5 ms·

Guide dogs and guns: America's blind gunmen

24 points by jjp 12y ago

marak830 12y ago
Insanity. Even the author thinks so, by the tid bits at the end of the piece.
- wtbob 12y ago
  How's it insane? I think it's a pretty cool triumph of will over adversity. And it takes away every excuse I have for my poor shooting if a blind man can be a good wing shot.
  - marak830 12y ago
    I can understand how my statement would git a raw nerve, but i cant imagine giving a ranged weapon to a person who cannot see at range, makes any sense. Yes the target ahooting part was interesting, but people who intend to do bad do not wear coloured circles.
  - curun1r 12y ago
    But while the test was meant to measure a skill, he beat the test without having the skill. He used the sound of the targets on the range to aim which, while impressive, is also completely unavailable in situations for which concealed carry permits are intended. Range marksmanship can translate to real-world scenarios for sighted shooters, but it doesn't seem like it would for blind shooters.
- onion2k 12y ago
  The thing that makes guns dangerous is the willingness to use them to kill other people. In that regard, being blind or not shouldn't make any difference at all to whether or not someone should be allowed to carry one. If a sighted person can be trusted to carry one then so can a blind person. The idea of carrying a gun is that you should never need to use it, so the skills required to use it safely are rendered moot. (I'm not entirely sure even I agree with the point I'm making here, but it's fun to think about both sides of an argument.)
  - lsc 12y ago
    >The thing that makes guns dangerous is the willingness to use them to kill other people. You are, at least statistically speaking, incorrect. The majority of gunshot deaths are self-inflicted and judged to be intentional. sources: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm Firearm homicides:Number of deaths: 11,068 Firearm suicides:Number of deaths: 19,990 (the number of firearm accidents is comparatively small; slightly above 500 deaths.) for comparison: Motor vehicle traffic deaths: Number of deaths: 33,783 Note, my position on gun control also isn't entirely decided. But I do think that these statistics support my view that the right to die on your own terms is, in a very real way, a major part of why people want to own a gun, and this is not a part of the public debate, while the number of suicides is included in 'gun deaths' in the public debate. I think that is an inconsistency in how most people look at and talk about the issue.
  - andyjohnson0 12y ago
    Some fairly confused reasoning here. "The thing that makes guns dangerous is the willingness to use them to kill other people. In that regard, being blind or not shouldn't make any difference at all to whether or not someone should be allowed to carry one." That is just one factor. Another is possession of the ability and skill to use the weapon appropriately. This is why, for example, young children cannot carry weapons in public. And in that respect its very hard to make a case for blind people being able to carry lethal weapons in public places, or indeed on private property. If they can't see what they are shooting at then their use of the weapon would be inappropriate because they can't use it safely. "The idea of carrying a gun is that you should never need to use it, so the skills required to use it safely are rendered moot." You're using an obviously incorrect premise to justify a conclusion that is therefore flawed. The practical justifications for concealed carrying of firearms in the US are [1] personal protection and crime prevention. Both require a willingness on the part of the carrier to use the weapon, even if they hope that they never have to do so. [1] I live in a country where carrying weapons is (thankfully) highly illegal, so its kind of hard for me to understand the idea of "concealed carry". I hope I haven't significantly misunderstood. Also, I do appreciate that there is a constitutional justification in the US for possessing a weapon, that exists irrespective of the practical ones that I have listed.
