Feeling Safe in the United States

[TacticalAssassin1]

i watched Bowling for Columbine recently and i think know why the United States of a Ameerrica is so gun crazy cautious. just hear me out.

a very very long time ago a really mean guy from China wanted to be King of the land, he conqured and killed thousands of people, children, warriors and the like. i forget his name but he basically almost owned China through war. eventually when everything was his he started wanting to be immortal because of his fear of death. he drank Mercury as it was the "elixer of life" it was making him go insane and he died a few years after, we all know him as the person who buried thousands of those stone soldiers and guards. why was he so huge on afterlife protection? he was terrified of the thought that once he was dead, all the lives he destroyed would get him. those statues are his afterlife guards to fight for him.

short story is, aggressive people are afraid they're going to be attacked and will by all means arm themselves.

now...look at what Ameeerrriica has done throughout its entire existence.

now you know why they're so terrified of everything even though they have the biggest and worst weapons of mass destruction.

its interesting really.

So everybody in America is massively more aggressive than anywhere else in the world, leading to guns being everywhere? Riiiiight...
It's just the culture over there. Lots of them own them for sport, as a hobby, not for protection. And even those who do own them for protection, well in America if you want to protect yourself you kind of need a gun. You don't want to be going up against a person with a firearm with only a pocket knife, do you?

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I understand what you mean and it's just one of those things I'll never really understand about the States.

I can understand why some Americans have guns in their home for self defence purposes, but to walk around a city with a firearm on your person?

How crappy is your town if you feel the need to walk around with a gun?

O Daystar, Almighty Clarion, hear me out.

I think you got it backwards.

Yes, there are a lot of unfriendly and strange folks walking around with guns. But they're usually not proper mean spirited, they're just intent on minding their own business; their carrying a gun might be disturbing or special to you, it is not to them.

Most people I know carry guns just because their town or neighbourhood is not crappy at all and they like to keep it that way. See, I live in a neighbourhood where, up until five years ago, we didn't even lock our front doors. We left the car keys inside the cars, and we left the car windows all the way down. Eventually, that stopped being a good idea. And I think that's quite a pity, really.

 

[chadachada123]

So this, odds are, will likely devolve into a gun control debate. That's not really what I want to talk about, though. I'm more interested into whether people in the United States are really so scared that they feel the need to carry a lethal weapon on their body at all times in order to feel secure. Because to me, knowing that everyone around me could be concealing a gun does not make me feel remotely secure. It makes me feel like I'd prefer to be back in the Sudan, where at least they tended to carry the guns out in the open.

Also, the captcha is "know your rights", which given the subject matter is pretty funny.

Some people carry guns out of fear. Others carry them solely because it's their legal right to. Others carry them "just in case." There are a billion reasons why someone would carry a firearm legally.

Beyond this, there are many different ways to carry a firearm. In most states, it is legal to carry a weapon fully concealed OR fully unconcealed. Some will feel safer with a concealed firearm because it gives them an element of surprise against a criminal, while others will feel more secure carrying openly because a criminal would be less likely to try and rob a person carrying openly.

Others just like showing off, like people that walk around with badass pets or in supped-up vehicles.

Regarding your phobia of people exercising their rights, I suggest you look into statistics and note the fact that people that purchase guns legally in the United States are far less likely to commit a felony than the average person. In the United States, the vast majority of gun deaths (barring the half of them that are suicides) are gang-related and are VERY rarely committed by people that own carry-conceal licenses.

In short: You should feel far more afraid just walking around a gang-ridden shithole than you should walking next to someone with a CCW, because legal gun owners are safer than the average person.

 

[Dangit2019]

I've never been afraid of people with small concealed handguns here. Mainly because I've never been or heard of a situation where someone pulled out their personal handgun after being appropriately trained that ended in tragedy.

Now, I'll admit, AK47s and SMGs will put me on edge, but I've never seen them carried in public (mainly because I live in the more civilized part of Texas). For me at least, the people who DON'T carry in public and decide to hole themselves in their house with a shotgun at their side while watching FOX News all day are the ones who you should truly be afraid of. They're the ones who are going to freak out and have a trigger finger for some kid who's just walking past without a care in the world. Not some guy who's simply showing off to his buddy in a (presumably) safe manner.

