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In fairness, everyone I know in the US who owns firearms - which is basically everyone I know here - takes safety and knowledge of the laws around storing/carry

In fairness, everyone I know in the US who owns firearms - which is basically everyone I know here - takes safety and knowledge of the laws around storing/carrying/brandishing/firing them very seriously. But the sheer scale of the US population and the absolute number of guns is just difficult to conceive of from a European perspective. We have something like 60 privately owned guns in this country for every person in the Czech Republic. So even if only 1% of our gun-owning population were irresponsible or criminal with them, it would still add up to a lot of deaths every day.

kelnos 3y ago
Same, but I suspect there's a bit of selection bias going on there in both our cases. I just don't think I'd be able to sustain a friendship with the kind of person who owns guns and handles them irresponsibly, and I expect the same might be true of you.
- bombcar 3y ago
  You’re spot on - everyone who I know who “does gun” has an extremely hostile reaction to people who handle them irresponsibly. And those people are often irresponsible in many other ways, too.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Except everyone who "has a hostile reaction to people who handle guns irresponsibly" has a story of a range or person they know who does exactly that, and their response is simply to stay away, instead of narcing on them and making the community safer at the expense of being a tattle tale. So there are plenty of people who call themselves "responsible gun owners" but turn a complete blind eye to bad behavior. Or they will keep a loaded gun in their bedroom for home defense, something that is outright NOT responsible gun owner behavior, yet is the primary cited reason people own guns in the US.
bryanrasmussen 3y ago
I guess that seems reasonable, but now it makes me wonder about the graph - it can't be that the people who take gun ownership and security safety only know people who do likewise - how many people who take these matters seriously still have friends they hang out with who take it less seriously. Why? Well bad apples and stuff, it's hard to believe perfect discipline is maintained when some of those around you have less than perfect discipline. It seems like a question that one could probably get pretty close to answering (although not perfect).
- noduerme 3y ago
  Just from personal experience among my friends and acquaintances - and anyone I meet who I chance to talk about guns with - there is a very strong self-reinforcing culture of safe handling and responsibility. People will come down incredibly hard on anyone who seems inept or who they even hear speaking about some kind of irresponsible behavior. Now, I'd say about half of these are ex-military people, but they set a standard and keep other people in line. Of course, perfect discipline isn't maintained in this country. But it's actually one of the few areas where pretty much everyone knows they must act like a responsible adult. People are well aware that it's their life or their freedom are stake if they mess up. I know guys who get drunk as skunks and get in bar fights, but who would never carry their gun when they go out drinking, or anywhere besides the woods.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    >Of course, perfect discipline isn't maintained in this country. well ok, I don't know but there are stats on how many adults have guns, and there are stats on misuses of guns. I suppose a clever statistician would be able to get to some potential overview of how many people who own guns have decent discipline? Not saying that's you but someone on this site. It is difficult to find anything with a query on Google nowadays, but the things I do find - like https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/ https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/ implies to me that the amount of the population that maintains your level of discipline is very low.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
midasuni 3y ago
Oh another “The US is big” post. The EU has 30% more people There are 60 times as many privately owned guns in the EU as there are in Montana. There are 5 time as many guns in the US, but 20 times as many murders. There is a cultural problem in the US with firearms.
- darkclouds 3y ago
  Does that include places like Switzerland, where every male is issued with a gun as part of their national service/canton militia? I think the cultural problem is everyone wants to be like Stallone or Arnie, which would suggest the US population has an inferiority complex towards the old world.
  - midasuni 3y ago
    No. Switzerland isn’t in the EU. Include non EU countries and the population and number of guns is even larger, but gun homicides don’t change much. Even gun suicides are far higher in the US per capita and per gun than in the EU. The US has a gun fetish. People sleep with them for crying out loud!
    - rootw0rm 3y ago
      hey now, if i don't sleep with the thing, how am i gonna grab it when i'm asleep?
      - bombcar 3y ago
        I took “sleep with” as a sexual thing but you’re right, it’s probably referring to nightstand guns or the famous bedshotty.
        mrguyorama 3y ago
        Worth noting, it is impossible to both have a gun for home defense, and be a "responsible" gun owner. Being a responsible gun owner implies the guns are properly locked up, away from ammunition, because kids regularly play with daddy's guns and kill each other and themselves, but if your gun is locked up in a safe separately from it's ammo like it is often legally required to be, there's no way you can actually use it for home defense. But everyone still claims they are "A responsible gun owner" because all that actually means to the gun culture in the US is that you are white or rural or conservative.
throw0101c 3y ago
> In fairness, everyone I know in the US who owns firearms - which is basically everyone I know here You are not representative, as only one-third of individuals, and 42% of US households, own a firearm: * https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem... * https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own... Gun owners are in the minority of the population.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Drill down to state levels, or further to local areas, and those numbers change tremendously. In many parts of the country gun ownership is almost universal. And you might not even know; not everyone tells everyone that they own a gun.
- mindcrime 3y ago
  Assume those numbers are wrong. Many gun owners lie on various polls and surveys when asked about firearms ownership. The reason generally being a certain level of paranoia about firearms and firearms owners being cataloged in a way that could support a hypothetical future confiscation effort. Firearms owners may well still be in the minority, but there's probably a fair bit of error there.
- dalore 3y ago
  Does that include children in the population?
dfxm12 3y ago
Yeah, my father keeps everything locked in a safe, but the other day, some cops knocked on my door asking if I knew anything about a gun that was stolen from the passenger seat of an unlocked truck parked across the street. I'm sure everyone says they take these things seriously, and I'm sure you're a fine upstanding citizen who mostly interacts with other fine, upstanding citizens. However, we do know, due to the number of offenses made public thanks to Florida's Sunshine law and other public sources, that we simply can't make the generalization that people take these gun safety measures seriously.
mrguyorama 3y ago
>takes safety and knowledge of the laws around storing/carrying/brandishing/firing them very seriously. What matters is what happens when their friend does something dangerous with a gun, and they don't seem to care. My entire family is "responsible gun owner" including my brother who definitely seems to care about safety, but all that goes out the window when another family member brings out the guns at a family BBQ while absolutely drunk. You can bet your ass nobody said anything. If you aren't willing to narc on irresponsible gun behavior, you ARE NOT a responsible gun owner. Also, Kyle Rittenhouse took a gun across several state lines, possibly stirred up shit, got shot at, and killed the person doing so. While the actual event of shooting was ruled "self defense", how is it "responsible" to take your firearm to a protest with the intent of being a counter protester. If "Anti fa" did such a thing, these people would riot, but Rittenhouse was invited to talk at fucking CPAC. That's the kind of person these people lionize. They are envious that he was able to kill someone with a gun and get away with it. They want to be him.

