There’s nothing inherently wrong with gun ownership. However, there is a shit ton wrong on how we handle distribution and tracking of them. We have more prerequisites for operating a vehicle than we do a firearm, and in a country where we have a SIGNIFICANT number of mass shootings, we are doing SIGNIFICANTLY little to fix the issue.
Gun ownership is totally fine. I bought a handgun and a shotgun on the same day (after someone tried to break in and attack my wife - they didn’t realize that I had just come home from a trip) and was blown away that I could just walk right out the door with them within a few minutes. A rifle for hunting is also not an issue.
Fun fact: handguns are used in mass shootings more often than AR15s. In fact, all rifles, of which AR15s is merely the most popular type, are responsible for ~500/60,000 gun deaths/yr in the US. Probably because, as you may guess, handguns are a lot more concealable than rifles.
Also, be fair about the buying process, you still went through the National Instant Criminal background check system. Sure instant checks don’t take long anymore due to Al Gore inventing the internet in the 90s, but they do still happen and adding arbitrary length does nothing to stop crimes. In fact even if they did, they don’t stop nor are they designed to stop the types of planned attack we’re talking about (mass casualty events), they are to stop “crimes of passion” (guy killing his wife), and there’s some contention that they effectively do that as it isn’t like the couple necessarily receives the proper counseling, so he just picks it up and does it next time he’s in a wife killin’ mood, or if he can’t wait goes all Chris Benoit or that “Stairs” jerkoff.
You know what would be a lot higher? Not letting mentally ill people or domestic abusers, or people who have shown to use them in an unsafe manner around children have access to them. But apparently that is way too far in America.
People who have been convicted of domestic violence are already federally barred from firearms ownership, same for people who have been involuntarily committed, and child endangerment is already also a crime that falls outside the scope of simply firearms.
I cannot relate to that. I am 37 years old and I think I have never witnessed violent crime, except in television or on playgrounds (children are assholes to each other!)
Yeah, it was terrifying. Like the guy knew she was there, we had just put the dog outside, so they were obviously watching the house. They tried to kick in the front door, and I ran to the front door have naked and half asleep. The terror slammed full force into me when I realized someone was at our door (could see through glass), and I had no weapon to deal with them. They ran as soon as they saw me. I had just gotten home late the night before, so they obviously knew that I wasn’t home, and the knew that my wife was.
How long does the police need to arrive at your home? For me in case of an active break in it would probably be around 120 to 180 seconds. So this usually only happens when nobody is home, it’s too dangerous otherwise.
Someone stole my e-bike from the back yard. And I have heard of break ins in cellars. But that kind of crime that you describe is very very rare.
Does that mean that gun ownership is a side effect of a security system that has flaws in itself?
National average response time to emergencies is 11min, 23 to non emergencies. In the cities it’ll be “less” (maybe, and not much), but in the country it could be hours.
That’s long. 😱 For non emergencies I have waited long times. Like 40 minutes or even hours. But when I called the fire department once it came like 30 seconds after I had hung up. And it was just a smoking trash can, nothing really dangerous.
Fire dept is a bit quicker I think but they only protect you from fires of course, also, analogous to firearms, fire extinguishers are good to have on hand if a fire breaks out. Also, fortunately the fire often doesn’t actively prevent you calling the fire dept, though often due to the nature of being victimized violently you won’t be able to even call the police until after the event unless you’re lucky, you often have to focus on fighting or running in the moment.
People are not always logical. Even if the cops could get there within 2 minutes, that’s still 2 minutes that you have to deal with someone that is intent on doing harm to you. I wouldn’t want to risk that.
The police also have no legal obligation to protect you. Meaning if there is a situation that they consider “dangerous” they might not even enter the house to protect you. Like…I’m not hedging all of my bets on a cop to protect me. Because there’s still a chance that I lose.
I understand your point that there’s not really any point to having weapons when we have a “protector”, but we’ve already seen that those “protectors” have no obligation to actually protect you if they feel endangered. Guns are tools. A rifle is a tool to provide food for yourself. A handgun/shotgun is a tool that you use to protect yourself. We just shouldn’t hand those tools out to literally everyone that wants one.
Here, they are less afraid because almost no household is armed. It is a dangerous situation to enter a home, but they always come in pairs and might do so with guns drawn.
But we are talking about very extreme cases. German police shot 14 people in 2017, 11 in 2018, and 15 in 2019. So about the same amount of people that die from lightning strikes. The vast majority of policemen do not discharge their gun in their whole line of duty.
If you compare likelihood of violent crime the bigger danger comes from people inside your house, rather than burglary. Therefore, weapons in houses would make life more dangerous here, since you are less likely to escape your step mother armed with a gun, than your step mother armed with a kitchen knife.
No we do not, you can purchase a car at any age, transport it across any state lines, drive it without insurance or a license at any age on private property, and you don’t have to register it once to do any of this.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with gun ownership. However, there is a shit ton wrong on how we handle distribution and tracking of them. We have more prerequisites for operating a vehicle than we do a firearm, and in a country where we have a SIGNIFICANT number of mass shootings, we are doing SIGNIFICANTLY little to fix the issue.
