack.
Posted by EtUxor | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:04 AM
Sure, it's less crime if you consider a woman burning her boyfriend's toast a crime, or a kid playing with something he's been told not to touch a crime, or a man who can't cope with the loss of his job a crime!
Hurrah for culling the herd.
Posted by winna | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:07 AM
As I understand, high-caliber high-velocity guns knock people down and stun them even if they don't kill them. Whereas someone hit by a 22 might keep going for a bit even with an ultimately lethal wound.
Where I grew up (rural MN) everyone had guns (except my dad, an MD and WWII vet who cleaned up after the gunowners), but it was almost always one of about 5 different hunting rifles and shotguns. But while I was in HS a kid I knew went down to Texas for a couple years and came back dreaming about blowing people away.
Gun ownership is separable from violent fantasies, but the gun nuts I've ever run into were almost all riddled with violent fantasies, fearfulness, and various sorts of systematic anger and hatred. There are fucked-up places where owning a gun for personal protection and home protection is pretty reasonable, but gun nuts prepare themselves for self-defense even if they don't live in those places.
There are places where gun-ownership is widespread (e.g. North Dakota) where there is virtually no gun violence. On the other hand, I doubt that there are any places where gunownership is low which would be safer if gunownership were higher. (An exception might be a place where an armed population dominates a disarmed population, but this is a kind of political domination and only will change if there is an actual revolution.)
Rational discussion about guns is very rare in the US. Liberals can be ignorant, but gun nuts can be scary.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:10 AM
At this point, because of Lott and Bellesile, no one trusts anyone else's statistics on guns, and with some justification.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:12 AM
My favorite statistic about guns is that in 2000 roughly one woman every day was murdered with a gun by a spouse or boyfriend.
How many of them shot back? I can't make this out to be an anti-gun ownership for women unless their boyfriends all used the woman's gun.
I don't own a gun, and have no plans to, but this area is pretty much where all my right-wing sympathies are. I know how to shoot. I know how to take apart a gun and make sure there aren't any bullets in there. I don't see the point of a gun safe in which to store your gun for personal defense, presumably only needed for emergencies (what, you're going to have time to enter the code? excuse me, mr. thief, I need a minute.)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:14 AM
Mmm. There seems to be some irrationality on both sides -- ignorant city types like me don't so much get what anyone legitimately wants guns for, and those who are fond of guns really appear to overestimate their usefulness. Even though I wasn't raised that way, I'll totally buy into the "Guns as inoffensive pieces of sporting goods -- shooting range? Fun! Hunting? Fun! Knocking over tin cans? Fun!" view of guns. It's not a hobby I'm likely to pick up for logistical reasons, but there's nothing wrong with it.
The self-defense stuff, though, seems a little irrational. Given the low levels of violent crime in the US, and particularly the highly class-segregated nature of the violent crime that exists (i.e., I, and other upper middle class professionals like me are particularly unlikely to be victims of violent crime); the risks added to ones life by gun possession (accidental shootings; risk that a criminal will take your gun away and use it on you; risk that an altercation that would not otherwise have become lethal does so because of the easy availability of a gun); and the reasonably high level of skill and training necessary to successfully use a gun in self-defense, it really seems as though most people who have guns under the theory that it makes them safer have got to be either irrational, or at least wrong.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:22 AM
Gun nuts have this saying, "An armed society is a polite society". And yeah, Somalis are wonderfully polite.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:25 AM
I for one believe that every man and every woman should have his or her own gun, and all domestic disputes should be decided with hot lead.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:28 AM
Well, most people. But conceivably fun + large amount of training and education in how to use the it could make you safer. Also, although I don't own a gun and don't foresee the need for one, there are circumstances (crazy stalker ex-boyfriend, e.g.) in which I'd conceivably want one.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:29 AM
and the reasonably high level of skill and training necessary to successfully use a gun in self-defense...
I think this point is key. Most gun nuts I know like to imagine they would morph into Steven Seagal or Dirty Harry, complete with cool one-liners, and blow the evil attackers away. It is an easy fantasy that justifies buying a gun. In reality, I suspect most of these people would instantly piss their pants and beg for their lives in a real situation- and that Glock 38 would remain stashed safely away in the safe.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:34 AM
I don't think the standard liberal position is pro- gun law anymore. I think the standard position is, "Who cares?"
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:35 AM
My brother married into a gun nut family. They talked the talk about respecting gun, and they had strict ritualized rules for handling guns, but even so my niece came reasonably close to getting blown away on the shooting range. Guns are intrinsically dangerous the way most other things are not. A small mistake can be lethal.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:39 AM
but even so my niece came reasonably close to getting blown away on the shooting range.
Do you like your niece?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:45 AM
The weak- willed and "Prissy" European in me is flabbergasted by this thread. Amused also, but deep down alarmed.
Asked not so much as an academic exercise in semiotics but as one in civil liberty: What does a gun symbolise? Better still, what does possession of a gun symbolise?
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:47 AM
What's flabbergasting about it, Austro?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:49 AM
I've only ever fired a gun in the boy scouts. I went into the experience with a typical Li'l Liberal attitude (gun control was in vogue at the time), and came out thinking, "I've been all turned around on this!" Fifteen minutes later I had a "hmmm" moment.
So I've always sort of felt the same way about guns as I do about drugs: they're too inherently awesome to be approached objectively by their users. Ideally, everyone should be free to use them responsibly, but some can't and produce problems for the rest of us. The solution, as always, is massive government regulation.
The closest I've come to real gun nuttery was my mom's recent boyfriend, who was a devout Harley enthusiast. Which, at the fringes, is similar to being a gun nut in many ways (e.g. obsession with minor mechanical details; weird theories about Jewish conspiracies). I'm pretty sure he wasn't allowed to own any guns, or else he probably would've been into them, too.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:49 AM
This is such an interesting issue. In my experience, more than just about any other political issue, a given person's feelings on it depend almost entirely upon where that person was raised (I'm speaking more urban/rural, although regional factors are important also). I grew up in semi-rural/suburban Texas, shot quite a few guns recreationally, was taught about safety and responsible gun handling, and therefore (like Cala) tend to think that gun ownership is not in and of itself a big deal. Most everyone I've met who was raised in similar circumstances feels the same way, and most everyone I've met who is for strict gun control has had little-to-no exposure to firearms themselves (the obvious exception being people who live in places plagued by violent crime; these tend to be mostly anti-gun, for obvious reasons).
There are clearly some insane paranoid gun nuts out there. But like Emerson said, there's not a lot of rational discussion about this on either side.
As a sidebar, parents who own guns (Jesus, I almost typed "child-owners") should keep their guns locked in boxes within safes within trunks. Because for kids? Guns = SO COOL. If kids find guns, kids are going to play with the guns.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:54 AM
I make no apologies and have no shame for being anti-gun. I recognize that people enjoy them, that hunting is probably fun, and that most people who own guns are not evil bastards. Nonetheless, the things are dangerous and have one purpose, which is to kill. Target shooting is just practicing for killing (even if, in fact, that's all one ever does with it). They're too damned dangerous to have in a civilized urban society, which we basically are. I'm sure they're fun and all, but cost / benefit analysis: find another hobby.
And home defense? Forget it. If you're sneaking around corners trying to catch someone in your house, you'd be better off climbing out a goddamn window and calling the cops from the neighbors.
