Check out the top ten weapons used in the US. Most are 5-7 shot junk .22 along with the Mossberg 12 gauge. We have a violence problem, not a weapon type problem.
It is possible to have both. Though, my understanding is that the weapon type that we have the most problem with is overly available handguns, not ARs. Still, while hand grenades are probably rarely a problem, I don’t think they should be available. Fatality rates aren’t the only consideration.
I have to agree with multiple points above - the “optics” of people walking around with long guns in fast food joints or Target stores isn’t an appealing situation for most people. Regardless of how they’re dressed, their ethnicity, waistline, or anything else, there’s going to be a negative reaction by most people who rightly fear what guns are capable of doing (as a side note, I’d be far more fearful of someone dressed in an immaculate business suit carrying firepower than someone who looks like they came out of an episode of Duck Dynasty). I think these displays simply further entrench opposition.
Furthermore, when people talk about capacity, there are a couple of angles to consider. First, there’s simply a logical increase in potential lethality with the chance of more bullets flying through the air than otherwise in any given timeframe. It’s not always a huge increase (or even one at all), as there have to be additional people to kill for it to be an added threat, and one bullet is all it takes to end a life. However, the potential for added lethality is always there. But should they be banned? Meh. The benefit to safety seems minimal simply due to the fact that there are so many already out there. I have a hard time imagining where an accidental shooting is impacted by being high capacity or not, so it’s just criminal actions and as Houngan said, they’re planned out and the availablility is already there. A well built and cared for gun can last for decades on end, so it’s not like they’re about to fall out of circulation. I suppose the only argument is that they eventually would and having fewer of them available at that time might make mass killings a little harder for criminals to pull off. But there are so few mass killings (despite what the news channels would have you believe), that I could understand people discounting that factor.
I guess in the end it’s a matter of leveraging the couple of lives that might be saved any given year (again, with the understanding that restrictions don’t happen in a vacuum, as a great many high capacity guns are already out there) against the impact that restrictions would have on gun owners. I don’t view the restrictions as being terribly onerous and I believe in the intrinsic value of human life, so I’d be fine with the restriction. However, I just don’t expect that particular one to have much of an impact on public safety.
Just telling you how it sounds to an outside observer. I’m nodding along to your post, quibbling with a few things, agreeing to disagree on the rest. Then I get to the end where you just can’t help throwing out a prejudiced stereotype and lazy FUD phraseology like “mowing people down.” It shattered the earlier points you tried to make. All I could do was roll my eyes.
Like I said, it’s up to you. We all decide how we want to communicate our thoughts and ideas. And we’re all tempted by stereotypes.
My devil’s advocate challenge was whether gun supporters should accept this line of thinking as a matter of course, and whether it reinforced an inaccurate stereotype. There’s an old story about a woman in Texas calling 911 about a man with a gun. The reply is, “well, is he doing anything with it?”
I get that it’s a bit if a reach to ask the masses to calmly assess the situation when there’s an AR-15 involved. Given what they see in the news, that’s a little much. And certain places are going to be more sensitive. Suicidal spree killers love to target schools, for example.
A holstered handgun and a cheerful demeanor would be the more effective approach for these open carry guys. Maybe some pamphlets would help too. I don’t know.
Stereotypes allow us to stop thinking.
I wasn’t trying to frame it as a “seeing big, evil guns” - just that guns kill, and they naturally have a right to be afriad of that.
Not to belabor the point (just kidding, I love to do that) but there’s a little more to the risk analysis before you reach the threshold of “being afraid.” That’s a pretty high threshold. The average man on the street can kill me too, but I don’t walk around in fear. Part of that analysis is the worst thing that can happen: an AR-15 can more easily mow down a crowd (kidding again) than some guy without a weapon. That’s obviously a factor. You then mitigate that with context. Like you said, a cordial redneck wearing a denim American flag jacket might seem more normal than a deranged businessman or a glazed-eyed college kid.
Despite that, it’s still natural for the average person in 2014 to be afraid. They know more about spree killers in the news than they know about the open carry movement. And of course they have a right to feel any way they want. But it may not be necessary to feel that way every time. Practical reality means they probably will, but gun supporters ought to be careful with their language not to take it as a given. I didn’t think about it that way until a few days ago.
