The Thread Where We Discuss Guns and Gun Control

[TheMeInTeam]

In defending one's home, one is far less likely to face legal trouble if they shoot and kill someone in their home than if they were to injure the person with a knife or knock them unconscious with a blunt object.

Simple, irrefutable proof that our gun laws are immoral and illogical.

Shouldn't be legal trouble for knives/blunt objects either, though I'm detecting a distinct bias against garrotes in this discussion. So unfair.

 

[Sommerswerd]

You're hilarious.

I'm here all week.

 

[Farm Boy]

Plenty of time!

Spoiler :

 

[EgonSpengler]

I've often heard that if you're going to pull a gun out, you'd best be prepared to use it. That would hold especially true in an actual encounter with a burglar. It's not so simple not to hesitate though - could be someone you know visiting by surprise for example, so you probably don't want to unload 3 to the chest without verifying that the person is someone you don't know.

I would estimate that most people would not feel comfortable enough to keep a level head while aiming a gun at someone. The intruder is likely more apt to use a firearm if packing one. Still, I'm not convinced it's bad to have a weapon if capable of using it responsibly in the moment.

I'm not so sure. I don't have any references handy, but iirc, one of the biggest risk-factors for PTSD is killing someone. Even successfully defending yourself with lethal violence is not free of consequences. If there's an alternative, it's almost certainly a better alternative. But I also remember reading something a while back about how having a gun makes you more likely to think that using a gun is a reasonable course of action. So you're actually less likely to choose the less lethal alternative, even if the less lethal alternative would work just fine. And all of that is if a potentially-deadly encounter actually occurs at all. In the absence of any such threat actually taking place, having a gun in your home is more dangerous than not having a gun in your home. I can't remember if it was on this forum or another one, but a while back somebody was writing about taking a handgun with them to college. Of course nobody ever behaves irresponsibly at college, so I'm sure that's totally safe.

Oh, I had another thought about those burglaries, which tend to happen when the home-owner isn't at home: What would a lot of burglars love to steal, if they found one?

I don't think a crazy accelerationist shooting up a place then spouting crap to be divisive should move the needle on a country's gun law. That's not how responsible policy is handled.

I agree. As horrific as they are, the mass shooting events that get all the media attention actually make up a small portion of the overall gun deaths and injuries in the United States every year. As slow as Congress was to restrict bump-stocks after Las Vegas, for example, they're hardly a drop in the pond. Eliminating bump-stocks completely would hardly put a dent in the overall levels of violence in this country.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Eliminating bump stocks was wasting money to make a gesture that they acknowledged something happened.

Outside of the comparatively rare mass shooting events (as opposed to gun violence in general), aren't most situations over after 2-7 shots or something? We're doing this crap while most shootings would be more or less the same if someone simply empties a revolver once.

 

[Estebonrober]

Eliminating bump stocks was wasting money to make a gesture that they acknowledged something happened.

Outside of the comparatively rare mass shooting events (as opposed to gun violence in general), aren't most situations over after 2-7 shots or something? We're doing this crap while most shootings would be more or less the same if someone simply empties a revolver once.

We havent' done anything. At all.

 

[cardgame]

I've yet to hear or read someone outline a situation to me that I felt made their owning a gun for self-defense or home defense sound prudent. The home invasion scenario is both far-fetched and more complicated than gun proponents will say (or than they know, perhaps). For example, I think a lot of burglaries* are committed by someone the victim knows. Do you really want to shoot your teenaged son's drug-addicted friend that you've known since they were 5? Or do you maybe want to get them into rehab? Heck, maybe getting arrested would be the best thing for them. Some places have really good drug courts. Anyway, if you're so scared of The Purge happening in real life, you're better off getting a dog. iirc, having a gun in the house actually makes you more likely to get shot, especially if you're a woman. I have a friend whose rottweiler is a sweetie, and she flips the [fork] out when somebody comes near the house, until she can smell you (the rottweiler, not the friend).