- arethuza 12y ago
  Actually, it sounds like complete sanity to me - if these people can meet the objective criteria for carrying weapons then why not let them do it? [NB I'm not in the US and I'm rather glad my country does not have the cultural interest in guns that the US has - I have little interest in them personally.]
- patio11 12y ago
  This is one way in which a large portion of America is culturally distinct from Britain in a way which many people do not appreciate white people being capable of being culturally distinct. In much of America, use and possession of firearms is a strong cultural marker, like ear piercing or playing football or driving cars. Perhaps it is not obvious at the BBC, where this looks like "Crikey, that's the only way to make guns MORE dangerous," but for people who are in that culture, it reads more like "Blind man triumphs over adversity to claim his rightful place in the civic life of his community."
  - Mvandenbergh 12y ago
    To be fair, use and possession of firearms in Britain is also a very strong marker of a distinct rural culture. To some extent this relates to class politics as well because the upper class has traditionally been rural and derived power and wealth from agriculture, it still sees itself that way even if that's not where many people make money any more. See also the debate over fox-hunting which was seen as both a culture war between urban and rural as well as between the urban upper-middle class and the rural upper class. One of the reasons for the different class associations of hunting between the UK and the US has to do with land availability. There is and always has been loads of sparsely populated land in the US (publicly or otherwise owned) on which it is possible to hunt inexpensively or for free. That is not true in the UK and many upper-class landowners have historically rented out their land to farmers but retained the hunting, fishing, and shooting rights for themselves.
rdl 12y ago
It was interesting how in the photo of him using the sonic scope, he had one eye open and the other closed, in the manner a sighted person would use a scope. I'm really intrigued by the tech for this whole area - clearly these guys are absurd 0.001% outliers, but I wonder if you could make a (lethal or non-lethal) self defense device for reduced-vision or blind people which used image recognition. It's going to happen at physical-contact distances, but having some combination of camera, pepper spray or firearm, and safety interlock (like a nailgun, where you press it against the material to allow it to fire)? Ideally something which requires even less physical strength, vision, or other ability than a firearm (handguns are actually hard to use in self defense for a variety of situations). An impaired mobility, impaired vision person totally deserves some kind of protection, and probably needs it more than someone who can see trouble coming from a distance, or run away.
- noelwelsh 12y ago
  "An impaired mobility, impaired vision person totally deserves some kind of protection" It's the job of the police specifically and of government generally to create a safe society. If one's community is seriously so unsafe that carrying firearms is justified from the point-of-view of personal protection there are better ways to fix it than arming blind people.
  - mgarfias 12y ago
    Police in America have zero responsibility to protect an individual. They enforce laws. Also, even if they did, check on response times for a 911 call. My wife is a dispatcher with the sheriffs dept here - 20-30 mins is normal where we are at. Tell us again how the cops can protect us?
    - claudius 12y ago
      Fix your police, then.
      - bashinator 12y ago
ExpiredLink 12y ago
Funny. Reminds me of the Ray Charles scene in 'Blues Brothers'.
gglitch 12y ago
I guess it's a sign of my age, but when I read stories like this, I no longer try to carefully reason my way through to a solid judgment on whether it's right or wrong, or sensible or foolish; instead I just view it as a sign of the times we live in and wonder whether PKD, Gibson, Vonnegut, or Pynchon wrote about it first.