Gun ownership is totally fine. I bought a handgun and a shotgun on the same day (after someone tried to break in and attack my wife - they didn’t realize that I had just come home from a trip) and was blown away that I could just walk right out the door with them within a few minutes. A rifle for hunting is also not an issue.
Fun fact: handguns are used in mass shootings more often than AR15s. In fact, all rifles, of which AR15s is merely the most popular type, are responsible for ~500/60,000 gun deaths/yr in the US. Probably because, as you may guess, handguns are a lot more concealable than rifles.
Also, be fair about the buying process, you still went through the National Instant Criminal background check system. Sure instant checks don’t take long anymore due to Al Gore inventing the internet in the 90s, but they do still happen and adding arbitrary length does nothing to stop crimes. In fact even if they did, they don’t stop nor are they designed to stop the types of planned attack we’re talking about (mass casualty events), they are to stop “crimes of passion” (guy killing his wife), and there’s some contention that they effectively do that as it isn’t like the couple necessarily receives the proper counseling, so he just picks it up and does it next time he’s in a wife killin’ mood, or if he can’t wait goes all Chris Benoit or that “Stairs” jerkoff.
Sounds like a good reason to highly regulate handguns to me.
They are regulated.
There is a difference between regulated and highly regulated?
Crimes like straw purchasing or lying on a NICs form are punishable by 10yr in prison, federal prison in some cases. I’d say that’s pretty “high.”
You know what would be a lot higher? Not letting mentally ill people or domestic abusers, or people who have shown to use them in an unsafe manner around children have access to them. But apparently that is way too far in America.
People who have been convicted of domestic violence are already federally barred from firearms ownership, same for people who have been involuntarily committed, and child endangerment is already also a crime that falls outside the scope of simply firearms.
Not for long.
That’s not what I said, I said a history of mental illness.
But it doesn’t include handgun ownership, which you know full well. And that’s what we’re talking about here.
But since you are blatantly misrepresenting what I said and being incredibly dishonest, I don’t think this conversation needs to continue.
I cannot relate to that. I am 37 years old and I think I have never witnessed violent crime, except in television or on playgrounds (children are assholes to each other!)
Yeah, it was terrifying. Like the guy knew she was there, we had just put the dog outside, so they were obviously watching the house. They tried to kick in the front door, and I ran to the front door have naked and half asleep. The terror slammed full force into me when I realized someone was at our door (could see through glass), and I had no weapon to deal with them. They ran as soon as they saw me. I had just gotten home late the night before, so they obviously knew that I wasn’t home, and the knew that my wife was.
It still wigs me out to this day.
How long does the police need to arrive at your home? For me in case of an active break in it would probably be around 120 to 180 seconds. So this usually only happens when nobody is home, it’s too dangerous otherwise.
Someone stole my e-bike from the back yard. And I have heard of break ins in cellars. But that kind of crime that you describe is very very rare.
Does that mean that gun ownership is a side effect of a security system that has flaws in itself?
National average response time to emergencies is 11min, 23 to non emergencies. In the cities it’ll be “less” (maybe, and not much), but in the country it could be hours.
That’s long. 😱 For non emergencies I have waited long times. Like 40 minutes or even hours. But when I called the fire department once it came like 30 seconds after I had hung up. And it was just a smoking trash can, nothing really dangerous.
Fire dept is a bit quicker I think but they only protect you from fires of course, also, analogous to firearms, fire extinguishers are good to have on hand if a fire breaks out. Also, fortunately the fire often doesn’t actively prevent you calling the fire dept, though often due to the nature of being victimized violently you won’t be able to even call the police until after the event unless you’re lucky, you often have to focus on fighting or running in the moment.
People are not always logical. Even if the cops could get there within 2 minutes, that’s still 2 minutes that you have to deal with someone that is intent on doing harm to you. I wouldn’t want to risk that.
The police also have no legal obligation to protect you. Meaning if there is a situation that they consider “dangerous” they might not even enter the house to protect you. Like…I’m not hedging all of my bets on a cop to protect me. Because there’s still a chance that I lose.
I understand your point that there’s not really any point to having weapons when we have a “protector”, but we’ve already seen that those “protectors” have no obligation to actually protect you if they feel endangered. Guns are tools. A rifle is a tool to provide food for yourself. A handgun/shotgun is a tool that you use to protect yourself. We just shouldn’t hand those tools out to literally everyone that wants one.
Here, they are less afraid because almost no household is armed. It is a dangerous situation to enter a home, but they always come in pairs and might do so with guns drawn.
But we are talking about very extreme cases. German police shot 14 people in 2017, 11 in 2018, and 15 in 2019. So about the same amount of people that die from lightning strikes. The vast majority of policemen do not discharge their gun in their whole line of duty.
If you compare likelihood of violent crime the bigger danger comes from people inside your house, rather than burglary. Therefore, weapons in houses would make life more dangerous here, since you are less likely to escape your step mother armed with a gun, than your step mother armed with a kitchen knife.
PS: I don’t know your step mother. Maybe she is a world class samurai swordswoman. I apologise if my analogy insulted her.
Yeah but my dude, before any of this happens, you’re way morelikely to just lose your shit yourself and murder yourself or one of your family or more.
Live by the sword die by the sword I guess.
No we do not, you can purchase a car at any age, transport it across any state lines, drive it without insurance or a license at any age on private property, and you don’t have to register it once to do any of this.