[tjradcliffe]

Your comment implies that there are two classes of people, "gun owners who understand firearms" and "non-gun owners who do not understand firearms". A casual glance at the deplorable accidental and unintentional discharge rates in the US statistics should make it immediately clear that gun ownership and understanding firearms have absolutely nothing to do with each other.

I say this as a non-gun-owner who was taught to shoot the old fashion way, by a 12 year old friend who got a rifle for Christmas when I was 11, and have subsequently taken enough firearms training, including in the armed forces, to understand firearms well enough to be terrified of the huge number of ignorant clowns who own them, no matter how well-informed and responsible the majority of gun owners are most of the time.

It is also worth pointing out that since the point of firearms is to make it really easy to kill things it would be disingenuous and stupid to claim anything other than "a gun owner only needs to fail in their understanding or self control for a moment to kill someone", and anyone who believes of their fellow gun-owners, "we never make mistakes"... well, people like that have good company in murderous tyrants the world over.

Everyone makes mistakes now and then. When people with guns make mistakes, other people die. Because the purpose of guns is to make killing really easy, and when you have a technology that makes something really easy you get more of it. To claim otherwise is to claim that intercontinental travel was as common before steamships as after, which is false.

Guns are a tool to solve a problem: killing things. Gun advocates in the US claim that this tool, and this tool alone, can be applied to the unrelated problem of personal safety. I say this is an unrelated problem because it is: in every other developed nation it has been solved more effectively than it has been solved in the US, without substantial reference to guns.

Let me say this again: the problem of personal safety has been solved better (people are safer) in every other developed nation without ubiquitous firearms. This is just a fact. Murder rates in Canada are lower than in the US. Murder rates in England, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Switzerland (where firearms are all inaccessible, remember), etc are all lower than in the US. People in those countries are safer than in the US, despite the freedom of all Americans to carry firearms and the overwhelming victory of the gun lobby in the US in the past couple of decades.

So anyone who advocates firearms as a good solution to the problem of personal safety is like someone advocating bloodletting for personal health. It is a solution that has been tried and failed. It's time to move on to something else, like civilization and the rule of law.

[angersock]

So, the two groups actually pointed out by the parent post were "gun owners" and "people who don't understand guns"--we can infer the existence of "gun non-owners" and "people who understand guns". So, don't go putting words in their mouth.

That said, yeah, many gun owners don't really understand guns in the technical sense, and have very silly biases (consumer preferences, really) about what is a valid arm to possess. A lot of older hunters I've met, for example, get grumpy if they see you with any rifle that isn't a bolt-action.

I tentatively disagree with the problem of personal safety being solved in those other countries: you've stuck with the metric of "murdered", whereas there are additional ones still of note to the average citizen such as "assaulted" and "robbed". Also, we can trot out the tired refrains about diversity and whatnot and argue that those populations don't map onto ours, but let's save space.

I might agree that the firearms are not a good solution to the problem of personal safety, but they are a solution and one that has worked. I think that the problem that they help prevent is creating an irreversible monopoly in force and ensuing tyranny, which is what happens once you disarm your populace. As a veteran, surely you appreciate that.

EDIT: Changed qualifier on "one that has worked well" to "one that has worked"...don't want to blow my reply quota picking nits on the difference between "well" and "good".

Also, forgot to mention: parent's point about letting people who don't understand something regulate it is correct--if you can't even articulate the different sorts of firearms and differences thereof, why should you be allowed to restrict anyone's access to them? It's just as annoying as legislation about computer stuff.

[hga]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_McCarthy#Gun_control last paragraph: "When [Tucker] Carlson pressed [Congresswomen Carolyn McCarthy] twice more on the question about barrel shrouds, she admitted that she did not know what a barrel shroud was, and incorrectly stated, 'I believe it is a shoulder thing that goes up.' Carlson replied with, "No, No it's not.'"

In case you don't know the meaning of the word shroud: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_shroud

[dreamweapon]

And your point is?

[ctdonath]

It is an anecdote representing the incredibly vast number of gaffes by those who strive to ban something they truly are grossly ignorant of.

Imagine some legislator wanting to regulate Internet usage (say, to prohibit pseudonym use) but when asked "what's a 'user ID'?" replied "it's a finger thing that goes South" - you'd say the person had absolutely no business being near a computer, much less recommending incarceration for people who chose their own unique login name. Insofar as there are a great many people who likewise have absolutely no competency regarding network usage, it would be safe to say such people should in no way be allowed to enact legislation regarding computer networks enforceable by substantial fines & imprisonment.

[hga]

The start of this sub-thread is rgrieselhuber saying "This is why gun owners get nervous when people who don't understand firearms try to legislate their ownership."

[dreamweapon]

Citing a single anecdote doesn't do much to support the insinuation that those who support firearm regulation (in general) lack a basic understanding of the issues. It doesn't make any kind of a point at all, really.

[dllthomas]

Citing a single example of a legislator talking incoherently about firearms while trying to regulate firearms seems a fairly reasonable example of "gun owners get nervous when people who don't understand firearms try to [regulate] their ownership". That makes no claim that only people who don't understand firearms try to regulate them - such a claim may or may not have been intended.

