Wait … you’re going try and shoot a raccoon while it’s attacking your kid? You’re going to point a loaded firearm at your kid, while they’re dancing around erratically, and deliberately fire in their direction? You’re going to leave your kid while she’s being attacked, run inside, find a pistol or a rifle or a shotgun, find some ammo, load the weapon (you can hear your kid screaming outside as you do all this, because she’s still being attacked while you’re farting around inside), run back out, point the weapon at your kid and fire? That is your plan? You’ve thought about this, and that’s what you came up with?
Bravo. That’s some wonderful parenting.
The only place you’ll be taking your kid afterwards is the morgue. Because you killed her.
YES. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU SHOULD DO. Jesus Christ, even William Tell didn’t try shooting that apple off his son’s head while his son was presumably running around with a rabid animal clinging to his body.
I don’t carry a gun, and rarely use any weapon that leaves the hand, and know very little about firearms (about half my friends carry, and are very knowledgeable, so I just ask one of them if I need to know something).
But oddly enough I’m familiar with the Krag… when I was still young enough to think guns mattered in the world, my best friend had one he’d inherited. The ammo is very expensive, as I recall, and each round is as big as your index finger.
If you are ever surprised by a rhinossowusser or hippopotawurst in your pajamas, it’s just the ticket!
It’s strange to me though. My dad was a gun nut and my family is sick and insane, so like I have jokes about my mom yelling at me to put the phone down and stop being dramatic while my drunk psychotic dad is standing next to her holding a gun to her head telling her to get that bitch of hers under control before he has to kill me too… and literally thirty minutes later everyone is acting like none of that happened. So when I say I hate guns I truly hate them. As is often the case with kids, especially females, from shit starts in life like this I went on to date the kind of guys who strangle you unconscious on the first date and when you wake up they’re talking about how they’re going to leave their wife for you one day. No, really, this is just my fucking actual life. I know how it sounds, that’s why I’m honestly very hesitant to talk about it and haven’t really blurted out the whole kind of bird’s eye view on a situation instead of saying you know something like my dad was “an angry drunk” or my ex-bf was “dishonest and abusive.” So the thing is I know a lot about being afraid actually. A lot. Powerless and afraid, knowing you are probably going to die, knowing there is nothing you can do to stop that person from doing what they are already doing to you. I’ve lived this over and over. But I don’t have a gun. Now the reason I don’t have a gun is because I am one hundred percent sure that if I have a gun I will shoot myself with it. Maybe on accident but most likely I will shoot myself in a fit of suicidal depression. There is no background check in the world other than my own that could stop me also not only because of lax controls but also because I’ve otherwise lived the cleanest sanest life possible at least from the outside. No one knows the depths of my suffering, my past, or how deeply I want to die most of the time save for maybe my therapist or psychiatrist who even then would be extrapolating from my generally overwhelming tendency to downplay everything (I know no one is likely to believe that but in real life I pretty much joke, shrug, or pretend not to have noticed anything because that is the first thing you learn to do around dangerous people… you cry when they want you to and not when they don’t and you get good at figuring out which it is…). All this is to say though… why are you so afraid? Like what are you really so afraid of? You haven’t actually been attacked, you just see people that are creepy and you feel safer having a gun. That’s a fantasy right there. I wasn’t on the fantasy kick until you told your story. But honestly, most people go through their lives afraid of things that will never happen to them, and let me tell you that when and if those kind of things happen to you a) you may not act at all like you think you will when you are not in that situation and b) you as you knew you is a thing of the past, your new life begins afterwards, who you want to become is partially up to you through a fog of weird chemicals that irreversibly change your brain… all is lost gun or no gun. Just telling the truth. I don’t really care if you personally keep a gun. I have my reason for hating the god damned things, but I get that some people just love them. I just want you to look at your fear and reasoning a little.
This was actually unbelievable to me and I had to go verify the numbers.
