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Gun owners (I am one) regard compromise on the subject as they're the ones giving something up. The people on the other side of the table aren't sacrificing an

by chiph 10y ago

Gun owners (I am one) regard compromise on the subject as they're the ones giving something up. The people on the other side of the table aren't sacrificing anything. It's like your boss asking you to come in and work on Saturday for the good of the team. But won't pay you for your time.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
It's more like having a team of mostly ok workers (all citizens) and one screw up who never shows up to work (violent criminals who commit crime with guns) and then making everyone come in on Saturday because they need to account for the work the no-show didn't do. Then you exempt HR and overhead staff (non gun owners) because you don't need them to be involved in that particular work. Then you exempt the HR and overhead staff because they have no skin in the game and as predicted the no-show no-shows. Of course the people who actually have skin in the game and do what they're supposed to are salty about it.
pjc50 10y ago
The people on the other side of the table aren't sacrificing anything. Their lives and safety, on a daily basis? It's the other way round, really: universal gun ownership involves the sacrifice of thousands of lives annually. Admittedly so does car ownership and OTC tylenol, but in those contexts we can admit the tradeoff and seek to minimise the cost.
- hga 10y ago
  You don't see a trade-off in our allowing effective self-defense, which by data collected by gun controllers decades ago happens a minimum of a million times a year? Or the difference between citizens, who are traditionally defined as those who bear arms in defense of their polity, with subjects?
- chiph 10y ago
  > gun ownership involves the sacrifice of thousands of lives annually I would put it to you that human nature is such that if guns weren't available, people would turn to alternative weapons. Knives. Bats. Fists. The UK is seeing this progression happen now. But with a tool like a firearm, any 45 kilogram woman can defend herself against a stronger attacker. Or a 77 kg man against someone stronger than him, or perhaps a group of attackers. In the rural USA the attacker doesn't even have to be a person - it could be a brown bear (which are absolutely huge, BTW), a wild boar (increasingly common in the South), or a venomous reptile. Not having a firearm to defend yourself in those situations means you die alone in the wilderness. But the key thing to all those examples is that they are defensive uses of a firearm. You will seldom see examples of this in the news because it's not lurid enough. And that most of the time, the gun is never even fired - the credible threat is enough to stop the attack. I'm guessing that you are European, and as such have never seen a defensive use of a gun. You have only been exposed to negative views of them via the news services and Hollywood films. If you visit central Texas anytime, I'd be willing to take you to the range and give you an introduction to safe operation of a firearm and show you that gun owners are regular people too.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    Thanks for the offer; I'm a Brit who got my firearms training at school courtesy of the army cadet scheme, with a set of antique .22 bolt-action rifles on the school range. Then I went to university and met someone who'd lost a close relative at 17, short dead by a British soldier in Northern Ireland. So in some ways I've seen a little of both ends of the gun. > The UK is seeing this progression happen now. Crime is slowly falling (as it is everywhere) in the UK; there is a bit of a knife problem in some places, but not one that dominates political conversation. Nowhere near as bad as the 50s. Responses range from the ineffective - literally a ban on scary-looking knives ("zombie knives"), to the quite effective Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. The one thing I accept as a completely legitimate use is against wild animals in the rural USA. No argument there. It doesn't follow from that that everyone needs to have guns in a densely packed city.

by chiph 10y ago

dsfyu404ed 10y ago

It's more like having a team of mostly ok workers (all citizens) and one screw up who never shows up to work (violent criminals who commit crime with guns) and then making everyone come in on Saturday because they need to account for the work the no-show didn't do. Then you exempt HR and overhead staff (non gun owners) because you don't need them to be involved in that particular work. Then you exempt the HR and overhead staff because they have no skin in the game and as predicted the no-show no-shows. Of course the people who actually have skin in the game and do what they're supposed to are salty about it.

pjc50 10y ago

The people on the other side of the table aren't sacrificing anything. Their lives and safety, on a daily basis? It's the other way round, really: universal gun ownership involves the sacrifice of thousands of lives annually. Admittedly so does car ownership and OTC tylenol, but in those contexts we can admit the tradeoff and seek to minimise the cost.

hga 10y ago
You don't see a trade-off in our allowing effective self-defense, which by data collected by gun controllers decades ago happens a minimum of a million times a year? Or the difference between citizens, who are traditionally defined as those who bear arms in defense of their polity, with subjects?
chiph 10y ago
> gun ownership involves the sacrifice of thousands of lives annually I would put it to you that human nature is such that if guns weren't available, people would turn to alternative weapons. Knives. Bats. Fists. The UK is seeing this progression happen now. But with a tool like a firearm, any 45 kilogram woman can defend herself against a stronger attacker. Or a 77 kg man against someone stronger than him, or perhaps a group of attackers. In the rural USA the attacker doesn't even have to be a person - it could be a brown bear (which are absolutely huge, BTW), a wild boar (increasingly common in the South), or a venomous reptile. Not having a firearm to defend yourself in those situations means you die alone in the wilderness. But the key thing to all those examples is that they are defensive uses of a firearm. You will seldom see examples of this in the news because it's not lurid enough. And that most of the time, the gun is never even fired - the credible threat is enough to stop the attack. I'm guessing that you are European, and as such have never seen a defensive use of a gun. You have only been exposed to negative views of them via the news services and Hollywood films. If you visit central Texas anytime, I'd be willing to take you to the range and give you an introduction to safe operation of a firearm and show you that gun owners are regular people too.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Thanks for the offer; I'm a Brit who got my firearms training at school courtesy of the army cadet scheme, with a set of antique .22 bolt-action rifles on the school range. Then I went to university and met someone who'd lost a close relative at 17, short dead by a British soldier in Northern Ireland. So in some ways I've seen a little of both ends of the gun. > The UK is seeing this progression happen now. Crime is slowly falling (as it is everywhere) in the UK; there is a bit of a knife problem in some places, but not one that dominates political conversation. Nowhere near as bad as the 50s. Responses range from the ineffective - literally a ban on scary-looking knives ("zombie knives"), to the quite effective Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. The one thing I accept as a completely legitimate use is against wild animals in the rural USA. No argument there. It doesn't follow from that that everyone needs to have guns in a densely packed city.