As a father of small kids, the danger of owning a gun are manifold: kids finding guns and playing with them; burglars who use your guns against you; “accidents” due to mishandling; the risk of marital arguments becoming fatal... the dangers can outweigh benefits.

As a former soldier I respect firearms enough not to buy them unless I can safeguard them. And many people can’t or won’t.

Empirically, gun accidents are very rare. They are scary, but it's often the less-scary stuff that gets you.

Obviously you should be careful, and of you're not, I'm sure the odds are a lot worse. But empirically, it seems most people handle guns somewhat safely. Perhaps because they are scary.

That being said, if you don't feel comfortable being safe with a gun, don't get one. Or maybe you just don't want one more thing to worry about.

The first two problems would be easily prevented by keeping your firearms in a safe. If you're worried about arguments with your spouse becoming fatal, please talk to a counselor ASAP.

As for negligent discharges, which are probably the most legitimate concern, you should always follow the four rules of gun safety:

1. Treat all guns as if they are always loaded.

2. Never let the muzzle point at anything that you are not willing to destroy.

3. Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to shoot.

4. Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

In my experience, these are hammered into civilian students who take firearm training classes, but soldiers in the military often haven't heard of the four rules and generally are far more casual with their guns than civilians.

It's easy to dismiss the concerns out of hand and spout basic handling rules that soldiers do get, btw and are drilled into them.

The wisdom is realizing that all of this goes out the window when the shit hits the fan. Also unless you're training your entire family on weapon use, they will be untrained folks around dangerous weapons.

There is a reason barracks do not allow weapons and all that stuff is under guard in a proper armory.

Your flippant response sounds more like a religious defense than practical consideration of real situations. There's a reason a large number of firearm deaths are one of the above categories I listed.

You do not need to teach young children how to use a gun if you instead teach them to never, under any circumstances, to touch the gun. This is not hard to do, though many irresponsible people neglect to do so. And none of this goes out the window even in fantasy "shit hits the fan" scenarios; the rules for how to handle (or, to not handle) guns remain the same. The rules keep you safe when you follow them dogmatically. As soon as you start making 'common sense' exceptions to the rules, that is when you put yourself in danger. A lot of people have gotten hurt after thinking "I know I shouldn't point the gun at myself, but I KNOW I just unloaded it so logically there is no danger..."

(And anecdotally, I've personally witnessed no correlation whatsoever between military service and taking gun safety seriously. YMMV.)

Great points. I agree that military service and gun safety are orthogonal.

If one can't make these dogmatic safeguards, a firearm may pose more of a danger than what it protects against.

Sometimes the best way to solve a complicated problem is to avoid the source of complication in the first place.

If abstinence education was effective, there would be few unwanted children in red states.

A shit hits the fan scenario is when you're black out drunk or something where you're in a bad mental state, not society collapsing. Following rules does not help in a situation where you're unable to follow rules

If 'gun abstention' weren't effective, there would be a whole lot more kids with gunshot wounds in red states. The fact of the matter is that telling kids not to touch guns generally does work.

I don't doubt that you've considered your experience and knowledge in coming to the decision to not own a gun. My response wasn't flippant, and I'm sorry it came across that way.

I grew up around (unlocked) guns and knew better than to even think about touching one of them while I was a child. I am aware that many children aren't taught proper respect for firearms, which is part of why I recommended keeping them locked up. (The guns, not the children...)

My comment about soldiers is based on my personal interactions with them. I know they go through gun safety handling, but in practice they frequently have very poor muzzle discipline ("But it's unloaded!": I don't care). I've also talked to a few soldiers who had never heard of the four rules of gun safety, either by name or after hearing them listed out, so I don't think all soldiers have had gun safety drilled into them as strongly as you may have.

I don't live in barracks, but my understanding of military life as a whole is that the military has to support the lowest common denominator in their troops. If you have children, you probably aren't a hotheaded 20 year old anymore, and it seems like that should factor into your decision making process, no?

The other two points (being shot by a spouse or burglar using your own gun), frankly sound silly to me. You listed four categories, but only two of them are responsible for a large number of firearm deaths. It's extremely rare for a burglar to take and use a victim's gun against the victim, and also pretty rare for a spouse to murder the other.

And just to reiterate what I said in my first post, if you're even a little worried you might lose control and kill your spouse, or your spouse might kill you, you need to see a counselor right now regardless of whether you have guns or not. (Alternatively, if you do get along with your spouse, then I'm not sure why you factored that into your decision to not own a gun?)

I am making this post in good faith, and I hope you'll respond.

For me the danger of all these externalities outweighs the potential gains.

The biggest danger of all is the perception that you are somehow in control of things that you can mitigate but do not actually control.

While you may be correct that spousal conflicts are not the biggest cause of deaths, a quick search showed that suicide is 5x more likely if that suicidal person has access to a gun.

Whether you get along with your spouse today is not guaranteed tomorrow. Counseling? Yes it helps. Guns? Statistically not.

> For me the danger of all these externalities outweighs the potential gains.

Fair enough, I'm not here to tell you how to live your life.

