What is different, of course, is that you can also use the gun to kill people and manage people's behavior. (At least, in ways that are less practical than with a pinball machine.) If I'm a store clerk with a gun pointed at me, that gun owner is my new manager and I will obligingly empty the till into his sack. I also believe that the vast majority of gun owners have a very sober and mature recognition of this. I know an avid hunter who couldn't enjoy playing paint ball because pointing a gun at the other players was distressing and went against his natural instincts.
As a rule, however, owners are comfortable with the guns themselves, if not downright fond of them. Most owners believe that they are both safe and facile with their use. The rabid poster child Chuck Norris not withstanding, your average gun owner is also your average citizen, complete with the very natural and human goal of protecting themselves and their family, as well as their property and ideals. How dangerous our world really is can be rather subjective but there are few places left that aren't touched by violence. With all that in mind, it would be almost crazy for a gun owner to not see that firearm as a friend and ally in defense of the many threats, both real and imagined, that lurk outside his door.
As it happens, my wife stands in exemplary contrast to my personal gun experiences. When I met her, she knew there was a middle America largely because it was a five hour flight from New York to Los Angeles. Her sole experience with guns were nightly reports of drive-bys, hold-ups and the usual urban mayhem. She grew up in a world where the gun had no charm and no ulterior motive. Rather, it had a singular and ugly purpose. Whether for good or ill, it is nothing more than a tool for killing another person. She had no warm summer afternoons of picking off coke cans and the only thing she's ever hunted was a cab.
Once, when she saw a shotgun on a table with barrel broken and no shells in the chamber (to the uninitiated, read "nonthreatening"), she grew pale and stiffened, as if she had stumbled on a coiled and hissing rattler. I remember her discomfort, many years ago, when there was a gun in our house even though it was unloaded, in a case, safely buried in a closet and no ammunition. Like the viper she spied on the table, it still, somehow, retained the ability to slither in the night and strike us in our sleep.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dean Speir
As a recovering '60s liberal, although I was raised with exposure to handguns through my Army officer father, I came to firearms on my own in the mid-'70s as a tool of home defense and then as a means of competitive sport.
My wife, who I have known for more than 30 years, when we first came together romantically ten years ago, had no idea that I even owned a firearm. When she made that discovery, she asked why. I responded with a line I've found effective, one borrowed from the actor Donald Pleasance in Halloween II: "It heightens my sense of security."
She wasn't shocked by the presence of the handgun, but she explained that, as an Emergency Room Nurse for almost nine years, her sole frame of reference was "the effects of a handgun," and that had left her with a negative impression of all firearms.
We didn't debate, but a month later she came to me and said that she would like to learn how to shoot a handgun.
It was my turn to express surprise. "What occasioned this?" I asked.
She explained that she had recently seen several news reports of a woman, not a police officer or in the military, in a supermarket who had been able to dispatch a would be suicide bomber before he was able to detonate his lethal vest.
She figured it out from there on her own, and is now a licensed and professionally trained handgun owner.
2 - Dr Dreadful
She explained that she had recently seen several news reports of a woman, not a police officer or in the military, in a supermarket who had been able to dispatch a would be suicide bomber before he was able to detonate his lethal vest.
Where and when did this attempted suicide bombing take place? I don't recall anything like this ever happening in the US, or indeed anywhere, nor can I find any reference to such an incident online.
3 - Jordan Richardson
And why was a suicide bomber targeting a supermarket?
4 - Dr Dreadful
Unless it was Israel. All I can tell you is that my bullshit proximity warning light was flashing.
5 - Glenn Contrarian
*crickets chirping*
6 - Frivolous D
re comment #1: Yeah, I think it is exactly these kind of "real life" stories that get in the way of a meaningful debate.
7 - Dr Dreadful
Exactly, Friv D. There's a perfectly good case to be made in favour of guns without having to lie about it.
To be frank, the (not just one, but two) rather fantastic evangelical conversions in Dean's account had me smelling a rat even before the non-existent supermarket bomber was introduced.
8 - Frivolous D
Dr. D, I used to get an awful lot of those conservative propaganda emails (till they figured out that I was beyond saving) and the one certainty I had learned is that the longer the credentials, the weaker the facts.
9 - Cannonshop
#1: I guess if you're going to fantasize, fantasize big and shiny. A gun doesn't come with nifty powers like seeing a concealed suicide vest, nor do terrorists give the neato wild-west warning speech first-they walk into a crowded place, push the button, and Boom-followed by the burning and the bleeding and the screaming.
a gun is not a magic fetish that grants superpowers-now, if you're going to peddle bullshit, remember to keep the internal consistency-a gun MIGHT stop another gun-user under certain circumstances, such as averting another Luby's Cafeteria, Georgia Tech shooting spree, bankrobbery, mugging, or carjacking-that's at least in the realm of the possible (if not entirely probable-remember, mass-killings happen where there are lots of vulnerable, disarmed, and helpless victims in tight containment, not where people have the ability to flee or fight.) Stopping a bombing requires a level of prior knowledge and/or situational awareness well beyond the grasp of the average gun-owner and/or normal person, and/or Law Enforcement Officer.