*By "Home Invasion" I presume people are thinking of a burglary where the victim is at home when it happens. This is relatively rare. Most burglaries happen when the victims aren't home, by design, because most burglars don't want to get in a scrap with anybody. Also, most injuries incurred during a burglary are minor - I'd guess they're a result of the burglar trying to escape upon being confronted or stumbling upon someone they didn't know was in the house. In fact, I bet some of the injuries incurred by burglary victims were because the victim tried to engage the burglar with violence and got hurt in the process. Not to say the burglar shouldn't still be charged with assault in those cases, of course they should, I'm just saying some people think they're Jet Li, when they could've just locked themselves in the bathroom and called the cops.

Statistically, of course you are right, but as a matter of principle some folks just don't feel right to hide in their closet while some ******* is stealing their stuff, and the police arrive and the thief or thieves are gone and there's nothing anybody can do. Now, I might do that as a best option because I'm 130 pounds and don't have any sort of weapon or improvisable-weapon in my apartment at all, but if someone has a home and a bat or a gun or whatever they're going to feel righteous about protecting it, and they're justified in that action. Not to say that one should shoot first and ask questions later, but come on, they're invading your house.

In fact, how do I know that the stranger who is dressed in dark clothes and is in my house at night even committed a crime if they have yet to be tried and convicted?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Oh, I had another thought about those burglaries.

Are they not called burglarisations? Committed by burglarisationators?

 

[Sommerswerd]

Plenty of time!

Spoiler :

Looks like fun... get Abathur involved and you've got a party!

 

[Commodore]

I've yet to hear or read someone outline a situation to me that I felt made their owning a gun for self-defense or home defense sound prudent.

You need to look harder then. A CDC study showed an estimated 500,000 "defensive gun use cases" per year in the US alone. I will caveat that though with the fact that those results were based on a combination of police reports and general surveying of people without verifying the truthfulness of their responses. They also loosely defined "defensive gun use" to include scaring off an attacker by threatening the use of a firearm, whether or not the potential victim actually had a firearm to use. And I don't remember, but I believe the study also counted cases where guns were used defensively against animals as well, which would inflate the number quite a bit.

I'll save you some time though, "home invasion" is not a statistical category in the crime figures, so there is actually no way you could know that "home invasions are on the rise," suggesting you just....made it up.

Google is your friend. Typing "home invasions on the rise" will yield quite a few results. Most of them are local media reports about home invasions in that specific locality being on the rise, but the fact that those local results are spread across the country, it is reasonable to assume home invasions in general are on the rise.

Do you think that local/municipal defiance of state/federal law can be a valid check on state/federal overreach/abuse-of-power/tyranny?

It can be, sure. However, what one group may see as tyranny, another may see as a perfectly legitimate use of government power. So with what constitutes "tyranny" being extremely subjective, I think we are entering dangerous territory if we start allowing local governments to defy laws that aren't overtly unconstitutional.

So I guess what I'm saying is I would only support such municipal defiance if it were in defiance of a law that was blatantly unconstitutional, like outright banning the worship of a certain religion or something like that.

This raises the point that if you're surprised and don't have time to call the cops, it would be difficult for your weapon to be retrieved fast enough unless it was in an unsecured location and already loaded, which I'm sure would offer more danger than protection. Just my opinion.

Well, yeah. If the purpose of your firearm is home defense, then it should be easily accessible and loaded at all times. Mine is. And it's only more dangerous that way if everyone in your household isn't educated on gun safety. I've discussed before (I think in this thread) about how gun safety is a continuous point of emphasis in my household and we haven't had any problems, not even any close calls.

 

[rah]

Teaching 5 year old children gun safety doesn't always work. And younger, probably not at all.

 

[Estebonrober]

You need to look harder then. A CDC study showed an estimated 500,000 "defensive gun use cases" per year in the US alone. I will caveat that though with the fact that those results were based on a combination of police reports and general surveying of people without verifying the truthfulness of their responses. They also loosely defined "defensive gun use" to include scaring off an attacker by threatening the use of a firearm, whether or not the potential victim actually had a firearm to use. And I don't remember, but I believe the study also counted cases where guns were used defensively against animals as well, which would inflate the number quite a bit.



Google is your friend. Typing "home invasions on the rise" will yield quite a few results. Most of them are local media reports about home invasions in that specific locality being on the rise, but the fact that those local results are spread across the country, it is reasonable to assume home invasions in general are on the rise.



