That seems to be one of the core asks of the anti-gun lobby. I can’t really say I’m against it. For home defense, long guns work just fine. For hunters, while legal, almost nobody hunts with handguns. For street defense, running away is almost always a better bet than defending yourself with any kind of weapon or martial art.
The 2nd amendment was based around the idea of a civilian militia, and banning handguns doesn’t significantly impede that either.
If every handgun magically disappeared tomorrow, the number of deer hunting licenses sold just in the state of Pennsylvania alone would give any invading force pause.
My state has 40+% gun ownership (probably closer to 50%), yet somehow manages to go with generally less than a handful of firearm murders each year [and at least once every few years, there’s at least one tragic hunting accident counted in those stats]. The bigger problem in the state is firearm suicides - they outnumbered firearm murders in 2011 here 14:1!
A lot of those deaths could have been prevented with a combination of background checks that happen every time ownership is transferred, better mental health services, more accurate reporting amongst agencies, better education and training, and ensuring guns are locked up properly. Unfortunately, even common-sense ideas are considered attempts to take our guns nowadays.
The trend of low gun violence, high gun ownership, high suicide rate rules about just about every place in North America. Since you used the word “State” and not “Province”, you’re in Alaska, yes?
Yes. But that’s no excuse for not enforcing proper handling within the store.
I don’t think anyone here denies that mishandling a firearm is worth getting upset about. I mean, Mister44 is always talking about how safe gun handling is paramount, but I always get the feeling that I’m the only one cringing when I see these videos.
You just never ever never, put your finger on the trigger unless you’re in the process of shooting something. And you never ever never never never point your gun at anything you’re not okay with shooting. Ever.
I would disagree that snowboarding gets you more out into nature.
How? You’re on a mountain, likely travelling much further in a day than hunting, without anything but gravity and the occasional chairlift. I also find the concept of getting out into nature by killing the things there to be at odds with each other. If I burned down a number of trees in Whistler because I wanted to get out into nature and have the side benefit of heat then people would, probably rightfully, tell me I was being a dick. How is killing an animal different, apart from the increased ethical questionability of taking the life of a sentient being?
you’d have to go to some lengths to go snowboarding in a place that is more than a mile or two from the nearest bar.
You’re not doing it right if you’re still that close to a bar, plus the bar is supposed to be in your jacket in the form of a hipflask
snowboarding falls flat on its face as an excuse to get away from the wife and kids for a week.
Is that because it’s a socially sanctioned ‘male getaway’ activity or because your wife/kids don’t like seeing bambi all bloody and on a BBQ? If it’s reason two that’s fair enough, but if it’s reason one then it speaks volumes about how fucked up society is. It could also be reason three: you don’t want to expose the “delicate” women and children to the violence of hunting which would be the most fucked up of all as it recognises that there’s something wrong, traumatising or confronting about what hunting is.
Pig hunters are a funny one. I still bestow my general dislike upon them because in Australia they tend to be the extreme bogan ignoramuses, but it’s difficult to judge as the introduced pig species that are hunted actually seriously damage native flora and fauna. I suspect the boar hunters who hunt with spears are an extreme minority though. Here the rednecks who do it just set their dogs on the poor pig after having shot it.
We’re top dog not because of our claws, but because we figured out how to make really pointy sticks.
I find that itself unfair though. Many hunters would not have the knowledge to build a firearm, let alone the ammo. That they can benefit from centuries of human invention by handing over $100 is a sneaky shortcut that circumvents evolution and puts any hunted animal at a severe disadvantage.
Doesn’t have to be just those two reasons. I’ve never gone deer hunting, but I have gone duck hunting, and it can be… Grueling, standing hip deep in a 35oF bog, having to hike through that bog for miles. If you don’t have a dog, then you have to go searching for the carcass. Sometimes they land deep in a blackberry patch.
So, yeah, there’s also the reason that perhaps, a guy might be motivated to suffer physically in order to have some free time to himself. That could be an option.
Most purchases do go through the standard FFL checks. Order a gun online? That goes through a check. Nearly every gun at a gun show goes through a check.
Private sales and gifiting, face to face, within your state are the only exceptions. Looking at the data of where criminals get their guns, I don’t see how cracking down on private sales will do much good. I belong to several buy/trade groups on Facebook, and when ever there is anyone shady the admins let everyone know. A lot of people won’t sell unless you have a CCW card (which shows you aren’t a felon, etc) or at least writes up a bill of sale, writing down your ID info as a CYA measure.Would you sell a gun if you go to meet the guy and he is tweaked out or acting shady? Probably not.
People that would sell to that person are the same kind of people who would still sell to that person if it were illegal.
While we are at it, why don’t we prosecute more of the people who FAIL the background check at an FFL. Out of the ~80,000 who were denied for one reason or another, guess how many were prosecuted in 2012? Guess. The answer will shock you.