You don’t see this fact in charts of causes of non-natural death because those charts would be comparing “car accident” to “suicide” not to “gun death”. It’s interesting that when the death was caused by a car we categorize it by the car, but when a death is caused by a gun we categorize it by the intent of the gun user (suicide, homicide, accident). That’s not just a US thing, I’m looking at Canadian stats.
Particularly grizzlies, moose and a few other very large. Very aggressive animals are the exception on this front. But areas where interactions with these animals are usual or unavoidable are rare. And a gun is only useful or neccisary in those interactions in rare cases. Either way a handgun isn’t usually the right thing to have. A shotgun is the more appropriate thing. And it’s mostly useful in scaring them off.
But getting trapped in your house by a bear isn’t a usual occurance. Even in beer country. It’s not something you generally need to be prepared for at any moment. And trying to shoot the bear is much more dangerous in almost every circumstance than staying away from the bear. Which why experts and people trained for dealing with this tell you to say away from the bear.
Mine probably doesn’t count as antique. Late 60’s to 1970 Bolt action .22 rifle.
It is weird to have it. I do enjoy target shooting occasionally. And like to eat wild animals. But I typically get my wild animals from others. And have no need to own a gun to go target shooting. I have a fire arms instructor uncle who can take me whenever I want. I do not want a gun in the house, frankly.
And I’ve long said that the only gun I’d ever want is exactly that sort of rifle. But would only likely take one of it was one of my grandfather’s. And since his guns were long sold I had no interest. One turned up, no-one else in the family needed or wanted a second .22 so it showed up.
I don’t put much stock in the idea of any use of it, or anything else, for defense. I’m not likely to ever encounter such a situation and if I do the gun or a gun is not likely to do anything for me. What little utility might be there is in the intimidation factor. And I have a much more intimidating air rifle. Although it doesn’t make a typically “gun” noise when cocked. And I’ve been told that’s actually the most useful thing. I’ve heard from more than a few Iraq veterans that the best thing to have at a road block is an unloaded shot gun. Because you can repeatedly cock it without firing a shot. And that noise. Of a racking a shotgun. Just makes people freeze. I remember hearing about a guy preventing a home invasion with a recording of a shotgun being racked.
Yes. Everything you said, ditto here. Also, I can’t afford the time or money to regularly practice at a gun range, so I’d just be another monkey with a gun.
…but I do use a giant sledge hammer AND a pickaxe on a regular basis. I use the sledgehammer as a doorstop when I’m not bashing concrete. I never miss with the sledgehammer. Wanna break in, now?
Thank Dog I’m not the only parent with this reaction. Yeah, last thing I’d ever do is leave the area to retrieve a firearm that I would subsequently point at my child. That is…what’s the word…murderous? Reckless? Shameful? Man, so many to choose from, none of them flattering.
That’s a strange mix of deep insight and horror story. Wisdom doesn’t come to everyone who suffers.
May this day bring you happiness
may the stress of effort bring you the pleasure of repose
relaxation the reward to sore body and weary mind
may your life be touched by loving kindness
and may goodness and mercy be your companions
all the many days of your life to come
However, firearms vastly increase the likelihood that people with access to them will act upon their stupid and dangerous impulses, because they provide a sense of ‘empowerment.’
Fun aspect of that old legend that most people forget; Tell was forced to take that shot at a target atop his son’s head under duress, and he prepped two arrows… the second was just in case his famously spectacular aim failed him, and he ended up inadvertently killing his own child; Tell admitted had that happened, he would have used the 2nd arrow to kill the man who had forced him to endanger his son.
The people I know with guns take, IMO, appropriate precautions like a gun safe, only shooting at a proper range, extreme caution anywhere else, training, etc. DH and I played paintball for years, and we do own a pellet gun for critter control, and that is plenty dangerous for my tastes.
What if the gun shop owners are hiring black people to drive through town blaring rap and hip hop music?
Better yet, what if white gun shop owners are driving around town in blackface drumming up business?
I don’t even know if it’s feeling empowered or if it’s just that the easier it is to do a thing, the more likely we are to do it. It feels like decisions like murder and suicide should be in a totally different category than impulse-buy items at the grocery checkout, but in some ways they overlap.
