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In my country (Australia) I believe most people would be a little uncomfortable if they knew they were in a house with a gun. I'd certainly think the owner was

In my country (Australia) I believe most people would be a little uncomfortable if they knew they were in a house with a gun. I'd certainly think the owner was a bit odd/unhinged unless they owned it as part of their employment (farmer, roo shooter etc.). That said, I don't see this as a big deal. It's always been possible to mail weapons from a jurisdiction with easier access to them. Tor black markets just make it a little easier to organise.

TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago
I aalso live in Australia, and I can offer a different perspective. I grew up in Port Lincoln in South Australia. My father owned a couple of .22 rifles, I've fired shotguns a few times, currently live in Launceston in Tasmania, more than half the 30 odd guys I work with own one or more (mostly more) guns. None of them require a firearm for work purposes, they're all hunters / enthusiasts. Most of the people I know are comfortable with guns. None of the gun owners I know are "odd/unhinged", and I think that is an uncharitable characterisation of gun owners in this country. For many people firearms are amazing creations of metallurgy and machining, and hold artistic values in and of themselves, in the same way some people appreciate knives or swords, or cars or aeroplanes.
wyager 12y ago
> I believe most people would be a little uncomfortable if they knew they were in a house with a gun. And most Americans would be uncomfortable going to a nude beach with their German friends. That says nothing about its morality or safety.
harshreality 12y ago
If someone isn't comfortable in a house with a gun, regardless of the upstanding character of the owner, that might indicate a harmful phobia of certain kinds of inanimate objects, but it's their choice not to visit a gun owner's house and nobody is going to take that choice away from them. A law against gun ownership is vastly different. Plenty of people don't like drugs, particularly banned narcotics and stimulants. I might even be uncomfortable in certain instances visiting someone who I know has drugs. Presumably if they have them, they use them on occasion. Let's ban drugs, right? Who cares whose privacy and property rights are violated as long as I feel better?
- frapandolf 12y ago
  I don't think that is a particularly fair correlation. Guns are (historically) tools created with the express purpose of KILLING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, capitalized for emphasis. Being uncomfortable around them is not indicative of some kind of basic phobia of inanimate objects.
  - golemotron 12y ago
    > Guns are (historically) tools created with the express purpose of KILLING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, capitalized for emphasis. I've never been able to fathom that argument. Even if a gun was made to kill people (one could equally argue that a particular gun is made for target practice or hunting and often that is true) the intentions of the maker of an object have absolutely nothing to do with whether you should be scared or not. As an example, suppose someone hits you on the head with a hammer. As you sit in the hospital with a concussion is it any solace that the maker of the hammer intended it to be used on nails?
  - ta82828 12y ago
    Maybe it's not a basic phobia, but the grandparent poster implied that anyone who likes target shooting and owns guns for that purpose is "odd/unhinged". I don't understand why people can say, "oh he's a farmer, so he's not insane for having a gun" but the moment someone's not a farmer, they're suddenly unhinged or obsessed with violence, as opposed to perhaps, a target shooter or other kind of hobbyist. It's like they have this mental pattern "grandpa with a gun" where it's ok, and everything else just sets off alarm bells. It's odd, because it's usually liberals (in the US this is a liberal/conservative thing) that have more "openness to experience" but for some reason they are rarely open to the experience of growing up with guns, considering them dangerous but useful tools, using them for sport and hunting, and not being insane while doing so. Weapons of war have historically become objects of sport: it happened with fencing and archery - firearms are no different.
    - golemotron 12y ago
      Agreed. People are very bad at assessing true risk so they go with their feelings. Pointing out how silly it is rarely works.

TheSpiceIsLife 12y ago

I aalso live in Australia, and I can offer a different perspective. I grew up in Port Lincoln in South Australia. My father owned a couple of .22 rifles, I've fired shotguns a few times, currently live in Launceston in Tasmania, more than half the 30 odd guys I work with own one or more (mostly more) guns. None of them require a firearm for work purposes, they're all hunters / enthusiasts. Most of the people I know are comfortable with guns. None of the gun owners I know are "odd/unhinged", and I think that is an uncharitable characterisation of gun owners in this country. For many people firearms are amazing creations of metallurgy and machining, and hold artistic values in and of themselves, in the same way some people appreciate knives or swords, or cars or aeroplanes.

wyager 12y ago

> I believe most people would be a little uncomfortable if they knew they were in a house with a gun. And most Americans would be uncomfortable going to a nude beach with their German friends. That says nothing about its morality or safety.

harshreality 12y ago

If someone isn't comfortable in a house with a gun, regardless of the upstanding character of the owner, that might indicate a harmful phobia of certain kinds of inanimate objects, but it's their choice not to visit a gun owner's house and nobody is going to take that choice away from them. A law against gun ownership is vastly different. Plenty of people don't like drugs, particularly banned narcotics and stimulants. I might even be uncomfortable in certain instances visiting someone who I know has drugs. Presumably if they have them, they use them on occasion. Let's ban drugs, right? Who cares whose privacy and property rights are violated as long as I feel better?

frapandolf 12y ago
I don't think that is a particularly fair correlation. Guns are (historically) tools created with the express purpose of KILLING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, capitalized for emphasis. Being uncomfortable around them is not indicative of some kind of basic phobia of inanimate objects.
- golemotron 12y ago
  > Guns are (historically) tools created with the express purpose of KILLING OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, capitalized for emphasis. I've never been able to fathom that argument. Even if a gun was made to kill people (one could equally argue that a particular gun is made for target practice or hunting and often that is true) the intentions of the maker of an object have absolutely nothing to do with whether you should be scared or not. As an example, suppose someone hits you on the head with a hammer. As you sit in the hospital with a concussion is it any solace that the maker of the hammer intended it to be used on nails?
- ta82828 12y ago
  Maybe it's not a basic phobia, but the grandparent poster implied that anyone who likes target shooting and owns guns for that purpose is "odd/unhinged". I don't understand why people can say, "oh he's a farmer, so he's not insane for having a gun" but the moment someone's not a farmer, they're suddenly unhinged or obsessed with violence, as opposed to perhaps, a target shooter or other kind of hobbyist. It's like they have this mental pattern "grandpa with a gun" where it's ok, and everything else just sets off alarm bells. It's odd, because it's usually liberals (in the US this is a liberal/conservative thing) that have more "openness to experience" but for some reason they are rarely open to the experience of growing up with guns, considering them dangerous but useful tools, using them for sport and hunting, and not being insane while doing so. Weapons of war have historically become objects of sport: it happened with fencing and archery - firearms are no different.
  - golemotron 12y ago
    Agreed. People are very bad at assessing true risk so they go with their feelings. Pointing out how silly it is rarely works.