One is one too many. Yanno, it may be that Gunforge has warped my perspective. Until I joined here, my deer-hunting cousins and my LEO neighbors and the people I suspected probably had a piece locked in the nightstand but who didn't feel obligated to wave it around or bring it up in conversation all the damn time were just regular people. Maybe this place has a disproportionate number of SHRERPLs and Captain Animes, not to mention the "middle ground" of "I've always had guns. I can't imagine living without my guns" but that's altered my perspective. Thank you, Gunforge, for making me aware of an aspect of American society I was oblivious to before. In short, Gunforge has radicalized me on this issue.
Captain Anime is ascared of facts. Librul bias and all that. He also apparently doesn't believe that one mass shooting is one too many. He'll this post to express his impotent rage.
The exact nature of the anti-gun argument. After telling us for decades that the actions of a few should not be used to condemn the group, the anti-gun crowd uses the actions of a few to condemn the group. Breathtaking cognitive dissonance.
To me, the most telling stat is this: "Interviews with people in heavily gun-owning towns show they are not as wedded to the crime defense idea as the gun lobby claims." So if the tax-exempt NRA hadn't done a 180 from a "sportsman's club" to a conduit for brainwashing and fear, this would be a very different country.
Agreed. So, Dinner, are you saying all Muslims are terrorists? I don't. No idea where you got the notion I do. To most people "I can do without X" means they're stronger and more self-reliant than people who say "I can't live without X!!!11!" Only the gunlubbers can pretend a weakness is a strength.
1) Did you read the article? 2) Do you have anything to say about it? 3) Can you support or refute any of the information in it?
So Federal Farmer has the guts to label my post "dumb", but I wonder if he has the guts to answer the three questions ?
One problem I have with the article is the claim that use of a gun for self-defense is rare, based on the number of incidents where a gun is fired. This leaves aside the much, much larger category of self-defense uses of a gun where a gun is not fired.
Your article pierces the fantasy cowboy bubble. Anyone with some common sense could tell you that a gun is terrible at preventing crime. This is because a gun is not designed to prevent anything. It is an active thing made to kill another person or animal. That is not prevention. A gun can only stop a crime in progress if the person with it gets a chance to shoot the person doing the crime. When one considers the nature of crime you often do not have criminals giving the victims a chance to shoot, or a gun owner right on top of a crime when it happens to do anything about it. One should also note a criminal who knows you have a gun can easily modify their approach to make your gun completely useless, or useful to the criminal. The only people who think their gun prevents crime are the ones who have not grown up beyond pretending to be Rambo.
As the article states, it's much more likely the gun will be misused, either by its owner or someone in his house. Or simply stolen and misused by someone outside his house. A gun is an inanimate object. It's the assholes carrying the guns that concern me. Not an asshole? Prove it. Take recurring competency tests (not just gun handling). Until then I'm happier banning semi-automatics giving assholes less firepower.
How about this claim: In a 2015 study using data from the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. Also in 2015 a combined analysis of 15 different studies found that people who had access to firearms at home were nearly twice as likely to be murdered as people who did not.
I like the First Amendment almost (but not quite) as much as I like the Second Amendment, that's why I am not in favor of rounding up you Commie gun-whiners and having you all shot.
Well it doesn't support GunForge's claims so I imagine it will be A) summarily dismissed as "liberally biased" or B) ignored completely. Speaking of "ignoring" I notice that there is at least one post from an "ignored member" is it worth opening?
Having lived in the 30144 for 20 years, it's a bit disconcerting to have it taken as indicative of anything. It's a small town that got swallowed decades ago. A bedroom community today with a funky main street and civil war museum. The gun mandate was a joke. The article does bear reading and discussion. I challenge anyone to pick a quote from the article and post it for discussion rather than spewing platitudes we've all heard before. There's lots of good stuff there.
Aside from Paladin, I haven't seen anyone indicate that they've read the article and no one has pointed at specific information in an effort to refute it. Paladin made an interesting point, which I invited him to amplify, but no response so far. About what I expected.
Rather troubling that they're coming out at all as a way of "bluffing" one's way out of a situation that could be considered self defensive.
If you pull a gun and the threat runs away, that isn't bluffing. If you call out to a home intruder that you have a gun--even if you don't, it's credible because for all he knows you could--then that, too, is the use of a gun--or the threat of one--to deter a criminal.
