Why Carrying A Gun Promotes Violence

[uglypeoplefucking]

@Uccisore

Military stand offs between more or less equally matched foes, vs. wholesale slaughters when an unarmed populace has something a potential invader wants.

I don’t think that has much effect on the AMOUNT of violence either way. The US and England were more or less matched with the Germans but their war was far bloodier than, say, Germany’s relatively easy takeover of Poland. i don’t dispute that an armed populace is better prepared to fight - in fact, that’s part of my point - but the claim that everybody being armed results in less violence doesn’t follow.

I don’t want to mix up causation and correlation, but it does seem to be a trend that the most heavily armed places in the U.S. have lower crime rates, since you asked. But of course, they tend to be rural.

Actually i have heard that before and, yeah, it’s a correlation vs. causation issue. Relatively sparsely populated places are generally going to have less crime, and can safely accommodate more people owning firearms. i’ve always believed that gun control policies should vary from place to place.

Also, speaking of statistics, I don’t think you’ll find statistical evidence that there is actually an existing problem that further gun restrictions will solve.

Depends what you mean by “gun restrictions”. But yeah, if we just look at statistics, then 20 or so schoolkids getting shot while in class by some nut with an assault rifle or two happens relatively rarely, so banning assault rifles probably won’t lower the overall rates of gun crime much. So what, though? The nut in question probably couldn’t have pulled it off if the only thing he could get his hands on was a 9mm. Is it worth banning assault rifles to prevent or at least mitigate those types of incidents which only occur once or twice a year, as opposed to handgun related crimes which probably occur multiple times a day? i think so, but then i don’t own any assault rifles and i don’t ever want to, so it’s easy for me to say. i think gun advocates really need to examine their ethical position when they lobby for the right to own ever more deadly and advanced killing machines.

Then there’s the issue of better enforcement of existing laws, which is never popular with the gun lobby - in fact, they would do away with most existing laws given the opportunity.

an armed populace doesn’t need weapons parity with the US government, because a tyrannical US government is very unlikely to bomb itself.

Sure, but the govt also has tanks, trained soldiers, and shitloads of other stuff that even a populace as well armed as the US’s couldn’t ever hope to resist.

What’s more, we have examples of armed civilian populations holding their own against tyrannical governments going on right now.

Sort of. But most of those armed populations are getting significant military aid and tons of weapons from elsewhere. It’s not like the Syrian rebels are just fighting with stuff they kept around prior to the uprising.

i understand that, but the fact is it wouldn’t actually be an assault on that culture to control gun possession and prevent people from getting certain weapons. An AR15 is not really a cornerstone of any part of American culture and history.

I think it’s up to the people who are going to potentially have this reaction to decide that, not up to people who would rather we didn’t have any guns whatsoever.

Hopefully without sounding like too much of an asshole here, i have to say i wonder why i should care much about the feelings of people who are going to have that reaction.

[uglypeoplefucking]

@mr reasonable

Anecdotal evidence.

Well yeah, it’s an anecdote, and it’s not central to my central argument, but it’s also a true story that i think offers a lesson.

[Kriswest]

As a gun owner I don’t think all humans are mentally equipped to own guns. Some gun owners that previously were responsible can become irresponsible and dangerous. Will I become dangerous to the innocent? I don’t know, I don’t think so. Yet I support ownership of guns.

[Mr_Reasonable]

I know a guy who’s accidentally shot a hole in some wall or another of every place he’s ever lived.

[James_S_Saint]

@uglypeoplefucking

As i see it, police carry guns as a means of getting people to cooperate with them. Police must be threatening enough that people will do what police tell them to do. So obviously, police kill people all the time.

So do the other robbers and mobsters, just less organized. So why give guns only to the robbers?

[Uccisore]

@mr reasonable

That kid shoulda had more tact.

Well, you know. He’s one of those with his face all pierced up and covered with tattoos and shit, and the old man said he was probably on something. Who knows what was in his head, if anything. I come from that school where I wouldn’t point a gun at somebody unless it was going to be immediately followed by pulling the trigger- using it as a form of social expression is very odd to me.

[Uccisore]

@uglypeoplefucking

I don’t think that has much effect on the AMOUNT of violence either way. The US and England were more or less matched with the Germans but their war was far bloodier than, say, Germany’s relatively easy takeover of Poland.

