Defensive gun ownership is a farce

boing
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Ammunition put into cans for, and before WW2 is perfectly viable. The technology of firearms is over 1,000 years old.


The modern smokeless powder cartridge… I’m too lazy to look that up, but it was a well developed technology 100+Years ago at the start of WW1…

You can’t just magically make this stuff go away. Making a firearm is trivial technologically, making a bomb is also trivial. If you want to live in a world with jets and elevators and cars and massive energy consumption you just have to accept that these energy intensive technologies could be transformed into weaponry.

To reduce these dangers we need to accept a certain level of government control. You can’t ban fertilizer, engine lathes and charcoal. Not if you want to ride around in your fancy car, and continue to eat food and stuff. (Yes I’m a smart ass, but it’s not directed at you, forgive me.

Getting people to comply with the basic premise of not owning and using weapons to kill on another is the key, there’s no magic 'bullet" (Watch as I high 5 myself) such as banning ammunition that will eliminate the problem.

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If you end up using a gun to kill someone, someone will probably be you.

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Always worth remembering.

It seems, and I apologize for not having the time to post the proper sources. That suicide is largely an impulse driven thing, and in the absence of guns, or coal gas stoves for example people are significantly less likely to kill themselves overall.

The truly determined will find a way, but the merely despondent who lash out and commit suicide in a moment of despair are much more likely to do so if they have an ‘easy’ means to do so at hand. Guns are particularly ‘easy’ and significantly increase the number of suicides in a given population.


The bulk of what I’m saying is validated by that, it’s not the best source. But the premise is supported by science.

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…and hypnotics and tranquilizers and many other meds, and tall buildings and bridges, and heavy vehicles to jump under, and rope/chair combo, and many many other means…

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People can try to commit suicide by those means, but it takes planning and commitment to actually carry it out successfully. Every hospital in the western world admits, treats and discharges alive people who’ve attempted suicide by those sorts of means on every day of the week. It’s rare anyone actually manages to die if they haven’t planned for success and get to hospital somehow.

Now grab a loaded handgun, put it in your mouth facing back and up, then pull the trigger? Minimal uncertainty about the result and it can be done almost as fast as the thought crosses your mind. Readily available firearms just make it easy for the ones who don’t plan to be successful on a whim.

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RIP Kurt Cobain. Still miss your voice.

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Amen. I used to stay up past bedtime to tape Dr. Demento and then edit them into mixtapes.

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Every sunday night for years.

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What he said. Trust me, using a box cutter to kill yourself requires an entirely different level of commitment than using a large caliber handgun. one is BANG and you die, the other involves suffering and pain which will result in your death. These are not the same thing.

It might seem counter intuitive, but jumping off of or in front of something is also much more difficult than simply putting the end of the barrel in your mouth and squeezing the trigger.

I’ve decided not to post pictures of my wrist to elbow scars just to prove my point, the ones I tried to take all turned out yellow and highly unflattering. (Not that they are particularly flattering in natural light.)

However, if there was instead a hole through my head which allowed the light to shine through the back of my head and out my mouth… I doubt I would be having this conversation.

Enh, (Changed my mind, my wrist is hairy, or it’s a bit personal)

Say that was a .357 magnum entering through the mouth, and exiting out the back of the head? Do you suppose that would have healed nicely?

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Also, anecdotal report (I asked a friend). 16ga shotgun shells, stored indoor in a paper box without any special precautions for 30 years or maybe more (inherited that time ago, never shot until being inherited again), now worked without the slightest sign of problems.

WW2-era ammo had some sealant, likely shellac, over the crimped joints (the primer well, the cartridge-bullet joint). Looks like the main objective is keeping the moisture out, and, for nitroglycerine-containing propellants, keeping the temperature at sanely low value (room temp or less).

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AND what you say is true as well; although it s a bit strawman-esque to imply that the second amendment allows one to murder people.

But lets not get hung up on specifics- I could have easily used the 13th amendment instead of the 1st. In which case you would have been making the argument that slavery never killed any one? :laughing:

Peace.

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Corgis make rubbish gundogs.

Yeah, I think it’s kind of popish with the name choosing. I reckon they need to shake it up a bit. Why not have a new name? (or, you know, just piss off and stop being parasitic bastards)

Turns out only 3 British monarchs have chosen new names: Victoria, Edward VII and George VI (both of whom were Alberts).

Which means if the PoW changes his name he’ll still be a proper Charlie.

And I mean that entirely in this sense:

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Ah, a reasoned response with some level of both humility and acceptance of your limited knowledge and a desire to know more. I so rarely see this from the anti side (not suggesting you are that at all).

Both sides lack objectivity to a degree and critical thinking bows to emotional conditioning into paranoid hysteria compliments of the media and its six masters in the U.S.

One the anti folks spokespersons post faux science and are financed by anti gun supporters, the pro gun rights folks researchers are NOT financed by any faction at all other than occasionally an administration that is anti gun, and when then research comes back they get most embarrassed because it does not, as hoped, make out that gun control works. In short two democrat administration CDC studies came back with in support for gun ownership reducing crime and gun violence, and both stating that they found NO correlation between gun control laws and the raising or lowering of violent crime or gun crime.

Now if you want cites for these claims, and with links, you just feel free to demand them of me and I will happily provide … but if you are anti you are NOT going to like what the FBI, DOJ, even the gun unfriendly CDC, and the U.N. has to tell you about the truth of guns in this country, and AND the lies that the gun prohibitionists constantly fill her eyes and ears with until you are jerkin’ that old knee at each new “revelation,” about those evil redneck gun ammsexual penis substitute gun owners.

