7 ms·

i live in the american south, where everybody owns guns. i own a gun for hunting. but for self defense, i have pepper spray and bear spray instead of guns becau

i live in the american south, where everybody owns guns. i own a gun for hunting. but for self defense, i have pepper spray and bear spray instead of guns because i don't want to kill somebody regardless of their intentions. i'd be curious to see the stats of self-defense/firearms, because it seems like self-defense gun owners are LARPing over imagined intruder situations. they're definitely not about to take up arms against the state, and if they think they would do that, then they're certainly LARPing and live in a fantasy world. exceptions to this rule, especially in the american south, are civil rights leaders and similar political activists. Martin Luther King preached non-violent protest but owned guns for protecting his home against the very real threat of violent racists. (there's some interesting writing about this if you look it up. google something like "martin luther king guns malcolm x") the bigger risk is accidentally killing somebody with a gun, like an "intruder" that is actually somebody you know. or a kid accidentally firing the gun and killing themselves or somebody else, or somebody intentionally killing themselves. edit: added "but" in front of dependent clause "for self defense"

clairity 5y ago
it's interesting that you criticize owning guns for self-defense, but claim it as a (partial) reason for owning your own guns. perhaps you mean self-defense against wildlife rather than people, since you use pepper/bear spray to avoid chancing murder? but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense, where only the perpetrator is incapacitated and not the defender or bystanders, primarily because of a complete lack of (extreme duress) experience and (usually) genuine lethal intent. and the mere act of brandishing a weapon in such circumstances tends to escalate them uncontrollably, and to the defender's disadvantage. we can discourage gun ownership for self-defense and still support them for their (symbolic) value against governmental tyranny, as well their general usefulness in hunting and rural life. regardless, we should work on reducing gun death and injury: over 100K/yr are injured/killed by guns in the US.
- greenie_beans 5y ago
  maybe i'm sleep deprived today, but i'm missing where i claimed owning guns for self-defense? i own for hunting, so i can hunt wildlife. not for self-defense, but for food.
  - clairity 5y ago
    apologies, i must have misread that the first time around.
    - greenie_beans 5y ago
      no worries! it's partially my fault for unclear writing.
- flyingfences 5y ago
  > there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense The evidence that I've seen does not support such a bold claim at all.
- rpmisms 5y ago
  > but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense I and the dozen other people I've met who have all done so, me without firing a single shot, would all disagree with that bold and ignorant claim.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense I'm pretty anti-gun as they come, but this seems like a pretty absurd assertion. I would certainly expect a non-trivial amount of self-defense situations involving firearms would result in disaster, but I would not expect that to be even close to "nearly all of them".
staunch 5y ago
> ...i don't want to kill somebody regardless of their intentions... This is where each person's specific ethics are really important. I would really hate to ever kill anyone. Full stop. But I would definitely prefer to kill a criminal that was attempting to murder me or someone else. If you would rather be murdered by a criminal rather than kill them, that is a respectable position to hold. Although I do tend to doubt the conviction of most people who claim this position.
- greenie_beans 5y ago
  i agree, but i've come to believe that there are other ways to prevent this without a gun. hence my believe in mace as a form of self-defense. i've never been in this situation and hopefully never will be in this situation. so we'll let this hacker news comment act as a historical note for my personal decree.
tastyfreeze 5y ago
Very few sane people will consider taking up arms against the government until it becomes a necessity.
gorwell 5y ago
"they're definitely not about to take up arms against the state, and if they think they would do that, then they're certainly LARPing and live in a fantasy world." Didn't the Taliban prove otherwise? That would suggest an armed citizenship can be a counter to tyranny.
- greenie_beans 5y ago
  good point, but i'm speaking from a US-centric point of view. and so is this article. so i don't think the your taliban argument is a strong counterpoint to my claim.
  - lowkey_ 5y ago
    The Taliban was fighting against the US though, with all their high-tech drones and such, which are usually cited as the reason that guns are futile against the state.
    - greenie_beans 5y ago
      i don’t know enough about the military strategy that allowed the taliban to seize control, so i can’t argue with you there. but i do want to point out how your argument could be interpreted as advocating for guns so a tyrannical regime like the taliban can take over a government.
      - lowkey_ 5y ago