I’m aware that a ‘kill this shit’ button works well on its owner as well. I know that if firearms were easier to come by here then there would be a lot more actual suicides and a lot less failed suicides. Guns make the act of taking life too easy. Humans need the grisly nature of violence as a deterrent IMO.
It is not at odds with our evolutionary history. Arguably, hunting deer is more humane than a lot of domestic animal farming practices these days.
Is that because it’s a socially sanctioned ‘male getaway’ activity
In a word, yes.
or because your wife/kids don’t like seeing bambi all bloody and on a BBQ?
Much less so. You’d be surprised how unfazed kids are to such things. I was cleaning a fish last summer, and had several 6-9 year old girls and boys ask to touch the scales and guts. Yeah, it’s not Bambi, but it is Fred their pet goldfish.
I find that itself unfair though.
Life isn’t fair, let alone Nature. You’ve got a long road ahead of you.
My favorite way of getting some time to myself is actually about half-hunting. I like to go into a secluded, quiet section of my neighborhood park (it’s about 3 square km of dense PNW forest embedded in the middle of town), find a rock to sit on, and silently have a few drinks, and spot animals.
Very vaguely arguably. From an animal welfare angle you’re mostly right, though it’s hard to quantify the difference between living free and in nature (which comes with its own challenges of fending for yourself) while being constantly hunted every time you’re in-season and living as a captive whose needs are provided for, including an end that you wont see coming and that is almost certainly going to be quick and painless. That being said, farming and animal welfare laws in America are far more lax than in Australia.
From an ecological perspective industrialised farming, provided it is done ethically and properly, is likely much more efficient than any form of hunting short of subsistence hunting on land you don’t have to go far to get to.
Life isn’t fair, let alone Nature.
I know this full well, but I can still tell hunters that they should get a better hobby and otherwise portray them as dicks so eventually it’s not a socially sanctioned male getaway activity. Dog/cockfights were once considered entirely acceptable. One day hunting and even eating meat will be seen by society to be as morally questionable and unacceptable as dog/cock fighting.
I’m Canadian. An outsider. My sense is US debate over gun control laws is a struggle to ensure that people who probably should not be able to get guns have a right to get guns. I thought the video was great - go into a gun store and instead of being shown what is on SALE AND PRICED TO MOVE you are given a reality check. Someone who has already informed themselves honestly was probably not who the video was made for. Guy’s mind might not have changed, but his girlfriend seemed to think about things a little more.
ps. Are they the REAL guns? Did the shop have a LICENCE? Are you kidding me?
Maybe hunting. I am skeptical that our long evolutionary history of meat eating will be tossed aside so casually. But, whatever. Our consumption of other mammals is basically sustainable by most counts, it’s the fish populations that are really hurting.
The DNR (Dept. of Natural Resources - the primary state level conservation society) is in charge of issuing the deer permits. The DNR actually attracts a lot of liberal hippie types to its ranks, at least from what I’ve seen. The reason they don’t outright ban deer hunting is because it actually serves a very humane purpose: to manage the deer population so that there’s fewer deaths from winter starvation, or traffic accidents. This is actually a huge problem. Huge. So it’s far more humane to have hunters kill them, and make use of the meat.
When there’s too many deer (see previous note on how they determine this via winterkill, etc.), the DNR issues more Doe permits. When there’s not enough, they issue more Buck permits. Some years, they issue no permits.
I realize in Australia you probably don’t see 3 dead deer on your morning commute. But, I call that a Tuesday out in the Chicago suburbs.
There’s my issue…you’re depending on the hope that everyone involved does the right thing, and when there’s a profit motive involved, not everyone can have as keen a sense discerning who looks “shady”.
Where do most suicides get their guns from? (see my comment above for context)
In fact, how many people were shot in the US last year?
I can say for certainty neither you nor anyone else here knows the answer, given that any research that would have been done on the national level by the CDC has effectively been banned for almost 20 years thanks to the Dickey amendment. This right here isn’t a question of civil liberties, freedoms, the 2nd amendment, home defense, small government, or anything else; it’s a very powerful lobby having way too much sway over our public policy with no room for any middle ground.
Ahhhh . . . but you fall for the gun-lobby logic too-- simply talking about gun control is not necessarily an “attempt to ban guns”-- that’s paranoia and jumping to conclusions. This is how the argument usually plays out: someone says “something should be done about gun violence”, and the gun-rights advocate immediately equates this with a gun ban. Except a gun ban wasn’t mentioned. This is exactly why we can’t have the discussion, any legislation that is proposed is called “the first step towards taking away all our guns”, except that ignores all previous gun laws, aren’t they the first steps, and should we therefore repeal them?
I am not aware of any proposed legislation that attempts to ban guns outright, and even if there were, the Supreme Court would overturn it.
