While I understand the reasoning for the emotional appeal, making policy on such things isn’t the best way to do things. I know someone who thinks the DEA should take the kid gloves off and shoot dealers in the streets because his son died from a drug overdose. I know more than person who is anti-Muslim because they lost people in 9/11 or over seas. I know another person who wants to ban motorcycles because their son died in a wreck involving one (they never liked him getting it in the first place).
Violence is going to exist, probably as long as people do, unfortunately… but it’s far easier to commit violence from a “safe, comfortable” distance.
Knives and similar edged weapons require a much closer proximity in order to inflict damage; therefore doing violence with them is much more “intimate” and visceral.
I have to concur, and I also find it disheartening.
Not to mention, that I think that its rather obnoxious to try turn damn near every conversation into a soap box defending one’s pet cause.
There’s some underlying self entitlement there that is bothersome.
And they require that much more commitment to and belief in the validity of the act. Recall the independent variable of proximity from the Milgram experiments, which demonstrated that participant willingness to inflict pain* on a stranger** plummeted once proximity required them to manually hold the stranger’s hand to the pain-inducing stimulus (a purported electroshock plate, or so the participant thought).
*Really, what they thought was pain
**Actually a confederate of the study
I know a family—nice people, I’ve been to their home many times—the father of whom is a gun enthusiast. One time he showed me his collection—and what, to me, looked like an arsenal—of semis, singles, shot, and handguns stored in an offsite shed.
Points for it being offsite, I suppose.
Still, I never understood why he owned so many. He lives in a somewhat secluded area, owns acres of land surrounding their home, all of this located in an already small town whose sole attraction is the square dancing place two miles down the road.
He is an outspoken Christian who believes in a Satan whose evil presence is an active force in worldly events. But really, that didn’t clear anything up for me. Last I checked, supernatural beings, should they exist, are widely assumed to be impervious to natural things like, say, bullets.
So—again—why does he have all these guns? To shoot anyone possessed by Satan? Would this include animals? Is a buck possessed by the Dark Lord any more dangerous than a buck that already thinks he can take you on? Can we just stop talking about guns for a second and get some ice cream? And cake? I need cake.
What follows is merely my opinion,
It’s not that sensible gun laws won’t help, Rather it’s that the type of people that would accept sensible gun laws are the same people who would benefit from sensible gun laws. After Sandy hook, I stopped believing that people are acting sensibly.
Not enough likes for a freakin’ unicorn cake. OMG.
That’s it. From now on I will do whatever I can to transform any gun thread past 200 posts into a cake thread. Join me, cake enthusiasts! It’s time for our own version of the 2nd Amendment:
A well regulated commentariat being necessary to the sanity of a public forum, the right of the people to keep and share cake shall not be infringed.
Addendum— Supporters and fellow cake-conspirators: please make your way to the cake thread!
In my area, it is not “racially laden”. It is purely about how we talk to the kids about storing food and other measures that have always made sense up here in the mountains. Some people certainly do think about city people roaming the countryside raiding farms after some imaginary apocalypse, but not because of any particular race. If city people ever did manage to get up here, it would probably be crystal-worshiping New Age Whites from Santa Fe.
And “thug” is an Indian term. That is appropriation, I guess. Although Tupac seemed to like the association.
I have a huge number of guns. My Grandfather collected guns, My Dad collected guns, I have been collecting guns since we came to the US. Not cheap, random modern guns, but guns owned by historical figures, impossibly intricate antique guns, Wonderfully engraved sporting rifles. Most of them are very rarely fired. I also have swords. Bunches of them. Some date to the 16th century.
But I cannot see how my having so many guns makes me more dangerous or the world less safe. If you were raised with guns the way I was, there is not the emotional response that they might generate in people who have not been around them as much. You might have a strong reaction to seeing a room full of guns, someone from Yemen might react to to seeing the girls on a beach in France.
This comparison feels particularly apt, as many Europeans still seem to (mistakenly) think that every other U.S. citizen owns a gun, much like someone from Yemen might (mistakenly) think that women from the U.S. will go to bed with you faster than a panhandler accepting a euro.
I can’t think of many here on BB who would quibble with owning several historic or otherwise ‘heirloom’ firearms. It’s those gun owners with an unnerving number of modern firearms that tend to get the brunt of the collective criticism on these sort of threads. And you’re right in that for most of us, myself included, such collecting is completely foreign.
The man I mentioned in my first post, nice as he is, has no apparent reason for owning a semi. That there isn’t already a separate and more stringent licensure process for owning such firearms in the U.S. baffles me.
