In my experience it wasn't a horde - just one man - but I needed it all the same.
* Own a gun and kill oneself with it. The primary risk factor being depression, not the gun.
* Own a gun and be part of a criminal organization. The primary risk factor being rival criminal organizations, not the gun.
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Documents/UDHR_Translations/en...
Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
I could continue pasting the remainder of the document, but I would argue that the ability to defend oneself (from the State, or other individuals) is the fundamental human right. Without it, all other rights are null and void. Gun ownership is the final fallback for securing our human rights.
That’s just like the militia running around in the woods training just in case they have to fight against the government. The same government that spends billions on weapons every year. If the government wants to impose martial law - like the nutcases including Chuck Norris thought they wanted to do a few years ago - the “militia” wasn’t going to be able to stop them.
No, it didn't. The guerilla forces that were successful in Afghanistan has outside state sponsorship and supply and intervention by global or regional powers on their behalf (advisers, intelligence, special ops support, etc.) That's true of the Mujahideen fighting the USSR (backed by the USA, Pakistan, and others), and true of the Taliban/al-Qaeda associated groups which were fighting the internationally-recognized government (backed by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.)
No, I think the pre-breakdown distribution of light civilian arms isn't how you win that fight.
Keep in mind the 25 million ex military in the US know how to run that gear. Any conflict in this country will be a mess.
Your SWAT example is great: how many guys are on the SWAT team kicking the door to get one guy? 4? 6? 10?
What about an actual military operation going door to door? Squad size is 10? 20?
Government violence, when directed against you is nearly impossible to resist. But that's not the same as government violence directed against an armed populace.
History is flush with examples of failures of superior military power to subdue a population that actively resists.
Individual citizens trying to fight cops with firepower is never going to work. Cops have much better equipment than you're going to have, and have the backing of the entire government.
Unless you're literally planning on staging a coup, arming yourself to fight cops is not a viable strategy.
On the other hand, if we disarm everybody, then we don't need to have such over-militarized cops either, and maybe we can finally get to a place where cops no longer automatically reach for their gun (or even carry one) and therefore stop routinely murdering citizens.
Govts should fear the citizens, not the other way around.
Tyranny is a thing you want to avoid
A great way to get a head or spine injury is to own a ladder.
A great way to maim yourself is to own a circular saw.
A lot of popular sports have a substantial risk of very predictable injuries, from CTE (caused by repeated head trauma) to joint damage.
People accept all sorts of risks from sports activities or (mis)use of all kinds of tools. When the subject turns to guns there's this uncontrollable fear reaction certain people have and want to get rid of the object. They don't want guns. They don't want their family to have guns. They don't want their friends to have guns. They don't want anyone to have guns. Guns are evil and must be eradicated. They cannot be tolerated and anyone who has one is suspicious if not a verified homicidal maniac.
There is no magical solution to the "gun problem", just like there's no magical solution that will keep everyone safe in sports or DIY home improvement. Every "solution" that would work involves some kind of extremely harsh and limiting regulation or outright ban that, if it could be enforced, would upset a lot of people.
How do you know every single one of your friendly, stable, normal, and non-violent friends doesn't own a gun? 30% of adults in the U.S. own one. 50% live in gun households. If you don't live with them, you simply don't know.[1]
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own...
The three things you can do which will reduce your odds of being killed by a gun by about 95%:
1. Don't shoot yourself. That reduces your odds by nearly 70%
2. Be Asian or Native American. This reduces your odds by another 70%. If you're not able to do that, being white or Hispanic still improves your odds substantially.
3. Be a woman (reduces your odds of dying by another 80%)
If you are able to accomplish all 3, congratulations! You've reduced your odds being killed by a gun from .01% to around 0.0005%
If you're able to understand basic safety rules, owning a gun is not that dangerous. Accidental deaths are incredibly rare (literally less than a one in a million occurrence), and have been trending down since gun safety has become more popular (the modern conception of trigger discipline has only existed for like 40-50 years). I think you're conflating the inherent danger of firearms with some confounding variables that lead certain people to be more likely to possess them.
You can't shoot yourself if you don't have a gun.
> Be Asian or Native American. This reduces your odds by another 70%. If you're not able to do that, being white or Hispanic still improves your odds substantially.