This whole discussion is making me feel like I should be an asshole and quiz every adult who invites PK over to play with their kid: "do you have a gun? Yes? Sorry, no play date."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:56 AM
Thats what amuses me most... I am aware that the term knee- jerk liberal response was used earlier and I m guessing very hard that I fall into that categoryof people whose knees jerk, instinctively. So I am amused at myself and interested in the attitude of you guys as mostly liberal types to the theme. I think most Europeans have an inbuilt horror of the idea of private ownership of side-arms. I ll grant that hunting rifles and shot guns might be a moot point.
I am flabbergasted by the coolness with which the theme is viewed. I m prepared to admit that Im being prissy about it, but the idea of being in the same room as a device whose sole functional purpose is to kill makes me queasy.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:58 AM
Liberals can be uninformed and husterical, but the only frightening, threatening people I've run into on this issue are on the gun nut side.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 8:59 AM
I think gun control has gotten to be a less hot issue for ignorant urbanites as violent crime has dropped. While we still find gun culture alien it makes them easier to regard as "Odd rural type of sporting goods, like ATV's. I don't get the appeal, but no one ever said I had to understand everything." I still kinda think that gun owners have an odd weighting on the risk/benefit equation, but it's not the kind of thing I need to get into a political fight about.
(And based purely on that five years of reading Outdoor Life, and on the couple of hunters I know, I have to think that hunters as a class are a possible pickup for the Democratic party on environmental issues, if we could cool the gun thing down.)
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:01 AM
I'm with you Austro. And I object to the whole "knee-jerk" label, which is a rhetorical device used to dismiss a perfectly rational position out of hand.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:01 AM
They're too damned dangerous to have in a civilized urban society.
Urban society isn't civilized, except etymologically. Guns are not too dangerous to have in a civilized rural society like North Dakota. Guns exacerbate other problems; they're like gasoline.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:03 AM
I think most Europeans have an inbuilt horror of the idea of private ownership of side-arms.
Except, notably, the Swiss. The afternoon I arrived at my Swiss host family for a summer's exchange, my host-father had the army-issue assault rifle on the dining-room table for its periodic cleaning. It lived behind the front door.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:03 AM
I have to think that hunters as a class are a possible pickup for the Democratic party on environmental issues, if we could cool the gun thing down.
I think this is the reason that gun control has been played down recently. It's not that people stopped caring about the issue, it's that it's too much of an electoral liability (that, plus questions of efficacy). Here in DC, though, whenever congressional Republicals decide they ought to make a bold second amendment statement by repealing the district's very strict gun laws, it becomes a pretty big issue.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:04 AM
I would re-iterate the question though.
What does gun ownership symbolise? Is it purely a functional thing, like owning a fire-extinguisher, or is there a higher symbolic value to it? If so, what is it?
Unfortunately I need to get home to the family and I shall not be around this evening to follow the thread. I'd be curious to know though.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:04 AM
In a totally agreeing with comment 85 sort of sense, I don't know what ownership of a gun symbolizes, but the importance of the legality of gun ownership to civil liberties is that the state sometimes fails to protect you (having worked at a rape crisis center and spoken to a not-insignificant number of women who were being stalked and harrassed by boyfriends they had taken reasonable steps to separate from, and seen that the police did nothing for them, I'm convinced of this). Given this failure, it would be nice to be able to protect yourself. However, I have no illusions about my current competency to own a gun or successfully use it for self-defense. Heck, the one time I tried fencing I had a bunch of Spanish kids standing around me yelling "Ataca" because I refused to thrust, and then when my opponent accidently speared me in the boob, flustered, I yelled "Dulce" (sweet) instead of "Suave" (smooth), prompting lots of eight year old giggles. If I were in the crazy ex-boyfriend situation I know I'd need a lot of training to achieve competency, and I'd be happy if massive government regulation mandated that I get it.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:05 AM
North Dakota is rural, but it's part of a larger society that is increasingly urban. It's not like guns are stapled to the floor.
I do have to point out, in response to LB's comment, that I'm not making gun control or banning handguns my #1 Democratic party platform or nuthin'.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:05 AM
A lot of gun nuts are otherwise rational OK people, which is why I don't ever raise the issue.
Swiss gunownership is licensed and regulated, and licensing and regulation is the big issue in the US -- not prohibition.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:06 AM
Politically, why can't it be a local issue? I'm thrilled that handguns are illegal in NYC. Let the people in each community decide what's right for them, say I.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:07 AM
I mean "Suave" (soft).
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:07 AM
Bitch, my point is that if ours were a civilized society, guns would not be a problem. American cities are full of violence and conflict, and guns make the violence worse.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:08 AM
"Except, notably, the Swiss."
Ah yes, I'd forgotten about my rides on swiss trains, with the guys loading their rifles into the overhead luggage racks, loaded.
I think that is due to the Swiss national service model.
Posted by Austro | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:09 AM
Meitnerium!
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:10 AM
Yeah, I often think about the stats on Canadian gun ownership vs. their rate of gun violence (as per Bowling for Columbine). Plenty of guns, very few gun crimes.
Freaky Canadians.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:11 AM
Prissy Canadians, Joe.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:13 AM
Does Switzerland have mandatory military service? For some reason when Swiss came up in this thread my mind jumped to mandatory military service but I think I am mistaken. Does Switzerland even have an army?
Tia, were you learning to fence in Spain? Or what?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:14 AM
This was written by the owner of the gun store in my small, otherwise idyllic hometown. The author is a pugnacious sort, as demonstrated by the rest of his blog, and he at times seems to exhibit the violent fantasies and fearfulness Emerson was describing above. I grew up around guns and around people like this, but some time ago transitioned to being one of the insulated city-dwellers. My opinions on gun control have changed accordingly. The mindset of the author in the linked post are what unnerve me about the pro-gun lobby at this point. I think for the most part that those are and were the people fighting gun control, and the attitudes revealed in that anecdote are and were their reasons.
I think Emerson gets it largely right in 78, as does everyone who thinks there's a dearth of rational gun policy debate in the U.S. I've found myself on both sides of the issue, and I still have no idea what such a discussion would sound like. I don't find it surprising that it's largely off the platform.
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:16 AM
Um, why else would there be Swiss Army knives?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:17 AM
#93
And home defense? Forget it. If you're sneaking around corners trying to catch someone in your house, you'd be better off climbing out a goddamn window and calling the cops from the neighbors.
That's not really when you're most likely to want one. Shortly after my first daughter was born, someone kicked in a window in our duplex in middle of the day and came in. My wife was home alone with the baby. The duplex a split level, so the upstairs bedroom my wife was in with the baby was quite a ways off the ground. She called the police immediately, and was trapped in the upstairs bedroom desperately trying to keep the baby quiet while she could hear the guy moving around downstairs. Thanfully, he'd taken long enough to get in, and a police unit was close enough that he heard the approaching sirens and left before he had a chance to come upstairs. But if he had, she was trapped with no avenue of escape.
I already owned a couple guns when we got married. I'ld told her that as we had guns in the house, she needed to take a course and be at least competent with one for safety if nothing else. She'd never even handled a gun before, and had been resisting. Needless to say, her interest sharpened a bit after that.
It turned out she quite enjoys shooting, and now has her own revolver.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:18 AM
Don't they make those in Taiwan?
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:18 AM
Men in Switzerland are required to own and maintain their militia weapon, but there are restrictions on what they can do with them.
I'm absolutely convinced that a large proportion of gun nuts have underlying psychological issues. They live their whole lives thinking of events like home invasions which are very unlikely ever to happen, especially in the all-white neighborhoods where many of them live.
