whur whur whur whur whur... rurrr.
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!!)
MHS, I didn't say anything about foregoing.
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.
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.
I'm still commenting, aren't I?
You too? What is wrong with us all?
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.
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.
How many liberals does it take to answer a gun question...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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!
#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.
I lead such a boringly non-violent life. Wait, I like it like that.
23: umm, I don't think that's the right link.
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
It takes me to a Blogger sign-in page.
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.
I've never been mugged. Which is to say, my vial of pulverized Kotsko penis has never failed me.
Oh crikey, that story is hilarious, tweedle.
The funnier part was what I had tried to link originally.
Here we go, UPI version of the guys who shot himself five times.
For symmetry's sake, the determination of the time and manner of the death of a king ough to be called his coronertion.
What I love about the story tweedle links is that it has the best non-denial denial ever.
Authorities say Glen Betterley noticed the blood and asked Emma Larsen if she had hit him. Larsen said she didn't know.
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?
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.
#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.
38: I guess not many folks get mugged at a shooting range, huh?
this .500 Mag Hunter
Good grief. I killed two deer just looking at it.
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.
I was unequivocably shitty at hitting my mark
This is why I have just have a cannon loaded with grapeshot.
I was unequivocably shitty at hitting my mark
That's why I'm firing blanks. All the bang, less guilt.
As someone who, while sneaking into the house late, was nearly shot by her own, usually very careful, rational father
Why the qualifier "usually"?
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.
Guns don't kill hypothetical people. Hypothetical people kill hypothetical people. Or would, hypothetically.
Guns don't kill people. Chuck Norris kills people.
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.']
When I point at someone, I want them to pee there pants. Damn. I need to go to sleep.
Guns don't kill people; people kill people. However, people who kill people sure do seem to like guns a lot.
oh shit. Their pants. There pants. See? Sleepy time for tweedledopey.
I need to go to sleep.
The "there" gives it away.
there is some actually lurid gun pr0n out there
Links?
What about Bashful, Sneezy, Happy, Grumpy, Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent, and Doc?
#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.
#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.
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.
Despite ogged's demurral, he does bring up the issue of #2 in the first sentence of the last paragraph of his post.
64: me. But you knew that already from my inimitable style.
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.
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.
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.
Okay guys, who's going to propose to Becks for the hunting trip with her whacky uncle?
I was just about to remark that that wasn't helping.
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.
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!
Hurrah for culling the herd.
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.
At this point, because of Lott and Bellesile, no one trusts anyone else's statistics on guns, and with some justification.
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.
Gun nuts have this saying, "An armed society is a polite society". And yeah, Somalis are wonderfully polite.
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.
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.
I don't think the standard liberal position is pro- gun law anymore. I think the standard position is, "Who cares?"
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.
but even so my niece came reasonably close to getting blown away on the shooting range.
Do you like your niece?
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?
What's flabbergasting about it, Austro?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Um, why else would there be Swiss Army knives?
#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.
Don't they make those in Taiwan?
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.
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.
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 with that, Emerson's mask slipped...
Damn. That second paragraph should be italicized, too.
Sheesh.
Bowling ball NOT bolling ball, which was not even an amusing mistake.
I'm thrilled that handguns are illegal in NYC
Um, why? Is there any indication it's hampering a criminals ability to acquire one?
(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.
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.
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.
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.
Jeremy, when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.
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.
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.
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.
133 -- you're forgetting cops and soldiers, who will also have guns.
#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?
(Private security guards too, most likely.)
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.
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?
do people really believe that whole "2nd amd = freedom from tyranny" thing? i mean, other than instapundit and wayne lapierre?
Ahem.
138 -- you didn't think I said that in earnest, did you JO?
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.
I call shenanigans on the bowling / target shooting comparison.
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.
149 -- no, not really but I was a bit confused because I couldn't see where the joke was.
I don't think Britain's strict handgun laws have made a dent in their rate of gun violence.
Are you kidding?
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?
#132
Yes, gswift, NYC is actually safer than other large cities.
Yeah, but is there evidence that this is due to the handgun regulations?
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.
I was mocking those who would use that argument in the face of actual declining crime rate statistics.
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.
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.
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.
"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:
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.
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.
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.
Mandatory gun safety in schools?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
180 -- "If guns are regulated, only people who apply for and receive permits will have guns."
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.)
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
191 -- this speaks in favor of the regulation of guns, and against their prohibition. 'Least I think so.
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....
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.
#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.
Ogged, if you think that anyone on this thread is being unreasonable, you haven't been involved in many second amendment debates.
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.)
(nuts that Emerson mentions)
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.
That's why I'm for local control, or licensing and regulations.
Guns are pretty easily smuggled between localities with different regulations.
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.
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.
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.
True, but there's getting to the police, and then there's getting help. Most people at least have neighbors close.
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.
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?
Once again, I am deeply in love with LB.
In my experience, people who are naive about their opinions on gun violence have abnormally small testicles, or at least shave them regularly.
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.
FYI: I'll be packin' at the next meetup.
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?
Tia-
From your link in 214:
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.
He means a gun, Joe.
What, you think this thing is unlicensed?
Small-town neighbors are much, much, much more willing to intervene. A curse and a blessing.
LB -- the idea that KG's neighbors should have acted may be wrong-headed, but a truly great song came out of it.
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.
KG's neighbors should have acted. What's wrongheaded is that they failed to out of indifference.
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.
There's even a Kitty Genovse musical.
229 -- I don't wanna take a stand on whether Kitty Genovese's neighbors should have acted.
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.
they failed to s/b thinking that they failed to
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.
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?
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.
Why should we keep guns cheap and not health insurance?
Health care should be free.
#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.
Gah, that's to 203. Should've updated before commenting.
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.
243 is me, dang it -- I'm going to relent and check that Remember info box.
Gswift is not a scary gun nut. These arguments get tremendously heated, believe me.
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
Ok, I'm off to swim--try to keep it civil in this thread.
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.
245: You're right. I'm pretty sure gswift isn't a gun guy at all.
#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.)
Re the Second Amendment argument, that amendment states:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Contrary to popular misconception, the courts have generally interpreted the Second Amendment narrowly: unless you're in a state militia, the government can restrict your right to keep and bear arms all it wants. For example, here in Illinois, several municipalities have laws banning all possession of handguns. The courts have repeatedly upheld these laws against challenges under both the Second Amendment and a similar provision of the Illinois Constitution. (I haven't followed the issue closely, but I think there may be some recent decisions in other jurisdictions construing the Second Amendment more broadly.)
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.
LOL True, they've come back down now. The ban was part of the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired in 2004. I should have been more clear. The point is that they weren't hard to come by during the ban, just more expensive. When I was shopping around for my wife's revolver it was 2002, and they were still common. Relatively expensive, but common. You could pretty easily drop a couple hundred on a high capacity mag, but again, that's not much of a barrier to someone determined to do a mass shooting.
You also indicated a drop in mass shootings during the ban. Any data supporting that this was because of the ban? Have we seen a subsequent spike since the lapse?
B in 241: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.
Agreed, absolutely. That's the point I was trying--badly--to make. There's so much cultural divide on what guns "mean" that even people whose views aren't all that different can seem pretty alien to each other. And by the time nuanced views like yours have been fed through the NRA's marketing machine, they're just another example of why it's important to stockpile guns now before they're banned and the black helicopters come for us.
Or, more briefly, guns are a good Unfogged topic, but not so good for a party platform. And apologies for personalizing it--I was just really struck by how much I instinctively bristled at the way you said stuff that I basically agree with. As Cala said above, I think that's probably mostly an urban vs. rural upbringing thing, but I'm well enough reconstructed that it surprises me a bit when it crops up.
Unfortunately, I am inclined to agree with those who are saying that the Dems should probably not push gun control in order to appeal to outdoorsmen/women on environmental issues. Probably the way to go is to say that it should be handled on a local level; as Howard Dean always says, laws that make sense in NYC may not make sense in a rural area, etc. Personally, I would like to see a nationwide ban on handguns and other guns intended to kill people, but politically it's not going to happen -- sadly, IMO.
#248: I'm confused. Why? If anything my #248 [204] was the *opposite* of what might be expected from the feminist/liberal strawwoman, no?
Right. That's where it became clear that there's actually a lot of common ground. The problem is that when you (generic you, not BPhD you) start from the premise that guns are, on balance, a bad thing, you're already a strawman long before you get to the part about it being infeasible/undesirable/whatever to make them go away. The policy position is nuanced, but there's a segment of the population that's already on its way out to buy more ammo by the time you finish working through the analysis that gets you there.
A personal experience before Christmas shows one of the problems in the 'an armed populace will make the world safer' point.
True story - while I was exiting Target (sheesh what a name) I heard a commotion. I kept walking out a few steps and then a couple guys ran past me. A quick glance told me it was a teenage boy and a guy in a suit. I heard a woman yell "Get him David!"
I kept watching and the guy in the suit jumps in a car parked in the lot and the kid runs up to the car and the lady yells "Get his plate number!"
The guy in the car starts the car, backs out, surges forward where he is blocked by an oncoming car, then surges backwards, going very fast in reverse up the complete row of parked cars.
Now lets say I had a gun. My initial idea of who the 'bad guy' was was wrong. Once I determined who was chasing whom I had no idea what the 'perp' had done. Maybe he shoplifted. Maybe he was racing to set off a terrorist bomb that would destroy our city. Let's say everbody in the parking lot had a gun. What would we have done with one?