Well, if the US and England stood together right away, I don’t think that part of the war would have ever happened- it wasn’t clear then that the US would do anything if England was attacked (and indeed we did not).

i don’t dispute that an armed populace is better prepared to fight - in fact, that’s part of my point - but the claim that everybody being armed results in less violence doesn’t follow.

It seems logical to me that if you have a gun and your aim is to start robbing people, you're going to be more apt to act in a community where you feel like you're the only one with a gun than in one where you know plenty of people walk around armed.  I'm simply saying that being defenseless invites violence unto yourself.  Still, I think the statistics will show that population density and multiculturalism are bigger predictors. 

Actually i have heard that before and, yeah, it’s a correlation vs. causation issue. Relatively sparsely populated places are generally going to have less crime, and can safely accommodate more people owning firearms. i’ve always believed that gun control policies should vary from place to place.

I think there should be some leeway on this, sure. It’s easy to overstep the bounds of the Constitution though.

Depends what you mean by “gun restrictions”. But yeah, if we just look at statistics, then 20 or so schoolkids getting shot while in class by some nut with an assault rifle or two happens relatively rarely, so banning assault rifles probably won’t lower the overall rates of gun crime much. So what, though?

 Well, so you need to have some sort of actual reason to justify a gun ban, or change to registration, or other law. If, statistically it's not actually going to improve anything, then you don't have an argument for inconveniencing people, or taking their property, or whatever downside the law would have.   Ethically, it's just sensationalism; handguns kill way more people, even more kids, than assault weapons do.  A school shooting is like a plane crash- a big event where loss of life is concentrated in one moment.  But as horrible as a plane crash is, and as much publicity as they get, I think we all mostly accept the adage that it's far safer to fly than to drive a car, because statistics.  The idea that nobody gives a shit and it doesn't make news when one person dies in a car accident or one gangbanger shoots another, and it makes all sorts of news when there's a plane crash or a school shooting creates a perception that there's a problem that isn't there.   I know shootings are intentional and plane crashes mostly aren't, but if you're going to put a moral question to gun owners regarding school shootings, I think it makes just as much sense to put a moral question on people who buy plane tickets regarding plane crashes. 

Then there’s the issue of better enforcement of existing laws, which is never popular with the gun lobby - in fact, they would do away with most existing laws given the opportunity.

To the contrary, I always see gun lobbies saying that what we need to do is enforce existing laws, that’s practically their mantra. I’m not sure about other organizations, but the NRA, the big one, supports restrictions on criminals and the mentally ill not being allowed to own firearms, and the background checks that facilitate that. I think they are against renewing/passing assault weapons bans though.

Sure, but the govt also has tanks, trained soldiers, and shitloads of other stuff that even a populace as well armed as the US’s couldn’t ever hope to resist.

 But forcing the State to go that far to enforce its will is a victory in itself!  If a tyrant can't get the job done with police and the national guard, and actually has to break out tanks and so on, it's far more likely that they will back down due to the expense, or at the very least the international community will take notice. 

Sort of. But most of those armed populations are getting significant military aid and tons of weapons from elsewhere. It’s not like the Syrian rebels are just fighting with stuff they kept around prior to the uprising.

No, but the fact that they have firearms as part of their culture certainly helps facilitate that training, makes them more effective with the aid and such they get. And again, being able to fight back to the point that their Government had to bomb them and gas them is what drew the attention that got them that aid.

Hopefully without sounding like too much of an asshole here, i have to say i wonder why i should care much about the feelings of people who are going to have that reaction.

[/quote]
Well, because in the absence of any actual statistics that show that an assault rifle ban would accomplish anything, you appealed to the moral sense of those people in this post. Also, if seems like what we’re discussing is a justice issue, and not caring about the people affected by a proposed law seems like a poor path to justice.

[Mr_Reasonable]

@Uccisore

@mr reasonable

That kid shoulda had more tact.

Well, you know. He’s one of those with his face all pierced up and covered with tattoos and shit, and the old man said he was probably on something. Who knows what was in his head, if anything. I come from that school where I wouldn’t point a gun at somebody unless it was going to be immediately followed by pulling the trigger- using it as a form of social expression is very odd to me.