They also have fantasies of an armed populace resisting the government. That kind of thing is just symbolic, though. Randy Weaver, the Montana militia, and David Koresh were sitting ducks, militarily speaking. They survived as long as they did because of the rule of law and because Koresh and Weaver were hiding behind children. In an actual state of civil war, they all could have been wiped out by one soldier with a shoulder-mounted missile. Their weaponry was a joke.
In an actual civil war the most important question by far is which way the military goes. The funky homemade militias are jokes, theough they will be able to terrorize their neighbors.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:19 AM
93:
Bphd,
I understand what you are saying, but in my opinion you are being a little extreme.
Here is my theory - people enjoy exercising power over their enviroment and especially power at a distance. For example, it is fun to knock over a tower of blocks, and even more fun to roll a bolling ball and watch the pins fly.
In target shooting the gun is not about killing or practicing killing it is about exercising power at a distance.
Certainly for some gun nuts the thrill is about killing or imagining killing but not for all gun owners.
I have no data to back up my assertions but this seems right to me.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:20 AM
why get a gun - why not just get a pepper spray - something incapacitating but usually non-fatal - if you want self-defense?
the standard liberal position is still "outlaw automatic weapons and handguns, which have no functional purpose other than to murder a human being; hunting rifles are okay."
really. guns at shooting ranges is fine, i'd be curious to do it myself, but what is the need to own your own gun?
it is a personal policy of mine to cut off all interpersonal contact with anyone who i learn owns a gun (other than a hunting rifle). i had a handgun pointed at me once and have no need to ever relive that situation, or meet people who enjoy the fantasy of playing God.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:20 AM
Wow. Here's how I know none of you are bonafide gun nuts: Not one person has mentioned New Orleans.
When social order breaks down, the government will not be there to protect you. If you are unarmed, you will depend entirely on the mercy of those who are. You will need to rely on yourself and your family.
Learning to shoot is potentially as useful as learning to turn a puddle into potable water. It's like learning first aid.
Lay in a few weeks of food for you and your loved ones. You might need to hole up for a while. And you might need to defend that hole.
(And all of this is to say nothing of what happens when the police mistakenly kick in your door while executing a no-knock warrant on the wrong address-- a situation in which more than one person has defended himself with a gun.)
Posted by Brutal Hugger | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:21 AM
The Swiss have a mandatory national defense army. All men serve for two years at around 18 or 19, and then do regular service stints for some years after that. (As far as I can tell, the Swiss defense strategy remains essentially unchanged over the centuries: pull down the mountain passes and defend from above.) Since almost all men have army-issued arms, the guns would seem to be pretty damned controlled, though.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:21 AM
They also have fantasies of an armed populace resisting the government. That kind of thing is just symbolic, though. Randy Weaver, the Montana militia, and David Koresh were sitting ducks, militarily speaking. They survived as long as they did because of the rule of law and because Koresh and Weaver were hiding behind children. In an actual state of civil war, they all could have been wiped out by one soldier with a shoulder-mounted missile. Their weaponry was a joke.
In an actual civil war the most important question by far is which way the military goes. The funky homemade militias are jokes, theough they will be able to terrorize their neighbors.
And with that, Emerson's mask slipped...
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:22 AM
Damn. That second paragraph should be italicized, too.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:23 AM
Sheesh.
Bowling ball NOT bolling ball, which was not even an amusing mistake.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:24 AM
I'm thrilled that handguns are illegal in NYC
Um, why? Is there any indication it's hampering a criminals ability to acquire one?
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:24 AM
(And all of this is to say nothing of what happens when the police mistakenly kick in your door while executing a no-knock warrant on the wrong address-- a situation in which more than one person has defended himself with a gun.)
In the most recent such case of which I have read, the person in question is now (unjustly) sitting in jail awaiting execution -- which makes this seems to me like an unconvincing argument in favor of keeping a gun in your home.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:26 AM
Not one person has mentioned New Orleans.
Weren't you following the news? All the crazy violence that was supposed to have happened didn't. Who in New Orleans was better off because they had a gun (links to news stories would be appreciated)?
(And all of this is to say nothing of what happens when the police mistakenly kick in your door while executing a no-knock warrant on the wrong address-- a situation in which more than one person has defended himself with a gun.)
And this is just nitwitted. Oppressive and awful as such no-knock warrants often are, there's pretty much no situation where shooting a cop is going to leave you better off, or where pointing a gun at a cop makes him less likely to shoot you. Google "Cory Maye" for how this one plays out in practice.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:27 AM
Is there any indication it's hampering a criminals ability to acquire one?
The low-and-declining rate of gun crime in the city could be taken as one such indication.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:28 AM
LB, I agree about the Cory Maye point, but I think we ought not to call the newbie's points "nitwitted" -- keep that kind of language among the regulars.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:29 AM
#115: If you have a kid in the house, the gun is way more dangerous to the kid than the risk of someone breaking in, in the vast majority of cases. If you keep a gun locked up so that the kid is safe from it, it's even *less* useful in a defense situation.
Install a fire ladder in the upstairs bedroom.
#118: I'm being a bit polemical, as is my wont. But I'm not saying that people like guns *because* guns kill; I'm saying that the function of a gun, as opposed to, say, a water pistil, or a nerf gun, or a bow and arrow, or any other thing with which you can shoot targets, is manifestly to kill. Target shooting is just an interesting alternate use of the thing. It's not target shooting, or even violent fantasies, that I have a problem with: it's the fact that a gun is a lethal weapon with no other real functional use (unlike, say, a car). I don't think that the fun of target shooting with a gun is important enough to society to justify having guns lying around.
#120: Actually the "New Orleans descended into lawlessness" thing has been pretty much shown to be myth. The dangerous lawlessness was on the side of the authorities (who had guns), not so much on the side of the people (who were mostly just trying to survive). If anything, New Orleans is evidence *against* the pro-gun argument.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:30 AM
Periodically I get an unsolicited phillipic from one of my pro-gun colleagues about how we all need guns to fight off the gummint. They have no inkling just how alarming that makes them sound. I'm convinced that the NRA and its members actually, by this means, provide the main impetus for gun control in America.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:30 AM
Yes, gswift, NYC is actually safer than other large cities.
Of course, since guns can easily be smuggled into NYC from places where they are legal, the situation is not as good as it might be. But even so, the NYC police have leverage on armed criminals even before they do anything.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:30 AM
Jeremy, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:31 AM
John Emerson said: Gun nuts have this saying, "An armed society is a polite society". And yeah, Somalis are wonderfully polite.
This really gets at the heart of the issue for me. It always sounds nice to talk about the gun as self-defense in the abstract, but in any real life situation where social order and the protections of the state break down enough to make it necessary, an organized militia or mafia will invariably spring up and will always outgun you. And you can be pretty much guaranteed that they're not going to arm themselves purely for purposes of "self-defense."
Posted by Doctor Slack | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:33 AM
129: While in general I agree with you about kindness to strangers, my respect for my fellow man requires that I point out when someone else's grasp of publically available facts (rather than the conclusions to be drawn from such facts) is that far off.
I mean, Brutal Hugger -- I'm sure you're a lovely person with all sorts of illuminating perspective on things; it's just the two factual issues you opened with seemed severely loopy. Feel free to call me names in return if you've got some basis for thinking I'm wrong.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:34 AM
So BG can back me up on this, but as you enter Boston from Logan Airport on the Pike, there's a double billboard.