245
Gswift is not a scary gun nut. These arguments get tremendously heated, believe me.
249
You're right. I'm pretty sure gswift isn't a gun guy at all.
What's funny is that to some at the shows I'm a raving lefty. I'm full of sinful ideas like maybe unregulated full auto isn't such a good idea.
It gets far nuttier than me. Back in the 1992 when the Great Western Show still used to come to the L.A. County fairgrounds, out front, I shit you not, was a table manned with flyers, buttons, and all..."Bo Gritz for President" Google around on Bo Gritz to get a real look at a gun nut.
255: It's just a curious coincidence, I'm sure.
260: I figure that the idea that you're engaging at all on the issue an a site where most people disagree with you indicates that you can't be too far out there from my perspective. If it's not clear, I, for one, and I think most people here as well, enjoy having new people around to argue with.
To sum up my point in 102, 211, 214: the state doesn't afford the same level of protection to everyone, and this should at least be a factor in our consideration of gun laws. I can imagine a circumstance in which I would want to own a gun, and therefore I don't feel comfortable denying that right (subject to heavy regulation of course) to anyone else.
I consider the following to be 'reasonable' federal bans.
Ban full-auto.
Ban cop-killer bullets.
Ban calibre bigger than something. (no bazookas).
In addition I think the feds should require that legal gun owners have a license similar to a drivers license. Yeah, yeah, I know, paranoia about the gummint but if we can license vehicle drivers we can license legal gun shooters. Licensing means you must pass a gun safety test. The NRA can design the test.
Other than a 'slippery slope' argument I can't see any reason to oppose these bans and regulations.
Tweedledopey (or is it jvance? I can never tell)-- I don't own a car and haven't driven past Logan in a long time. I do remember an ugly apartment building that used to have a sign saying, "if you lived here, you'd be home now."
228: Tia, in 1999 or 2000 there was a woman who was attacked in Portland, Maine in broad daylight and very few people did anything. It was on a highly-trafficked main street. I think that one person called 911, and they totally fucked it up. There was a huge soul-crisis, because Maienrs liek to think of themselves as people who will help each other out, very community-minded.
gswift,
Yeah, what LB said - welcome! Around these parts we like to take the time to gnaw at points of view without (hopefully) hurting anyone's feelings. Not that you have a right to not get your feelings hurt, but I think most of us try to be civil. Most of the non-civil stuff is done in fun between those who know each other.
Re: 258-
I think the better premise for advancing gun control is that guns are dangerous, rather than bad. This might be an effective end-run around the rural/urban view of guns, as everyone is likely to agree guns are dangerous.
The law is no stranger to imposing greater restrictions & burdens on things deemed hazardous or ultra-hazardous. I think framing the issue this way might get more traction with the NRA crowd than the argument that guns are bad. In other words, pull a Karl Rove: start a "Safe & Happy Guns" initiative and then slap guns with every kind of onerous fee, license & restriction known to the mind of man. If anyone disagrees with your intiative, adopt a posture of rightous indignation and accuse them of supporting sloppy, irresponsible, godless, anti-culture-of-life, child & puppy-killing gun ownership. Hey, it worked for Dubya's "Clear Skies" right?
It's just a curious coincidence, I'm sure.
As I recall, that period saw a huge reduction in overall violent crime. So it seems a little premature to attribute the decrease to the assault weapons ban.
Ditto to what Tripp said in 266.
Bostoniangirl,
I'd sure like a link to that story. I hope the onlookers were simply confused instead of callous.
I think guns *might* be useful defending oneself in some cases but I don't think one can count on strangers with guns for defence.
Tripp, that's where you start losing people who know anything about guns. "Cop-killer bullets" is a meaningless scare phrase, and "ban calibre bigger than something" is very little better. Calibre--bore diameter, basically--doesn't really determine how powerful a gun is (it matters a lot how much powder is behind the bullet, how it's shaped, and how fast it's moving), and if it the .50 BMGs that you're worried about, I gotta say that I find people who want to shoot very large bullets out of very expensive guns at very distant targets a little nutty but not all particularly threatening.
Apologies for being more than usually incoherent today. Or maybe I'm always this bad.
262 & 266
I've lurked here for quite some time, so I'm familar with the tone. It helps that I really am a raving lefty on a lot of issues.
Come fellow liberals and partake of the joy of hot lead. ;)
DaveL,
No, I think you made your point very well.
By 'cop-killer bullets' I meant bullets capable of penetrating a modern protective vest with enough force to cause injury.
I don't think these bullets are needed for hunting, for competition, or even for self defense. Yeah you can argue that the bad guy might have body armor but then I will argue that that is not very likely.
As for the 'calibre' thing I meant keep the regulations we currently have.
Calibre--bore diameter, basically--doesn't really determine how powerful a gun is (it matters a lot how much powder is behind the bullet, how it's shaped, and how fast it's moving)
Quite true, but I'm fascinated by the tension between this fact and the marketing from large-caliber handgun manufacturers cited in ogged's post. Presumably they are marketing to folks who should know better.
I really like to shoot guns, and I think the Second Amendment very much expressly says that's fine. That's as loony right as I go.
By 'cop-killer bullets' I meant bullets capable of penetrating a modern protective vest with enough force to cause injury.
I don't think these bullets are needed for hunting, for competition, or even for self defense. Yeah you can argue that the bad guy might have body armor but then I will argue that that is not very likely.
But that's completely wrong. Most hunting rifles (and bullets fired out of hunting rifles) are significantly more powerful than basically any handgun round or the common military cartridges. People are pretty soft targets compared to a lot of game animals, and guns that are mostly intended for shooting people (handguns, military weapons) are pretty wimpy for hunting purposes. I'm pretty sure grandpa's 30-06 with normal hunting ammunition will pretty readily punch through most or all body armor.
IIRC, the term "cop-killer bullets" has been directed at two completely different types of bullets: fully-jacketed bullets that are designed not to expand (which means they penetrate better because they're applying all of their energy to a small area) and bullets that are designed to expand a lot to make a big ugly wound channel (but that won't go through armor very well).
274
By 'cop-killer bullets' I meant bullets capable of penetrating a modern protective vest with enough force to cause injury.
I don't think these bullets are needed for hunting, for competition, or even for self defense.
No offense, but this is exactly why gun enthusiasts don't trust liberals with regulation.
Most Kevlar vests are what's called Level II protection, which basically will stop your standard large caliber pistols and I think 00 Buck shot from a 12 gauge. However, these vests don't stop rifle rounds. Almost any hunting round will pierce a Level II vest. A ban such as you describe would basically outlaw every hunting rifle in the country.
IIRC, the term "cop-killer bullets" has been directed at two completely different types of bullets: fully-jacketed bullets that are designed not to expand (which means they penetrate better because they're applying all of their energy to a small area) and bullets that are designed to expand a lot to make a big ugly wound channel (but that won't go through armor very well).
I hadn't heard the hollow points referred to as cop killers, but it wouldn't surprise me. The other common way to get armor piercing capabilities in a round is to use a core of a much harder metal like steel or brass.
I hadn't heard the hollow points referred to as cop killers
My recollection is that it wasn't hollow points in general but some specific products where advertising claims in gun-enthusiast publications were picked up by the anti-gun groups and used as horror stories.
Have we reached at least a partial concensus on the following:
1. For some people, in some circumstances, having a gun is insane. No halfway reasonable person could think that the benefits outweigh the risks.
2. For other people, in other circumstances, owning a gun (even carrying a gun) is entirely rational, even prudent and sensible.
If anyone wants to dispute #2, I'll jump in. Otherwise, I think we've reached something like a pro-choice position. In some places (e.g. NYC) a ban is a good idea. In other places, leave it up to the individual.
This chart gives a good idea of what vests stop. Level III and up usually involves ballistic plates, or there's now Pinnacle's "Dragon Skin" which uses small overlapping ceramic or titanium plates much like medeival fish scale armor.
The other common way to get armor piercing capabilities in a round is to use a core of a much harder metal like steel or brass.
I'm not sure this is going to be coherent but bear wit' me. It seems to me like you are recognizing here that some bullets can be/are built particularly for their destructive capabilities versus an armored opponent. That makes your earlier "this is exactly why gun enthusiasts don't trust liberals with regulation" seem a little disingenuous to me: you are essentially saying-without-saying-it, "I could design a proper regulation that would control malicious [for lack of a better word] forms of ammunition while leaving benign [ditto] ones in circulation." But instead of offering it up and/or saying "Here is something I would sign on to", you are belittling the ideas of people who are searching for the stuff you are talking about but who do not have your wealth of knowledge on the subject.
281: I would argue that while 'some' is accurate in both cases, that case 1 vastly outnumbers case 2 -- in other words, that if your circumstances are such that a gun in your house makes you safer, that you're in a genuinely unusual situation.
(I don't think that leaves me in a different policy place than you, because I don't think the externalities from ill-advised gun ownership are quite high enough to justify a ban. I just wanted to restate my understanding of the facts.)
Just to make sure I understand things correctly, is your point that deer hunting rifles use bullets that can pass through a law enforcement protective vest?
If so then I would not ban the ammunition but I would only allow the use of such ammunition in a long gun.