[ctdonath]

A casual glance at the deplorable accidental and unintentional discharge rates in the US statistics should make it immediately clear that

...there isn't a substantial problem therewith. Not zero, of course, but by your line of reasoning cars should be outlawed immediately because of the actual accidental & unintentional harm rates therewith ... and the same issue with guns being orders of magnitude less.

The problem isn't accidental casualties (those are in fact quite rare). The problem is people willing to cause grave harm to others, a group which does not include a vast number of people who are not willing to cause grave harm to others save for stopping the former from doing so - but whom you are quick to lump together. Break down US murder rates, and you'll find the bulk of the problem firmly within certain subgroups; disarming other US subgroups (as you advocate) won't solve the problem, as up-arming those groups has decreased murder rates in their areas.

[barrkel]

by your line of reasoning cars should be outlawed immediately

Cars have lots of valuable uses. The valuable uses of guns are a lot fewer.

[ctdonath]

Preserving innocent life against those who would take or subjugate it is very valuable.

Per the rhetoric I regularly encounter, the value of cars should be irrelevant to the discussion due to the loss of life thereto.

[hga]

The minimum generally accepted death toll of subjects (not citizens because, some how, some way they were disarmed first) killed by their own government is 100 million in the 20th Century. My personal guess is a quarter billion, based on different scoring of the Communists who took over China (that's an additional 60 million minimum) and how much worse it turns out to be when one of these regimes is overturned enough that people are able to poke around.

With stakes that great, a well armed citizenry is cheap insurance.

[Osiris]

Cars kill tens of thousands of people a year. Human drivers should absolutely be outlawed, as soon as the technology is feasible to do so.

[ctdonath]

Of under-discussed note: those fatalities are almost exclusively accidental. That vs (per current topic) nearly all gun-related fatalities (similar number) being deliberate. Of the two, seems the former is a grossly deficient product more worthy of prohibition; absent the latter, those choosing the action will just find some other tool.

[ctdonath]

In review, I wasn't clear: accidental deaths with guns numbers in the low hundreds, if that high. Tragic, yes, every one of them, but so are falls down stairs and swimming pool drownings (comparable numbers).

[kefka]

SCOTUS reaffirmed the ruling in 2013 that police are NOT required to protect. So, whom do you want to take responsibility for your safety and security?

I know what I want if I have to take care of my safety and security. It's the same weapons the police carry.

[cobrausn]

Sure, the problem is 'solved' until you are the one stuck trying to defend yourself without the proper tools because others wanted to not own a gun and have less of a chance of ever being caught in a situation where that decision would impact them. I consider each and every crime against a forcibly disarmed citizen to be an order of magnitude more a tragedy.

[giardini]

Guns save more lives than they take; prevent more injuries than they inflict:

https://www.gunowners.org/sk0802htm.htm

Articles, anecdotes and statistics:

https://www.google.com/?q=guns+save+lives

[dreamweapon]

Guns save more lives than they take;

Whether or not this is true, "guns" != fun toys like the AR-15 or the M&P15, the ownership of which is touted by pro-gun activists as some kind of an inalienable right.

[hga]

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

Which recognizes the unalienable right of self-defense ... and a bit more.

If you think not, you're welcome to try to take them away from us.

[dreamweapon]

If you think not, you're welcome to try to take them away from us.

Sorry, but I'm not going to play into your macho fantasies.

And I'll leave the issue of firearm regulation to the several decades of Supreme Court interpretation, which have consistently upheld the legitimate interest of federal and local governments in regulating the ownership and display of weapon types not reasonably related to self-defense.

[ctdonath]

Why not include those "fun toys"? They are extensively used for hunting & home defense, and are used far less in crime (on a per-item rate) than mundane handguns.

[scott_karana]

Switzerland is a horrible example of a country where guns are inaccessible: mandatory militia services with the ability to retain your weapon afterwards; Government subsidized ammo costs for training and sports in the general populace; a 29% household firearm presence rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Switzerland

[philh]

> Let me say this again: the problem of personal safety has been solved better (people are safer) in every other developed nation without ubiquitous firearms.

Don't these countries have lower murder rates than the US has non-gun-related murder rates? As in, even if you removed every gun in the US, and even if all the crimes that would otherwise be committed with guns now just don't happen, the US still would have a higher murder rate than these countries.

(This is off the top of my head, please correct me if I'm wrong.)

In which case, it seems unlikely that the US' murder rate can be attributed to guns. You don't explicitly blame guns yourself, but I think this is worth noting. (And "civilization and the rule of law" isn't a solution, it's an applause light.)

[MrMember]

At first glance that seems to be the case for some countries. In 2011 the US had a homicide rate of 4.7 per 100k, with a firearm homicide rate of 3.6 per 100k. The United Kingdom had a homicide rate of 1.0 per 100k in 2011.

[prostoalex]

> A casual glance at the deplorable accidental and unintentional discharge rates in the US statistics

What do the statistics imply? Per gun-owning capita is the rate of accidental discharge higher, lower, or within the median compared to other populaces around the world?

[anonbanker]

Expat living in Canada. I don't feel nearly as unsafe walking down the roughest block in Edmonton. I still have a decent chance of being stabbed and robbed, though; A 1:37,000 chance.

However, I am very excited to see how this technology will be used in Canada, or if it will even make a blip on the crime radar.