First: Massachusetts: You're more likely to live here.
Second: Massachusetts has the lowest gun fatality rate in the U.S. Proof that gun laws are effective.
Previously stated here.
Can't find a picture of it though.
Posted by tweedledopey | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:34 AM
I do know the difference beteen "pistil" and "pistol," by the way.
The "there's no point in making guns illegal, because then only criminals will own guns" argument *is* nitwitted. Talk about your race-to-the-bottom arguments.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:34 AM
133 -- you're forgetting cops and soldiers, who will also have guns.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:34 AM
#119
why get a gun - why not just get a pepper spray - something incapacitating but usually non-fatal - if you want self-defense?
Because it isn't very hard to shrug off pepper spray. Learning how is standard training for a lot of law enforcment personell. It's common for them to have to learn how to take a direct blast from pepper spray, then turn, draw their weapon, and hit a target.
the standard liberal position is still "outlaw automatic weapons and handguns, which have no functional purpose other than to murder a human being; hunting rifles are okay."
If you're in your house when someone forcibly enters and is coming at you, using a handgun isn't going to feel much like murder.
it is a personal policy of mine to cut off all interpersonal contact with anyone who i learn owns a gun (other than a hunting rifle). i had a handgun pointed at me once
Oh Jesus. And if you'd been threatened with a knife? Would you be swearing off the company of people who own pointy objects?
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:35 AM
(Private security guards too, most likely.)
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:35 AM
really. guns at shooting ranges is fine, i'd be curious to do it myself, but what is the need to own your own gun?
For the same reason many bowlers or golfers own their own equipment - in may be cheaper in the long run and customized to suit your personal preferences or abilities.
Projecting power at a distance are part of the appeal of bowling, golf, and target shooting.
Other sports may have similar appeal, but they also contain the appeal of exercising power over one's own body and over other people.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:37 AM
Re the "civilian gun ownership is useless against a mdoern army" argument: private ownership of automatic weapons was legal and basically universal under Saddam Hussein. So gun ownership of a much more serious kind than even imagined by the NRAers isn't even an effective deterrent against repressive government, let alone a plausible means of resistance.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:38 AM
In target shooting the gun is not about killing or practicing killing it is about exercising power at a distance.
All of my sisters and I were on our high school rifle team. One of them captained it and led the team to a regional championship.
My sisters and I are not the sort of person one would expect to find when one thinks 'sport shooter'; fairly liberal (excepting one), petite, they're cute, etc. And trust me, none of this was going on while we thought in the back of our minds how well we'd do if the Gummint came chasing us down or about how we'd have to shoot terrorists. It's really about the mental control it requires to put holes in a piece of paper perfectly.
Maybe we're the freakish exceptions where knowing that my dad kept a gun in the house never made any of us feel we needed to show off with it.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:40 AM
Part of the urban/rural divide on guns is, I imagine, related to what kind of response and protection we expect from the government/police. In less densely populated areas, where the police (or neighbors) might be ten or even twenty minutes away, it makes a lot more sense to have a gun. In a city, you crawl out the window (or just scream) and somebody is there (we hope) to call the police or give you some protection.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:43 AM
w/o guns, rural america would be overrun by clay pigeons. chaos.
do people really believe that whole "2nd amd = freedom from tyranny" thing? i mean, other than instapundit and wayne lapierre? you'd need an awful lot of "terminal effectiveness" to take out that B-1 bomber, methinks.
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:43 AM
And if you'd been threatened with a knife?
Yes, it's exactly the same, isn't it?
I mean, it's not like knives have scads of non-lethal uses.
Also, it's not like guns would be considered for any reason at all to be more threatening. You know, like giving you lower odds of being able to run away successfully as a defense?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:45 AM
do people really believe that whole "2nd amd = freedom from tyranny" thing? i mean, other than instapundit and wayne lapierre?
Ahem.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:45 AM
146: me
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:46 AM
138 -- you didn't think I said that in earnest, did you JO?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:47 AM
The "there's no point in making guns illegal, because then only criminals will own guns" argument *is* nitwitted. Talk about your race-to-the-bottom arguments.
Well, yes and no. Two Canadian friends of mine were lamenting that Toronto's recent stricter gun control hadn't worked in part because guns were easy to smuggle in from the U.S. I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence. NYC hasn't become less violent because of handgun laws, last I checked, because it's easy to get them from well, the rest of NY state if you're inclined.
With perfect, severe enforcement, perhaps this sort of smuggling could be stopped. But that's going to be hard in a relatively open nation.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:48 AM
I don't think that the fun of target shooting with a gun is important enough to society to justify having guns lying around.
Well, as I've been saying a lot lately, it depends. I'm not real big on government denying us our pleasures. I think the burden of proof should be on the government to demonstrate a very good reason for the prohibition.
In urban areas where population density is higher there may be a bigger reason then in rural areas. Even in that case I'd lobby for allowing private ownership of firearms which are kept in locked cabinets at the firing range. You'd have a problem, though, if the owner wanted to transport the gun to some other legitimate location such as another firing range or competition.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:48 AM
I call shenanigans on the bowling / target shooting comparison.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:49 AM
I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence.
Really? I thought their rate of gun violence was pretty low.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:50 AM
149 -- no, not really but I was a bit confused because I couldn't see where the joke was.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:50 AM
I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence.
Are you kidding?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:51 AM
really? you do? i thought that was just being extra-snarky.
do you mean that in a more psychological way, like gun owners being more vigilant, or tyranny's agents will be less likely to kill people who resist? or do you mean in the red dawn sort of way?
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:51 AM
#132
Yes, gswift, NYC is actually safer than other large cities.
Yeah, but is there evidence that this is due to the handgun regulations?
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:52 AM
Because it isn't very hard to shrug off pepper spray. Learning how is standard training for a lot of law enforcment personell. It's common for them to have to learn how to take a direct blast from pepper spray, then turn, draw their weapon, and hit a target.
ah. i am going to be fighting off the police??
If you're in your house when someone forcibly enters and is coming at you, using a handgun isn't going to feel much like murder.
first of all, i have to agree with previous comments that this has got to be one of the LEAST EFFECTIVE ways to successfully defend yourself, especially in a city.
second of all, it surely would feel like murder. i, like the police, prefer crime be stopped WITHOUT the loss of human life, including the lives of criminals. i have no desire to have the experience of killing someone, particularly when it is unnecessary, and i believe this experience would also affect you much more strongly than you apparently realize.
it is a personal policy of mine to cut off all interpersonal contact with anyone who i learn owns a gun (other than a hunting rifle). i had a handgun pointed at me once
Oh Jesus. And if you'd been threatened with a knife? Would you be swearing off the company of people who own pointy objects?
Jesus yourself. Handguns have no purpose other than to wound or kill a human being. That's why they are built the way they are. That makes them different from knives, as well as a host of other things.
Get serious.
Posted by mmf! | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:52 AM
I was mocking those who would use that argument in the face of actual declining crime rate statistics.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:53 AM
I don't own a gun because I cannot imagine being able to shoot a mugger successfully, and that's probably what I'd need it for here. (He can take the $20 I probably have on me. His life ain't worth that.) In a city, two blocks away from the police station, I'm probably okay without it given the risks & responsibilities of carrying.
Out in a rural, isolated area? Not just climbing out the window and hoping I can walk three miles to the neighbors in time.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:53 AM
Per capita gun deaths
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:54 AM
Yeah, but is there evidence that this is due to the handgun regulations?