With that settled, I'm going to reaffirm my masculinity by mopping the kitchen floor. Slaughtering helpless dust bunnies, and dust elephants, makes me feel manly. It lets me exercise power at a distance, even if the distance is only the length of the mop handle. But, alas, sometimes a mop is only a mop.
What calibre of mop do you use?
The point is that if someone is enraged, or even particularly determined, that pepper spray isn't the deterrent you think it is.
in that case, let me spray it in your eyes sometime.
#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.
this and also fighting dirty in surprising ways.
A friend who took the same self-defense course i did was attacked while climbing a mountain by herself in Tunisia. She fought him off, temporarily but successfully, and it gained enough time to escape down the mountain. She punched the man so hard she broke her own wrist in the process, but she didn't even notice that until it was all over. And it worked. That was her only injury: a broken wrist from the force of her own punch (meeting his face-bones). Verdict: we can all be plenty strong when we have to.
this is not something I need to argue. but:
a)How could a gun possibly be handy enough to protect oneself, unless it was sitting around unlocked in the house, i.e. reachable during this imaginary break-in that may or may not happen, and therefore a giant safety risk in and of itself?
b)How could a gun possibly be genuine useful or effective protection, unless I took it with me wherever I went, particularly when I am out at night? That's far more dangerous for me than being at home. Meaning: are you in favor of loaded concealed weapons? For women? For all of us? Crowds of us?
Otherwise, this is silliness - guns aren't what's going to protect me. Social norms, law enforcement, and my own smarts are.
I'd feel much safer in a world where neither I nor anyone else possessed a handgun. Except maybe the police.
Just to make sure I understand things correctly, is your point that deer hunting rifles use bullets that can pass through a law enforcement protective vest?
If so then I would not ban the ammunition but I would only allow the use of such ammunition in a long gun.
I think the point is that you can defeat body armor either by using a smaller, harder bullet in a gun that otherwise couldn't--e.g., handgun bullets designed to penetrate body armor--or by just hitting it hard enough that any old bullet will punch through. Most rifles are going to be in the second category. The other semi-complicating factor is that in some respects smaller, harder bullets are less damaging because they make a smaller hole, so they're not unequivocally a bad thing. (IIRC, there's some kind of Geneva Convention or similar rule that requires military small-arms ammunition to use non-expanding bullets, but I could be completely wrong about that.)
If you could craft a ban to get only ammunition that's specifically designed to be armor-piercing in handguns, I wouldn't see anything wrong with adopting it, but I'm afraid the definitional issues would tangle you up so badly that it would be pretty hard to do that.
Thank you for the clarification, LB. There's a whole public policy debate we could indulge in about when the vast majority of situations justifies a law that produces bad results in a small minority of cases.
But I was thinking outside the house. I can well imagine situations (such as being on my 20 acres in the mountains, when there have been reports of rabid coyotes in the area) where I'd consider a handgun to be sensible.
I don't see the 'protection of home against intruders' as the only rationale for guns.
But instead of offering it up and/or saying "Here is something I would sign on to", you are belittling the ideas of people who are searching for the stuff you are talking about but who do not have your wealth of knowledge on the subject.
I don't mean to come off as belittling. I realize this stuff isn't common knowledge, but it makes it really hard to get the pro gun side to come to the table when things get portrayed in this way.
It's not uncommon in the media. For example NBC had that whole debacle about teflon coated cop killer bullets. Coating a bulett with Teflon is about friction reduction, not armor piercing. Some armor piercing rounds happened to be Teflon coated, but it was because the actual bullet was made of a harder metal that would scew up the barrel. But to this day when a lot of people hear Teflon coated bullets, they think armor piercing.
in that case, let me spray it in your eyes sometime.
No, he's right about this. I just recently saw some video of a guy who was sprayed by several police officers several times, to very little effect. Pepper spray will often deter an attacker, but not a determined one.
climbing a mountain by herself in Tunisia
Clearly, your friend is already a stud; also, Tunisians are pussies.
287: What calibre of mop do you use?
I use only the highest caliber mob. An imported mop, exclusively available from a specialty mop shop in San Francisco.
Speaking as a short fat old male, I think the whole gender thing is a red herring. I'm quite sure that were I attacked by most any woman in the 18 to 40 age group, I'd get thoroughly whupped.
I'd feel much safer in a world where neither I nor anyone else possessed a handgun. Except maybe the police.
I tend to agree, but given that we don't and will never live in that world, I'm not sure that much of anything policy-wise follows from that aspiration.
Increasingly, I'm on gswift's side on this. I wonder how much stranger violence (or threat of violence) most have seen. I'd bet responses vary base on exposure to this kind of risk.
the urban rural debate is interesting, and i certainly see its point. but why can't the rural folk just use hunting rifles?
all right, i am going to bed, where hopefully i will dream of people on crowded streets and metro cars packed shoulder-to-shoulder, all having big bulges where their concealed weapons are and being very, very polite to each other.
(as the war-torn somalians are, according to a comment above). good night all.
If you could craft a ban to get only ammunition that's specifically designed to be armor-piercing in handguns, I wouldn't see anything wrong with adopting it, but I'm afraid the definitional issues would tangle you up so badly that it would be pretty hard to do that.
It's not easy. There's definitely stuff I wouldn't want to see in wide circulation. There's a companies like LeMas that design "blended metal" rounds designed specifically to pierce hard armor and/or ballistic glass, and yet do massive damage to the soft target afterwards. From what I've read the reason it's not around is that they angle for U.S. military contracts only, and won't sell to anyone else.
263To sum up my point in 102, 211, 214: the state doesn't afford the same level of protection to everyone, and this should at least be a factor in our consideration of gun laws. I can imagine a circumstance in which I would want to own a gun, and therefore I don't feel comfortable denying that right (subject to heavy regulation of course) to anyone else.
Well, there's a problem here, particularly in regard to 211. The one place gun control (even handgun bans) is very popular is in high-crime areas of big cities. Those voters have made their own calculation about the path of greatest safety, and it's not more lenient gun laws. So this ends up seeming a bit patronizing in a yuppie suburban dailykos liberal elitist way. (Not saying that you or anyone else who holds this view are any of those things, I'm just saying that's the way it will come across.)
all having big bulges where their concealed weapons are
I have had dreams strangely similar to this...
296: p.s. well, i do right now. at least, it's a continent without handguns - not bad. no reason to be fatalistic.
I wonder how much stranger violence (or threat of violence) most have seen. I'd bet responses vary base on exposure to this kind of risk.
Yes, but I think the relationship is the opposite of what you're expecting.
It's not immediately obvious to me that majority of people who voted for stricter handgun controls are actually the people who live in poorer neighborhoods of urban areas (maybe they are; don't know one way or the other). There are wealthy yuppies in the city who do a lot of voting too. All I know is I'd be a lot less confident about police response time if I lived in Bed-Stuy than I do spending my time in UWS/Park Slope, given that I used to read pretty pointed remarks that it had improved markedly since white people came to the neighborhood on billboards on the Clinton Hill subway stop. This is how I gather all my sociological data. Merely living in a bad neighborhood would not be sufficient to think that on balance I was better off owning a handgun, but I don't think I could count on the police either.
NB The white people did not actually arrive on billboards. I just don't edit my comments.
Hey, Clinton Hill is the only neighborhood where I've ever been a crime victim; I was burgled on Classon Ave, just down the street from Pratt.
Unfortunately, I am inclined to agree with those who are saying that the Dems should probably not push gun control in order to appeal to outdoorsmen/women on environmental issues. Probably the way to go is to say that it should be handled on a local level; as Howard Dean always says, laws that make sense in NYC may not make sense in a rural area, etc.
This may be the right stance electorally, though I'm skeptical. I just want us to keep in mind that it's absurd as policy, because what it really means is something close to "the entire Northeast is entitled to the gun regulation policy of the state of Virginia (or pick your own lenient nearby state)".
304: It's hard to explain DC or Detroit with yuppies. There just aren't enough of 'em.
297: See, I think most people both haven't seen much stranger violence, and are correct in believing that stranger violence isn't likely to be a significant problem for them in future. So, someone with significant experience of stranger violence may have a much better sense of how much use a gun would be in a fight, but is likely to have a vastly overstated sense of how useful a gun is likely to be to most people overall.
Ditto 309. What little experience I have in Democratic politics led me to meet lots of organizers/activists from urban crime-ridden areas, and they were all very vocal hangun opponents. It was one of their biggest issues (since this was on the Dean campaign, it was talked about a lot). It seems that in those communities, the debate is pretty much over.
(By "seems", I mean "based on my own anecdotal samplings.")
310 -- kind of like letting families of murder victims set our death penalty policy.
310: I wasn't actually thinking specifically of the gun control question; I just found some of the other ways that people suggested addressing violent situations not very convincing. As to gun control - I don't care. I want my country back, and if giving the fuck ya!s their guns makes that more like, let them have them.
307--Aretino, I understand what you mean when you say that local gun regulation isn't going to prevent people from buying guns out-of-state, but surely those people could be--and are--prosecuted under local law for violations. While there are obviously problems with presuming that criminals are rational actors, NYC's general policy of "If you have an illegal gun and we see it, you're going to get nailed" seems to have permeated the culture pretty effectively. [Caveat: not that I'm particularly jacked into the gun-wanting culture of NYC, mind you.]
