Some facts about guns in the US

Yes i have that... an lights that come on outside... an 2 flood lights that shine down the hallway in ther eyes.!!!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

It goes back to when we needed them to keep the redcoats off our necks. We Yanks kind of invented the personal gun, you know - along with the felling axe and the sodbusting plow, the log cabin and corn whiskey, the "Kentucky long rifle" was an ordinary man's access to the tools and means of the wealthy in Europe - and possibly the best rifle in the world, for practical use.

It's not "so called". It's the right to keep and bear arms.

But why are you quoting that bizarrely fantastic statistic Randwolf didn't check out before posting - the "just - - - wow" thing not remotely accurate? Is that your conception of Yanks and their guns?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

You have no clue why I posted that article, do you? Did it ever occur to you that I might be showing an example of the statistical skewing that the anti-gun crowd employs to shore up their position? No... You're not that smart.

OTH, since you continue to question the veracity of the study:

The increased risk of suicide by any method among handgun purchasers (standardized mortality ratio, 4.31) was attributable entirely to an excess risk of suicide with a firearm (standardized mortality ratio, 7.12). In the first week after the purchase of a handgun, the rate of suicide by means of firearms among purchasers (644 per 100,000 person-years) was 57 times as high as the adjusted rate in the general population.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199911183412106
​

Happy hunting Ice...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

A lot of factors. Some people just want guns for hunting, or need one for their jobs or because of where they live. Some identify strongly with the right wing political party, and they promote guns, so they own guns as a way of showing their allegiance to the right wing. Many people in the US are afraid and feel powerless, and for some of them, a gun makes them feel powerful and in control. This is reinforced by a media that accepts and promotes the axiom "whoever has the gun is in charge." (And they like showing guns.)

Note that often the latter rationales are embarrassing to admit, so often complex rationales involving self protection and false dilemmas like "I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six" come into play.

 

No, it didn't. Check back in this thread, and understand what this debate is like - you've got Poe's Law operating here, and too clever malfunctions. Sorry about that, if you posted it as self-evidently nonsense, but really - KISS.

I do? What study, and where have I questioned the "veracity" of a study?

Is it supposed to be news that suicidal people frequently obtain their means via purchase in the immediate runup to a suicide attempt?

There's the emergency fantasy - the idea that if things go to hell, you could rob a bank or something and feed your kids. We saw that played out after Katrina, and also after various race riots: remember the grocery store families guarding their stores during the reaction to Rodney King's beating and police exoneration? Those stores were not burned - those rifles and shotguns saved them their life's work, as well as the community's food supply in the aftermath, and they didn't kill anyone. That feeds a common fantasy, with some roots in the deep racism of American culture.

There's also inertia, cultural habit, the notion that some competence with a firearm - like the ability to change a tire on a car - is expected of adults, especially adult men. Men in the US inherit firearms, are given their father's 30-06, their grandfather's shotgun he used to keep loaded on a couple of nails over the kitchen door to the garden (and trim the trees over the machinery lanes with). Being able to blast nuisances at need is a kind of warm, fuzzy, sentimental, nostalgia-infused family tradition, in America.

 

That's a good point; cultural inertia will mean that you may not always see the result you expect based on current societal drives and values. A large part of it is inherited.

 

2 bucks in the yard this afternoon
venison soup on the stove
..........
owning firearms enhances my quality of life
just as good as owning and using a trot line
or planting and weeding and harvesting a garden
the last harvest of really tough carrots was a great soup addition
and all this bounty is just out my backdoor


a bottle of bullet rye whiskey and you guys
what if
this is as good as it gets?

 

The best known and most effective were the American rifles - personal weapons, owned by individual adults living in rural communities, used for hunting and for the defense of house and family against actual threat.

They were in many respects the finest military firearms in the world, certainly for the circumstances of the Revolutionary War in America - far more accurate, easily maintained, provisioned, and reliable, than the muskets used by the German mercenaries or English regular army. They were invented in America, by blacksmiths and artisans in the frontier towns - German and Scotch-Irish colonists, for the most part.