I have it on good evidence that it's due to the fearsome cock-power of Labs' occasional visits here.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:54 AM
159 -- Ah, got it.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:55 AM
I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence.
Are you kidding?
No, I'm not; to clarify I'm not talking compared to the U.S., but Britain post-recent law change vs. pre-law change. If you have stats I'm open to being convinced, but the military historian type I've talked to says that it's been less than effective in ridding the streets of guns.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:56 AM
It's really about the mental control it requires to put holes in a piece of paper perfectly.
Yes, but I still maintain it is about projecting power, too. The first time I ever knocked over a can with my low powered BB gun I thought 'Cool!'
I don't think it serves anyone's purpose to deny that thrill. We need to acknowledge it and then discuss it in the context of a civilized society, and a big part of my reasoning is along the lines of 'if it doesn't hurt other people or animals or the shared environment' then it should be allowed.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:56 AM
"I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence."
Britain has always had strict laws and low handgun violence. There have been questions about the direction of change of the two factors recently.
Here's murder-rate statistics:
Stats
The Dakotas and Vermont are at the bottom, NY is in the middle. The worst are mostly western and southern, plus Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, and DC. The correlation with gun ownership is probably non-existent.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 9:57 AM
tyranny's agents will be less likely to kill people who resist?
Pretty much that. I figure the government is somewhat less likely to send the troops into the streets if there's a chance that there'll be armed resistance. But, really, everything post 9/11 has made me think that tyranny doesn't come from "the government" so much as from our fellow citizens (most of whom, in this particular tyrannical incarnation, are also in favor of gun ownership, ironically enough). So, I'm no longer so very convinced. I'm still buying several if I move to Idaho, however.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:01 AM
Handguns have no purpose other than to wound or kill a human being.
If you would have said 'few' I would have agreed with you but making a blanket statement that is easily rebutted does your cause no good.
Here is one other purpose for handguns - target shooting. Here is another - collectibles. And one more - as a symbol of adulthood. And one more - to impress your friends.
I agree that most people purchase handguns for the purpose (God forbid) of wounding or killing humans but please do not say 'all.' It weakens your case.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:03 AM
Britain post-recent law change vs. pre-law change.
Here you just know more about the facts than I do, but weren't there awfully strict laws before any recent change? If I'm right, all you're saying is that an incremental tightening of tight laws doesn't improve matters much.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:04 AM
Canada's an interesting outlier. Lots of guns, especially in the praire/western provinces and nowhere near the level of gun violence. Given that we're unlikely to reach Japan-like levels of handgun ownership, if we have to emulate someone, I'd like to see what Canada's doing.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:04 AM
143
And trust me, none of this was going on while we thought in the back of our minds how well we'd do if the Gummint came chasing us down or about how we'd have to shoot terrorists. It's really about the mental control it requires to put holes in a piece of paper perfectly.
Maybe we're the freakish exceptions where knowing that my dad kept a gun in the house never made any of us feel we needed to show off with it.
That's exactly right I grew up in Los Angeles, and my Dad, while not really a gun nut, owned a couple, and I learned to shoot quite young. With me, my siblings, and my friends who also were familiar with guns, taking a gun out and playing with it seemed dangerous and stupid rather than exciting.
A couple of kids I went to elementary and jr. high with had a different experience. They found one of the dad's .380 automatics laying around. Neither of them knew how to tell if it was loaded, or proper handling, or anything. They started tossing it back and forth, pointing it at each other, etc., and Jaime, my friend, accidentally shot the other kid in the forehead. He's a vegetable now.
But that kind of behaviour would have been inconceivable in my family.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:05 AM
But, really, everything post 9/11 has made me think that tyranny doesn't come from "the government" so much as from our fellow citizens (most of whom, in this particular tyrannical incarnation, are also in favor of gun ownership, ironically enough). So, I'm no longer so very convinced. I'm still buying several if I move to Idaho, however.
Yes, this. It's interesting; the people most worried about tyrannical government (to the point of arming themselves to the teeth) have the least to fear, since the guns are not likely to be turned on them, but on me. Like Emerson said, it depends on which way the army goes, and I have no illusions about the army fighting for my side. I'd likely be someone who's hunted down.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:06 AM
Despite what social scientists wish, causes are pretty hard to find in social life. So if we're going to wait until we have an ironclad proof that Britain's and New York's historically-strict gun control laws have something to do with their relatively low crime rates, we'll wait forever.
If I were a New York policeman, I'd be glad I had that tool. New York is usually used in this argument because it existed in peoples feverish TV-infested minds as a pesthouse of sin and crime, but actually it isn't, granted that it IS a city, and not North Dakota.
In many or most rural areas the inaccessibility of the police, if it's a fact at all, is made up for by a tighter community, no anonymity, and often by less violence in general. "Rural" usually means small-town; only about 5% of the population lives away from all concentration of population.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:07 AM
gswift, I don't know what to do about such cases. Playing around with a gun is like juggling kitchen knives; so foreign I don't even know how to address it.
Require mandatory gun ownership responsibility? Sounds like a start to me, but what if (say) LB's non-gun-owning-family has a kid who comes over to play with your kid, and while your kid is responsible, LB's kid just thinks its cool and fun and has no idea. Not the kid's fault or LB's, but it's still a problem waiting to happen.
Mandatory gun safety in schools?
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:11 AM
167:
i can sort of see that point, but i've never been much persuaded. i think the likelihood of armed resistance makes it more likely the troops get sent out. see eg ruby ridge.
i'm interested in your increasing doubt - to me, the emerging meme of "whiny ass titty babies", or whatever subtle phrasing atrios et all are using, is possibly very powerful, as all of these former small-gov, libertarian, etc types are suddenly expecting gov to protect us all, in a very different sense than traditional national defense. if gov suddenly tossed the 2nd amd out the window w/ the 4th, would that get people more concerned?
also: idaho, bastion of freedom! i hear coeur d'alene is very welcoming to people of color.
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:11 AM
My opinion now is that gun ownership per se has little or no effect on crime one way or another, but that it can make an otherwise-bad social situation worse. But for an individual, given a already-bad personal situation, it might be a good choice. I don't see guns as a social solution, but if there's no social solution, it can be a personal solution. But I don't see guns as intrinsically a problem either, if there aren't other problems. (Except the way that motorcycles are problems -- fun but dangerous).
My antipathy to some of the gun nuts makes me seem more anti-gun than I am.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:13 AM
I think the burden of proof should be on the government to demonstrate a very good reason for the prohibition.
Sure. And the evidence is there: gun ownership is dangerous, you're more likely to be shot by your own gun, blah blah blah.
Tripp, it is a fact that guns, unlike most other things that are also fatal, are for killing. That's why, as someone else said, they're built the way they are. The other purposes you offer as reasons for them are alternate uses, sure, but they aren't the primary use, and every one of them could be achieved using something that isn't fatal. I did *not* say that "all people buy guns to kill other people." I said that guns, as objects, are built for killing. It doesn't weaken my case to state a fact.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:22 AM
haven't read the thread yet, but i must chime in. if you want a gun for home defense, get yourself a fucking shotgun. looks scary, sounds scary, you don't have to hardly aim it, what could be better?
Posted by fiend | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:26 AM
bphd,
Speaking strictly within the realm of 'killing,' I think it is important to make a distinction between killing people and killing animals, and even between which animals are killed.
