Not so fun fact: Gun suicides are far more common than any other type of gun related death. Having a gun in the house is a big risk factor for suicide.
100% I just posted a comment about how I feel like I’m more likely to kill myself than needing a gun for defense. Not that Id generally say that I’m suicidal.
Not really, suicide is historically just under half of all gun deaths. But your point stands!
It hasn’t been under half in ages. In 2023 it was 58% in the US and in some areas it’s noticeably more
Haven’t looked at numbers for 4-5 years, and holy shit did it flip around 2022-2023. Last I saw was 43-48%.
Anyone want to see for themselves, this is a solid search:
“cdc gun deaths”
Plenty of data from solid sources to back treesquid. Thanks for getting me up to date! I was quite ignorant.
I’ve faced many attempts to severely harm me but I usually escaped. I failed to escape twice: got kneecapped with a bat once (leaving me with a permanent injury), and stabbed once miraculously missing anything vital.
My crime: having to work late, growing up in a poor neighbourhood.
I’d feel a lot safer if I could be armed. I don’t want to die.
When I took a class to get my Concealed Carry Permit, on the very first day the instructor made a very interesting statement.
“If you are somewhere where you feel you need a gun to feel safe… Why are you there in the first place?”
While I did go on to get my permit I never once carried. I never went anywhere where I felt I needed it. If I became uncomfortable at a location, I left.
I did self-defense training, both learning and teaching for close to 15 years or so, I did the CCW thing, took classes in firearms as well as martial arts and the whole nine-yards for many years.
I will often reiterate what you cited there, that if you’re in a dangerous situation that you already expect to be dangerous, your first priority is changing your situation. Not going to that place, working towards moving, etc. Kind of like step-one of any fight is to not get into a fight.
I eventually also stopped carrying my gun, because all it did was add extra stress to my life. Always making sure you know where it is, if you’re somewhere that legally prohibits you having it, then if you do have to leave it outside of a store or business, you are always thinking about it inside your car. My greatest worry was someone breaking into my vehicle and using the gun to commit a crime, which statistically is much, much more likely than actually being in a situation where you need to use it.
I still own guns but keep them locked up. But I don’t enjoy guns broadly because I’ve had too much time think about it. I’ve had to learn the law, I’ve had to take responsibility for teaching others how to defend themselves, I’ve spent too much time playing out situations and the post-event situations that most gun-chuds NEVER spend a moment thinking about.
I feel strongly now that a lot of the gun violence in the US can be connected to the general lack of respect and knowledge about firearms. The only “training” most owners get is action movies. I think if more people were required to actually study the law and play out scenarios they might be far less likely to reach for a gun to solve all their problems.
Never really thought about the logistics of having to leave it in your car. Are you allowed to take the ammo in with you?
It depends a lot on your local laws. Not every state even makes the distinction, so to err on the side of caution, I always treated ammo the same as a gun, and never separated them.
Some laws let you transport guns anywhere in your car if it’s in a locked box, some laws are written in a way where that could mean your glove compartment, other states have wording that excludes a glove compartment, just as an example of the ambiguity involved in gun laws.
Also, your proximity to schools or other public services can override all the other laws. It was when I was drawing kilometer radiuses from local schools that I started to feel such stress from planning my trips outside that I decided to stop taking the damn thing out all the time, and eventually just stopped entirely.
A good CCW class will give you the most basic stuff you need to know for your area, but it does change frequently so you would need to refresh on the laws frequently.
I got mine so it would be easier to transport weapons to a range. I got the weapons in case trump starts a civil war or something.
When I’m at the range!
The pig who shot Michal Brown said he had to shoot because Brown could have taken his piece away. If you accept that, then you agree that, at least in this situation, the public and the police would be safer without guns.
It used to be: I had to shoot him judge, he had a gun
Then it was: I had to shoot him judge, I thought he had a gun
Now it’s: I had to shoot him judge, I had a gun.
I’ve never set my house on fire, but I still feel better having a fire extinguisher.
I don’t see how this applies to guns.
If your house is on fire, you would want a fire extinguisher, not another flamethrower.
If you have an emergency you want the tool that protects against that emergency.
If there’s a fire you want a tool to put the fire out. That could be a bucket, but a fire extinguisher works better.
If you are threatened with a violent person who wants to do you harm, can you name a more effective tool than a gun?
Guns don’t work like video game guns. You can shoot a person 10 times and inflict 10 fatal wounds, and they can still keep coming at you.
If you aim for the head, who is behind them? A bullet doesn’t just stop when it hits something.
What the chance you’ll miss? A bullet can go a long way if it doesn’t hit your target.People take time to die. Other people can be behind your target. Guns don’t protect, they only kill.
I’ve never set my house on fire, but I still feel better having a
fire extinguisherflame throwerThe most likely person to shot you is yourself.
The second most likely person to shot you is a housemate.
The third most likely person to shot you is a loved one.
Look up the stats on defensive gun uses. Just Google it.