Hey, Clinton Hill is the only neighborhood where I've ever been a crime victim; I was burgled on Classon Ave, just down the street from Pratt.
When I was at Pratt, everyone I knew had been either mugged or burgled. I once interrupted an eleven-year-old boy in the midst of removing the wallet from my backpack, which I had left on a chair in my 2nd-floor studio. He dropped the pack and said, "I just grabbed it from that dude--he went that way! I'll get him!" pointing and then running to the inner room, from which there was no exit. Short silence. Then, "Shit! Motherfucker jumped out the window!" When he came out, I held out my hand, and he dropped the wallet in it and ran.
It was pretty much that kind of neighborhood in the early 90's. I don't know if it's changed since.
I just want us to keep in mind that it's absurd as policy, because what it really means is something close to "the entire Northeast is entitled to the gun regulation policy of the state of Virginia (or pick your own lenient nearby state)".
I hear you, and that's why, if it's feasible, a nationwide policy makes much more sense. State-by-state or municipality-by-municipality laws are of limited efficacy if someone in State or Municipality A that restricts guns can go buy guns in nearby State or Municipality B, where anything goes. Case in point: Chicago as I understands it basically bans the purchase of new handguns. If you had the gun in the city, registered, before 1994 or something, you can keep it. If not, it's illegal. Chicago has a lot of murders (more than NYC, IIRC, even though NYC has over twice the population), and yes, the vast majority are committed with guns. Not being able to buy a gun in Chicago means little when you can buy whatever you want in any number of nearby 'burbs (the gun shops of which are reportedly quite happy to cater to Chicago gangbangers). So I guess I'm completely undercutting the position I advocated.
314: You're right, the way I put 307 was far too stark.
What little experience I have in Democratic politics led me to meet lots of organizers/activists from urban crime-ridden areas, and they were all very vocal hangun opponents. It was one of their biggest issues (since this was on the Dean campaign, it was talked about a lot). It seems that in those communities, the debate is pretty much over.
It's ironic. I haven't seen the statistics, and thus am somewhat talking out of my ass, but I daresay a lot of the most diehard "right to bear arms" advocates are those who have the least need for guns to defend themselves (say, white folks in upper-middle-class suburbia), whereas some of the biggest gun opponents are those living in dangerous areas where they're much more likely to be in a self-defense situation where a gun would be useful.
they were all very vocal hangun opponents
Of course, who wouldn't oppose Hangun?
260 -- the Montana Militia guys were far too nutty for Bo Gritz. He walked away shaking his head.
Despite NYC's strict gun laws, there is a firing range in (of all places) Chelsea. I've always wanted to go.
I've also always wanted to check out the National Firearms Museum, which is right up the road from me in Virginia.
there is a firing range in (of all places) Chelsea
Sadly it is not at the Chelsea Piers.
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 think I may be in the other camp. I know I could pull the trigger in a limited range of circumstances. I'm not sure that would be correct, though.
Part of the problem with crafting policy, which has come up in this thread, is often the lack of knowledge of the people promoting those policies. 'Cop-killer' bullets? The only analogy I can think of is how annoyed scientists are when they hear that 'theory' just means 'explanation' and how annoyed philosophers get when someone says 'oh, I have an opinion, so, like, I do philosophy.' We end up banning Teflon coated bullets that don't pierce body armor because the people drafting the laws have next to no knowledge, and that pisses gun enthusiasts off as much as a school board insisting ID is just another sort of science annoys biologists. Hard to want to allow the government to regulate when they're more likely to regulate the wrong thing.
Case in point: Chicago as I understands it basically bans the purchase of new handguns. If you had the gun in the city, registered, before 1994 or something, you can keep it. If not, it's illegal. Chicago has a lot of murders (more than NYC, IIRC, even though NYC has over twice the population), and yes, the vast majority are committed with guns.
This was the point I was attempting to make eariler, but I put it badly. Local control means nothing when you can drive 15 miles and buy something legally. The sort of crackdown it would require is going to take wayyy too much manpower to enforce.
I for one think everyone deserves a cookie for prolonging a serious discussion in which there has been no name calling.
325! -- The sum of two perfect squares in three different ways (1+324; 100+225; 36+289)!
Yeah, 1729 rocks, as you doubtless know: the smallest number that's the sum of two perfect cubes in two different ways (1+1728; 729+1000). I'm guessing that 325 is the smallest number that's the sum of two perfect squares in three different ways, but I don't know.
I'm guessing that 325 is the smallest number that's the sum of two perfect squares in three different ways, but I don't know.
It seems like it ought to be really easy to write a program to test that -- but I'm having a hard time figuring out the logic.
OK, I think I'm on my way to a solution...
While he's thinking, let me mention that Mark Schmitt pwns.
Ok if my logic is correct, Frederick has it right. I will post my source at my blog, should be up in a couple minutes after I format it, if you want to check it.
Oh, three different ways. Whoops.
50 is only the sum of 2 squares in 2 different ways. (If that is what you meant, Ben.)
330: Have I ever mentioned that I don't like it when people get on some kind of a trip about how their preferred sex acts are better than other people's preferred sex acts? I don't think I've ever said anything of the kind before.
tia
['vaginal sex is never messy or degrading']
>>> from genlib import conjoin
>>> def normalize(a, b, c):
if c > b: return normalize(a, c, b)
if b > a: return normalize(b, a, c)
if c > a: return normalize(c, b, a)
return a, b, c
>>> from sets import Set
>>> triples = Set()
>>> for (a,b,c) in conjoin([lambda: range(1,18)]*3):
if a == b or b == c or c == a: continue
triples.add(normalize(a,b,c))
>>> sums = Set()
>>> matches = []
>>> for (a,b,c) in triples:
s = a**2 + b**2 + c**2
if s in sums: matches.append(s)
sums.add(s)
>>> matches.sort()
>>> matches[0]
62
No, Tia, but 6 squared plus five squared plus one squared equals seven squared plus three squared plus two squared (62).
Little known fact: some sex acts make you bad at math.
That's why I revised the code to remove the possibility of zero. (I see it's back to replacing the numeral zero with the letter "o".)
Or rather, 0 and o look identical. Nemmine.
337: Yeah, Caitlin Flanagan ITPM Maureen Dowd.
The problem is that a program isn't needed to solve the problem.
Okay, I should know better than to but into math threads. just didn't know what you were doing. back to cock jokes for me.
w-lfs-n's problem: using Python. (Is that Python? I never can differentiate properly between those scripting languages.)
Silvans -- no mathematician I. How do you do it without algorithms? Please tell.
And, sorry about misspelling your name!
It's Python, but you do it a disservice by calling it a scripting language, my friend.
It's not, like, VBA.
I guess I don't have a rigorous answer. I just wrote down all the perfect squares less than 325 and looked at them for a few minutes. If you write them in order, the problem is that the larger and smaller numbers have to be marching (for lack of a better word) toward each other after a fashion, and there's just no room for them to do that in a way that works.
But let me think about it, I might be able to come up with something better.
Actually I really want to learn Python but never seem to make the time for myself to actually do it. I intended no insult by calling it a scripting language; maybe my nomenclature was wrong though. There are a couple languages that serve similar functions and I use "scripting languages" to refer to them; VBA is not one of them but now that you mention it, I can see that "scripting languages" probably describes VBA better than any of them.
No no Tia, come back! We need to keep talking about sex acts etc.
For instance, Schmitt is wrong about Betty and Veronica's comparative social status, but I think he's right that Veronica is the sexually available one. So why does Archie feel a tension? I think it's that Betty is, literally, a nice girl. In this way Archie resembles An American Tragedy* in that the poor girl is tremendously appealing but is a hindrance to our ambitious young hero nevertheless. In real life Archie didn't save Betty after beating off those other guys.
*from what I've heard, haven't read it or seen any of the movies.
Anyway, I don't know what you mean by my "problem", since I was right.
Silvana, you wrote down three columns of 18 numbers, and discovered that you could add three different triples up to get the same number just by looking? That seems ... hard.
Silvana -- aren't you doing something algorithmic? You are just saying "a program is not necessary" because your intuitive grasp of arithmetic lets you get the answer faster than somebody can write and debug a program to do the same thing -- but you are implementing a "program" yourself, just that it is not executable by a machine.
Anyway, I don't know what you mean by my "problem", since I was right.
Likewise I'm sure.
360: I did my senior thesis on a project which involved manipulating numbers to get a particular result (usually 24). I spent a lot of time just staring at numbers on a page. I guess I got used to it. (of course, I eventually wrote some programs, to make sure I was right... they do provide a nice certainty)
And yeah, Osner, but in that sense anything you do is a "program."
In AAT the poor girl isn't really that appealing next to the rich girl. She just happened to come first.
I didn't read Archie comments either. Jesus, math, comics, I'm so ignorant. Clearly I've been spending so much time getting laid. No wonder Ogged is so much smarter than I am.
(Weiner, I think you owe me some info. I invited you to IM me in email)
urg. comments/sb comics, so s/b too. Typing is another thing Ogged is better at than me.
If Fermat had had a blog, he wouldn't have had to worry about margins.
We all have to live with our choices, young Tia.
And isn't Silvana vs. computer like heuristic vs. algorithm?
So, I read Archie comics, you read An American Tragedy and had sex, if it weren't for the math skillz you'd be on top.
Likewise I'm sure.
We had different results.