        That is fair and I agree with the assessment! My argument is advocating for guns so that a population can determine its own fate, and not be subject to either domestic or foreign top-down control against its own will.
- kelnos 5y ago
  I think these are two pretty different situations. If civilian gun owners in the US tried to overthrow the US government, the US military would crush them in a heartbeat. Hell, with the level of militarization of many local police departments in the US, it might not even take the US military. You can't really compare that to a reluctant, unpopular war fought in someone else's territory. The US was never going to commit the entirety of its military might to defeat the Taliban. And at any rate, it's probably more accurate to say that the Taliban defeated the poorly-trained, poorly-prepared (US's fault) Afghan Army, not the US military. I expect the US could have occupied Afghanistan indefinitely, holding back the Taliban, if we chose to.
Fogest 5y ago
It sounds like lower estimates indicate about 55 000 - 80 000 uses of self defense with a gun per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use But it sounds like it really varies source to source. The problem is that a lot of the time it is just an estimate. Not all self-defense uses of a gun are reported as often someone doing a criminal action is not going to self-report it. And the person with the gun may not want to report it either for fear of getting in trouble. Additionally it doesn't seem like there is really a national database that can properly catalogue and account for self-defense actions with a gun. So it seems a lot of it is based on estimates from what data they do have. Either way that low-end estimate still seems to be quite a large number. It does make you think how many violent crimes may have been avoided because of brandishing a firearm in self-defense. It's unfortunate that it is hard to get accurate data on this.
- throw0101a 5y ago
  > Either way that low-end estimate still seems to be quite a large number. It does make you think how many violent crimes may have been avoided because of brandishing a firearm in self-defense. It's unfortunate that it is hard to get accurate data on this. What are the trade offs though? > 5. Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense > Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Center, we examined the extent and nature of offensive gun use. We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense. All reported cases of criminal gun use, as well as many of the so-called self-defense gun uses, appear to be socially undesirable. > Hemenway, David; Azrael, Deborah. The relative frequency of offensive and defensive gun use: Results of a national survey. Violence and Victims. 2000; 15:257-272. * https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...
- uncoder0 5y ago
  CDC says ~ 60,000 to 2.5 million[1] which is a massive range spanning nearly 2 orders of magnitude. It's likely on the higher side because who calls the cops when they had to brandish a firearm to scare someone away... Brandishing is illegal in many states. That changes the calculus even more. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm...
glangdale 5y ago
The thing I always find astonishing about the LARPing element of "taking up arms against the state" is how one-sidedly political it is. An authoritarian right-wing state - say, an alternate world where Trump had somehow seized power and suspended democracy - would find large numbers of American gun owners who would be very happy about this and serve as a pro-government paramilitary (coordinating the police/military and doing all the Bad Things that the government doesn't want to be seen doing, like human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing). It shows an astonishing lack of historical awareness to imagine that gun ownership in private hands will be default mobilized "against tyranny" - like tyranny is always going to be some sort of sneering baddies that the public is 95% against. There are obviously some genuine libertarians among gun owners, but there's also a pretty large contingent of authoritarian right wingers (or people who are libertarian only in respect to their own freedoms).
- notacoward 5y ago
  Exactly. Nothing enables a tyrant like a sympathetic mob that is more heavily armed than those who would fight for freedom. Historically, would-be tyrants tend to make sure their sympathizers are well armed more than to disarm anyone. The idea of someone with MAGA and Punisher stickers on their pickup using their guns to oppose tyranny is laughable. No, they'll be first in line to trade in their fake military insignia for the real version.
  - glangdale 5y ago
    It's actually advantageous to have a separate "mob" as well as controlling the military/police; the last thing you want is to formally deputize or enlist them. This way you can go to international events and join the hand-wringing over lynchings, torture and murder ("we can't control our overenthusiastic supporters and of course mistakes were made on both sides, etc"). You can also preserve your control of rule-followers and humanitarians in the police and military. As a rule, weapons in private hands seem to be handy for overriding the policies of democratically elected governments while complaining about "tyranny" (c.f. Ammon Bundy).
- proc0 5y ago