Cause that isn’t who they are. And violence is not what they do. It all comes out of small high crime areas, even the suicides and accidents, let along the violent criminal shootings.

But you won’t ask because you don’t really want to know…

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Whoa whoa whoa … ah whoa. You are citing the much debunked Kellerman study.the one where he changed his tune every few months, refused to release his data and methodology to researchers, (a huge no no in all research) and lost out terribly to real researchers.

His data was deeply flawed. How? Well went from the specific to the general to start. He surveyed households where there had been a homicide. He had controls but terrribly weak.

He conducted the research heavily weighted to interviewing households in high crime areas and households where the gun involved was NOT legal as there criminals in the household.

Incidences of domestic violence, drug violence, are and were very high in those areas. And he counted shootings OUTSIDE the home done by non residents using NOT the gun in the home. No logical connection except through it being a high crime area.

No low crime area where guns were in the house hold and NO shootings of residents were included in the study. What are we to learn by his methods about real gun safety or gun risks?

Well, don’t be a criminal or a child or spouse or friend in a criminal household, and stay off the street cause they’ll kill you out there, but it’s not because you have a gun at home… it’s because you are thug and they are thugs.

Are you about to catch on to how you have been conned by bogus research? Well Kellerman isn’t the first and he most definitely is not going to be the last. There’s a raft of them.

If you want real data on risk levels and cost benefit ratio by a real researcher, try Gary Kleck, and hes a liberal that fully expected when he started his research to find a net loss to owning a gun. And his peers that hate guns, but are honest researcher themselves hold his work in high esteem.

He is an award winner of a prestigious criminologist society. He has meet every attempt to attack him with clarity and honesty and success.

His opponents include those who are NOT criminologists and quite frankly have been found by myself and others to just out right lie. Sadly, since some do hold university director ships etc. But they are funded by anti gun activists, which Gary Kleck is NOT.

This is the man the gun control fear and should, given who he is and what he’s done to bring out the unpleasant truth, for them: You’ll need word or a word friendly utility to open it.

http://criminology.fsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/Kleck-CV.doc

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I don’t know if a dozen people have had their posts disappeared by moderation, or if you’ve all been reasonable and respectful, either way good job :smile:

I read that, I’ve had a boring weekend. With much procrastination, and learning something can never be that big of a waste of time, can it?
Thing is these sorts of analyses, whatever the methodology are of very limited usefulness. Who’s the “YOU” they are talking about? A simple thing to take away from his research is that the much higher rate of gun suicides about 5-14 year olds in high gun states… Hmmm I live in a high gun state. Medical care, mental health care are horrible, education is poor, which adds to the stigma of even seeking mental health care, if they could afford it, which most of them can’t. Despair at that poverty, and from growing up in an inner city slum/rural trailer park, those might be factors that make these kids want to kill themselves more non?

I dream of a world where we might be able to have this discussion on a national level, and people could do science on a scale that would be really helpful to understand the issues, and we could make policies based on that research! In the current world if you come at this without an agenda it seems certain you’ll never get the funding you need to do the research properly.

Appeal to moderation: Maybe the middle ground in this issue is the worst possible policy, and I’m simply horribly wrong. What I can tell you though is it’s the most unpopular in discussions either online or in person. I’ve been slammed and personally insulted more than once for saying the things I usually say about this subject. I’m either an an inbred hill-jack ammosexual, or a commie gun banning homo depending on the mood of the crowd. (Again thanks to the BB collective for being not so bad about such things in general)

While we’re on the subject, I might get to (legally, and briefly) shoot a .50 machine gun this spring, and I’m quite excited about that. I suppose it is possible I’m a hill-jack techno-sexual commie who seeks limited gun ownership. But it doesn’t have the same insulting ring does it?

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You’re reading more into his comment than is warranted. Being required to complete a gun safety course does not require you to then go out and buy a gun.

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Huh?

You seem to be doing a little grand-standing here. I don’t have a dog in the are-guns-safe fight (although for full disclosure I should mention that I own one – a 9mm Ruger – but that’s more for historical reasons (haven’t had it out to shoot it in a decade, last time I used it was to put a groundhog out of its misery after a passing car hit it)).

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Well, you could start a program of slowly, but inexorably, restricting gun ownership.

  • Include a mandatory gun license that requires the owner to pass a test like a car license, to prove that they are capable of safely owning and operating a gun.
  • Make sure there’s appropriate allowances for defending yourself from wildlife, and pest control and hunting (and whatever else I’ve forgotten)
  • Allow gun clubs and ranges to be a secure and safe place for people to store the weapons they wouldn’t be allowed to keep in their house
  • Institute an aggressive buy-back scheme and destroy all the received weapons (with exemptions for historically or mechanically interesting ones)
  • Possibly introduce increasing taxes on guns and/or ammunition

In the US you’re going to have to do this very slowly. The first set of laws will have to outlaw basically nothing, in order to get people used to the idea.
I think a 50-100 year timescale would get the gun ownership in the US similar to Europe now.

I’m a brit, so I’m not saying the US should do this, but you asked for options.
*edit Also aggressively destroy all firearms or ammo connected to crime, but I think this is already the case

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Thank you! Thank you! Without your digression, I might never have wandered from

to

and finally to

which is full of win.