369 -- that sounds promising. What is a heuristic precisely?
I used to be pretty good at math. But like Ogged said, we all make our choices.
You were solving different problems, young Ben. JO was solving Frederick's problem: What is the smallest n such that n = x^2 + y^2 = z^2 + w^2 = u^2 + v^2, u v, w, x, y, z distinct? You were solving: What is the smallest n such that n = x^2 + y^2 + z^2 = w^2 + u^2 + v^2, u, v, w, x, y, z distinct?
ben, you were solving a different problem than Osner. He is looking for the sum of two squares three different ways, while you are looking for the sum of three squares two different ways, yes?
371 -- But you are doing sums of 3 squares in 2 different ways! Or that is what I took your 336 to mean) -- that is not the question under consideration!
I'm going by the definitions here, but I keep telling myself to read this.
Wait, wasn't that the problem? Fuck.
like Ogged said, we all make our choices.
Not always. I was in "gifted" math classes until I hit puberty; then, suddenly, I sucked at math. True story.
This is why I read this blog. Where else am I going to see comments by a guy named Weiner about Archie beating off other guys.
I take it all back, and prepare to hide in shame.
I actually was no good at math until I started having sex. So, YMMV.
Some of three different squares: Silvana, Jeremy Osner, Matt Weiner.
(though I still think that my code is a lot clearer than Osner's, and is readily adapted to solve the actual problem!)
And then I assumed I was confused because I was dumb, and I tuned out. This is like the failures of our educational system in a nutshell.
Weiner, you are supposed to be kibbitzing with me.
ben's code is easily adaptable to solve other problems, which is why my "heuristic" (although I'm not sure I want to call it that) is no good for more difficult questions.
387 -- yeah that code I wrote is pretty lousy it's got to be said. Did the job tho.
He's jinxed. Matt Weiner Matt Weiner Matt Weiner.
Tx, silvana. You notice how we've moved from first commenter pwns second to second commenter jinxes first?
Sometimes the oppressed come back fighting with fists of fury.
The weiner-pwn was always an illegitimate designation.
I can't believe no one came up with a program in MATLAB.
Tia, are you checking your e-mail?
Weiner if you can't receive my email then there is nothing left but to sign up for AIM right now. Do not underestimate my seriousness. I am Oediparex.
Just got some. e-mail from tia, I mean.
You two can't just go chat. There's precedent for this. You have to invite everyone who's still reading the thread.
I don't know how to set up a multi-person chat room with AIM, or on AOL. Yet another thing I would have learned if not for...
You definitely haven't gotten all the email of sent, M.
Tia and Weiner, sittin' in a tree…
It's easy to do a multi-person chat using AIM.
People are at the basement. It's kinda lame though.
Except I think everyone's trying to get Tia and Matt Weiner alone... there's a very junior high sleepover feel to the whole thing.
Oh, I guess that means I'm supposed to leave, then.
While they're messing around in the basement, we can sneak upstairs and break into mom and dad's booze.
Unfortunately, the site chat software really does suck.
416 -- Are mom and dad Mineshaft denizens, too? Oh shit -- I thought I was free of parental supervision... Or are you referring to Ogged and FL?
I think the basement killed unfogged.
Aha: what that chat room software made me feel like, was the little old lady from Pasadena. Oddly I did not lay eyes on Kevin Drum.
Oh, we'll be back, right after we have hot hot chat sex.
Man, that software does suck. What's the reason for not just using aim, again?
I think Drum is in Irvine.
Maybe he would have had sex with me in SEK's office.
Tia said she didn't know how to do a group chat in AIM.
Well, actually, I just looked up the help file on group aim chats. i think the real reason is that weiner has no screen name. now i really am going to bed.
What is the distinction between what Unfogged is now from a chat room?
(In some ways, this is a sincere question, as I've never been to a chat room, so far as I know. In fact, I associate chatrooms with my slightly skeevy Swiss host sister, yes, she of the assault-rifle-owning father.)
good night. matt needs to get an aim account. it's free, matt.
This is a high-minded blog, where we ruminate on serious topics and produce comments worthy of being archived forever. A chat room, less so.
Or, just click the link in 409 and you can hang out in a (crappy) chat room.
Plus, in a chat room, Ogged can't close comment threads.
okay, an example of why chat rooms suck. I just realized that when Matt said, "Has anyone ever negatively reinforced you for talking about your sex life?" I should have said, "If they did, I'd probably just enjoy it." Now I'm really, really going to bed.
Building on what ogged said in 430, a chat room is also real-time.
Theoretically.
Okay, punk. I'd take you down verbally, but this really calls for a rumble.
This is not a good advertisement for chat.
Ok, now I'm really off to read "Year of Yes."
(Still, the homies of the Bay Area could probably swarm you if I managed the diplomacy properly.)
(Still, the homies of the Bay Area could probably swarm you if I managed the diplomacy properly.)
Most of us don't know where ogged is located, though.
I was hoping for some kind of regional deterrence.
Just be on the safe side and get one of these.
Ok if my logic is correct, Frederick has it right. I will post my source at my blog, should be up in a couple minutes after I format it, if you want to check it.
Thanks, Jeremy! You rock!
It's good to see that my surmises are sometimes right. The other day at BPhD's blog, I boldly claimed that there is only one pair of body parts whose names are anagrams of one another (for example, "arm" and "ram" would qualify, if only the latter were a body part). Then Orange came up with another pair. Embarrassment city. Anyone care to guess the two pairs of anagrammatic body parts?
spine and penis I've heard before, but another? hmmm
Very impressive, gswift! You got both of them -- and I'd never considered "thyroid"/"dirty ho." :-)
409: I don't wanna be a little priss, but I think the chat room should be called the back room of the Mineshaft.
Don't wanna be a puppet or a fat little priss
But there's lots of corrections on a critical list
Typos in a line are fruit low on the vine
'cause it's strict time
"fat" is dispreferred but I was hurting for scansion. Also the original little priss is very much the opposite of fat, so I hope that his feelings will not be hurt.
Anyone care to figure out the numbers that are the sums of the cubes of their digits (forgetting about the trivial 0 and 1)? I know four 3-digit numbers that are. I believe there's also a 4-digit number, but I don't remember what it is.
Why are people going to church on Saturday?
I guess I'm being insensitive.
Frederick -- I'm getting 153, 370, 371, and 407.
And not getting any 4-digit numbers.
I believe this was one of the problems on some math/programming challenge site; I can't remember if I did it or not.
I'm sorry, Jeremy. I Googled it, and apparently I misremembered about the four-digit number. The numbers you gave are the only ones. There are three four-digit numbers that are the sum of the fourth powers of their digits (see the link below for much more on the subject). I think I may have seen the smallest of those numbers (maybe in a book by Martin Gardner that I read about 30 years ago) and misremembered it.
It turns out that numbers that are equal to the sums of some power of their digits are called narcissistic numbers:
A total of 88 narcissistic numbers exist in base 10, as proved by D. Winter in 1985 and verified by D. Hoey. T. A. Mendes Oliveira e Silva gave the full sequence in a posting (Article 42889) to sci.math on May 9, 1994. These numbers exist for only 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37, 38, and 39 digits. It can easily be shown that base-10 -narcissistic numbers can exist only for [powers no greater than 60] . . . .
The largest base-10 narcissistic number is the 39-narcissistic 115132219018763992565095597973971522401.
Except of course 1 and 0 are narcissistic for any power.
the 4th-power numbers are 1634, 8208, and 9474.
Who doesn't? (excluding vegans and vegetarians, and the kosher-keeping among us)
Particularly after reading "Fast Food Nation," I avoid burgers like the plague.
After the apocalypse, I'll eat you first, Frederick.
Burgers in all their manifestations?
Basically, although I would eat a burger that was ground from a single steak. Schlosser in "Fast Food Nation" says that a single hamburger may come from the meat of 100+ cows. So if any of that is contaminated, so is your hamburger. I was never a big hamburger fan anyway, though.
I don't get the Fast Food Nation reaction. I've eaten hundreds of burgers, and one has never made me sick. So if Schlosser says that there's literally shit in my burgers, all that tells me is that shit tastes a lot better than I would have guessed.
I don't need to read Fast Food Nation to be worried about mad cow, but I'm also not going to swear off beef until there's some indication that the threat has become real, and mad cow is very very rare, even in places where it's occurred.
Rare, yes. But it doesn't show up for *years*, and there's *no cure*. Any meat that's mixed up from dozens of different individual cattle and that includes brain or spinal cord tissue = bad, man.
I know. I hate paranoid weirdness about one in a million chances too. But the whole "it turns your brain to sponge" thing wigs me out.
Yeah, it freaks me out too, which is why I try not to think about it. But, on the bright side, it's the kind of disease that gives you plenty of time to kill yourself.
True, there is that. Problem is, I have a kid, which complicates the whole preemptive suicide choice way too much.
By the time you have to off yourself becaue of mad cow, he'll be old enough to pity himself, which means...insta-novel! The Year My Mom (Really) Lost Her Mind.
Any meat that's mixed up from dozens of different individual cattle and that includes brain or spinal cord tissue = bad, man.
Does this extent all the way down the tail? Is oxtail soup out?
Shit, I don't know, I'm not the cow disease expert. Google it.
Maybe you should read the book, smartboy.
The book isn't about the vagaries of BSE.