clairity 5y ago

it's interesting that you criticize owning guns for self-defense, but claim it as a (partial) reason for owning your own guns. perhaps you mean self-defense against wildlife rather than people, since you use pepper/bear spray to avoid chancing murder? but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense, where only the perpetrator is incapacitated and not the defender or bystanders, primarily because of a complete lack of (extreme duress) experience and (usually) genuine lethal intent. and the mere act of brandishing a weapon in such circumstances tends to escalate them uncontrollably, and to the defender's disadvantage. we can discourage gun ownership for self-defense and still support them for their (symbolic) value against governmental tyranny, as well their general usefulness in hunting and rural life. regardless, we should work on reducing gun death and injury: over 100K/yr are injured/killed by guns in the US.

greenie_beans 5y ago
maybe i'm sleep deprived today, but i'm missing where i claimed owning guns for self-defense? i own for hunting, so i can hunt wildlife. not for self-defense, but for food.
- clairity 5y ago
  apologies, i must have misread that the first time around.
  - greenie_beans 5y ago
    no worries! it's partially my fault for unclear writing.
flyingfences 5y ago
> there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense The evidence that I've seen does not support such a bold claim at all.
rpmisms 5y ago
> but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense I and the dozen other people I've met who have all done so, me without firing a single shot, would all disagree with that bold and ignorant claim.
kelnos 5y ago
> but yes, there's is roughly a 0% chance that using a gun defensively in a hostile situation will result in successful self-defense I'm pretty anti-gun as they come, but this seems like a pretty absurd assertion. I would certainly expect a non-trivial amount of self-defense situations involving firearms would result in disaster, but I would not expect that to be even close to "nearly all of them".

staunch 5y ago

> ...i don't want to kill somebody regardless of their intentions... This is where each person's specific ethics are really important. I would really hate to ever kill anyone. Full stop. But I would definitely prefer to kill a criminal that was attempting to murder me or someone else. If you would rather be murdered by a criminal rather than kill them, that is a respectable position to hold. Although I do tend to doubt the conviction of most people who claim this position.

greenie_beans 5y ago
i agree, but i've come to believe that there are other ways to prevent this without a gun. hence my believe in mace as a form of self-defense. i've never been in this situation and hopefully never will be in this situation. so we'll let this hacker news comment act as a historical note for my personal decree.

tastyfreeze 5y ago

Very few sane people will consider taking up arms against the government until it becomes a necessity.

gorwell 5y ago

"they're definitely not about to take up arms against the state, and if they think they would do that, then they're certainly LARPing and live in a fantasy world." Didn't the Taliban prove otherwise? That would suggest an armed citizenship can be a counter to tyranny.

greenie_beans 5y ago
good point, but i'm speaking from a US-centric point of view. and so is this article. so i don't think the your taliban argument is a strong counterpoint to my claim.
- lowkey_ 5y ago
  The Taliban was fighting against the US though, with all their high-tech drones and such, which are usually cited as the reason that guns are futile against the state.
  - greenie_beans 5y ago
    i don’t know enough about the military strategy that allowed the taliban to seize control, so i can’t argue with you there. but i do want to point out how your argument could be interpreted as advocating for guns so a tyrannical regime like the taliban can take over a government.
    - lowkey_ 5y ago
      That is fair and I agree with the assessment! My argument is advocating for guns so that a population can determine its own fate, and not be subject to either domestic or foreign top-down control against its own will.
kelnos 5y ago
I think these are two pretty different situations. If civilian gun owners in the US tried to overthrow the US government, the US military would crush them in a heartbeat. Hell, with the level of militarization of many local police departments in the US, it might not even take the US military. You can't really compare that to a reluctant, unpopular war fought in someone else's territory. The US was never going to commit the entirety of its military might to defeat the Taliban. And at any rate, it's probably more accurate to say that the Taliban defeated the poorly-trained, poorly-prepared (US's fault) Afghan Army, not the US military. I expect the US could have occupied Afghanistan indefinitely, holding back the Taliban, if we chose to.