It can be, sure. However, what one group may see as tyranny, another may see as a perfectly legitimate use of government power. So with what constitutes "tyranny" being extremely subjective, I think we are entering dangerous territory if we start allowing local governments to defy laws that aren't overtly unconstitutional.

So I guess what I'm saying is I would only support such municipal defiance if it were in defiance of a law that was blatantly unconstitutional, like outright banning the worship of a certain religion or something like that.



Well, yeah. If the purpose of your firearm is home defense, then it should be easily accessible and loaded at all times. Mine is. And it's only more dangerous that way if everyone in your household isn't educated on gun safety. I've discussed before (I think in this thread) about how gun safety is a continuous point of emphasis in my household and we haven't had any problems, not even any close calls.

First two replies, you have to do better here. Anecdotal TV reports in a industry in which the entire premise is "it bleeds it leads" is no way to measure crime statistics. Their market is fear and consumerism.

I think I generally agree with the idea behind your third reply although I'll remind you that we have a plethora of antiquated laws like livestock laws, and homophobic laws that should not be enforced. We also have a real problem with selective enforcement on class on race. So the premise is marred by the reality of humans being really bad at equal justice.

Finally on your fourth point, sure that is fine for you and your home until that "close call" is a dead kid, which statistically is more likely than you running off a home invader. This is a crucial reason why we need to let CDC analyze the issue though so we can get to the truth of your assertion in your first two points here and the reality of home accidents and suicides that we know take place.

 

[Lexicus]

Google is your friend. Typing "home invasions on the rise" will yield quite a few results. Most of them are local media reports about home invasions in that specific locality being on the rise, but the fact that those local results are spread across the country, it is reasonable to assume home invasions in general are on the rise.

No, it definitely isn't.

 

[rah]

And I'd like to see if there is any correlation between guns in the home along with booze when it comes to accidents/suicides

 

[Lexicus]

And I'd like to see if there is any correlation between guns in the home along with booze when it comes to accidents/suicides

The number of liquor stores in a neighborhood is absolutely correlated with domestic violence in that neighborhood. I would be quite surprised if it wasn't also correlated with deadly or injurious accidents.

We know that suicide is correlated with access to guns as well.

Every study that has examined the issue to date has found that within the U.S., access to firearms is associated with increased suicide risk.

(my emphasis)

 

[EgonSpengler]

You need to look harder then. A CDC study showed an estimated 500,000 "defensive gun use cases" per year in the US alone. I will caveat that though with the fact that those results were based on a combination of police reports and general surveying of people without verifying the truthfulness of their responses. They also loosely defined "defensive gun use" to include scaring off an attacker by threatening the use of a firearm, whether or not the potential victim actually had a firearm to use. And I don't remember, but I believe the study also counted cases where guns were used defensively against animals as well, which would inflate the number quite a bit.

I found a Forbes article that references a 2013 CDC study, which may be what you're thinking of, and a Reason article. Actual uses of a gun for self-defense aren't quite what I was referring to, although that information may be interesting in itself. Rather, what I was getting at was the gun owner's justification for owning the gun, and whether it was rational and/or reasonable, given the risks. Simply put, the decision to use a gun doesn't justify itself, and other peoples' decisions to use their guns doesn't justify anyone else using theirs, so data on gun use doesn't justify gun use. Of course, it's hard to measure risk objectively. We can find extreme examples of times when the use of a gun was clearly justifiable and others where it clearly wasn't. But those are few and far between, with probably hundreds of thousands of incidents in between.

The Forbes article quotes the Reason article: "However interesting attempts to estimate the inherently uncountable social phenomenon of innocent DGUs (while remembering that defensive gun use generally does not mean defensive gun firing, indeed it likely only means that less than a quarter of the time), when it comes to public policy, no individual’s right to armed self-defense should be up for grabs merely because a social scientist isn’t convinced a satisfyingly large enough number of other Americans have defended themselves with a gun."