I went to that same school, but hey, I realize that more often than not…the threat of death is just as effective at ending the confrontation as actually killing the fucker. You shouldn’t let the crackheads in the streets decide whether you have a corpse on your conscious. I’ve never met a person who doesn’t cut the shit when they’ve got a gun in their face.

In reality, in my experience…the best way really is to just mace the fucker. I’ve known a lot of people who have been shot. And almost none of them died. I mean, a fair number of people died, but of the ones that got shot it’s a small percentage.

A can of mace will make a person fall to their knees in an instant. Every time I’ve ever maced someone that was the end of it. You can mace a guy, and walk off, or stay there and lecture him about ethics while he’s hacking and wheezing for air and unable to see. You can kick him a few times, you can do whatever you want basically just don’t get that shit in your eyes.

Honestly, I don’t believe that most people have it in them to commit an act of violence. If a person pointed a gun at me, I’d probably taunt them and insult them and if they didn’t shoot me after a second I might try and take it from them, because most people probably wont shoot at you.

Now a guy with a can of mace? Shiiiiit. He’s probably got no qualms whatsoever about spraying you with it. Because he isn’t hurting you really. He doesn’t have to go to court on a gun charge, he doesn’t have to worry about being kept up at night because he shot a dude. A mofo with a can of mace is usually quick to act.

[Uccisore]

@mr reasonable

[
I went to that same school, but hey, I realize that more often than not…the threat of death is just as effective at ending the confrontation as actually killing the fucker. You shouldn’t let the crackheads in the streets decide whether you have a corpse on your conscious. I’ve never met a person who doesn’t cut the shit when they’ve got a gun in their face.

That seems reasonable.

In reality, in my experience…the best way really is to just mace the fucker. I’ve known a lot of people who have been shot. And almost none of them died. I mean, a fair number of people died, but of the ones that got shot it’s a small percentage.

A can of mace will make a person fall to their knees in an instant.

Now see, that wasn’t my experience. Me and some guys from the dojo got together a few years back and had a mace party where we took turns spraying each other just to see what the deal was. It’s very very effective, and disabling, but our experience was that when you get hit you have maybe 1 second where it may as well be water. There’s this “Oh, I was hit in the face with something, I wonder what that YARRRRRGHHH” delayed response. It certainly is useful for self defense, but I wouldn’t rely on it if somebody was already drawing a gun or was already in a position to stab me or whatever- seems like they’d have time to get that one shot/swing/whatever off before they went down.

Or maybe we were just using the cheap shit.

Honestly, I don’t believe that most people have it in them to commit an act of violence. If a person pointed a gun at me, I’d probably taunt them and insult them and if they didn’t shoot me after a second I might try and take it from them, because most people probably wont shoot at you.

I’m really not sure on that. I tend to think as a general rule that anybody is capable of anything in the right circumstance. I mean, most people most of the time wouldn’t shoot kill somebody for sure. But if somebody is drawing a gun, that’s already a rarified circumstance, so I wouldn’t bet on it then; but it sounds like you have a little more experience than I do there.

Now a guy with a can of mace? Shiiiiit. He’s probably got no qualms whatsoever about spraying you with it. Because he isn’t hurting you really. He doesn’t have to go to court on a gun charge, he doesn’t have to worry about being kept up at night because he shot a dude. A mofo with a can of mace is usually quick to act.

That seems right.

[Mr_Reasonable]

You want the shit that’s a combination of oc and cs gas. You’ll find it at a gun show, or some place besides academy sports. The last time I maced a guy, the shit I used was in a good sized can, and it came out not in a stream, but in a wide spray, and not as a liquid, but as a brown gel that clings to the skin and leaves a UV dye. He had 2 guns left of the 3 he’d stolen from my mom’s house that morning, as he’d only managed to sell one of them. We managed to subdue him without too much trouble. I agree that you can learn to shake off some pepper spray, but in the heat of the moment, when it’s unexpected, the shock of it can add to it’s effect a bit. A side note…in Alabama, the crime of “unlawful use of a chemical spray” is a felony, and it’s a 15000 dollar cash bond if you want out of jail before your court date. So unless you waive your right to a grand jury on this felony and take a court date next week, or you have 15k that you can pay in bond to get released, you could sit there for months. I maced this guy in February, and the grand jury couldn’t hear my case until September. If I hadn’t had that 15k, then I would have been in college another year and failed all my classes for an action that in the end turned out to be legally justified. Interestingly, the guy who I maced was released in a week on no bond because he agreed to go and take drug tests. They categorized him as a drug offender because he had 10 bucks worth of weed on him when they peeled him out of his car covered in that gel. He left the state and it took a year before they caught in him Florida on another string of burglaries. Criminal justice is…well…I dunno man. I just don’t know. Ol Zimmerman can hunt an innocent kid and shoot him down, leaving no one to tell the story but himself and he walks. I mace a guy with 2 guns and hand him to the cops with a bunch of pictures of him breaking into the house that were taken by an old lady neighbor and well…it didn’t go so smooth for me.