By the time you have to off yourself becaue of mad cow, he'll be old enough to pity himself, which means...insta-novel! The Year My Mom (Really) Lost Her Mind.
Now there's a cheery thought. I suppose if Eric Clapton can make a ton of money out of his kid jumping out a window (that "Tears in Heaven" song, which weirds me out every time I hear it), why not? :P
By the time you have to off yourself becaue of mad cow, he'll be old enough to pity himself, which means...insta-novel! The Year My Mom (Really) Lost Her Mind.
Now there's a cheery thought. I suppose if Eric Clapton can make a ton of money out of his kid jumping out a window (that "Tears in Heaven" song, which weirds me out every time I hear it), why not? :P
I'm suggesting "Downer Mom" as the title. Opening line: "When Mom started spinning in circles for hours on end, I thought at first that it was just one more eccentricity. But when she fell down and just lay there making mooing sounds, I began to suspect that something might be wrong".
Hey I hate to bring up math again but maybe one of you guys (Silvana?) will be able to enlighten me. I was just idly modifying that program above, to find numbers that are sums of pairs of squares in multiple combinations -- for 3 combinations (Frederick's problem that started this all off) I find 10 numbers between 325 and 2,405; and then nothing -- I ran the program checking numbers up tp 400,000 and got no matches above 2,405. Right now I'm running it up to a million but my hunch is I won't find anything. Is there any proof that would show why several relatively small numbers can be expressed as the sum of two squares in three different ways, but above a certain point (say 2,405) nothing?
Also -- I asked the program whether any numbers could be expressed as the sum of two squares in four different ways, and it did not think so.
Oh wait -- nevermind. Silly programming error. I take it all back.
The smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two squares in four different ways: 1,105. The ditto ditto ditto ditto five different ways: 5,525. And check it out, 5,525 is also the smallest etcetera six different ways! Still churning looking for a smallest etcetera seven different ways.
There is no number smaller than 4 million (the highest I checked) that can be expressed as the sum of two squares in seven different ways.
Is this a blatant attempt to reach
500? Well, we don't do no number-hogging no more.
Curses! foiled again! Disregard my 498; 27,625 can be expressed as the sum of two squres in seven different ways. and likely several other numbers less than 4 million. (FTR: 27,625 = 20^2 + 165^2
= 27^2 + 164^2
= 45^2 + 160^2
= 60^2 + 155^2
= 83^2 + 144^2
= 88^2 + 141^2)
0sn3r sh0uld b3 a non-3xistent objecT!!!!111!!
Thanks meinong. here's a link to my new code, much easier to read. Tho still lacking in comments.
Damn, Jeremy, you read my mind. I was just going to ask if you'd find the smallest number that can be expressed as the sum of two perfect squares in four different ways. You solved that problem, and that for five, six, and seven different ways to boot.
Frederick -- also for eight -- the answer is 27,625, same as for seven! What should I make of this? 5,525 is the anser for both five and six, 27,625 for both seven and eight? Is there some weird property of numbers that makes this happen? Just coincidence? I recognize that this question is less meaningful than some; still I ask it.
Jeremy, 102 and 132 don't work. Note that they're both even, thus producing even squares, which can't add up to an odd sum. Only an even/odd pair will work. Presumably a typo by you, but I can't figure out what you had in mind.
Wow -- over at your blog you say 27,625 is also the smallest number that's the sum of two perfect squares in EIGHT different ways?! That is way cool. But what are the other two?
I don't know, Jeremy. I'm certainly not the god of numbers. Just coincidence, I guess.
Now if you want to crunch your program all the way to 9 and 10, and those turn out to be the same too, then I'll really be flabbergasted. But I doubt that's the case. (Of course, I would've doubted it for 5/6 and 7/8, too. That seems really weird.)
Hey, there are people here trying to portray themselves as hip, sexy guys, and y'all are doing this nerd shit right where everyone can see you.
"Oh, Ogged, probably not .... I'm not really in the mood for narcissistic numbers tonight .... or whatever it was that you had planned for us. But you go have fun"
507 -- you're right, it's 101 and 132. And 27,625 also = 115^2 + 120^2.
I think it must be provable that any number which can be expressed as the sum of two squares in at least three ways, is a multiple of 5. But I have no idea how one would go about proving this result.
Or rather, it is not provable because it is not true.
A great majority of such numbers are divisible by 5 though. At least at low magnitudes. I wonder why that is, and if it continues to be true for larger numbers.
What can I say, JE? We're nerds.
To elaborate on 27,625:
27,625
= 400 (20^2) + 27,225 (165^2)
= 729 (27^2) + 26,896 (164^2)
= 2,025 (45^2) + 25,600 (160^2)
= 3,600 (60^2) + 24,025 (155^2)
= 6,889 (83^2) + 20,736 (144^2)
= 7,744 (88^2) + 19,881 (141^2)
=10,201 (101^2) + 17,424(132^2)
=13,225 (115^2) + 14,440 (120^2)
A great majority of such numbers are divisible by 5 though. At least at low magnitudes. I wonder why that is, and if it continues to be true for larger numbers.
Jeremy, I don't know why this is, but a lot of these numbers are very closely related, and are divisible not only by 5, but by 13, and not by 2, 3, 7, or 11:
325 = 5 x 5 x 13
1,105 = 5 x 13 x 17
5,525 = 5 times the preceding
27,625 = 5 times the preceding
Weird stuff. I think you're on to something.
2405 = 5 x 13 x 37
Every one of these numbers you've listed is divisible by both 5 and 13.
JO, I'm pissed, btw, that you got the 2 to the ninth power comment, and didn't even remark on it. What are the other "sum of lots of different pairs of perfect squares" numbers that you've found? Are they divisible by 5 and 13, too?
This isn't a proof, by any means.
The final digit of a square number can be 0, 1, 4, 5, 6 or 9. There are nine ways of ending up with an odd number:
(0, 1) (4,1) (6,1)
(0, 5) (4,5) (6,5)
(0, 9) (4,9) (6,9)
Three of these are distinct pairs that result in a number divisible by five. In fact, they are the only three pairs that result in the same final digit. (0,9) & (4,5) and (0,1) & (6,5) also have the same final digit; otherwise, you would need three instances of the same two final digits summing to the same number.
For (4,9) to work, you'd need three different numbers whose squares end in 4 (such numbers have the form 2+10x or 8+10x) and the same for 9 (3+10x or 7+10x). This seems ... unlikely?
For evens the possibilities are
(0, 0) (1,1) (4,4) (5,5) (9,9)
(0, 4) (1,5) (4,6) (5,9)
(0, 6) (1,9)
Here the only distinct triples that work are (any triple drawn from) (0,0), (1,9), (5,5), (4,6), which would result in a number divisible by five. But that doesn't mean that two instances of (0,4) and one of (5,9) couldn't work. (Wait, actually, it wouldn't; the only two-digit ending that ends with a 0 is 00, and the only two-digit endings that end in 4 are of the form 4+20x; however, the only two-digit ending that ends in 5 is 25 and that ends in 9 have the form 9+40x; so they could never sum the same way.)
Frederick, I sent you a file containing numerous numbers expressible as the sum of 2 squares 3 ways. Let me know if you see anything interesting in there.
In the first 295 numbers that work (what should we call these numbers?), I get the following ones digits:
0 -- 122 times
1 -- 5
2 -- 2
3 -- 5
4 -- 1
5 -- 144
6 -- 2
7 -- 5
8 -- 3
9 -- 5
Hmm, so just over 90% of the time the "squaresum" numbers (ugly name; I'm certainly open to alternative suggestions) are divisible by 5, whereas random chance would be only 20%. Jeremy, what e-mail did you send the file to? I haven't seen it. Could you please send it to me at fsrhine AT gmail.com, too? Thanks.
About a third of those numbers are divisible by 13, and about a quarter are divisible by 17. None are divisible by 11. None are divisible by 7. Less than 10% are divisible by 3.
That is weird. 295 numbers, and 90% are divisible by 5, but 0% are divisible by 7? I wish I were a mathematical genius who could explain to you why this is so.
Perhaps you should choose a goal and then post numerology until you get there. 7,283 is a very significant number, but a doubt that any of you can figure out why. I'll tell you when you reach that many posts.
Clearly, because when you sum its digits pairwise, you get 9 10 11, or, if you use each digit only once—9 11.
Googling suggests the Mayan Calendar is important here.
27,625 X 5 = 138,125, which can be expressed as the sum of two squares in 10 different ways. (Though I don't know if it's the smallest such number.) However 138,125 X 5 = 690,625, which is not expressible as the sum of two squares in 11 different ways. So the pattern is broken, or else my code is.
or, if you use each digit only once—9 11.
Writing 9 11 involves using one digit twice. And what about the zero?
527 -- the pattern is not broken. 690,625 can be expressed as the sum of squares in 12 different ways. It would be very interesting to find out if it's the smallest such number but I need to optimize my code a lot if I want to find out.
Writing 9 11 involves using one digit twice. And what about the zero?
It uses each digit of 7283 once: 7+2, 8+3.
A-and get this! 3,453,125 (which is 5 X 690,625) can be expressed as the sum of squares in 14, count them 14, different ways!
You know, iff a number is divisible by five, it will end in either a 5 or 0, so you don't need to post its division by five to prove it.
