Not really, it just seemed like a good title.
A short distance from my house there is a private gun range. I think it’s for the Secret Service. Maybe the FBI. Most mornings I hear the sound of somebody practicing.
It doesn’t bother me, and if people are going to carry guns, they should definitely practice.
But I often wonder what my neighbors think. Some people have strong reactions to guns.
When I was a kid, my father had just won another shotgun. (He had incredible luck in the gun-club raffles.) That evening, his best friend from his childhood was coming by with his wife, and Dad wanted to show Howard the gun, so he put it behind the couch. Unloaded, in a box, etc.
Half-way through the evening, Dad pulled the box out from behind the couch to show Howard the gun. Julie, Howard’s wife, almost had a fit. She couldn’t believe that she had been sitting “so close to a gun.”
I was very surprised by this. Howard and Julie were both very intelligent people, and I would sit in and listen to their conversations with my parents.
An unloaded shotgun is about as dangerous as an aluminum baseball bat, and … we were all friends. Nobody was at any risk at all. But Julie seemed to have an emotional reaction to the very idea of a gun somewhere close to her.
That stuck with me (obviously), and I factor it into my expectations of how people will react to gun-related stories.
Even rational, intelligent people can have some strange hang-ups.
(BTW, names have been changed.)
On the other hand, there are people who like to display guns and even shoot them because they know that they doing so is offensive to some, most notably their political or ideological opponents. Recent photos and videos of Republicans doing this illustrate this point most vividly. I think that I prefer the Julies over the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Lauren Boeberts.
A grad school friend of mine admitted quite bluntly that the fact I might own guns scared him. (As it happens, I didn’t: more trouble than it’s worth where I lived at the time.) I politely declined the opportunity to live my life circumscribed my his fears.
The fact so many people own a 4000-pound steel death machines they regularly move around and aim them right at people and things with ~2 megajoules of kinetic energy is concerning in principle, but I make reasonable risk assessments and get on with my day.
(And I say this as someone who’s had to jump out of the way of cars which would otherwise have hit me, and once probably hospitalized me, twice in the past few years. LargeCanadianCity drivers are not to be trusted.)
The big difference is that a car has a purpose besides injuring or killing.
I’ve never understood this argument.
Almost all gun use is for recreational purposes like skeet shooting or target practice which injures and kills no one. That’s why people go through enough ammunition to kill the world many times over but not everyone is dead.
People receive Olympic medals for their skills with guns. At the first modern Olympics in 1896, shooting was one of only a handful of contests they had.
Some people collect historical guns which can’t even be fired, as beautiful objets d’art. A friend does the same with swords, which were used for injuring and killing long before guns were invented.
Although guns can be used quite effectively to injure and kill (both humans and animals), and there are circumstances in which those outcomes are greatly preferable to the alternative (a murderous attacker, a wolf after sheep), they also have many other purposes.
The fact you’re not interested in other uses might be a fact about you but isn’t really a fact about guns.
I didn’t say that I am not interested in other uses, and this is not certainly about me. (Let’s keep such BS aside.) But the reason why people fear guns or, more correctly, people who display guns is because they are primarily made to kill or injure. Of course, they have secondary purposes, just as a car is primarily a means of transportation, but can be used for other things. Someone can collect cars, race them with each other, demolish them, live in them, have sex in them, and even injure or kill people with them. But it is most unreasonable to say that these purposes are precisely what a car is made for. What a car is first and foremost made for, the reason why cars were invented in the first place, is to enhance transportation. The reason why guns were invented in the first place was to kill or injure. All other purposes are secondary. Of course a secondary purpose of an artifact can even become the primary purpose for an individual. And there can even be special guns manufactured in order to meet such peculiar needs. But the fact remains that a gun is primarily meant to kill or injure, just as a kitchen knife is meant to cut food, as a house is meant for dwelling, clothes are meant to wear, and this post is meant to refute the above-posted sophistry.
not certainly –> certainly not
As to Julie’s discomfort in being near a gun, I would wonder whether her real discomfort had to do with being in the presence of people who are fascinated with such a thing. I can fully understand why someone might have a gun for a legitimate reason, e.g. security. But when I think of someone getting a kick out of seeing one, it kind of gives me the creeps, unless of course it has qualities that make an object of aesthetic interest or something along those lines.
My recollection was that she was horrified by the thing itself — somewhat the way a superstitious person would react to cursed item.
That sounds highly unusual. It is best not to discuss an issue by identifying a very strange case.
Another thing is that Julie probably didn’t know it was unloaded. I am sure I wouldn’t.
A long time ago I had a couple of friends who had a fascination with guns. They weren’t that way when I had first met them, but they were something like hippies who morphed into rednecks (and I suspect that there are a lot of people of that type), but both deceased now (probably because of excessive alcohol and drugs). Anyway, one of them in particular often said that he wanted me to get together with them and they would bring out their guns. That whole scenario of “bringing out the guns” creeped me out and I avoided it like the plague. It is not a gun in isolation, so to speak, that would bother me.
And I wouldn’t know if it was loaded or not.
I used to think “Why would anybody need an assault rifle?”
Then, in 2020, George Floyd “demonstrations” and looting. I lived 2 blocks from the “demonstrations”. Neighbor across the cul-de-sac is sort of a whacked out survivalist…old and biding his time until he can move some place off the grid near the OK / AR border. Well, some time before the scheduled “protests” (night before or morning of), the neighbor saw me in the front yard, gave me a piece of paper with his phone number on it, and told me to call if I had any “problems” with “protesters” because he was “prepared”. I knew that meant he had an arsenal at his disposal. It didn’t bother me. I was thankful.
I have never owned any guns other than a Crossman air rifle. My son, 29, OTOH, never leaves the house without his concealed .25. Where I live now, I’d probably buy a gun but my wife is not a fan, so I don’t have one. Hopefully the air rifle is enough of a deterrent to scare off any homeless or druggies trespassing on my property.
After my experience with the “protests”, I understand why people have guns and even assault weapons. If something happens, the police are no help. Sometimes they even have instructions not to help. Personally, I’d rather have a flame thrower rather than a gun to deal with a mob. I think someone getting BBQed would be a bigger deterrent than a gun. A flame thrower would put the fear of God into “protesters”.
Elon Musk made one.
https://www.boringcompany.com/not-a-flamethrower