[Rebuff5007]

I like this response to poke a hole in the parent comment, but it is worth noting that smartphones and guns are different in a pretty massive way:

Smartphones can be useful and valuable in many ways separate from the ways they can be used harmfully. Guns exist only for physical violence (or to threaten physical violence).

[swiftcoder]

This is a fairly recent transition in gun use - it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people (both through hunting, and through keeping predators away from livestock/crops)

[mmooss]

> it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people

To where and when are you referring? In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians.

[swiftcoder]

> In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians

My understanding is that the mobilisation for the Civil War is the only time in US history that military stockpiles of firearms have outnumbered civilian gun ownership (although possibly also at the height of WWII).

Though large standing militaries (versus recruiting large numbers of civilians into militias) is a fairly recent phenomenon, so the calculation is often not as cut and dried as one might expect.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

> Guns exist only for physical violence

Skeet shooting? Targets? Most gun owners never kill anything.

[AlecSchueler]

Those are both acts of physical violence, just not against living creatures.

[swiftcoder]

That's a pretty extreme stance. If shooting inanimate clay pots is violence, wouldn't baseball also constitute violence?

[AlecSchueler]

When I search a definition I get three results:

1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.

In the case of the shooting examples the idea is to destroy the clay pots or damage the target. Baseball isn't quite on that level. I'm not sure what a gun can be aimed at without intent to damage it.

2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena.

A gunshot definitely feels like an intense force. You could argue it for a strike from a baseball bat but it's quite relative and of course you can strike gently much more easily than you can shoot gently.

[timschmidt]

> In the case of the shooting examples the idea is to destroy the clay pots or damage the target. Baseball isn't quite on that level. I'm not sure what a gun can be aimed at without intent to damage it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hunt

1984.

The point of clay target shooting isn't to destroy something, it's to build a skill and test yourself against an impartial system. That's what Duck Hunt captures and what made it popular. It's why shooting is a sport in the olympics.

Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering.

[AlecSchueler]

> Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering.

I'm not debating that. I have no moral issue with shooting a clay duck, I just see using explosives to shoot anything as an act of violence. I would say the same about fishing and archery. There seems to be some confusion here about the moral aspect of this, I'm not saying it's anti-social or anything like that, only that the use of guns is inherently violent.