Mathworld says that:
The least numbers that are the sum of two squares in exactly n different ways for n==1, 2, ... are given by 2, 50, 325, 1105, 8125, 5525, 105625, 27625, 71825, 138125, 5281250, ... (Sloane's A016032; Beiler 1966, pp. 140-141; Rubin 1977-78; Culberson 1978-79; Hardy and Wright 1979; Rivera).
Which matches up with what I have except the "exactly n different ways" -- I think that is why they go to 8,125 for 5 and 105,625 for 7, etc.
Here is a sweet link: Online Encyclopaedia of Integer Sequences. 533 -- yeah that's what clued me in to the frequency with which I was getting numbers divisible by 5.
You know, iff a number is divisible by five, it will end in either a 5 or 0, so you don't need to post its division by five to prove it.
Is that the Old English spelling of "if," ben? The reason Jeremy kept writing 5 x whatever is that many of these "squaresum" numbers are in a sequence that results from multiplying the previous number in the sequence by 5, e.g.,
221 (2) (25+196; 100+121)
1,105 (4)
5,525 (6)
27,625 (8)
138,125 (10)
690,625 (12)
3,453,125 (14)
In parentheses is the number of different ways that the number can be expressed as the sum of two perfect squares. A very striking pattern -- every time you multiply by 5, the number of different pairs of squares adding up to the number goes up by 2. Is there somehow some significance to the fact that we use a base-10 system, and these two numbers are 5 and 2, the prime factors of 10? Beats the hell out of me.
Does the pattern keep going? Is 17,265,625 the sum of 2 perfect squares in 16 different ways?
I have no idea why this works, but it's hard to imagine that this pattern is mere fortuity. Probably if one sits down and looks at the different pairs for each number, one can figure out why this works. I'll sit down with it when I have a chance, but I'm going to bed now.
Good work, Jeremy. Very cool!
Gad, I can't even try to catch w-lfs-n in a typo without ending up looking stupid myself. :P
Don't worry, even w-lfs-n occasionally makes mistakes.
In the early part of 20C Dr. Julian Hatcher (also Gen.) conducted studies which led him to conclude that "stopping power" (i.e. killing power, but for handguns) was about equal to the cross-sectional area of the bullet multiplied by its momentum. Thus:
S.P. = A*mv
This is still under some argument - despite the numbers of steers, beagles and goats that have given their lives in the interest of military science - but to a reasonable approximation we can assume it is accurate.
Given that, the slower and heavier .45 ACP is twice as powerful than the faster and lighter 9mm, and I believe the .357mag is also more powerful than the 9mm. (S.P. goes down quickly after those rounds.)
However, the 9mm is a medium frame gun and slightly easier to carry concealed than the standard size .45, though not by much. The thicker double-stack handle means that it prints (shows through clothing) more easily than the thinner single-stack 45. I also prefer the more manageable recoil of the .45. (Less painful in extended shooting at the range.)
Regarding small calibers, my sensei used to quote Jeff Cooper (guru of small arms combat) as saying to one student about her .25 caliber carry-gun:
"Do you really plan to carry that? I'd recommend against it. Because if you carry it, you're liable to shoot somebody with it. And if you shoot somebody with it, he's likely to get very pissed off and come after you."
The point of course is that small caliber is essentially worthless. (Not counting a shot to the carotid, the spine or through the eye socket.)
In the larger handgun calibers though (.38 and up), there are two rules of gunfighting (Hatcher notwithstanding):
Rule #1: Have a gun.
Rule #2: First hit wins.
Moral of the story, (and for the very limited self-defense scenario) it really doesn't matter what large caliber you use, so long as you have practiced enough to get the first shot on target. (And this is not a trivial point. There are many stories of cop vs. anti-cop gunfights in which many shots are fired before one makes contact.) Mantra = draw, aim, squeeze.
If however, you plan to become a professional soldier, be advised that the 9mm has never been a favorite and even now in Iraq guys are trying to get rid of the 9mm M9 Beretta in favor of the .45 H&K. It's not that the Beretta is bad (it was many years ago when it was brought in to replace the M1911 .45, but it's better now), but the 9mm cartridge is too weak. (See the commentary in 1234.pdf at http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2005/11/the_old_guns_ar.html.)
The .40 S&W is often derisively called the "40 Short and Weak". You can figure what the professionals think about that cartridge.
I've heard the Glock referred to (also derisively) as "combat Tupperware". Frankly, I think any gun which has the safety activate by pulling the trigger ineffectively is an incredibly stupid design. My other complaints about Glocks are the hidden hammer and weak firing pin; and the width of the handle (housing the double column magazine) makes me "monkey grip" the thing and it's harder to aim right. It also has a weird angle that really hammers the web of my hand between thumb and forefinger. It can get quite painful to shoot at the range after a short while. Oh, and the angle and lack of mass of the Tupperware makes it recoil a lot.
My overall preference is the Colt Commander, which is a variant of the traditional 1911 Government Model but with a barrel that is 1/2" shorter. (Both are .45 ACP.) It fits the hand well, with a good angle and good grip. It's not excessively long nor is it excessively big. Think of Magnum PI carrying one under his Hawaiian shirt. It carries 7 in the magazine and 1 in the chamber. If you need more than that then you need to go back to the range and practice, or you're in Iraq and the rest of your squad is either pinned down or dead and you have bigger problems than that.
What I like most about it is that it is incredibly common, so parts and gunsmiths are everywhere in the US. It's also not too expensive.
Sorry about the somewhat non-linearity and less than optimal coherence of the above. Hope the comment helps you make your decision.
I kind of expected the pattern to be hit-me-in-the-face obvious, but evidently not. For the first four numbers in the 221/x5/x5/x5 . . . sequence, the numbers that each is the sum of the squares of are as follows:
221 5/14, 10/11
1105 4/36, 9/32, 12/31, 23/24
5525 7/74, 13/73, 22/71, 25/70, 41/62, 50/55
27625 20/165, 27/164, 45/160, 60/155, 83/144, 88/141, 101/132, 115/120
I don't see an obvious pattern.
At the risk of stating the obvious, for the squaresum numbers 2 apart, i.e. where the second is 25 times the first, some of the constituent numbers of the bigger number are derived by simply multiplying those of the smaller number by 5, e.g. since 221 is the sum of the squares of (a) 5 and 14, and (b) 10 and 11, we know that 5,525 will be, inter alia, the sum of the squares of (a) 25 and 70 and (b) 50 and 55.
Frederick, you're going to drive me nuts. I think there's a pattern there, but I can't quite articulate it yet. This is bad - I've been known to look for patterns for years.
Probably get back to you tomorrow.
1105 4/36
Shouldn't that be 4/33?
Otherwise it doesn't match: 27625 20/165
Also, otherwise it doesn't add to 1105.
(7, 74), (14, 73), (22, 71), (25, 70), (41, 62), (50, 55)
For 138125: (22, 371), (35, 370), (70, 365), (110, 355), (125, 350), (163, 334), (194, 317), (205, 310), (218, 301), (250, 275)
For 690625: (8, 831), (71, 828), (100, 825), (135, 820), (225, 800), (300, 775), (327, 764), (384, 737), (415, 720), (440, 705), (505, 660), (575, 600)
Have we gone beyond the 4th iteration? Do we know for sure that for each integer n, x^2 + y^2 = (5^n)(221) has 2n solutions (where x, y are integers)?
Wait, did you figure it out, or are you programming?
I don't think any of us has proven that, no, but it holds for 0
I sure as hell can't prove it by induction, not at the moment, anyway.
Silvana, I just wrote a little function to find the sums, in response to your 547.
I mean, to find the numbers whose squares sum to the target.
Do you think that your 555 makes Frederick's original question a fruitless exercise?
I mean, I don't know that it doesn't continue to hold. That's just all I've tested.
The numbers get big, you know, and I don't exactly have an optimized algorithm.