kelnos 3y ago

Same, but I suspect there's a bit of selection bias going on there in both our cases. I just don't think I'd be able to sustain a friendship with the kind of person who owns guns and handles them irresponsibly, and I expect the same might be true of you.

bombcar 3y ago
You’re spot on - everyone who I know who “does gun” has an extremely hostile reaction to people who handle them irresponsibly. And those people are often irresponsible in many other ways, too.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Except everyone who "has a hostile reaction to people who handle guns irresponsibly" has a story of a range or person they know who does exactly that, and their response is simply to stay away, instead of narcing on them and making the community safer at the expense of being a tattle tale. So there are plenty of people who call themselves "responsible gun owners" but turn a complete blind eye to bad behavior. Or they will keep a loaded gun in their bedroom for home defense, something that is outright NOT responsible gun owner behavior, yet is the primary cited reason people own guns in the US.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago

I guess that seems reasonable, but now it makes me wonder about the graph - it can't be that the people who take gun ownership and security safety only know people who do likewise - how many people who take these matters seriously still have friends they hang out with who take it less seriously. Why? Well bad apples and stuff, it's hard to believe perfect discipline is maintained when some of those around you have less than perfect discipline. It seems like a question that one could probably get pretty close to answering (although not perfect).

noduerme 3y ago
Just from personal experience among my friends and acquaintances - and anyone I meet who I chance to talk about guns with - there is a very strong self-reinforcing culture of safe handling and responsibility. People will come down incredibly hard on anyone who seems inept or who they even hear speaking about some kind of irresponsible behavior. Now, I'd say about half of these are ex-military people, but they set a standard and keep other people in line. Of course, perfect discipline isn't maintained in this country. But it's actually one of the few areas where pretty much everyone knows they must act like a responsible adult. People are well aware that it's their life or their freedom are stake if they mess up. I know guys who get drunk as skunks and get in bar fights, but who would never carry their gun when they go out drinking, or anywhere besides the woods.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  >Of course, perfect discipline isn't maintained in this country. well ok, I don't know but there are stats on how many adults have guns, and there are stats on misuses of guns. I suppose a clever statistician would be able to get to some potential overview of how many people who own guns have decent discipline? Not saying that's you but someone on this site. It is difficult to find anything with a query on Google nowadays, but the things I do find - like https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/ https://time.com/6183881/gun-ownership-risks-at-home/ implies to me that the amount of the population that maintains your level of discipline is very low.
- throw0101c 3y ago