Also, a distinction needs to be made between handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Without that distinction "All guns should be outlawed' vs "All guns should be allowed' is extremely polarized. Either position leaves me thinking the proponent is either uninformed or radical.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:28 AM
What other things commonly found in the house can accidently kill people suddenly if a small mistake is made?
Medicines, lye, gasoline (with matches), automobiles, electricity, bathtubs. Medicines, automobiles, and electricity are regulated and licensed. I think that there are safety requirements for gasoline containers. Lye and bathtubs, less so.
The gun nut claim is that abolition and prohibition are the issue, but in reality it's regulation and licensing.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:30 AM
Bphd,
I said that guns, as objects, are built for killing.
You claim this for every single gun that is currently manufactured?!
I'm having a hard time believing you would make such a statement. I myself mentioned the underpowered BB gun I had as a child. It was a gun. It was not made for killing. It couldn't even be used very effectively for killing unless somebody tied down a mouse and you squashed him with it.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:33 AM
180 -- "If guns are regulated, only people who apply for and receive permits will have guns."
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:36 AM
Tripp, I didn't say "killing people." I said "killing."
And I also didn't say "all guns should be outlawed." I think that, on the whole, we'd be better off if handguns were outlawed, certainly, and automatic guns, and military-type guns. You're implying that I haven't taken a nuanced position when I have taken pains to do so, and been pretty specific about what I have and haven't said. I'm not weakening my argument; you're weakening it by attributing to me ideas I neither have nor have articulated.
(Sorry if I sound stiff--I'm not ticked off, just being precise and rushing a bit.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:36 AM
John,
Ladders, stairways, flammables such as propane and natural gas, plastic bags, other poisons such as insecticides, fireworks, flash paper and flash powder (which I have as an amateur magician).
But I do agree that licensing and regulation are not the same as prohibition, there is not necessarily a slippery slope leading from one to to theother, and it is reasonable to talk about licensing and regulation.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:39 AM
158
ah. i am going to be fighting off the police??
The point is that if someone is enraged, or even particularly determined, that pepper spray isn't the deterrent you think it is.
first of all, i have to agree with previous comments that this has got to be one of the LEAST EFFECTIVE ways to successfully defend yourself, especially in a city.
second of all, it surely would feel like murder. i, like the police, prefer crime be stopped WITHOUT the loss of human life, including the lives of criminals. i have no desire to have the experience of killing someone, particularly when it is unnecessary, and i believe this experience would also affect you much more strongly than you apparently realize.
I'm not advocating whipping a gun out at the first sign of danger, but sometimes you get backed into a corner and there's not a lot of options. It would be nice if every time there was the option to run away, or just shout for help, or have enough time to run a fucking ladder out the window and put your baby in a backpack to take along, but that's not reality.
It sounds like precious few of you have experienced much violence first hand. Defending yourself (when you can't run away) is especially difficult for women, who are certainly going to be facing someone who is physically bigger and stronger. What the hell are they supposed to do if they have someone enter their residence and escape isn't an option? Calling the police is a good first step, but when the violent threatening ex-boyfriend has just broken in, the fifteen minutes it's going to take the police to arrive are an eternity.
I have no desire to experience killing someone either, but people who break into other peoples homes should accept getting shot as one of the perils of the venture.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:43 AM
"Guns as objects." I might more accurately have said "guns as a class" or something. Again, "not every single gun." Obviously people build guns that aren't intended to kill--toy guns, water guns, bb guns, and so on and so on and so on. You're really splitting hairs.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:44 AM
bphd,
I greatly value precision. Did you mean for your statement I said that guns, as objects, are built for killing. to apply to all guns?
Personally I think there are some guns that are demonstratably NOT built for killing and we should explicitly remove those from our discussion.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:44 AM
You're really splitting hairs.
I suppose I am.
Having watched this debate for years, though, I've found that providing a single counter argument to a blanket statement is used very effectively in debates.
I think there should be regulation of firearms but making an easily refuted blanket statement does not help when making our case. The gun nuts will simply tell people 'they want to take all your guns' and now the opposition includes a whole bunch of people who might otherwse be on our side.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:49 AM
Tripp -- thanks for the additions.
Ladders and stairwells are hardly dispensible in a house, however; they're dangerous because physical space can be dangerous. Likewise, gas is used for the necessary purpose of heating, and is regulated. Plastic bags is one of several things dangerous mostly for infants. Flash powder is not common in households, except yours (not that there's anything wrong with that). Fireworks are often prohibited.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:50 AM
It sounds like precious few of you have experienced much violence first hand.
Sorry, but I hate this kind of bullshit.
Try this: it sounds to me like you haven't been blown in awhile.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:52 AM
Come on, people, it can't be that hard to have a reasonable discussion about this. The fact is, a lot of the factors that make having/not having a gun reasonable are contingent and logistical. How far are the police? What's the layout of your house? Where do you plan to keep a gun? Loaded or not? Kids in the house, or not? Are you coordinated, or clutzy? For some people, it'll make sense. For others, not. No?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:55 AM
191 -- this speaks in favor of the regulation of guns, and against their prohibition. 'Least I think so.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:57 AM
Yeah, gswift, since mmf! is a woman who has mentioned having a handgun pointed at her, I think the "you haven't experienced much violence firsthand" move is misguided against her.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 10:59 AM
sometimes you get backed into a corner and there's not a lot of options . . . women, who are certainly going to be facing someone who is physically bigger and stronger
What? I'm a woman. I've never faced someone who is physically bigger and stronger who was threatening me, at least not in a situation where shooting them was my only option. I think the presumption that it's normal and to be expected that one will be in such a situation is weird.
Admittedly, there are times when folks are in special situations--e.g., the violent ex-husband--when owning a gun and knowing how to use it might be a damn good idea. But one of the major reasons that's so is because, duh, *the violent ex-husband might own a gun.* The violence is a problem, but guns aren't really a great solution, inasmuch as they merely make the problem bigger.
Tripp, okay. I will explicitly remove bb guns, water pistols, and other guns that are *designed not to be fatal* from the discussion. I will also preemptively remove toy cars from any future discussions about gas consumption, transportation, or highway building....
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:00 AM
I also agree with 191. Offer only valid in the U.S., and it's an empirical question how the risks of having a gun vs. not having a gun balance out.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:02 AM
#191: I'm going to play the parent card and say that the problem with the "I don't have kids in the house" argument is that that doesn't mean kids aren't around, or might not be sometimes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:05 AM
Ogged, if you think that anyone on this thread is being unreasonable, you haven't been involved in many second amendment debates.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:05 AM
I think that, on the whole, we'd be better off if handguns were outlawed, certainly, and automatic guns, and military-type guns.
I'm more sympathetic to the full auto bans. I know you detest the whole, "if guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns" argument, but in a country like the U.S. where we already have literally hundreds of millions of guns, a handgun ban won't impact criminal use as much as it will simply make it impossible for law abiding citizens to acquire one.
Attempts to regulate "military-type guns" is kind of a peeve of mine. First, advocates of regulating "military style" or "assault weapons" almost invariably have so little knowledge that the attempts to regulate them don't accomplish much besides pissing off collectors. It's often the same people who get us bizarre regulations like the one in the Brady Bill that limits the capacity of new magazines to 10. Because who hasn't had a gun pointed at them and thought, "Thank God he's only got 10 rounds in that thing"
Secondly, military style weapons are so infrequently used in crimes that regulating them has little to no real effect.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:05 AM
In my view, the rationale behind the Second Amendment is no longer viable in today's society. We do not live in 18th century America, and the vast majority of us are not confronted with the same threats as our ancestors.