221*(5**0): (5, 14) (10, 11)
221*(5**1): (4, 33) (9, 32) (12, 31) (23, 24)
221*(5**2): (7, 74) (14, 73) (22, 71) (25, 70) (41, 62) (50, 55)
221*(5**3): (20, 165) (27, 164) (45, 160) (60, 155) (83, 144)
(88, 141) (101, 132) (115, 120)
221*(5**4): (22, 371) (35, 370) (70, 365) (110, 355) (125, 350) (163, 334) (194, 317) (205, 310) (218, 301) (250, 275)
221*(5**5): (8, 831) (71, 828) (100, 825) (135, 820) (225, 800) (300, 775) (327, 764) (384, 737) (415, 720) (440, 705) (505, 660) (575, 600)
221*(5**6): (31, 1858) (110, 1855) (175, 1850) (350, 1825) (550, 1775) (625, 1750) (686, 1727) (815, 1670) (847, 1654) (970, 1585) (1025, 1550) (1090, 1505) (1201, 1418) (1250, 1375)
221*(5**7): (40, 4155) (355, 4140) (500, 4125) (675, 4100) (984, 4037) (1125, 4000) (1500, 3875) (1635, 3820) (1796, 3747) (1920, 3685) (2075, 3600) (2200, 3525) (2461, 3348) (2525, 3300) (2768, 3099) (2875, 3000)
221*(5**8): (155, 9290) (550, 9275) (875, 9250) (1574, 9157) (1750, 9125) (2069, 9058) (2437, 8966) (2750, 8875) (3125, 8750) (3430, 8635) (4075, 8350) (4235, 8270) (4850, 7925) (5125, 7750) (5450, 7525) (5698, 7339) (6005, 7090) (6250, 6875)
221*(5**9): (200, 20775) (1775, 20700) (2500, 20625) (3375, 20500) (4057, 20376) (4092, 20369) (4920, 20185) (5625, 20000) (6009, 19888) (7500, 19375) (8175, 19100) (8980, 18735) (9600, 18425) (10375, 18000) (11000, 17625) (12305, 16740) (12625, 16500) (13196, 16047) (13840, 15495) (14375, 15000)
221*(5**10): (775, 46450) (2750, 46375) (4375, 46250) (7870, 45785) (8750, 45625) (10345, 45290) (12185, 44830) (12262, 44809) (13750, 44375) (15625, 43750) (17150, 43175) (18898, 42439) (20375, 41750) (21175, 41350) (24250, 39625) (25625, 38750) (27250, 37625) (28490, 36695) (28553, 36646) (30025, 35450) (31250, 34375) (31906, 33767)
221*(5**11): (1000, 103875) (4643, 103776) (8875, 103500) (12500, 103125) (16875, 102500) (20285, 101880) (20460, 101845) (24600, 100925) (28125, 100000) (30045, 99440) (35628, 97579) (37500, 96875) (40875, 95500) (44739, 93752) (44900, 93675) (48000, 92125) (51875, 90000) (55000, 88125) (61525, 83700) (63125, 82500) (65980, 80235) (69200, 77475) (69333, 77356) (71875, 75000)
221*(5**12): (3875, 232250) (4274, 232243) (13750, 231875) (21875, 231250) (26323, 230786) (39350, 228925) (43750, 228125) (51725, 226450) (60925, 224150) (61310, 224045) (68750, 221875) (78125, 218750) (85379, 216022) (85750, 215875) (94490, 212195) (101875, 208750) (105875, 206750) (113062, 202909) (121250, 198125) (128125, 193750) (136250, 188125) (142450, 183475) (142765, 183230) (150125, 177250) (156250, 171875) (159530, 168835)
221*(5**13): (5000, 519375) (23215, 518880) (44375, 517500) (45264, 517423) (62500, 515625) (84375, 512500) (101425, 509400) (102300, 509225) (123000, 504625) (140625, 500000) (150225, 497200) (178140, 487895) (187500, 484375) (204375, 477500) (223695, 468760) (224500, 468375) (240000, 460625) (240791, 460212) (259375, 450000) (275000, 440625) (283432, 435249) (292756, 429033) (307625, 418500) (315625, 412500) (329900, 401175) (346000, 387375) (346665, 386780) (359375, 375000)
That's not really very readable, is it?
It's sufficiently legible. I'm making tables anyway.
Do we know for sure that for each integer n, x^2 + y^2 = (5^n)(221) has 2n solutions (where x, y are integers)?
Actually, it has 2(n+1) solutions, written like that.
I find it interesting that none of the members of any of the pairs has as its final digit either a 6 or a 9. Instead, all the ones that end in either 2 or 8 are matched with 1, and all the ones that end in either 3 or 7 are matched with 4.
You're right. For each integer n, x^2 + y^2 = (5^n-1)(221), then.
none of the members of any of the pairs has as its final digit either a 6 or a 9.
(9, 32) for 1105.
Also, (4643, 103776) for 10791015625.
Those that end in 2 and 8 always square to an ending of 4, so they have to match with 1 to reach an ending of 5; 3 and 7 always go to 9 so they need a square of 4 which always goes to 6.
I'm not getting anywhere with this.
What is the reason we have to believe that there should be a pattern here? Is it that we think that from (5,14) and (10,11) we should be able to proceed to get the solutions for the multiples of 221 without actually solving? I don't know if this is possible; first of all, (5, 14) itself it an outlier because it is the only pair containing a 5 end-digit that does not have end-digits 5, and 0, at least after a cursory glance.
Just the ones that can't be gotten by multiplying results from earlier indexes:
0 [(5, 14), (10, 11)]
1 [(4, 33), (9, 32), (12, 31), (23, 24)]
2 [(7, 74), (14, 73), (22, 71), (41, 62)]
3 [(27, 164), (83, 144), (88, 141), (101, 132)]
4 [(22, 371), (163, 334), (194, 317), (218, 301)]
5 [(8, 831), (71, 828), (327, 764), (384, 737)]
6 [(31, 1858), (686, 1727), (847, 1654), (1201, 1418)]
7 [(984, 4037), (1796, 3747), (2461, 3348), (2768, 3099)]
8 [(1574, 9157), (2069, 9058), (2437, 8966), (5698, 7339)]
9 [(4057, 20376), (4092, 20369), (6009, 19888), (13196, 16047)]
10 [(12262, 44809), (18898, 42439), (28553, 36646), (31906, 33767)]
11 [(4643, 103776), (35628, 97579), (44739, 93752), (69333, 77356)]
12 [(4274, 232243), (26323, 230786), (85379, 216022), (113062, 202909)]
13 [(45264, 517423), (240791, 460212), (283432, 435249), (292756, 429033)]
14 [(156479, 1150822), (587066, 1002113), (607951, 989582), (679633, 941794)]
multiples of 221
I mean positive powers of 5 multiplied by 221.
(5, 14) itself it an outlier because it is the only pair containing a 5 end-digit that does not have end-digits 5, and 0, at least after a cursory glance.
(142450, 183475), from 221*5**12.
As for what reason there is to think there's a pattern…beats me.
Oh, I totally misread your comment. Of course it's the only one that has an end-digit 5 that doesn't have the other end-digit 0, anything else would be impossible.
Because all the other sums end in 5, and if one of the numbers to be squared ends in 5, its square will end in 5, so the other number, squared, must end in 0, so the number itself must end in 0.
Of the list in 575: I've been looking at the pairs for 0-3 for a while and haven't gotten anything. I tried factoring some of the pairs, and factoring the squares of some of the pairs, but that's just produced more numbers.
Why does the simple act of multiplying 5 by 13*17 create two new pairs of squares? Beats me.
Fuck, it's nearly 3. Now I remember why I didn't get any sleep in college.
It's bedtime. More fun with this shit tomorrow.
I did a search for 221 and 5 and got back something that I couldn't understand, but might be fruitful.
Also, this seems relevant: the Complex Product Identity, which show that the product of two numbers, each of which can be expressed as the sum of two squares, can itself be expressed as the sum of two squares.
At least in that 5 is the sum of two squares.
Although I guess that's not really at issue.
(if c is the number of distinct prime factors congruent to 1 mod 4, then the number of (essentially) distinct ways of writing z as a sum of two rel. prime squares is 2^(c-1))
For 221, 17 and 13 are congruent to 1 mod 4, hence, there are 2 distinct ways. For 221*5**n for n >= 1, 5, 17 and 13 are congruent to 1 mod 4, and there are four ways of writing it as the sum of relatively prime squares.
For each n >= 2, you also have the ways of writing it for n-2, multiplied by 5 (and hence not relatively prime).
Link.
So all of the new pairs are relatively prime (hence 4 apiece starting with 1105), plus the pairs that you get from multiplying previous pairs by 5.
That's lovely.
It doesn't tell you how to get the pairs, but it certainly explains 575 quite nicely, don't you think?
Note, re 589, that 13 and 17 are also both the sums of two squares.
I don't think I'd have gotten that, but I take consolation in the fact that my factoring may have not been a complete waste of time.
So, 221 has no special quality, then, we could just as well start with 189, or 325 or a zillion other places.
I do wish I'd have taken an advanced/upper division math course.
I made a terrible mathematician, not because I was bad at math, but because I never wanted anyone else to tell me the answer, like ben's just done (damn you, w-lfs-n! But also; now I can go to sleep).
It becomes a little unwieldy when you try to solve all of history's problems yourself as if doing it for the first time.
Terrorist code messages here too.
So, 221 has no special quality, then, we could just as well start with 189, or 325 or a zillion other places.
After Jeremy started listing the smallest numbers that were the sum of two perfect squares in x different ways, I noticed that many of them were 1105 times some power of 5. I just divided 1105 itself by 5 to get 221, which I noticed was the sum of two perfect squares in two different ways. That is nothing special in itself, since there are much smaller numbers that have that property, such as 50 (1+49; 25+25).
What happens if you keep multiplying 50 or 325 or some other number by 5? As to 50, I see that if you multiply it by 5, 250 still has only 2 solutions (25+225; 81+169), not 4, so it doesn't follow 221's pattern. Also, if you go backwards, dividing 50 by 5, you get 10, which has one solution (1+9), not 0. If you divide by 5 again, you get 2, which still has one solution. 221 has 2 prime factors (13x17), neither of which is a 5. Does that somehow make it work better than 50? Beats me.
The reason I suspect, rightly or wrongly, that there's some sort of pattern to the 5-multiples of 221 is that the number of solutions keeps going up by 2 each time (see ben's 561). There must be some sort of explanation for that, and I would think some discernible pattern.
So why does 591 work? I don't get it.
The explanation is the same as the explanation for the italicized portion of 591, and I doubt anyone here's going to get it by looking at individual numbers.
What, specifically, is the question about 591? Why is it the case in general (beats me) or how does it apply to this specific case (I can explain that)?
Why is it the case in general (beats me)
That was my question.