[Mr_Reasonable]

Not to mention that fact that I have no convictions on my record at all, and this guy’d done time in 5 different states w/ like 3 aliases. I mean I can understand a lapse in judgement here or there. Shit…that’s human nature. But how could the cops, the detective, the prosecutor all at the same time decide to let him go and to try and keep me?

My friend who was there and who kicked the guy when he went for the gun was charged with “domestic violence” because it happened in his mother’s driveway, and he has a “domestic relationship” with his mother. So yeah…don’t beat up an armed burglar in your mom’s yard or you might get a domestic violence charge.

That’s like being put on the sex offender list for public urination. I mean…I don’t want people to urinate publicly, but it aint a sex crime, and I don’t want people to beat their wives, but beating up an armed, 40 year old, 240lb man who just robbed a house isn’t domestic violence.

What a waste of taxpayer money.

[uglypeoplefucking]

@Uccisore

Well, if the US and England stood together right away, I don’t think that part of the war would have ever happened- it wasn’t clear then that the US would do anything if England was attacked (and indeed we did not).

You think Germany would have left England alone if they had known the US was going to get involved?

I’m simply saying that being defenseless invites violence unto yourself.

i don’t think it does, necessarily. There are more common ways that people attract violence than by simply being unarmed, like by being confrontational and belligerent.

It’s easy to overstep the bounds of the Constitution though.

Yes it is. And it’s easy to appeal to the Constitution as though it were a flawless and unambiguous document.

Well, so you need to have some sort of actual reason to justify a gun ban, or change to registration, or other law.

i think the prevention of killing sprees is a valid reason. Even if single homicides are statistically far more common.

The idea that nobody gives a shit and it doesn’t make news when one person dies in a car accident or one gangbanger shoots another, and it makes all sorts of news when there’s a plane crash or a school shooting creates a perception that there’s a problem that isn’t there.

Well, the school shootings and plane crashes may not make for alarming statistics, but they are still problems if and when they occur. And they can sometimes be manifestations of more general, solvable problems, like a defective airplane design or the accessibility of assault weapons to dangerously unstable people.

I know shootings are intentional and plane crashes mostly aren’t, but if you’re going to put a moral question to gun owners regarding school shootings, I think it makes just as much sense to put a moral question on people who buy plane tickets regarding plane crashes.

The moral question i’m putting to gun advocates is not with regard to school shootings, it’s with regard to the general danger posed by the weapons themselves. i think it’s more like putting the moral question to people who drive when they’ve been drinking, even if they’ve never hurt anyone doing so.

To the contrary, I always see gun lobbies saying that what we need to do is enforce existing laws, that’s practically their mantra. I’m not sure about other organizations, but the NRA, the big one, supports restrictions on criminals and the mentally ill not being allowed to own firearms, and the background checks that facilitate that. I think they are against renewing/passing assault weapons bans though.

Even as it pays lip service to the need to enforce “existing laws”, the NRA actively opposes, for example, the institution of gun-control measures in New York City that already exist in other cities. It also opposes the closing of loopholes in background check laws and then cites the ineffectiveness of those laws as an argument against them. It also, as you point out, opposes any and all assault weapons bans. Not to mention bans on firearms in schools. It probably would not be averse to the legalization of fully automatic machine gun style weapons either, but that’s just what i take from the rhetoric and not something they actively lobby for.

And again, being able to fight back to the point that their Government had to bomb them and gas them is what drew the attention that got them that aid.

True, but i would question whether it’s really a honest victory for anyone if civilians are being gassed and bombed. Sure, it attracts the attention of the rest of the world (as it well it should), but there’s such a thing as negative attention!