Fogest 5y ago

It sounds like lower estimates indicate about 55 000 - 80 000 uses of self defense with a gun per year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use But it sounds like it really varies source to source. The problem is that a lot of the time it is just an estimate. Not all self-defense uses of a gun are reported as often someone doing a criminal action is not going to self-report it. And the person with the gun may not want to report it either for fear of getting in trouble. Additionally it doesn't seem like there is really a national database that can properly catalogue and account for self-defense actions with a gun. So it seems a lot of it is based on estimates from what data they do have. Either way that low-end estimate still seems to be quite a large number. It does make you think how many violent crimes may have been avoided because of brandishing a firearm in self-defense. It's unfortunate that it is hard to get accurate data on this.

throw0101a 5y ago
> Either way that low-end estimate still seems to be quite a large number. It does make you think how many violent crimes may have been avoided because of brandishing a firearm in self-defense. It's unfortunate that it is hard to get accurate data on this. What are the trade offs though? > 5. Firearms are used far more often to intimidate than in self-defense > Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Center, we examined the extent and nature of offensive gun use. We found that firearms are used far more often to frighten and intimidate than they are used in self-defense. All reported cases of criminal gun use, as well as many of the so-called self-defense gun uses, appear to be socially undesirable. > Hemenway, David; Azrael, Deborah. The relative frequency of offensive and defensive gun use: Results of a national survey. Violence and Victims. 2000; 15:257-272. * https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-threats-and-self-defense-gun-use-2/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...
uncoder0 5y ago
CDC says ~ 60,000 to 2.5 million[1] which is a massive range spanning nearly 2 orders of magnitude. It's likely on the higher side because who calls the cops when they had to brandish a firearm to scare someone away... Brandishing is illegal in many states. That changes the calculus even more. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.html https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/firearms/fastfact.htm...

glangdale 5y ago

The thing I always find astonishing about the LARPing element of "taking up arms against the state" is how one-sidedly political it is. An authoritarian right-wing state - say, an alternate world where Trump had somehow seized power and suspended democracy - would find large numbers of American gun owners who would be very happy about this and serve as a pro-government paramilitary (coordinating the police/military and doing all the Bad Things that the government doesn't want to be seen doing, like human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing). It shows an astonishing lack of historical awareness to imagine that gun ownership in private hands will be default mobilized "against tyranny" - like tyranny is always going to be some sort of sneering baddies that the public is 95% against. There are obviously some genuine libertarians among gun owners, but there's also a pretty large contingent of authoritarian right wingers (or people who are libertarian only in respect to their own freedoms).

notacoward 5y ago
Exactly. Nothing enables a tyrant like a sympathetic mob that is more heavily armed than those who would fight for freedom. Historically, would-be tyrants tend to make sure their sympathizers are well armed more than to disarm anyone. The idea of someone with MAGA and Punisher stickers on their pickup using their guns to oppose tyranny is laughable. No, they'll be first in line to trade in their fake military insignia for the real version.
- glangdale 5y ago
  It's actually advantageous to have a separate "mob" as well as controlling the military/police; the last thing you want is to formally deputize or enlist them. This way you can go to international events and join the hand-wringing over lynchings, torture and murder ("we can't control our overenthusiastic supporters and of course mistakes were made on both sides, etc"). You can also preserve your control of rule-followers and humanitarians in the police and military. As a rule, weapons in private hands seem to be handy for overriding the policies of democratically elected governments while complaining about "tyranny" (c.f. Ammon Bundy).
proc0 5y ago