I know a lot of veterans struggle with depression and PTSD, so I don't blame you for taking that aspect seriously.

Regarding getting along with one's spouse, maybe that's just something I won't understand without getting married.

People stockpiling guns at home for the unlikely event that they will need to use them to defend their lives/property qualifies for a "well-regulated Militia"? That's news to me.

interestingly first time gun ownership is off the charts. I guess a lot of people who would normally balk at owning a gun have reconsidered.

With the upcoming administration, the likelihood of a ban on magazines holding more than 10 rounds is a possibility. Both Joe and Kamala want gun registration, which is a no-no. The government has no business knowing who owns what. They work for us, not the other way around. And no, I'm not a right-wing gun nut. Quite the opposite, actually. I dislike the current administration. Our rights are inalienable, not granted by government. The second something is granted, it's no longer a right, but a granted privilege. I don't do granted privileges. Needless to say, no one I know who is a gun owner plans on registering anything. Most of the people I know who are gun owners bought them in face-to-face buys and there is zero record of them owning anything, as it should be. I dislike both the Dems and the Reps as far as rights go. I'd be happier with a tiny government that exists to protect the borders, ensure free trade, and prevent monopoly. The Founders were correct.

Your point of view is extremely US-centered. I would be shocked, for example, to hear an European to hold such a view.

>Your point of view is extremely US-centered. I would be shocked, for example, to hear an European to hold such a view.

Which Europeans believe that you work for the government, not the government works for you?

You haven't met many Finns, have you? Or Czechs. I know many Europeans who would love to have a 2nd Amendment. I've lived in Europe before, so I've had time to actually speak and interact with locals in several EU countries. I met heaps of Germans with all manner of firearms. It doesn't come up much in conversation in the EU, but the sentiment is alive and well and with more people than you might think.

> I met heaps of Germans with all manner of firearms.

This would seem to contradict the "gun control is the end of gun rights" argument you're trying to make.

And to a man, they loathe the need. However, you would be shocked at the number of "unregistered" firearms in Germany and all over Europe. Guns from the war, guns from abroad, all make their way into Europe. NY State mandated the registration of all AR and AK rifles a couple of years back. State police in NY show that less than 100 people have bothered to do so. Those people know better. Registration can lead to confiscation. Janet Reno, the erstwhile AG, actually said that the purpose of registration is eventual confiscation. No, thank you.

> State police in NY show that less than 100 people have bothered to do so.

So much for the "law abiding gun owners" meme, eh?

edit: While the registration law is indeed believed to be widely broken, the number of registrants was 20k+ people, five years ago. Nowhere near 100. https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/New-York-SAFE-Act-gu...

edit #2: Reno didn't say that, it's a hoax. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/janet-reno-on-gun-control-...

Do you think you shouldn’t need to register your vehicle too? Or obtain a drivers license?

I don't need to register the vehicle if I don't drive it on public property. I don't need to submit my information to the government to buy the vehicle. And I don't need a drivers license on private property either.

Fair enough. So should gun registration be required for it to be carried in public then? So you can buy and keep guns on your private property, but to "operate" it in public you're required to register it. And here in the context of a firearm, operate is carry, not necessarily discharge.

I'd say probably not no.

* I don't see how that wouldn't solve any problem with actual gun crime. Cars are required to be registered since they are meaningfully "operated" in public peacefully, guns aren't. For cars this is different because you can see the license plate, whether or not the registration is current, everybody has one... Nobody that wants to remain in good legal standing would drive an unregistered (unlicensed, uninsured...) car on a public road. Outside of concealed carry and a couple political protests, nobody is carrying guns around in public except criminals. Non-criminals shoot their guns on private property like ranges, and transport them in their vehicles on public roads. The latter has never been a problem. And lastly, criminals aren't going to follow silly restrictions like "get your gun registered before you carry it in public to go murder somebody."

* People are paranoid (probably rightfully so) about a gun registration database. This would not only confirm their fears, it wouldn't be useful for combatting crime making the paranoia worse.

If you take a look at CA's gun laws, almost all of them are laughably stupid to the point that they restrict cosmetic features, and where they don't, they don't meaningfully stop somebody from committing a violent offense with a gun. If you understand how guns work you understand this simply: the gun laws in places like CA are meant to stifle gun culture not prevent crime (since they are laughably ineffective) or they are written by people who are very, very, ignorant of how guns actually work. In the latter case, it has the former effect.

One of the government's fundamental purposes is to protect and maintain your enshrined rights.

For example the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In other words, an inalienable right which is taken away from anyone who is shot and killed or disabled by another person.

There's a very strong argument that the right to life trumps the right to kill.

The USA is a legendary place for amount of gun crime. Probably if you didn't keep shooting each other so much, nobody would care about registering the guns, and you'd be happy.

But collectively you do shoot each other rather a lot. Strikingly more than a lot of other countries.

A little more than 60% of gun deaths in the US are suicides. FWIW.

(this isn't an argument, just adding some context to our awful numbers.)

> Both Joe and Kamala want gun registration

Actually the majority of the country does.

It's refreshing to read that on hackernews.