Now, some folks on both sides of the Gun Control issue seem to think that firearms are these neat magical fetishes, that they grant supernatural power or that they are malign, cthulu-like corruptors of innocent minds with a dark will and thirst for blood.
Firearms are NEITHER magic fetishes that grant superpowers, nor are they independent, malign and demonic entities of evil-they're objects. "a device for throwing a ball" as one age of reason philosopher put it. Unfortunately, there is at least as much mythical, fetishistic bullshit on the pro-gun side, as there is generated by the anti-gun-ownership-by-civilians side.
10 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
Problem is, guns make it a whole lot easier to take out one's frustrations - and I don't remember hearing about any 'drive-by' knifings.
Think about it - let's say you wanted to kill me. If you knew that I had a gun or lots of guns or that even carried around a fully-auto AK-47 (btw, I own no guns right now), do you really think that would stop you from shooting me dead? Of course not. There's no way I could stop you, because you'd just wait until such a time and place that I couldn't shoot back.
Likewise, if I had a gun and really wanted to kill you, there's nothing on earth that would stop me. If I wanted to assassinate the president (and I certainly do NOT), nothing - not even the best efforts of the Secret Service - would stop me. And nothing would stop you, either. I think you would agree with me on all the above.
And all the above shows the grand fallacy of the 'guns for self-defense' argument. Yes, guns ARE used in self-defense to save someone's life almost every day...but in the big picture such are the rare exception to the rule when it comes to the sheer numbers of those who are wrongfully killed by gun-toting idiots.
We'll never get rid of guns - that's just a fantasy. But the notion of "an armed society is a polite society" is every bit as much a fantasy. The only pragmatic and practical answer is (again) the 'Goldilocks' approach: gun ownership for all citizens who want them, as long as all guns are registered, all owners pass a background check, all owners receive a proper safety training course, and owners are responsible for what their guns do regardless of who's holding those guns.
Do all that, and the gun-violence rate will plummet much further...and the drug wars in Mexico will subside.
11 - Cannonshop
#10 Glenn, the drug-wars in Mexico will subside when we eliminate the conditions that make drug-smuggling a lucrative business, and not before. Linking gun-laws to the disaster that is the Drug War is a false link, and you should ought to know better-though it would be nice if OUR government wouldn't arm the Cartels in the guise of half-assed 'sting' operations that don't work-and again, shame on you for bringing up that without owning up to the actions of ATFE and DHS agents making a bad situation oh-so-much-worse...likely for political reasons angled at drumming up new support for MORE regulations that they will cheerfully violate next time they get a bug up their ass.
We HAVE sufficient laws in this country, both at Federal and State levels-sufficient to barely scrape by the 2nd Amendment, 4th Amendment, and 5th Amendment, and the 14th Amendment, we don't NEED new laws, we need agencies that enforce the laws already on the books in a legal and just manner.
which, sadly, we do not have.
We ALSO need fewer laws, that are more enforceable, without resorting to no-charge imprisonment, no-trial imprisonment, and without violating Posse Comitatus, the 5th Amendment, the 4th Amendment, and the 1st Amendment, and without suspending the Habeas Corpus requirement.
For all the admiration you Libs have for European "solutions", I don't see y'all rushing to emigrate BACK to Europe, and sorry to point this out to y'all, but there is a reason why our ancestors LEFT.
12 - Zingzing
I wouldn't mind living in Europe... And gun laws have nothing to do with why people left. People left Europe because of religious wars and starvation, among other reasons... But not gun laws...
Actually, my parents are thinking about moving to Austria at the moment. Some place in the foothills near the Hungarian border. Not my scene, but I'd love to visit them if they did.
13 - Cannonshop
#12 it's not guns, Zing, it's culture-the culture of government, the social environment, etc. etc.
Gun laws are the least part of it, but they're on that short list of things Gun Control advocates always bring up Europe as an example to emulate.
right there with crime statistics. (often in the same breath.)
The PROBLEM isn't guns, it's people, we're not like Europe as much as we like to pretend we are. A simplistic way to look at it, is that in THIS country, the Left wants to be more like Europe in every way they can-and the right does not. It is, I suspect, closer to the real root of our politics than anyone is willing to admit.
14 - Igor
Andrew, a 45-70? During my hunting years the only rifle known to me that threw that slug was an old buffalo gun.
15 - Dr Dreadful
Austria, zing? Oh boy.