Anyway, it’s the weekend so I ought to wind down. I think we’re close to seeing it the same way.
A few more details on the Seattle shooting. It was a shotgun, which takes skill and practice to be able to reload quickly, and the guy used pepper spray on him. According to his roommate, he likes to carry it “to be prepared.” Smart move on today’s college campuses.
Ah, here’s a money quote in an article at the Christian Science Monitor, buried at the end after superfluous copy-pasting. (Did you know there was another shooting recently by a man named Elliot Rodger?)
President Martin told The Seattle Times that the school developed an emergency-response system several years ago and regularly conducts drills designed to train faculty and staff for this kind of scenario.
Good for them. They are just as much heroes as the guy who made the first move.
The subheadline writer also casually mentions the theme I’ve been helpfully suggesting:
Unlike other recent mass shootings, the assailant at Seattle Pacific University was not armed with semi-automatic weapons. The time to reload gave college senior Jon Meis a critical opening to take down the gunman and prevent additional deaths.
(Note that shotguns can be semi-automatic, but most of them don’t have box magazines, which is what s/he meant.) There aren’t enough details to come to a firm conclusion from one anecdote – was the reloading or the pepper spray or the training more important here? But even though I oppose magazine and weapon restrictions, I’d rather have the anti-gun crowd propose something that makes some sense!
I think you’re reading something else into what I wrote than what I intended, but I also think you’re doing it to make a point. The problem is, I don’t get what your point is. Fear is not a high threshold, unless you’re defining fear as something far beyond what I am.
edit - that said, I agree that I think we are pretty close on our views, from what I can tell
Oghier
3519
Of course you can commit a crime, or kill someone with any kind of gun (or no gun at all). But some guns amplify your capacity for violence more than others. There’s a reason that no military uses 5-shot garbage .22’s as their primary arms.
It’s the combination of violence and weapons that causes the problem. It makes me long for the good old days when depressed loners would just hang themselves in the basement, rather than go shoot up schools.
Used in murder, IIRC. It’s a valid data point to extrapolate crime as well.
A Cletus with a rifle is absolutely more alarming (rightfully so) than a guy in Dockers and a golf shirt with a gun on his hip. One screams “Psycho or asshole” and the other suggests “Huh, might be a cop?”
Here’s where I have to jump on my high horse. It’s not the combination of guns and violence that’s the problem, it’s the violence, period. Our non-gun murder rate still exceeds the total murder rate of the EU countries that we typically bring up in these conversations. Remove every gun from the US, assume that we have no further importation or manufacture, assume that there is no replacement going on (killing someone with a bat instead of a gun) and we still would be on the right tail of the murder curve. That. Is. The. Issue. Why? Over on BF I found and cited a few articles that show a strong correlation between income inequality and violent crime, across the globe, separate from firearm penetration. When you remove testosterone (strongest violence correlation is always males, by ridiculous margins) then the best correlation to “How violent is this society?” is “How inequal is this society?” This crosses weapon boundries, it works with machetes and guns and bats and whatever.
I’m feeling tired and lazy, so I encourage folks to google this for themselves. Every city has a pocket of violence, and every pocket of violence has an inequality score that is very obvious. Check out murder maps of any major city/metro and it becomes obvious that the “bad parts of town” share violence and poverty equally.
Spot on Houngan.
The trouble with the debate about gun control is that violence, and gun violence, is often a symptom of other more serious issues. It’s a question of mental health* and all too often - of poverty. We have large pockets of America where multi-generational poverty is the rule, and where education is seen as selling out. We have cultures where violence is normalized, where it is to a degree accepted as a part of life. All the magazine restrictions in the world won’t change that. Indeed, such restrictions are a distraction from the more serious and genuinely intractable problems behind the violence.
* 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides. Eighty percent of suicide victims are male.
ShivaX
3522
But fixing inequality and poverty is hard.
Lets just ban pistol grips.
ShivaX
3523
But fixing inequality and poverty is hard.
Lets just ban pistol grips.
Another week, another high-profile shooting. http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/09/justice/las-vegas-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
A lot of stuff coming to a head in this one:
- anti-government extremists;
- connection to the Bundy ranch protest;
- two of the dead were cops and presumably had guns;
- civilian victim had a gun and attempted to fight back.
More slenderman? WTF, people?
Hmm. Should have put that as point 5).