That being said, I don't think the Second Amendment is going anywhere. However, I would like to see the "right" of gun ownership more thoroughy tempered by one or more of the following: high license fees (perhaps $2,000+ per year); titles for guns (similar to the system used for motor vehicles); mandatory personal liability insurance for gun owners; gun taxes; mandatory annual gun safety courses; and strict criminal & civil liability for any owner of a firearm- whether the owner actually uses the gun or not. No one says you can't have a gun, but you should have take personal/legal/financial responsibility for it.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:06 AM
Oh! The Second Amendment! I keep meaning to bring that up.
There are arguments that the second amendment was born out of rhetoric about "defending oneself against the government" that was actually just cover for "wanting to kill Indians."
I mean, if one wants to be a strict constructionist...
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:07 AM
From what I know -- not a lot -- I also agree with 198. I might prefer if our gun ownership situation was more like Britain's, but it's not, and passing British gun laws won't make it so. That's why I'm for local control, or licensing and regulations.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:11 AM
Ogged's pretty much got the balance of questions/risks/concerns right in 191. And I think we'd all be safer if we never had handguns in this country, but given that they're here, the costs of securing all handguns, tracking them all, closing the borders effectively is so high, and so likely to be done incompetently, that we're better off with more regulation aimed at safety and oversight.
Not sure about $2000 licensing fees though. Yearly? What about collectors? $100,000 a year to maintain a collection of antique pistols? (This isn't a strawman; my uncle's got a collection of Civil War - WWII rifles and handguns.) It also looks like an excuse for cops to raid poor neighborhoods to me. But I think a yearly safety refresher is a good idea.
Perhaps hard to get through though; lots of the gun nuts Emerson don't want the government knowing who has the guns.
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:15 AM
Shooting Indians' rationale or not, the text is there in the bill of rights. We've taken 'freedom of the press' to include private individuals; I'm not opposed to a reading of the second amendment that does the same. (Though I think there's room for plenty of common-sense regulation before it becomes infringement.)
(nuts that Emerson mentions)
Posted by Cala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:18 AM
in a country like the U.S. where we already have literally hundreds of millions of guns, a handgun ban won't impact criminal use as much as it will simply make it impossible for law abiding citizens to acquire one.
Now, see, this is an argument I am perfectly willing to entertain, and may even decide I agree with.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:20 AM
That's why I'm for local control, or licensing and regulations.
Guns are pretty easily smuggled between localities with different regulations.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:21 AM
It's often the same people who get us bizarre regulations like the one in the Brady Bill that limits the capacity of new magazines to 10. Because who hasn't had a gun pointed at them and thought, "Thank God he's only got 10 rounds in that thing"
Straw man. Please show me a single advocate of the provision who argued for it on the basis of an assailant shooting at just one person.
In fact, the magazine-size limit was imposed in the context of a number of mass-casualty shootings.
Even I, who thought the military-style weapon ban was poorly thought out, believed that the magazine-size limit was reasonable.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:22 AM
206: me again.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:23 AM
191: All true, but as a matter of my sense of the facts, I'd say there are very few people for whom the answers to those questions net out to "A gun in my house will make me safer."
How far are the police?
As Emerson points out, most people live in populous regions; that's why they call them populous. For most people, help is pretty close.
Are you coordinated, or clutzy?
And willing to devote a reasonable amount of time and training in picking up a new skill.
One you didn't ask, but I will:
What's your baseline risk of encountering violent crime?
For most people, this is quite low. There's not all that much violent crime, and what there is is heavily concentrated by class. What gswift said: "It sounds like precious few of you have experienced much violence first hand," while it sounded like a put-down, is pretty much accurate. While his wife was around during a burglary precisely calculated to allow for sensible gun use, most people aren't. And a complicating factor here is that some of the factors that place you at greater risk of being a victim of violent crime are not reasons to encourage gun ownership, e.g., being a violent criminal oneself.
Now, there are some people for whom the baseline risk is high: jewelers, or other people known to be in possession of serious valuables; people against whom credible threats have been made; I'm sure there are other categories I haven't thought of. But most people don't fall into those categories.
Do you have kids?
Note that this increases the cost (accidental risk to kids) of having a gun, and decreases the benefits (the methods you're going to use to keep your gun safe from your kids -- locked, unloaded, in a box -- are going to make it more difficult to use for home defense.
It's not that no one's better off with a gun for self defense -- I just have a hard time believing that many people are.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:28 AM
#203: Oh, I agree that it's in the Bill of Rights. I'm just saying that the usual argument, that it's there to protect citizens against tyranny, not only doesn't hold water in present circumstances, but may well never have held water. And that using that language might be really problematic.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:29 AM
190
Sorry, but I hate this kind of bullshit.
Try this: it sounds to me like you haven't been blown in awhile.
Oh relaz. I'm doing just fine in that department.
193
Yeah, gswift, since mmf! is a woman who has mentioned having a handgun pointed at her, I think the "you haven't experienced much violence firsthand" move is misguided against her.
Possibly. But in my experience, people who take the "I'll just run away" and "I couldn't bring myself to kill someone" largely haven't experienced much violence. I'm glad it's uncommon. But I think because so few people have experienced a violent attack firsthand, it's easy to be a bit naive about your options.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:30 AM
One could live in a very populous region, but in a neighborhood where police response time tended to be slower, because the majority of the residents were poor and/or not white. Not to disagree with LB, just pointing it out.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:31 AM
I suppose a $2,000 annual fee for antique guns would be excessive. Perhaps some distinction could be drawn between antique/collectable guns and modern guns. After all, I don't think many people would invest in flint-locks for self defense (or to commit crimes) just to avoid higher fees.
Dr. B, I agree it is always amusing how Originalists (Scalia et. al.) often ignore inconvenient historical facts. Sometimes ideas that made sense in a world lit by fire do not play well today.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:32 AM
True, but there's getting to the police, and then there's getting help. Most people at least have neighbors close.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:33 AM
If I had active reason to think I might be the target of harm (which is very different from my current situation), I would not want to depend on my neighbors either.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:36 AM
However, I would like to see the "right" of gun ownership more thoroughy tempered by one or more of the following: high license fees (perhaps $2,000+ per year)
What, only rich people have the right to shoot muggers and burglars and crazy-stalker-exes? If there is any argument at all to be made for gun ownership it's the need for self-defense, and in general poor people are more exposed to danger than the well-off.
Hmmm. The Glock Model 38 or the Yamaha Silent Violin? So hard to decide! Do I want to destroy my neighbors, or spare them?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:37 AM
Once again, I am deeply in love with LB.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:37 AM
In my experience, people who are naive about their opinions on gun violence have abnormally small testicles, or at least shave them regularly.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:39 AM
215, me.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:40 AM
in my experience, people who take the "I'll just run away" and "I couldn't bring myself to kill someone" largely haven't experienced much violence
You say that as if it's a foregone conclusion that this makes those people wrong. But one might also point out, for instance, that children who haven't experienced violence are less likely to *be* violent. So maybe the people who take those positions are better than people who, having been trained by violence to see violence as an easily-defaulted-to-position, are more willing to consider it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:41 AM
FYI: I'll be packin' at the next meetup.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:42 AM
Straw man. Please show me a single advocate of the provision who argued for it on the basis of an assailant shooting at just one person.