It doesn't matter what race you are, if you don't have a gun.
3. Be a woman (reduces your odds of dying by another 80%)
If doesn't matter what sex you are, if you don't have a gun.
> If you are able to accomplish all 3, congratulations! You've reduced your odds being killed by a gun from .01% to around 0.0005%
If you don't have a gun, congratulations! You've reduced your odds being killed by a gun from .01% to around 0.0005%. And you have to worry a whole lot less about dying from a gunshot depending on your mental state, accident, or whether you are "unlucky" enough to have been born male or African-American, or have occasional bouts of severe depression.
> The best way to increase your odds of getting shot is to own a gun. Owning guns is dangerous. Occasionally for some people it will turn out to be a positive, but in general, owning a gun is a negative.
I want to hone in on this particular statement you made for some clarification. Are you referring to violence here? If the state or law enforcement are involved, what's the response?
Just trying to get an idea of what "defend that right" is supposed to mean here, since I hear it an awful lot in regards to this specific topic.
Just because something is the law it doesn't mean it's a sensible law nor that law should never be changed to reflect modern cultures. Otherwise you'd still be going round drowning women in rivers to prove they're innocence of witch crimes.
There has been so much evidence to prove that America's lack of gun control is counter productive:
* higher suicide rates
* the numbers family members accidentally killed by their own guns
* mass shootings
Even when looking at the figures in isolation, it's pretty damning. Then when you compare to statistics in the rest of the world, America's statistics become nothing short of embarrassing.
What's more, the UK, Australia and some other countries went through the same process of having relaxed gun control laws and then tightening them up because they came to the same realisation that guns are not comparable to free speech, power tools, nor any other the other dumb things pro-gun lobbies compare them with.
Among other issues such as full data never being released, the specific quote you have there was derived from police reports where someone was shot in their home. No other factors were considered like drug or spouse related, not if the home owner was shot by their gun, or any one of a number of other factors that would paint a better picture.
Do you seriously think police reports where someone was shot no other questions asked is a good indicator for gun ownership in the USA?
The CDC has been able to and has studied guns since that 1996 law.
They have not been allowed to suggest policy changes.
Interestingly when the ability to weaponize them went away, a lot less direction went into gun studies compared to the millions of dollars spent in the ramp up to 1993.
Would you be okay if the CDC couldn’t suggest policy changes when it comes to nicotine?
What’s the purpose of studying something if you can’t do anything with the results?
Anyone pushing for policy is free to cite the CDC results of studies. As they have done.
But if you notice, the narrative has been CDC isn’t allowed to study guns which is a lie.
This was partially rolled back by an Obama EO (sorta, its complicated) and you know what ever CDC study since has found? No exact correlation to guns and crime. There have been some interesting results since 2013 like the fact that Assault Weapon Bans have not at all proven effective since less than 400 people have died per year in any recent time by rifles of all types let alone the subset of scary looking ones, that there are 500,000 to 3,000,000 successful defensive gun uses by citizens a year mostly where a shot isn’t needed compared to 10-15,000 homicides in the country of 330,000,000 are over 75% gang or drug related, and that rural areas of USA where the guns are have effectively the same homicide rates as rural Europe when you look at like for like causes of the violence.
Specifically the CDC was barred from having tax payer money used to remove citizens civil rights.
Last I checked there was no enumerated right to asbestos or nicotine.
It wasn't perfect, but you're talking millions of dollars that went into the 92/93/94 push. That's hard to come up with for narrative building when it's not tax payer money. Just look at the single source of gun control in the USA today, Michael Bloomberg, if he wasn't personally bankrolling it, things would look a lot different.
There's a world of difference between OP's own circumstances and a statistical household average.
If s/he lives outside of an urban area and his family has no history of mental illness, the number drops dramatically. And s/he would know his/her own circumstances.
Someone thinks they know their own circumstances until they become a number contributing to that average. Also I'm curious about your distinction between urban gun access and rural access and how that affects the stats here.
The comment I was responding to did not say this.
> Also I'm curious about your distinction between urban gun access and rural access and how that affects the stats here.
It's no secret that the gun deaths and shootings are far more likely in urban areas than rural ones. I think both sides of the debate acknowledge that.