I agree with this, although maybe not for the same reason that the authors had in mind. Reason provides the wording of the CDC survey question: "During the last 12 months, have you confronted another person with a firearm, even if you did not fire it, to protect yourself, your property, or someone else?" (so that excludes the animal encounters) and notes that the CDC survey "asked no follow-up questions regarding the specific nature of the DGU (defensive gun use) incident." So that data would include any incidents where the use of a gun we would all agree was unjustifiable. I'm thinking, as one example, of the guy who shot the kid in a gas station parking lot; the guy said he felt threatened, and was rightfully convicted and sentenced for murder and attempted murder. If that guy was so scared by three teenagers playing loud music, then he wasn't capable of handling a gun responsibly in the first place. The guy in Florida who killed someone in a fight over a parking space is going on trial this Summer, I believe, and the guy in Detroit who killed the young woman on his porch is serving 17 years for manslaughter. Like I say, incidences this (relatively) clear-cut are rare. I can name these 3, which is basically nothing in the larger picture, but the point is that all three of these murderous morons, if surveyed from their prison cells, would go into that CDC survey as a DGU.

As for guns used for deterrence, the fact that nobody was actually shot doesn't justify it after the fact, either (and we still can't assume that the use of the gun - even just to brandish it - was justifiable). The fact that hundreds of thousands or millions of guns are used every year in the name of self-defense only tells us how gun-happy and/or scared we are.

 

[Commodore]

Rather, what I was getting at was the gun owner's justification for owning the gun, and whether it was rational and/or reasonable, given the risks

We've already been over this though. Like it or not, gun ownership is something the Founding Fathers included as a fundamental right in this country, and the exercising of a right requires no justification, nor does it need to be rational or reasonable. That's why most death threats and hate speech are protected by the 1st Amendment.

The only limits on the exercising of a right is when doing so would violate the rights of others. Merely owning a gun does not violate the rights of anyone else, so there is no reason to restrict firearm ownership. Hell, I would say even openly carrying a firearm doesn't violate the rights of others, unless one is doing it in such a way as to threaten someone who is not attacking or threatening the individual with the firearm. The only time owning a firearm violates the rights of another is when it is used in a criminal manner, in which case the offender is arrested and punished appropriately.

Teaching 5 year old children gun safety doesn't always work. And younger, probably not at all.

That's why they make baby gates and bedroom doors with locks on them. Or, you know, shelves or racks that can place the firearm out of reach. In other words, if your kid is getting to your guns without you knowing about it, then having your gun accessible and loaded isn't the problem, being a neglectful parent is.

Others have tried to make the argument to me that keeping the kids from the guns will only make them more curious and try harder to get to them. I would agree, but there is a very easy way to mitigate that: you don't keep them from the guns. You let them explore their curiosity involving the firearm under your supervision. As I have said earlier, my oldest daughter helps me clean my rifle and load magazines when I'm about to go shooting. I also teach her how it works and once she's old enough I'm going to start taking her to the range with me. Getting her involved in the process of maintaining the firearm satisfies any curiosity she has about it, so she doesn't try to play with it when I'm not around. Plus my wife and I have instilled a general fear in our children about going into mommy and daddy's room without permission, which also helps.

In other words, yeah, it takes a lot of responsibility to be a gun owner when you have children as well. Most people probably don't have the level of responsibility needed, but that doesn't mean they should be restricted from exercising their right to own a gun. I mean, we don't let lack of responsibility stop people from exercising any of their other Constitutional rights.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Like it or not, gun ownership is something the Founding Fathers included as a fundamental right in this country, and the exercising of a right requires no justification, nor does it need to be rational or reasonable.

I can't think of a better example of how bad the US Founding Father/Constitution fetishising is than that sentence.

 

[Samson]

That's why they make baby gates and bedroom doors with locks on them. Or, you know, shelves or racks that can place the firearm out of reach. In other words, if your kid is getting to your guns without you knowing about it, then having your gun accessible and loaded isn't the problem, being a neglectful parent is.

Just out of interest, whos bedroom door are you advocating locking? I do not have kids, but I know lots of people who do and the idea of locking a kid out of their parents bedroom, or into their own would not go down well with them.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Just out of interest, whos bedroom door are you advocating locking? I do not have kids, but I know lots of people who do and the idea of locking a kid out of their parents bedroom, or into their own would not go down well with them.

I understand the obvious objections to locking other people into a room, but locking one's own room? Really?