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I like this response to poke a hole in the parent comment, but it is worth noting that smartphones and guns are different in a pretty massive way: Smartphones

I like this response to poke a hole in the parent comment, but it is worth noting that smartphones and guns are different in a pretty massive way: Smartphones can be useful and valuable in many ways separate from the ways they can be used harmfully. Guns exist only for physical violence (or to threaten physical violence).

2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo ago
> Guns exist only for physical violence Skeet shooting? Targets? Most gun owners never kill anything.
- AlecSchueler 11mo ago
  Those are both acts of physical violence, just not against living creatures.
  - swiftcoder 11mo ago
    That's a pretty extreme stance. If shooting inanimate clay pots is violence, wouldn't baseball also constitute violence?
    - AlecSchueler 11mo ago
      When I search a definition I get three results: 1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury. In the case of the shooting examples the idea is to destroy the clay pots or damage the target. Baseball isn't quite on that level. I'm not sure what a gun can be aimed at without intent to damage it. 2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena. A gunshot definitely feels like an intense force. You could argue it for a strike from a baseball bat but it's quite relative and of course you can strike gently much more easily than you can shoot gently.
      - timschmidt 11mo ago
        > In the case of the shooting examples the idea is to destroy the clay pots or damage the target. Baseball isn't quite on that level. I'm not sure what a gun can be aimed at without intent to damage it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hunt 1984. The point of clay target shooting isn't to destroy something, it's to build a skill and test yourself against an impartial system. That's what Duck Hunt captures and what made it popular. It's why shooting is a sport in the olympics. Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering.
        AlecSchueler 11mo ago
        > Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering. I'm not debating that. I have no moral issue with shooting a clay duck, I just see using explosives to shoot anything as an act of violence. I would say the same about fishing and archery. There seems to be some confusion here about the moral aspect of this, I'm not saying it's anti-social or anything like that, only that the use of guns is inherently violent.
        swiftcoder 11mo ago
        You seem to be making some sort of qualitative argument about weapons (bullets, arrows... fishing rods?) vs non-weapons (baseballs), but I'm not seeing what makes archery categorically different from, say, playing darts, or shot-put (in all cases, a sport involving rapidly accelerating a projectile towards a goal of some kind)
        AlecSchueler 11mo ago
        No, not about weapons, about effects. Fishing is violent because it harms fish, not because a fishing rod is categorised as a weapon. I don't think archery is categorically different than darts. Shot-put is somewhat different in that nothing need be damaged in performing it but you're right that the launching of the projectile could be seen as violent. The former two meet both definitions of violence whereas the latter meets only one. The thing with a gun is that any use of them involves violence of multiple kinds.
swiftcoder 11mo ago
This is a fairly recent transition in gun use - it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people (both through hunting, and through keeping predators away from livestock/crops)
- mmooss 11mo ago
  > it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people To where and when are you referring? In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians.
  - swiftcoder 11mo ago
    > In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians My understanding is that the mobilisation for the Civil War is the only time in US history that military stockpiles of firearms have outnumbered civilian gun ownership (although possibly also at the height of WWII). Though large standing militaries (versus recruiting large numbers of civilians into militias) is a fairly recent phenomenon, so the calculation is often not as cut and dried as one might expect.

2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo ago

> Guns exist only for physical violence Skeet shooting? Targets? Most gun owners never kill anything.

AlecSchueler 11mo ago
Those are both acts of physical violence, just not against living creatures.
- swiftcoder 11mo ago
  That's a pretty extreme stance. If shooting inanimate clay pots is violence, wouldn't baseball also constitute violence?
  - AlecSchueler 11mo ago
    When I search a definition I get three results: 1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury. In the case of the shooting examples the idea is to destroy the clay pots or damage the target. Baseball isn't quite on that level. I'm not sure what a gun can be aimed at without intent to damage it. 2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena. A gunshot definitely feels like an intense force. You could argue it for a strike from a baseball bat but it's quite relative and of course you can strike gently much more easily than you can shoot gently.
    - timschmidt 11mo ago
      > In the case of the shooting examples the idea is to destroy the clay pots or damage the target. Baseball isn't quite on that level. I'm not sure what a gun can be aimed at without intent to damage it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hunt 1984. The point of clay target shooting isn't to destroy something, it's to build a skill and test yourself against an impartial system. That's what Duck Hunt captures and what made it popular. It's why shooting is a sport in the olympics. Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering.
      - AlecSchueler 11mo ago
        > Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering. I'm not debating that. I have no moral issue with shooting a clay duck, I just see using explosives to shoot anything as an act of violence. I would say the same about fishing and archery. There seems to be some confusion here about the moral aspect of this, I'm not saying it's anti-social or anything like that, only that the use of guns is inherently violent.
        swiftcoder 11mo ago
        You seem to be making some sort of qualitative argument about weapons (bullets, arrows... fishing rods?) vs non-weapons (baseballs), but I'm not seeing what makes archery categorically different from, say, playing darts, or shot-put (in all cases, a sport involving rapidly accelerating a projectile towards a goal of some kind)
        AlecSchueler 11mo ago
        No, not about weapons, about effects. Fishing is violent because it harms fish, not because a fishing rod is categorised as a weapon. I don't think archery is categorically different than darts. Shot-put is somewhat different in that nothing need be damaged in performing it but you're right that the launching of the projectile could be seen as violent. The former two meet both definitions of violence whereas the latter meets only one. The thing with a gun is that any use of them involves violence of multiple kinds.

swiftcoder 11mo ago

This is a fairly recent transition in gun use - it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people (both through hunting, and through keeping predators away from livestock/crops)

mmooss 11mo ago
> it's not that long ago that their primary use was in feeding people To where and when are you referring? In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians.
- swiftcoder 11mo ago
  > In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians My understanding is that the mobilisation for the Civil War is the only time in US history that military stockpiles of firearms have outnumbered civilian gun ownership (although possibly also at the height of WWII). Though large standing militaries (versus recruiting large numbers of civilians into militias) is a fairly recent phenomenon, so the calculation is often not as cut and dried as one might expect.