They were one of the first visible indications of the benefits of simply removing the aristocracy and handing all resources to the peasantry that was doing the work, leveling the economic structure, in a modern Western society - in Europe only the rich hunted with firearms, and only people with no access to education or resources used them in battle. The one had no motive, the other no opportunity, to improve the design.

 

And my most reliable weapons are a Romanian AK-47 and a Brazilian Beretta 92 clone. Hm.

 

If you look into the history of the AK, you will find some direct parallels and similarities with the circumstances and invention of the American frontier rifle - the biggest difference maybe that it was one named inventor, and combat was his central goal (rather than hunting).

There's an interview with the inventor of the AK floating around if you care to check it out - it isn't difficult to romanticize the event.

 

Yes'm. Anyone who carries with safety off and a round chambered probably should have been killed before they bred.

Sorry, that's pretty harsh.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

I suppose it beats the obvious crack about Darwinism.

Oh, right.

But, yeah, he's got a point in a way.

At least the child was protected from crime.

Or something.

You know, until this very bitter, horrendous end.

Why do you hate guns so much? Why focus on one little bad thing? How often do you publicly rejoice all the good guns do? You know, like keeping our parks safe from children? Or defending white adult men against unarmed dark-skinned children?

Think about the thousands of non-fatal firearm injuries each year. That's good news! Why focus on one death?

 

We could be looking at this all wrong as well...all the facts aren't in. I'm sure this two year old has already received gun training and therefore knows how to handle a gun.

He knew how to smoothly and efficiently slide the safety back with his thumb and he hit his target. We don't know what the mom was trying to do. This may have been self-defense.

Moms do occasionally try to kill their kids. Until all the facts are in we don't know if that was the case here or not. Let's be responsible and withhold judgement until all the facts are in. Guns don't kill people. People kill people (and sometimes in self-defense).

 

Did she have Skittles in her pocket? Because murderous thugs are known to carry them; perhaps the child just wanted to be judged by twelve rather than carried by six.

 

It's OK, he's a highly trained professional:

Georgia Police Chief William McCollom Says He Shot His Wife Accidentally [TWICE]

A Georgia police chief, who claims he accidentally shot his wife twice, has been placed on administrative leave, pending the outcome of the investigation.

UPDATE: Authorities provided an update at a Thursday afternoon press conference. "The initial reports that we got from a 911 call were that the chief had shot his wife, accidentally, twice. As a result of our preliminary interview, we have found that he only shot her one time," Georgia Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Sherry Lang told reporters.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/01/william-mccollom_n_6404050.html
​

Oh, well, that's alright then, he only shot her once - and it is Georgia...

 

And also, incidentally, probably the one thing that kept England from taking over the American colonisation for their own purposes. An unarmed society is a defenceless one in the face of an authoritative government, and yet the general opinion among leftist anti-gun activists is that "it can never happen here".

I suppose one might question the value of having a populace armed only with rifles against that same authoritative government, but then an unarmed population has even less chance.

Furthermore, one might also argue that the real authoritative government in modern times relies almost solely upon the power of the media to enforce its values, but... well, meh.

The thing about the debate on gun ownership in the USA, is that it serves as a very useful distraction from the actual issues that face American society.

As long as the issue is about gun ownership, then one does not need to focus upon the problems leading to guns being used. One might note that other societies have similar rates of gun ownership with less murder rates and be ignored; because the sheer numbers, apparently, speak for themselves.

The general rhetoric appears to be that if one were to take all the guns away, then the issues facing American society would simply disappear.
That is, unfortunately, far from being the case.
It does serve for leftist anti-gun philosophy to gain traction, however. And that appears to be working quite as well.

After all, it is far easier to pretend that those issues do not exist, than to have to answer to the evidence that they do.