In fact, the magazine-size limit was imposed in the context of a number of mass-casualty shootings.
You make it sound like mass casualty shootings are some kind of weekly occurence. I frequent the gun shows and shops, and pre ban high capacity mags are more expensive now, but can be had pretty much everywhere. If someone has planned to execute a mass shooting, and has gone to the expense of acquiring weapons that take high capacity mags, he's going to be deterred by what? The couple hundred extra in mag costs?
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:42 AM
I was packing at the last one.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:42 AM
He means a gun, Joe.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:44 AM
Tia-
From your link in 214:
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:44 AM
He means a gun, Joe.
What, you think this thing is unlicensed?
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:46 AM
Small-town neighbors are much, much, much more willing to intervene. A curse and a blessing.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:50 AM
LB -- the idea that KG's neighbors should have acted may be wrong-headed, but a truly great song came out of it.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:53 AM
LB, I know how the link begins. But many neighbors witnessed part of the attack and did not intervene, not because they were bad people, but because of bystander effect/pluralistic ignorance. I linked to KG because she's the most famous example of neighbors not helping out, but I'm sure there are others. "The neighbors will help," is a pretty unreliable self-defense strategy.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:53 AM
KG's neighbors should have acted. What's wrongheaded is that they failed to out of indifference.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:55 AM
What LB and Cala have said.
B, I know polemical is your thing and all, but it's worth remembering that a large segment of the guns-as-fetish-objects crowd really grooves on finding out-of-touch liberals who just don't get the rural way of life, etc., etc., to validate their feelings of persecution and need to be well-armed. I tend to think that backing away from the gun control wars is not only good politics but good policy, in that pursuing gun control legislation creates more scary freaks than it disarms.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:56 AM
There's even a Kitty Genovse musical.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:57 AM
229 -- I don't wanna take a stand on whether Kitty Genovese's neighbors should have acted.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:58 AM
What? I'm a woman. I've never faced someone who is physically bigger and stronger who was threatening me, at least not in a situation where shooting them was my only option. I think the presumption that it's normal and to be expected that one will be in such a situation is weird.
It's certainly not to be expected, and most people in the U.S. won't experience it. What's normal is that if you're attacked as a woman, your attacker is going to be bigger and stronger. It's just a consequence of violent crimes being overwhelmingly committed by males in the 18-40 range.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:58 AM
You make it sound like mass casualty shootings are some kind of weekly occurence.
No amount of quibbling about the actual frequency of mass-casualty shootings (which took a curious dip during the magazine limit days) excuses substituing a fake argument for the ban for the real one.
I frequent the gun shows and shops, and pre ban high capacity mags are more expensive now, but can be had pretty much everywhere.
Now I wonder if you are a fake gun nut. There is no need to buy pre-ban high-capacity magazines. The provision expired more than a year ago. I happen to read some gun and hunting magazines; if you really are into the gun culture you couldn't have missed all the hoopla about the new no-longer-limited magazines when the ban ended.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:58 AM
they failed to s/b thinking that they failed to
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 11:59 AM
DaveL, I think Bitch, Ph. D. is already perfectly situated to serve as a straw (wo)man for various right-wing ideologues. It would be kind of disappointing and not, I think, particularly useful, for her to back down on this issue out of dplomatic considerations.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:00 PM
Mcmc,
I see your point. However, I don't think $2,000 is cost prohibitive (keep in mind that figure is arbitrary). In my experience, if someone wants something bad enough, they will find a way to get it.
In truth, we expect "poor people" to pay for all kinds of things they need, many of which are more important than gun ownership- auto & health insurance; various license fees; rent; taxes; transportation etc. Why should we keep guns cheap and not health insurance?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:01 PM
And Tia, my 227 works great -- better, even -- if you substitute "failed to act out of indifference" for "should have acted". IOW 227 gets it exactly right.
Posted by Jeremy Osner | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:02 PM
"We've taken 'freedom of the press' to include private individuals"
As well we should. Ben Franklin, himself, the individual, owned a printing press, and printed an awful lot of political (as well as non-political) content. His right to use in precisely that way it was being protected. The relationship between the 1st Amendment in 1787 and in 2006 is much closer than that of the 2nd Amendment across that timespan.
That said, obviously only cretins really think that we can run our current society on simplistic readings of a hand-written, 220 year old document. It just so happens that, as of next week, 3 of those cretins will be on the Supreme Court.
Posted by JRoth | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:09 PM
Why should we keep guns cheap and not health insurance?
Health care should be free.
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:09 PM
#230, 236: I may be easily turned into a straw woman, but it isn't *my* responsibility to preempt that; I mean, pretty much any woman with strong opinions is easily turned into a straw woman. And in fact, come on: if you listen to me with a halfway charitable ear towards trying to understand my point, it is in fact pretty nuanced and reasonable. To wit: I will freely admit that I long ago gave up worrying overmuch about people who don't try in good faith to understand what I'm saying.
#233: Sure, stronger and bigger, maybe. Although I do think that the strength / size differential between men and women is exaggerated in our minds, much as the danger of violent crime is. But I don't agree that the only way to fight off or escape someone who is stronger or bigger is to use lethal force. For instance, aggression counts for a lot: I have made much bigger men quail, simply by getting in their face about it. Kind of the way a dachsund can scare off a doberman. This is, of course, a big part of the logic behind self-defense classes.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:09 PM
Gah, that's to 203. Should've updated before commenting.
Posted by JRoth | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:10 PM
pursuing gun control legislation creates more scary freaks than it disarms.
I think the more important causality runs the other way. Scary pro-gun folks create more gun control advocates. Like our gswift. He's probably responsible for several new chapters of Handgun Control, Inc.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:11 PM
243 is me, dang it -- I'm going to relent and check that Remember info box.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:13 PM
Gswift is not a scary gun nut. These arguments get tremendously heated, believe me.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:13 PM
219
You say that as if it's a foregone conclusion that this makes those people wrong. But one might also point out, for instance, that children who haven't experienced violence are less likely to *be* violent. So maybe the people who take those positions are better than people who, having been trained by violence to see violence as an easily-defaulted-to-position, are more willing to consider it.
They're not wrong in the sense that avoidance is the best option. People are can be ridiculously confrontational, and you never know who you're tangling with. It's best to just walk away, give the mugger your wallet, etc. But some seem to think they're always going to have that option, and I think they're unrealistic in thinking they'll always have that degree of control over the situation
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:15 PM
Ok, I'm off to swim--try to keep it civil in this thread.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:15 PM
Jeremy in 236: I'm not suggesting B ought to change (God forbid!!), but after some of the earlier debate, her 204 kind of hit me as encapsulating part of why gun control politics are such a mess.
Posted by DaveL | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:16 PM
245: You're right. I'm pretty sure gswift isn't a gun guy at all.
Posted by aretino | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:17 PM
#219: Granted. But, on balance, I'll take that chance because I think that the risks of having a gun around are way greater than the risk that I'll be in a life or death situation where it'll come in handy. And I think that this holds true for the vast majority of American gun owners, whether or not they wish to acknowledge or realize it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:17 PM
247: The gloves come off now.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:18 PM
#248: I'm confused. Why? If anything my #248 was the *opposite* of what might be expected from the feminist/liberal strawwoman, no?
(I'll have to read your answer much later, as I must now run to a goddamn Friday afternoon meeting, for which I can't blame anyone but my own goddamn self.)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 01-13-06 12:19 PM
(s/b "my #204")
Posted by