midasuni 3y ago

Oh another “The US is big” post. The EU has 30% more people There are 60 times as many privately owned guns in the EU as there are in Montana. There are 5 time as many guns in the US, but 20 times as many murders. There is a cultural problem in the US with firearms.

darkclouds 3y ago
Does that include places like Switzerland, where every male is issued with a gun as part of their national service/canton militia? I think the cultural problem is everyone wants to be like Stallone or Arnie, which would suggest the US population has an inferiority complex towards the old world.
- midasuni 3y ago
  No. Switzerland isn’t in the EU. Include non EU countries and the population and number of guns is even larger, but gun homicides don’t change much. Even gun suicides are far higher in the US per capita and per gun than in the EU. The US has a gun fetish. People sleep with them for crying out loud!
  - rootw0rm 3y ago
    hey now, if i don't sleep with the thing, how am i gonna grab it when i'm asleep?
    - bombcar 3y ago
      I took “sleep with” as a sexual thing but you’re right, it’s probably referring to nightstand guns or the famous bedshotty.
      - mrguyorama 3y ago
        Worth noting, it is impossible to both have a gun for home defense, and be a "responsible" gun owner. Being a responsible gun owner implies the guns are properly locked up, away from ammunition, because kids regularly play with daddy's guns and kill each other and themselves, but if your gun is locked up in a safe separately from it's ammo like it is often legally required to be, there's no way you can actually use it for home defense. But everyone still claims they are "A responsible gun owner" because all that actually means to the gun culture in the US is that you are white or rural or conservative.

throw0101c 3y ago

> In fairness, everyone I know in the US who owns firearms - which is basically everyone I know here You are not representative, as only one-third of individuals, and 42% of US households, own a firearm: * https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-demographics-of-gun-ownership/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2017/06/22/the-dem... * https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own-guns.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/264932/percentage-americans-own... Gun owners are in the minority of the population.

bombcar 3y ago
Drill down to state levels, or further to local areas, and those numbers change tremendously. In many parts of the country gun ownership is almost universal. And you might not even know; not everyone tells everyone that they own a gun.
mindcrime 3y ago
Assume those numbers are wrong. Many gun owners lie on various polls and surveys when asked about firearms ownership. The reason generally being a certain level of paranoia about firearms and firearms owners being cataloged in a way that could support a hypothetical future confiscation effort. Firearms owners may well still be in the minority, but there's probably a fair bit of error there.
dalore 3y ago
Does that include children in the population?

dfxm12 3y ago

Yeah, my father keeps everything locked in a safe, but the other day, some cops knocked on my door asking if I knew anything about a gun that was stolen from the passenger seat of an unlocked truck parked across the street. I'm sure everyone says they take these things seriously, and I'm sure you're a fine upstanding citizen who mostly interacts with other fine, upstanding citizens. However, we do know, due to the number of offenses made public thanks to Florida's Sunshine law and other public sources, that we simply can't make the generalization that people take these gun safety measures seriously.

mrguyorama 3y ago

>takes safety and knowledge of the laws around storing/carrying/brandishing/firing them very seriously. What matters is what happens when their friend does something dangerous with a gun, and they don't seem to care. My entire family is "responsible gun owner" including my brother who definitely seems to care about safety, but all that goes out the window when another family member brings out the guns at a family BBQ while absolutely drunk. You can bet your ass nobody said anything. If you aren't willing to narc on irresponsible gun behavior, you ARE NOT a responsible gun owner. Also, Kyle Rittenhouse took a gun across several state lines, possibly stirred up shit, got shot at, and killed the person doing so. While the actual event of shooting was ruled "self defense", how is it "responsible" to take your firearm to a protest with the intent of being a counter protester. If "Anti fa" did such a thing, these people would riot, but Rittenhouse was invited to talk at fucking CPAC. That's the kind of person these people lionize. They are envious that he was able to kill someone with a gun and get away with it. They want to be him.