By the way, just s/gun/abortion/g and see if your arguments sound familiar.
first off, you didn't even cite the statistic correctly from the article:
> One study found that when a gun is present in the home, that gun is 43 times more likely to kill a family member than to kill an intruder.
it's talking about the gun being used (perhaps intentionally) to kill by anyone in the house, not just the owner.
the relevant statistic for someone seriously considering a gun for home defense would be in the cases where the weapon is properly stored, the owner trains regularly with it, and any plans for use of the gun during an intrusion are discussed with and understood by the family. it's a bit harder to find this data though...
* Even the article cites it as only a single study
* The wording of the statement implicitly includes suicide, which while non-negligible, are often conflated by gun control advocates without context. 60% of all adult gun deaths are by suicide
* You don't have to kill an intruder for the gun to be used successfully for self defense. You don't even have to pull the trigger. The context of comparing deaths as if they are equivalently valid ends is misleading
* A gun's purpose is not solely to kill intruders. Many people carry weapons concealed, which also provides value to them that is not strictly tied to killing intruders
And I'm probably missing several other misleading context, but the paper itself that's linked is behind a paywall.
What you quoted is that NPR-affiliate news blog's incorrect summary of a 1986 study of gunshot deaths in King County, WA from 1978-83. The paper abstract says:
"For every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides."
Sample size was 50 homicides, 9 self-protection homicides, and only 2 of those by a resident against an intruder.
If you state it like that and consider that most thwarted home invasions do not end in death for the intruder, the narrative of the site you linked starts to fall apart. Studies like that tend to fall apart further when you look at exactly who was shooting who under what circumstances. How many "non-intruders" were really drugged out "family" members? Is it not okay to defend yourself if you know your attacker? "Family members" could be relatives living elsewhere and known to be dangerous, but who stop by uninvited. When studies cite "children", that can include older teen gang bangers (and gang bangers can be younger, too). The rhetorical tricks are legion.
Trying to impute homicidal impulses to people because they own a gun is simply ridiculous. You wonder why gun rights advocates get pissed off whenever any anti-gun stats or articles are tossed around? It's because they're almost always exaggerated, designed to mislead, and mis-attribute whether gun ownership or possession was the proximate cause of violence.
That the author of that WBUR blog post is still peddling an "assault weapon bad!" narrative indicates that they are not to be trusted. What those people really want is to ban all semi-autos with detachable magazines. If you could enforce it and not grandfather old guns, that might reduce mass shootings (or the number of deaths per). I can agree with that 100%. I only disagree that you could pass that law and that it could be enforced (without suspending the rest of the bill of rights). It would affect not just guns used in the Las Vegas mass shooting, but every single ordinary (non-revolver) semi-auto handgun owned commonly for self defense. They too use detachable mags of arbitrary size.
Any people using the emotional phrase "assault weapon", rather than talking honestly about banning functional characteristics like guns that accept detachable, potentially large magazines (you can't regulate magazines very well, you can 3d print ones that are good enough to be used for one mass shooting), are either not aware enough of the policy landscape to be offering an opinion, or they're intentionally writing misleading propaganda.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/tech/2018/12/...
"“Haselton said that his wife usually keeps the gun locked up in fear that he might shoot somebody,” Jacobs wrote in the report. “Haselton stated that he despises and hates those cars (Waymo) and said how Uber had killed someone.”
Haselton's wife told officers he was diagnosed with dementia, according to a police report."
It's illegal in America for private citizens to own automatic weapons manufactured after [some date - 1984?]. Since gun manufacturers thus can't sell them such weapons, they have no interest in making people want them.
You want motivated consumers screaming for your products, and large segment of keeping the 2A in place is reminding consumers that "if you don't have access to guns, bad people will do bad things that could have been prevented".
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21348242 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21348730
This is not someone who is informed about the topic.
It had no effect.
The prohibition target the manufacture of such weapon for civilian market past 1984. As such, there is naturally a very high demand for a very low offer, and prices are astronomical, IIRC about $20k for a pre-1984 M-16 receiver. If you have the money to buy a such receiver and your state law do not prohibit you from owning the weapon, go ahead, fill the ATF paperwork, wait 6 months, and enjoy your full-auto M-16. With more paperwork, you can even shot it as a full-auto suppressed SBR. 100% legal.