Well, because in the absence of any actual statistics that show that an assault rifle ban would accomplish anything, you appealed to the moral sense of those people in this post. Also, if seems like what we’re discussing is a justice issue, and not caring about the people affected by a proposed law seems like a poor path to justice.

Ok, fair enough.

[uglypeoplefucking]

@James S Saint

So do the other robbers and mobsters, just less organized. So why give guns only to the robbers?

Someone needs to maintain a modicum of social order, which requires law enforcement, which requires guns - that’s what i’m saying. i’m not saying we should only let police have guns and i’m certainly not saying we should give guns to robbers and mobsters.

[Kriswest]

Anyone can make a weapon out of normal household materials, of course this should be done by a person with actual understanding and knowledge in order to make these weapons stable. Someone reading how to off the net is most likely to kill innocent people around them… Banning factory made stable weapons has the definite probability of increased idiocy and deaths in horrible ways.

[Mr_Reasonable]

Yeah. You can go and get a box of .22 shells, then take one in your pocket to a hardware store. Then find the right size threaded pipe that’ll hold it in there nicely, then get 2 lengths. 1 for the chamber/barrell, and the other which you’ll hold in your hand.

Now you get a coupler to where you can stick the bullet into one, and then screw both peices to the coupler so that now you have 1 length of coupled pipe with a bullet in it pointing out one end.

Then you stick a nail in the other end, such that when you hold the coupled pipe with the bullet facing with the bullet away from you, you can insert the nail, making sure it’s long enough to strike the end of the bullet like a firing pin.

Now you get some surgical tubing, or a really fat rubber band and put it over the head of the nail so that it doesn;t slide out, and you duck tape all around the sides so that when you point the bullet end at the bay guy, and pull back on the nail, the surgical tubing will slingshot it into the .22 shell, causing it to go off and shoot the bullet out the end.

Use galvanized steel pipe, and don’t try this with some other rounds because you can blow your hand off otherwise. It’s important to put some work in and make sure that your nail is rubber-banded on really good and that it’s not gonna fly off or get stuck or anything like that.

Costs about 5 bucks or so.

This information is for entertainment purposes only and none of this shit should ever be done by anyone unless you’re hiding in a cave from a bunch of armed people who are hunting you or something like that.

[Mr_Reasonable]

But as you say Kris, I can just see idiots shooting themselves in the face with a shoddily taped nail if they tried to do what I described above. Or maybe getting powder burns on their hands from not tightening the coupling well, or losing a finger because they figured pvc pipe would be fine.

But I do know another guy who shot his own hand right below his middle finger, causing the finger to kind of fly off across the room. It was a 9mm…cz75 I think. This guy ran a gun shop and was as safe as anyone you’d ever met, and his lack of knowledge of that particular firearm made it the case that he was confused about it for once and shot his finger off. They reattached it and rebuilt his hand and all but it was just a nasty thing to see.

Only glocks should be allowed to exist. You just can’t be stupid enough to not operate a glock. It’s everything proof, and they only have 3 main frame sizes, and among each size there are barrels and mags you can swap to make em use different rounds. What ever happened to interchangable parts? I remember when I was a kid learning about how the industrial revolution was the best things ever, they talked alot of good stuff about interchangable parts.

So why not in cars? Or guns? Or anything these days? Why did that change and who does it benefit?

[Kriswest]

Yea and do you have any idea just how many people can fuck up following those instructions??
Line up a hundred people to assemble it and at least 10 will suffer some injury from minor to fatal. The worst part is, it won’t be the idiot that just shot them.

[Mr_Reasonable]

I edited that post, I guess while you were typing that. But you gotta think, those things go hand in hand. The 10% who are too dumb to do that are like the bottom feeders of society. Social darwinism doesn’t just have to happen in our economy, we can spread it everywhere and make the world a competition to see who’s the best and not having bad shit happen to them. How else will the cream rise to the top?

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

@mr reasonable

I edited that post, I guess while you were typing that. But you gotta think, those things go hand in hand. The 10% who are too dumb to do that are like the bottom feeders of society. Social darwinism doesn’t just have to happen in our economy, we can spread it everywhere and make the world a competition to see who’s the best and not having bad shit happen to them. How else will the cream rise to the top?

People working together would be much more productive than that I’m better than you stuff.
Competition doesn’t improve fitness.

[Mr_Reasonable]

Agreed. I was sarcastically mocking that mind set.