The vast majority (90+%) end with no shots fired- the criminal sees the gun and runs away.
If someone threatens me and my family I want a better option than ‘hope the violent criminal decides to let us live’.
Look up the stats on defensive gun uses. Just Google it.
The vast majority (90+%) end with no shots fired- the criminal sees the gun and runs away.
Because it’s regularly over reported.
People call the police and claim they saw/heard a thing, then grabbed a gun. Police arrive to investigate and it is - predictably - nothing. Resident self-reports that they must have scared the ephemeral assailant of. Cops dutifully write it up without further investigation.
Gun-as-security-blanket is registered as successful defensive use.
Determining the exact count is difficult. If you look at the wikipedia page on defensive gun use, you see that since it’s not centrally tracked and many go unreported, the only way to get any sort of number is with phone surveys and statistical analysis. That leaves a lot of opening to interpretation of the data.
Thus you have anti-gun researchers like Hemenway who put it at ~60,000 incidents/year and pro-gun researchers like Lott who put it at 2-4 million incidents/year. (I say anti/pro gun because Hemenway’s other writings advocate for gun control, while Lott’s other writings advocate against gun control). Obviously the number is somewhere in the middle.
But the firearm homicide rate (excluding suicides) is around 10k-15k/year, which means even if you only go with worst case data it means there’s 4x more DGUs as there are firearm homicides.
I’ll give you that’s a slightly apples to oranges comparison, as many firearm assaults don’t end in death.
But the real issue IMHO, which is unfortunately not tracked AFAIK, is how many gun crimes are committed with legal guns. IE, legally purchased/owned guns by a non-prohibited gun owner. That IMHO is some data that would really help settle the issue.I’d argue that the lion’s share of those 10-15k homicides per year are committed with illegal guns / prohibited owners, they are gang and drug related. The problem is that’s often hard to prove and it doesn’t show up in data sets. For example, you have incidents in sites like ‘mass shooting tracker’ like:
‘On friday at 11pm, victim1 and victim2 were leaving a house party in the 12,000 block of Nowhere St. Two unknown males opened fire from a moving vehicle. Victim1 and victim2 were wounded, along with bystander1 and bystander2 who were injured non-critically.’
Now that’s a ‘mass shooting’ because 4 people got shot. Read between the lines and it’s ‘gangland drive-by’. But you can’t prove that as the victims won’t admit to being in a gang and the perps weren’t caught. But you can bet those guns were illegal and the car was stolen.If you look at the wikipedia page on defensive gun use, you see that since it’s not centrally tracked and many go unreported
The definition of “defensive use” ranges from “discharged weapon at assailant” to “announced possession of weapon at scary noise”. So much of it relies on taking police reports at face value, no questions asked.
But the real issue IMHO, which is unfortunately not tracked AFAIK, is how many gun crimes are committed with legal guns. IE, legally purchased/owned guns by a non-prohibited gun owner. That IMHO is some data that would really help settle the issue.
I haven’t seen anything to suggest legality of ownership translates to defensiveness of use.
And none of this addresses the central problem of gun ownership - suicide. You are the person most likely to be killed by your own gun.
Get a pepper spray instead of a gun?
Did you know pepper spray isn’t as effective on some people as others? Even more so if the person is on certain drugs? Did you know that if an assailant is pretty close to you already or the wind is blowing at you, the pepper spray may leave you just as bad off as an attacker, or that pepper spray won’t make a person drop a knife?
Hitting someone with pepper spray is fairly likely to stop an attack. Hitting someone with bullets will stop an attack.
How many school shooting has been done using pepper spray vs guns?
How many unintentional discharches has let to death with pepper spray vs guns?
How many drive by’s have been done with stolen/illegal pepper sprays vs guns?
How many times police officers have been killes by a pepper spray vs gun, that perp took from the victims house?
How many times officers have mistaked victim as threath when they have had pepper spray vs gun on them?
Did you know that if assailant is pretty close to you or if you panic even a little, you might shoot yourself or miss the assailant completelly when pulling the trigger? Missing a shot won’t make a person to drop a knife. Using gun may lead to somebody elses death than attackers.
If normal civilians did not have so many guns there would be less guns in rotation in the streets. The less there are guns in rotation the more expensive they are. Normal thugs wont use guns in petty robbery if they costs 15 000$ in black market, but if they can buy one from the street with 300$ you bet your ass the robber will bring the gun.
Also when its likelly that the perps have guns police will always act like they have guns leading to police using violence and excess force also in situations where its not needed.
You’re talking like you’ll be able to live in a country that could magically remove all the guns, keep em out, and never possibly need any against a tyrannical government.