24 points by jjp 12y ago

marak830 12y ago

Insanity. Even the author thinks so, by the tid bits at the end of the piece.

wtbob 12y ago
How's it insane? I think it's a pretty cool triumph of will over adversity. And it takes away every excuse I have for my poor shooting if a blind man can be a good wing shot.
- marak830 12y ago
  I can understand how my statement would git a raw nerve, but i cant imagine giving a ranged weapon to a person who cannot see at range, makes any sense. Yes the target ahooting part was interesting, but people who intend to do bad do not wear coloured circles.
- curun1r 12y ago
  But while the test was meant to measure a skill, he beat the test without having the skill. He used the sound of the targets on the range to aim which, while impressive, is also completely unavailable in situations for which concealed carry permits are intended. Range marksmanship can translate to real-world scenarios for sighted shooters, but it doesn't seem like it would for blind shooters.
onion2k 12y ago
The thing that makes guns dangerous is the willingness to use them to kill other people. In that regard, being blind or not shouldn't make any difference at all to whether or not someone should be allowed to carry one. If a sighted person can be trusted to carry one then so can a blind person. The idea of carrying a gun is that you should never need to use it, so the skills required to use it safely are rendered moot. (I'm not entirely sure even I agree with the point I'm making here, but it's fun to think about both sides of an argument.)
- lsc 12y ago
  >The thing that makes guns dangerous is the willingness to use them to kill other people. You are, at least statistically speaking, incorrect. The majority of gunshot deaths are self-inflicted and judged to be intentional. sources: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/homicide.htm Firearm homicides:Number of deaths: 11,068 Firearm suicides:Number of deaths: 19,990 (the number of firearm accidents is comparatively small; slightly above 500 deaths.) for comparison: Motor vehicle traffic deaths: Number of deaths: 33,783 Note, my position on gun control also isn't entirely decided. But I do think that these statistics support my view that the right to die on your own terms is, in a very real way, a major part of why people want to own a gun, and this is not a part of the public debate, while the number of suicides is included in 'gun deaths' in the public debate. I think that is an inconsistency in how most people look at and talk about the issue.
- andyjohnson0 12y ago
  Some fairly confused reasoning here. "The thing that makes guns dangerous is the willingness to use them to kill other people. In that regard, being blind or not shouldn't make any difference at all to whether or not someone should be allowed to carry one." That is just one factor. Another is possession of the ability and skill to use the weapon appropriately. This is why, for example, young children cannot carry weapons in public. And in that respect its very hard to make a case for blind people being able to carry lethal weapons in public places, or indeed on private property. If they can't see what they are shooting at then their use of the weapon would be inappropriate because they can't use it safely. "The idea of carrying a gun is that you should never need to use it, so the skills required to use it safely are rendered moot." You're using an obviously incorrect premise to justify a conclusion that is therefore flawed. The practical justifications for concealed carrying of firearms in the US are [1] personal protection and crime prevention. Both require a willingness on the part of the carrier to use the weapon, even if they hope that they never have to do so. [1] I live in a country where carrying weapons is (thankfully) highly illegal, so its kind of hard for me to understand the idea of "concealed carry". I hope I haven't significantly misunderstood. Also, I do appreciate that there is a constitutional justification in the US for possessing a weapon, that exists irrespective of the practical ones that I have listed.
arethuza 12y ago
Actually, it sounds like complete sanity to me - if these people can meet the objective criteria for carrying weapons then why not let them do it? [NB I'm not in the US and I'm rather glad my country does not have the cultural interest in guns that the US has - I have little interest in them personally.]
patio11 12y ago
This is one way in which a large portion of America is culturally distinct from Britain in a way which many people do not appreciate white people being capable of being culturally distinct. In much of America, use and possession of firearms is a strong cultural marker, like ear piercing or playing football or driving cars. Perhaps it is not obvious at the BBC, where this looks like "Crikey, that's the only way to make guns MORE dangerous," but for people who are in that culture, it reads more like "Blind man triumphs over adversity to claim his rightful place in the civic life of his community."
- Mvandenbergh 12y ago
  To be fair, use and possession of firearms in Britain is also a very strong marker of a distinct rural culture. To some extent this relates to class politics as well because the upper class has traditionally been rural and derived power and wealth from agriculture, it still sees itself that way even if that's not where many people make money any more. See also the debate over fox-hunting which was seen as both a culture war between urban and rural as well as between the urban upper-middle class and the rural upper class. One of the reasons for the different class associations of hunting between the UK and the US has to do with land availability. There is and always has been loads of sparsely populated land in the US (publicly or otherwise owned) on which it is possible to hunt inexpensively or for free. That is not true in the UK and many upper-class landowners have historically rented out their land to farmers but retained the hunting, fishing, and shooting rights for themselves.

rdl 12y ago

It was interesting how in the photo of him using the sonic scope, he had one eye open and the other closed, in the manner a sighted person would use a scope. I'm really intrigued by the tech for this whole area - clearly these guys are absurd 0.001% outliers, but I wonder if you could make a (lethal or non-lethal) self defense device for reduced-vision or blind people which used image recognition. It's going to happen at physical-contact distances, but having some combination of camera, pepper spray or firearm, and safety interlock (like a nailgun, where you press it against the material to allow it to fire)? Ideally something which requires even less physical strength, vision, or other ability than a firearm (handguns are actually hard to use in self defense for a variety of situations). An impaired mobility, impaired vision person totally deserves some kind of protection, and probably needs it more than someone who can see trouble coming from a distance, or run away.

noelwelsh 12y ago
"An impaired mobility, impaired vision person totally deserves some kind of protection" It's the job of the police specifically and of government generally to create a safe society. If one's community is seriously so unsafe that carrying firearms is justified from the point-of-view of personal protection there are better ways to fix it than arming blind people.
- mgarfias 12y ago
  Police in America have zero responsibility to protect an individual. They enforce laws. Also, even if they did, check on response times for a 911 call. My wife is a dispatcher with the sheriffs dept here - 20-30 mins is normal where we are at. Tell us again how the cops can protect us?
  - claudius 12y ago
    Fix your police, then.
    - bashinator 12y ago

ExpiredLink 12y ago

Funny. Reminds me of the Ray Charles scene in 'Blues Brothers'.

gglitch 12y ago

I guess it's a sign of my age, but when I read stories like this, I no longer try to carefully reason my way through to a solid judgment on whether it's right or wrong, or sensible or foolish; instead I just view it as a sign of the times we live in and wonder whether PKD, Gibson, Vonnegut, or Pynchon wrote about it first.