Round and round we go. When will this debate be settled? Nobody knows.
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Guns in cute colors are bad.
Makes the police more likely to decide whatever object of any color somebody is holding might be a real gun.
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People can have a hunting gun and spend their time fantasizing about shooting a deer or duck or whatever.
But with a handgun its a human, unless its a specialized target gun, and with an ar-15 its a crowd of ‘those people’ whoever ‘those people’ may be.
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Also makes a kid more likely to think its a toy.
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I think sadly everyone has given up the pretense that police will exercise any form of restraint in determining if a gun is a toy water pistol or a real one before opening fire.
I do actually wonder what happened to this, I has assumed it was an actual law.
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And yet, ‘oddly enough…’ they weren’t.
The NRA supported the 1967 bill that banned open carry in CA.
And the NRA wasn’t there when Bobby Seale and others were arrested that day in Sacramento.
Nor was the NRA there when Fred Hampton was killed by the FBI.
So… how exactly was the NRA ever on the Black Panthers’ “side?”
Or, for that matter, when has the NRA ever been on “the side” of ANY Black person who happens to own firearms?
Funny, but I don’t recall hearing even a peep from them about Philando Castile or Alton Sterling, when they killed.
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“I think there is blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it, and you don’t have any doubt about it either.”
- An anonymous Russian troll
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Shootout, maybe. But generally speaking, your odds are about even on dying in a car versus from a gun.
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I was raised in an pretty rural place, And currently live there again. I have regular run ins with wild life. Our yard is an owl breeding ground. The woods near us have large populations of raccoons, foxes, possums. There are large herds of deer living very nearby. And in breeding season the males are aggressive.
In all my life. All 30+ years of it. Living here, or otherwise spending a lot of time here. And frequently camping, hiking and fishing in straight up wilderness areas do you know how many times I’ve been attacked by a rabbid racoon?
Never.
Do you know how many times I’ve seen a rabid animal of any kind?
Never.
Do you know how many times I’ve heard of a rabid animal in the general area?
3 or 4 times. No-one was attacked. But a cat was.
Do you know how my uncle recently dealt with an aggressive but not rabid possum that was fucking with his dogs?
Fire place poker.
This is just a different angle on the myth about fire arms for protection. An unfounded fear of an unlikely event that means you need a gun.
Your cited reasons seem to be an encounter with stereotypes that probably ended up telling a very similar story about you.
And a run in with an addict where no gun was needed and a gun was very likely to have escalated things.
More over your descriptions of these events is tinted with exactly the sort of fear everyone is trying to describe to you. It’s the central plank in fire arms market. Get people scared and tell them the gun is the only thing that will take away that fear. I’ve had thousands of similar interactions. While working. While living in cities. Just out and about. In outdoorsy situations. I had a Meth head outside a 7 eleven randomly start shouting at me that I was a “faggot” and start threatening me just a few weeks ago.
I didn’t need a gun. And these routine, if creepy occurances don’t mean I should be carrying one.
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I had a run-in with a rabid skunk 2 1/2 weeks ago. I just stood in the backyard and watched it waddle down the street. The next morning, it was dead in the gutter at the end of my driveway, so I picked it up and threw it away. Wouldn’t shooting it just spray rabies all over the place?
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When someone talks about carrying a gun “in case they need it” then they’re saying they are preparing for a scenario in which they might need to shoot someone or something. Unless you’re in bear country that generally means “another human being.”
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Probably. And lighting off a gun in your yard is typically illegal. There are usually regulations saying you cant fire a gun with in x yards of a residential lot/populated area. Because that’s insanely dangerous. I think it’s 150 or 250 yards here. I knew a guy who narrowly avoided charges for shooting some dogs that were actively mauling his neighbors goat.
Generally speaking when your dealing with aggressive wildlife. Your fine if you stay back and don’t Fuck with them. I’ve had to clap my hands and shout at some angry raccoons and a deer or two. There’s exceptions to that. But not many people are rolling through like grizzly preserves.
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Hm, that may be a good method of gun control. Mandate that every gun be pink!
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Which is absolutely bananas considering that even an avid hunter likely spends more time behind the wheel than behind a trigger and the average urban commuter may encounter tens of thousands of people actively using automobiles every single day.
The last time that many Americans came together to use firearms at the same place and time was the Battle of Gettysburg.
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That took some serious balls from that black man! Wow!
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I don’t know if that would help.
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My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains! You know, you’re the second guy I’ve met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.
– Philip Marlowe
(Yeah, I just used this quote the other day)
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I think it’d at least reduce the number of guns out there, I’m sure there’s plenty of gun nuts who are so toxically masculine that they wouldn’t even touch a pink gun.
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Not everywhere is the same. When I lived in Tahoe, my landlords had a shotgun because there were bears that kept breaking into houses up and down their street, including theirs. And after I left tahoe, my former roommate had a bear and two cubs break into her house, but the method by which they did so left them semi-trapped in the house. Mama bear was ANGRY. Cops were all, “oh well, call fish & game…at 2am…on a saturday…” Luckily it turned out all right, but it was a near thing. She’s not trained in using a gun so she doesn’t own one, but if she’d stayed in tahoe she might have looked into getting the training.
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I’ve also recently got an antique rifle my father gave me - an old M1898 Krag Jorgensen that my grandfather used for hunting. It’s weird to have it really, as I’ve never had a gun before.
If I did ever have to use it for “personal protection”, I’m pretty sure it would be most effective (for me) to use it as a club. Otherwise I’d have to say, “Hey can you hang on a minute while I go up in the attic? And then I need to find that old box of ammo, plus google how to get the safety off.”
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