By all accounts, Austria has the highest concentration of hillbillies east of the Atlantic seaboard...
16 - Frivolous D
Igor, yup! And it kicked like a buffalo, too. I always shot left-handed because I sighted better with my left eye. My dad gave me that rifle for deer hunting because it was the only one he had with a center-line safety. The rifle was an old Winchester lever-action and that model most certainly would have been used for buffalo hunting. I was told that it was developed to "Win the West" for the Indian Wars in the mid-1880s (best guess).
It's lack of range relative the 30-06, for instance, wasn't much of a handicap because anything outside of a hundred yards or so was, ahem, already pretty safe from me.
17 - Zingzing
#13--you're right cannonshop, that is simplistic, almost meaningless.
#15--they live on the eastern seaboard... So will that make it an improvement? It's wine country. I was there 10 years ago... Very beautiful, but very small town.
18 - Glenn Contrarian
Cannonshop -
#10 Glenn, the drug-wars in Mexico will subside when we eliminate the conditions that make drug-smuggling a lucrative business, and not before. Linking gun-laws to the disaster that is the Drug War is a false link, and you should ought to know better
A "false link"? I don't think so, not when TWO THIRDS of the guns found in Mexico's drug war come from America. If we (1) required registration of all firearms, and (2) required that owners are responsible for what happens with their firearms (including when a firearm is sold or stolen), this would NOT be the case.
-though it would be nice if OUR government wouldn't arm the Cartels in the guise of half-assed 'sting' operations that don't work-and again, shame on you for bringing up that without owning up to the actions of ATFE and DHS agents making a bad situation oh-so-much-worse
And shame on YOU for blowing stuff out of proportion, because while "Fast and Furious" (a Bush-era operation, mind you) went wildly wrong and resulted in 1300 (out of 2000) guns not being recovered (see here), my first reference above shows that two-thirds of almost thirty-thousand guns were traced to America. You're worried about the 1300...but I'm worried about the 20,000.
Almost twenty thousand guns, Cannonshop. WHEN are you going to get a clue that the reason why the gun manufacturers and the NRA wax SO patriotic has absolutely squat to do with the Second Amendment and a whole lot more to do with money? Hm?
...likely for political reasons angled at drumming up new support for MORE regulations that they will cheerfully violate next time they get a bug up their ass.
Yes, it's SO sensible and reasonable for any felon to be able to walk up and buy whatever he wants at a gun show, right?
We HAVE sufficient laws in this country, both at Federal and State levels-sufficient to barely scrape by the 2nd Amendment, 4th Amendment, and 5th Amendment, and the 14th Amendment, we don't NEED new laws, we need agencies that enforce the laws already on the books in a legal and just manner.
When those convicted of violent crimes are no longer able to legally buy guns, and guns are registered and tracked well enough to stop the gun-smuggling not only to Mexico but also to our own streets, and gun owners are held responsible for what is done with their guns, THEN you can say we've enough laws. But as long as you're going to allow violent felons to be able to legally buy guns, and as long as you're going to protect the gun-smugglers by not allowing passage of laws that stop them from putting more guns in the hands in the hands of felons, then NO, we the people have not done enough.
19 - Glenn Contrarian
And Cannonshop -
The PROBLEM isn't guns, it's people, we're not like Europe as much as we like to pretend we are. A simplistic way to look at it, is that in THIS country, the Left wants to be more like Europe in every way they can-and the right does not. It is, I suspect, closer to the real root of our politics than anyone is willing to admit.
Wrong. Why? Because Americans and Europeans have something in common - we're all PEOPLE. A better definition of the root of the problem is that the Right is unwilling (and unable, apparently) to learn lessons from anyone other than themselves.
20 - Glenn Contrarian
Oh yeah - I forgot! In the eyes of the Right, only America is free and none of the rest of the First World have a clue as to what freedom is....
21 - Igor
Friv, I think the 45-70 made a comeback in the 80's for elk hunting in Colorado. Big slug with flat trajectory for a close-in shot, 50 yards or so. At least that was the rationalization given me by Dr. D, but then he changed guns faster than he did wives and had his gunsmith on retainer.
22 - Dr Dreadful
Eh?
23 - Frivolous D
Igor, I'm sure it was just a rationalization. They probably just liked the way the rifle looked with the Rockies in the background. Claiming no expertise on the subject, I have a hunch the aught-six will hold pretty flat for the first 50 yards.
Dr. D should become a Mormon so he can keep his wives and his guns.
24 - Igor
Indeed, the 06 will have a flat trajectory for more than 50 yards, but the Doc was after stopping power from a big slug. But then he was always fooling with his guns, barrels, chambers, loads, etc. A real nut. He kept his gunsmith on a monthly retainer.
25 - Dr Dreadful
Eh?