He of course fails to consider that this will simply make guns more un-affordable from the poorest Americans. Those people tend to live in the worst neighborhoods where police respond poorly, and therefore often need them most.
Too late?[0,1] PGFs (Precision Guided Firearms) will take a picture, and help you aim too. They even have apps for your iPhone. Like how CA has a tech focused start-up culture, TX has something of a gun focused start-up culture [2]. IRL aim-bots have been around for ~6 years now, though those companies tend to snatched up by the DoD pretty quickly, so it's tough/expensive to acquire.
[0] https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23571-self-aiming-rif...
[1] http://www.tracking-point.com/
[2] Can MA give us an education focused start-up culture? Maybe NC a health care focused one?
>The IVAS Prototype Project seeks to provide a HUD 3.0 and integrated STE Squad capability within the Squad Architecture in support of Army, Marines, and Special Operations Forces within 24 months. The PPA shall deliver a baseline standalone STE Squad capability within 12 months, and STE Squad capability integrated into HUD 3.0 within 24 months. This complete IVAS capability shall be suitable to begin production as early as 4Q20 to ensure clear overmatch in Close Combat engagements and drastically increase Squad Lethality.
That method does not handle factors that cause the bullet's trajectory to not be perfectly straight or flat, such as wind, gravity, Coriolis Effect, etc. They're generally sufficient for short range shorting, but at longer ranges a large part of the skill comes in being able to adjust your sights to compensate for those factors.
Gun sights are also somewhat ineffective because they are only usable from a single position. You can't point the gun around a corner or lift it over the top of something you're hiding behind and still use them unless you expose your head as well. This method would change that and might give you some kind of a camera feed to a HUD that shows where your bullets would hit.
Not useful for civilian life, but I can understand army interest in it.
Edit: yes I'm totally wrong which is why city police departments constantly fight against gun control. /s
The phrase "I don't approve of what you're doing but I'll defend your right to do it" comes to mind.
Things like the push for 2A Sanctuary Cities may be pandering, but I think it wouldn't be happening if the cops in question were strongly against civilian ownership of firearms.
>Throughout the late 1960s, the militant black nationalist group used their understanding of the finer details of California’s gun laws to underscore their political statements about the subjugation of African-Americans. In 1967, 30 members of the Black Panthers protested on the steps of the California statehouse armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns and .45-caliber pistols and announced, “The time has come for black people to arm themselves.”
>The display so frightened politicians—including California governor Ronald Reagan—that it helped to pass the Mulford Act, a state bill prohibiting the open carry of loaded firearms, along with an addendum prohibiting loaded firearms in the state Capitol. The 1967 bill took California down the path to having some of the strictest gun laws in America and helped jumpstart a surge of national gun control restrictions.
They are typically not sourced well enough for an independent confirmation.
This has been a relatively non inflammatory discussion.
No, but ironically, he is committing an invasion, against everybody. To himself he's a disciplined warrior defending his precious family against the forces of chaos. To me he's a poorly-trained, hysterical coward willing to pollute the entire world and fill it with guns and surveillance cameras pointed at ME on behalf of his family about whom I'm not obliged to care in the slightest. God forbid I should be in that neighborhood if I'm black or "acting weird" in accordance with my god-given rights. What are this random guy's criteria and thresholds for threat assignment? With the police, I know what they are or could find out. And ostensibly they're trained for each thing. So yeah, ironically, as little as many people trust the police, they're still way more trustworthy than this guy.
And lastly, perhaps anecdotally, I've never ever seen anything to the effect of that message outside of tongue-in-cheek internet forum shitposting. Firearms manufacturers are highly feature-oriented in their marketing, with some generic patriotic bells and whistles if anything. What you wrote is just a gross caricature of the motivation and practice of self defense.
There are only four people who should be coming into our house without us letting them in and they all have the code to our alarm.
This comment is one reason why it's so hard to discuss firearm issues, one side is completely emotional and has no understanding of the facts or current laws.
The only uproar about “taking them” that I have heard in the past decade was about taking away guns in general.
It really depends on the machine gun in question. Transferable Mac 10s are sufficiently common and lame that they're still under $10k. (That hardly invalidates your overall point, even 'cheap' transferable machine guns are still expensive.)