Man United wrote:I was about to write a responce in the thread about the new law in Indiana, when I decided it'd be better to start a new one, so as to not take that thread too far from it's original topic.
I have always found the stupidity and delusion of Americans, who believe that everyone is safer if everyone owns a firearm, quite amusing. Hence, I would be entertained hearing some of you argue that guns are a good and useful thing for the average citizen to possess and even carry around.
"We need to carry weapons around in order to protect ourselves," many Americans will say. The thing is, would you rather defend yourself unarmed against an attacker who is also unarmed, or with your rifle against another man with a similar weapom?
"But the badguys still get their hands on guns, making it them with guns vs. us without," they may argue, and their point would be valid, if that were the case. Luckily for the inhabitants of many other countries, it is not. Firstly, having not grown up surrounded by firearms, it doesn't even cross most people's minds that they could use one. Secondly and more importantly, most shootings are not the acts of men who are evil at heart, but of mad men. When a man, or even a child, snaps because of all the stress they have been under, or whatever other reason, and there is a rifle around, there is a possibility they will grab it and take lives with it. If there isn't one around, they will do something else, usually far less severe.
I can't even think of what someone defending automatic rifles that shoot multiple bullets per second might say, but I know that people who are pro automatic-rifles exist. Perhaps we will even come across such a person in this thread, I'm sure it would be very interesting and amusing.
Now, obviously this is just my opinion, though statistics do certainly back me up.
Please note that i say Americans, not because I intend to demonstrate bigotry towards them, but because I am yet to come across this type of idiot in Europe, though no one could deny there are many other types.
(I have not read the rest of the thread (no time right now, though I likely will later), so if some of my response duplicates others.. sorry.)
LOL
No, you may not come across "this type of idiot", but you do come up against the reverse "type of idiot" in Europe.. and we have THEM here, in the US as well!
Set aside folks like Ted Nugent (sp?) and most of the NRA leadership, who I think are doing "the cause" far more harm than good. The real TRUTH is mixed.
First, guns in the US are as much, probably more, tied to hunting and target shooting sports as much as for true protection. Hunting is as much about getting food as sport. I know more than a few families who would not have meat, or who would only get meat from the food pantry, if it were not for either family hunters or donations from the game department (in PA game seized and some donated game is given to disabled and indigent folks.). This was never the case in Europe. In Europe, shooting was always a wealthy man's game and almost entirely just sport. Here.. it was and sometimes still is (though much less, of course) about survival. Even people who don't really depend on hunting for food today, still like having the ability because, well, you never know. I was extremely grateful that my husband and his friends hunted when my husband lost his job right when my son had some serious medical issues. We largely lived off deer and the vegetables I could grow.
Second they are tied to protection, it is in specific contexts -- wild animals, local defense (the ability to form well armed militias) and only lastly against other humans. None of these apply in Europe quite the way they do in the US. The US really does still have a lot of wild land, and up until very recently, (still today in parts of Idaho and Alaska), guns were (are) considered necessary for protection against wild animals. When talking about individual protection, I mean mostly out in the "boonies" where there is no real law enforcement. I can remember being a small child when a "neighbor" (half mile away) was robbed, 2 other neighbors held the guy at gunpoint for about 1/2 hour until the police could get there. I could also point to a recent PA council meeting where a guy did kill/hurt some, but was stopped, not by police, but by locals with guns, though that is more in the line of an unusual event that happened to work out for the honest gun holders.
Most of the above is about rifles and shotguns. Things get a lot more dicey when you start talking about hand guns in cities and/or automatic weapons.
I will start with the "automatic" bit. Some of the problem is definitional. Apparently there are some "automatic" guns that are legitimate hunting rifles, and then there are military issued guns that are not, but there is a lot of room in between. I am not in any way an expert on guns (though I do live with one
), but even I can see that there is a lot of overlap. That, alone causes confusion and makes a lot of people go to "knee jerk", "You ain' taking MY GUNS!" attitudes.
Then you have the gangs and such. These cause a LOT of people in bigger cities, particularly moms (yep, this is partly a gender and socio-group issue), see guns as threats to
their kids. This is where I get angry at the "Ted Nugent" types, because shouting about "rights" and "government taking" doesn't hold squat to the safety of these mom's kids. Add in that a good many (not all, no) of these moms are single, may not have the best opinion of domineering men to begin with... and guys shouting in their face about esoteric "rights" that are somehow supposed to be more important than their kids safety... and, well, no wonder a lot of these moms and dads are against guns PERIOD. In that context, in the context of having a gun to defend against the robber and such, the context most in Europe and the like see it, guns are NOT about safety. Statistics very much do show that guns are far more likely to be turned on the owner or their family than to be used in true defense. This is for a lot of reasons, but number one is that it takes a lot of real training to achieve the kind of proficiency necessary to use a gun in defense effectively. This goes beyond just being able to hit a target and into being able to shoot another human being, quickly and effectively.
In the US, you have a somewhat ironic addition of the "ant-war"/"anti-violence" type. I say ironic because some of that group see having guns (or other protection) as safety and others see them as part of the "western industrial complex" and "western domineering ideologue" . You have them in Europe, but they tend to have a slightly different "flavor" if you will.
BUT.. remember, gun holding was never a long tradition in Europe. To contrast, it is a long held US idea, from our beginning. How real and true that was, whether the second amendment truly meant individual ownership or just the ability of a community to hold guns can be debated, but the fact is that this right is a long held right here in the US. For many people, talk about taking guns is talk about defeating the constitution and therefore ALL of our freedoms. Those are the sentiments to which folks like Ted Nugent and the current NRA appeal. They hit hard and long, because guns have historically been tied to freedom here in the US. I dislike the NRA/Ted Nugent approach, in that I would like to see far more put ahead on hunter education and safety, along with some limits on the biggest automatic weapons. However, I am surrounded by people who firmly believe that the government is about ready to start taking away people's guns.. and who see that as a direct threat to their way of life.
So, anyway, the bit about " I need my gun for defense" IS bull, in a direct sense.. except in very rural areas, and as much against animals as humans, but that is not the primary reason for the debate, not really. (despite the NRA claims!).
