Just remind him the US government has military drones. Maybe we can get them to hide under their beds and stay there if we frighten them enough.
Then give me another option!
One that doesnāt rely on pretending Australia is the same as the USA would be preferable, but I personally am willing to listen to absolutely any suggestions (thanks, @Daneel!).
@Brainspore, your skepticism is understandable, but donāt poison the well, please.
Remember, the point is to decrease accidental gun deaths without increasing the number of people killed by criminals. Everybody wants that, regardless of their views on the police state and self-defense. Everyone. Why fight? Why not cooperate? Is it more important to make oneās political opponents submit to oneās will, or is it acceptable to make meaningful temporary alliances to achieve beneficial social change?
The more ideas are floated, the more likely it is that alternatives can be found. As Iāve already said, right now I see exactly two achievable options. I hope nobody likes the second one. The first one, education, is abhorrent to a sizable fraction of the anti-gun crowd because it means their children would almost certainly handle guns, and itās objectionable to a sizable fraction of the the pro-gun crowd because it would be a government mandate paid for from the public purse. We need more options since thereās too much opposition to these two.
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It doesnāt seem that straightforward to me. All but one of the times I had been threatened with firearms was by police. When I was not doing anything particularly illegal.
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For the record, I know (and like) a good many hunters, though I am not much interested in joining them. My only beef is with the Ruby Ridge mentality. We really donāt live in the wild west.
Iāve never seen that Steinbeck quote, and itās brilliant.
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I donāt think you can compare the US to these other countries. Their cultural make up is different. Their violent crime and causes of it are different. Before they cracked down on guns their crime rates werenāt like ours either. The also arenāt the crime free utopia they hoped to be, violence just moved to other means.
If you cherry picked and removed the worst, densest areas of gun violence the rest of the US actually looks like our neighbors to the north in Canada. To me this says we have some specific problems causing the worst violence in certain areas. Iād rather focus on that, determine what can be done to attack the source of that crime.
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Hope you didnāt have anything planned for the day ;o)
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But @Brainsporeās point is that if you look around at every other developed nation things are different. The US is an extreme outlier and people talk like that is the only way it can be. You gave one option (since the second one was clearly not an option), that being education on responsible gun ownership. I donāt understand why you think that would work.
You think that telling people that the safest thing is to not own a gun canāt work, but telling people that the safest thing is to store their guns in a particular way can? If the people you are speaking too are immune to facts, why would they listen to your facts?
Maybe the desire to kill other human beings is so deeply baked into US culture that there actually is no solution, but I donāt see why education about safe gun ownership is the silver bullet while everything else is doomed to fail. I donāt think that people who would shoot into the night at an imagined burglar are going to suddenly become responsible because someone tells them how to be responsible. To me, the real solution is to create a culture where rights come balanced with responsibilities.
If you asked me what the first thing I would do to solve gun violence in the US would be Iād say it would be to prosecute Dick Cheney and George W. Bush for torture. Reversing the American culture of total irresponsibility is the first step. When it is clear that there are actually laws and that people have responsibilities then itās time to have a more sensible discussion about what those responsibilities should be regarding guns. You can have a responsible gun culture whether you have a gun in every house or you can have the only guns in the city be the ones locked in the police armory. America simply does not have a responsible gun (or anything else) culture.
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This article is irrelevant.
Even in a hypothetical world where everyone agrees that the statistics clearly show that in most cases, a gun is more likely to accidentally kill someone than to be used successfully in self defense, people will still want guns and will buy guns. The reason is that everyone thinks they are smarter than everyone else. And nobody plans to have an accident.
Each individual gun owner will think āIām more likely to successfully defend myself that the rest of the population is,ā and also āI wonāt have an accident.ā
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Phase ownership out. When you die, either by your own gun or other causes, your guns must be turned in?
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Itās odd that people believe gun ownership doesnāt follow the law of supply and demand. If sales are curtailed, the price goes up, and guns end up concentrated in the hands of wealthy collectors. When a gun is worth as much as a motorcycle or a car, or a few mortgage payments, people will give up their guns.
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Why not phase out manufacture instead? Criminalize the manufacture of new guns, then all thatās left is a dwindling supply of antiques.
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Iām just glad I got my cardio in this morning.
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Then why canāt you just leave them at the range, in presumably a much better guarded situation, than lying around your house just waiting for you to forget to lock them down?
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False statistics are used by both sides in this debate. I would not defend the assertion that guns are used more often for defense than offense. I donāt have any basis. I do know that shooting statistics are often conflated with law enforcement shootings, police kills are often lumped in with the general publicās actions.
On the other hand, defensive firearm use is not often reported while almost every gun assault on someone is. That just makes sense to me. So I do not expect any public health statistics to ever support gun ownership. It doesnāt matter to me. I will defend my desire to own firearms. I can point to my 40+ year record of safe handling and ownership, if necessary. No, not everyone should own a firearm, no more than everyone should be allowed to drive on the road with me.
In terms of home safety I view it very much as I view my fire extinguishers. I know exactly one person who had a need to use a fire extinguisher yet I have them placed strategically in my home and garage. I will agree my firearms are more dangerous to children and foolish users than my fire extinguishers but that is why I have them under lock and key (fast-access Gunvault system for one handgun) with no ammunition in the house that is not also under the same locked storage conditions.
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Motivation for, or go-to argument forā¦
The statistic that always jumps out at me is the relative frequency of āhot burglariesā ā that is, robberies of the home while residents are at home. These numbers seem to occur at a a rate of almost 5x over the US rate in UK and Australia. Whether or not guns are actively used to defend a house or a person certainly do not reflect the complete deterrent effect of the presence of firearms.
That said, I think Iām more or less with you. My guns are very modest indeed and I see them as a tool I might need under a very limited set of uses (a fire extinguisher is a good example ā I rarely go camping, but I have a water filter with three extra filters. Just in case. I donāt eat that much rice, but Iāve got 40 pounds of it in the larder), but Iām not going to give them up under any circumstance.
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Huh. Wonder why there arenāt detailed stats about gun usage in the real world. If only there were an institution well-suited to tracking such things at the national level that could gather such data.
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I like the fire extinguisher comparison and agree that the two biggest things everyone should fight against in regards to firearm ownership is arrogance and complacency from gun owners.
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Actually I think your initial comment poisoned the well by positing ābetter safety trainingā and āwholesale slaughter of gun ownersā as the only two plausible options for decreasing accidental gun deaths.
You ask for solutions that would work āin the real world,ā but you preemptively dismiss approaches that have already worked in other places as ideas from āa fantasy worldā with āguaranteed failure.ā
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Kleckās data is garbage, I agree. Thatās not the same thing as proving that guns arenāt useful for self defenseāsomething the article doesnāt accomplish at all.
Furthermore, a good portion of the accidental firearms deaths are hunting accidentsāand I donāt think they should count against the value of guns for self defense.
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