You’re right, guns are designed to kill. I don’t own a gun to put holes in paper, I own it in case I’m ever attacked and I need it to defend myself. I was simply arguing that the design is irrelevant, and you disagree. Fair enough. But there are a lot of crazy motherfuckers out there. I live a 30 minute drive from three of the most infamous mass shootings ever perpetrated in the U.S., one of which was people being gunned down while shopping for groceries. So that’s why I carry one, not because I’m afraid (I’m not, the chances of that happening to me specifically are close to zero) but because it is happening, and if it does happen I want to give myself some small chance of saving myself and my loved ones. It’s still a tool of last resort because I know the most likely outcome of me shooting a criminal is me being killed by the police immediately afterward. I still want the chance to defend myself. But you won’t see me rushing into a situation to save strangers, because people have done that in my state and… been immediately killed by the police.
The real problem with making progress is that people who say they want more regulation usually don’t really want that, they want all guns removed from everywhere, period. And anyone who owns one is, by default, part of the problem. Gun control activists typically use the same strategies that anti-abortion activists use, to creep towards their eventual goal. I strongly suspect you fall into that camp. And I personally would love to live in that world, where guns don’t exist, but it’s a fairy tale. You’re welcome to hold those opinions but no meaningful change will come out of it. For a citation on that, I present to you: All of human history since the invention of the firearm.
I prefer to see solutions or regulations that work towards personal responsibility (recurring training requirements, with testing, at a bare fucking minimum), and other programs that remove the impetus behind most of these attacks, which is untreated mental illness. And that’s because there is no black and white fix to this problem. Excessive punishment, prison, or further empowering the police doesn’t accomplish it, any more than making homelessness illegal gets rid of the problem of homelessness. If that sort of thing worked, we wouldn’t have people sitting on death row. I believe that a much more effective place to spend money addressing this is on social programs that could help people from feeling like lashing out is their only remaining option.
You’re right, guns are designed to kill. I don’t own a gun to put holes in paper, I own it in case I’m ever attacked and I need it to defend myself. I was simply arguing that the design is irrelevant, and you disagree. Fair enough. But there are a lot of crazy motherfuckers out there. I live a 30 minute drive from three of the most infamous mass shootings ever perpetrated in the U.S., one of which was people being gunned down while shopping for groceries. So that’s why I carry one, not because I’m afraid (I’m not, the chances of that happening to me specifically are close to zero) but because it is happening, and if it does happen I want to give myself some small chance of saving myself and my loved ones. It’s still a tool of last resort because I know the most likely outcome of me shooting a criminal is me being killed by the police immediately afterward. I still want the chance to defend myself. But you won’t see me rushing into a situation to save strangers, because people have done that in my state and… been immediately killed by the police.
The real problem with making progress is that people who say they want more regulation usually don’t really want that, they want all guns removed from everywhere, period. And anyone who owns one is, by default, part of the problem. Gun control activists typically use the same strategies that anti-abortion activists use, to creep towards their eventual goal. I strongly suspect you fall into that camp. And I personally would love to live in that world, where guns don’t exist, but it’s a fairy tale. You’re welcome to hold those opinions but no meaningful change will come out of it. For a citation on that, I present to you: All of human history since the invention of the firearm.
I prefer to see solutions or regulations that work towards personal responsibility (recurring training requirements, with testing, at a bare fucking minimum), and other programs that remove the impetus behind most of these attacks, which is untreated mental illness. And that’s because there is no black and white fix to this problem. Excessive punishment, prison, or further empowering the police doesn’t accomplish it, any more than making homelessness illegal gets rid of the problem of homelessness. If that sort of thing worked, we wouldn’t have people sitting on death row. I believe that a much more effective place to spend money addressing this is on social programs that could help people from feeling like lashing out is their only remaining option.