I live in a country where there are about 30 guns per 100 citizens and over half of the adult males have served conscription and we have one of the lowest amount of gun related violence in the world because strick gun control
The tyrannical goverment argument is strawman. USA alredy has soldiers (national guard) walking in cities, minorities are unlafully detained by troops without showing any signia or seemingly needing any due process for their acts. Bombing and attacking neighboring countries, sinking civilian ships on international waters. 1.25 million citizens are in federal custody in system that is designed around to keep minorities in prisons whitout any care of rehibiliating them because the law essentially gives the goverment the right to use them as a slave labor. Your workers rights are a joke where any employee can be fired without any reason, unless they have managed to somehow unionise in the system that gives companies every change they can to crush unionising.
The second amendment is joke that people seem to cling on thinking some addition made to a paper, your president seem to ignore at every turn it suits them, would be somehow relevant in after hundreds of years have passes since people who wrote it have allready died. If it had any real meaning in the original meaning, there would allready be some militia rattling around.
Just google little around and look how mysteriously in countries with strick gun laws have less gun releated violence.
So most of your argument seems to not have much to do with what is being discussed and a lot more to do with pivoting over to our government that’s gotten all fucked up. Shouldn’t you be off standing in a field somewhere?
And how excactly you responded to my comment about the pepper spray? Or how gun violence and gun laws go in hand to hand? Look how Australias statistic went down after 1996. Must be coincidence that after gun law reform fatalities with guns went down.
I went on a rant about your “militia against the tyrannical goverment” bull. Its just convinient excuse for cowboys to feel good owning guns.
Australia is a globally poor country (by total in the country. Individually you’re doing well) with a small population surrounded by a lot of water.
If you think things that work in a country like Australia with a mere 27 million people can work the same as a place like the USA with a population of 340 million and land bordered with Mexico and Canada, you’re thinking like a child.
I think guns make sense if you live in the wilderness and need to protect yourself from bears
Not just bears and really there’s better ways to deal with bears generally to avoid confrontation with them as well as other critters. Still, there’s definitely instances where people will want to be carrying regardless for self protection. Hiking in remote areas you should have a rifle, farmers in the more rural areas of the country are likely to have something to deal with coyotes, wolves, bears, etc. that may threaten them or their live stock. I remember seeing a youtube video about living far north in Alaska that when it’s time to take the dogs out to do their business they bring a high powered rifle for polar bears. But me going to my local game store, there’s no real reason to be packing. ESPECIALLY open carry.
Sure. Take it as a privilege that you live in a safe area then. My grandma for example grew up in a monarchy where I find it completely justifiable that she and her family all carried weapons to fend off the government, invaders, etc. If you don’t have a functioning police and democracy in your State, guns are often your best way at protecting your family and the defensless against injustice. Maybe if her husband had a gun, he wouldn’t have been killed by the police. My grandma’s brother still carries a sword that’s hidden in his cane lol.
I live in the US which is safe for 99+% of people so your average Joe owning a gun would almost always do more harm then good here, so I’ve never considered buying a gun. Well, at least assuming ICE doesn’t raid my city. Then I might buy a gun and open carry to defend my fellow Americans against ICE terrorists.
Lucky you.
Please explain.
Guns have caused a lot of harm. They seem evil until you need one. I was hiking solo in the wilderness once and was carrying one for wildlife and was attacked by a homeless guy. I shoved him away and pulled it out and he ran off.
I cant but wonder if bear spray would have had the same effect.
Some of us have been victims and may have a different opinion.
And some of you may be upvoting any plausible argument for gun ownership, even in the face of overwhelming objective evidence that it makes societies vastly unsafe.
Here’s the thing about guns and victimhood, access to guns causes far more victims then access to guns prevents, and it always inherently will. In that environment, a predator intent on committing a crime will always have one, and a victim only ever might have one.
If you rely on mutually assured destruction arguments, then you have armed and killing each other over road rage because humans are dumb emotional children who think they’re more mature then they are.
Maybe so, but we live in a world where guns exist. Choosing to disarm oneself doesn’t change that, and certain things can change the math.
There was a violent incident at a nearby house, and it took police 40 minutes to arrive because I live in the middle of nowhere, so right off the “call the police” option essentially doesn’t exist for me. I also have no kids in the house. If children come over, the gun that isn’t in the safe goes to the safe and the ammunition goes to the car. I am not suicidal. For me, gun ownership makes sense where it doesn’t for others.
If I lived in a country where guns didn’t outnumber people it may not make sense. Though with the current government I also wouldn’t give mine up if they were outlawed.
Less guns there are in rotation and more screening there is when getting one effects straight how likely it is for the bad guy having a gun.
Nobody is suicidal until they are and nobody leaves the guns out for children until they do. Also guns at house escalate domestic violence cases.
Let me try to convince this rabid raccoon into killing itself by talking to it.
Pepper spray exists…
Or you know a billion other methods of fending off a racoon
Can’t tell if this is satire tbh
How often do you come across rabid raccoons?
Well someone doesn’t have depression and likes to flaunt it
I have depression and a massive fear of guns. Like I can’t stand being anywhere near one or someone holding one. I do my best to avoid the gun section of Walmart whenever I have to go there.
I have depression. Depression and guns do not mix well.