Someone trying to defend themselves with a firearm, especially in a crowded place are very likely to kill innocence. It happens all the time. Some guy trying to play the hero and starting a shootout with another nutjob, but then ending up shooting a little girl in the face. Im not saying your wrong to carry a concealed firearm, but it should only be a last resort.

I said "appropriately trained", and firearm trainers will regularly tell you about the dangers and side effects of pulling out a gun under every situation. They definitely won't encourage you to pull it out at every sign of violent activity. Like matial arts, they tell people that guns are to be a last line of defense for the worst possible scenarios, not what you pull out when you get nervous.

 

[chadachada123]

The above post was a response to the OP. This next paragraph is a bit snarky but is in the same vein as OP's post, and has, I feel, the same kind of fallacious/unbiased/unwarranted assumptions as many of the posts in this thread:

Spoiler

My observation is that people afraid of guns have some paranoia issues that they may want to work out.

I dislike that I'm looked at with suspicion just because I (after I apply for my CCW license) carry an extra tool for protecting my own life or the lives of others by people that most likely have never even fired a weapon before but additionally don't even CARE about the lives of others or respect the right of another to protect themselves. They additionally don't realize that it is not the job of the police to protect lives, but to apprehend criminals. It reeks of the pre-feminist ideology that a woman should just accept being raped and not fight back so that she would have a better chance of surviving. With respect, Fuck. That.

Since I can't trust a police officer to protect my own life or the lives of my family or friends, I'm taking that safety into my own hands.

Edit: Oh, yeah, and the fact that guns kill basically NOBODY in comparison to just about any other type of death.

 

[BOOM headshot65]

snip

What you talking about?? I live in a small town where almost everyone has guns because we get alot of coyotes, and most of them have cattle to tend too. We dont lock our doors. We dont lock our cars. We dont secure anything because if someone tries to get into our houses with the intent to rob, they will be met at the door by a 12-guage.

Hell, one time I was carrying out for a gentleman at the store I work at and when I was putting his stuff in his truck, I saw a mag for a pistol sitting in his cupholder. I asked him about it and he said he carried. If I hadnt asked, I would have even known. I dont fear full-autos either. One of my co-workers has a "Tactical-ized"[footnote]His own wording.[/footnote] AK-47. He showed me a picture of it one time. He has a red-dot sight, forward grip, 50-round banana mag, bi-pod, and had it repainted black. The only things he has ever killed with it are some paper targets, clay pigions, 5 decks of playing cards and a block of cheese. Of course, he would still be labeled some sort of crazy by some people who actually believe that full-autos are majical death-machines. I would own my own assualt rifle (an M-14 to be exact), but I dont feel like jumping through hoops and paying close to $17,000 for a gun that is just going to sit on my wall and look good and maybe occasionally scare of coyotes when I can do that with a $2,000 Shotgun (I want a Winchester Trenchgun). I will also want to conceal carry a revolver or heavy handgun if/when I get the job I want. Because to some people, politics is serious business, yo.

 

[Evil Smurf]

Being Irish, we have little gun crimes, the streets are relatively safe (If you stay out of the way of chavs)

what?!.......What about the IRA?

 

[ungothicdove]

I'm from a small town in Northern Minnesota so I've become pretty accustomed to guns because of how big of a hunting population there is. Generally I'm not too worried about some random person shooting me. What actually makes me nervous is when someone holds a gun improperly(not pointed at the ground or away from other people in the area). I don't care if it's not loaded, I've heard too many stories of people who thought the gun wasn't loaded shooting themselves or someone they love. So I guess what I'm saying is, proper gun handling training is important.

 

[90sgamer]

For those of you that won't bother reading further than this, I went to the United States for the first time recently and, basically, have never felt more scared in my life. 'cos of the guns. Yeah, it's going to be that kind of topic.

Moving on, if any of you want a bit more information than that, then I'll start with some quick background about me. I travel. A lot. I live in Australia, but approximately one year in every four of my life thus far has been spent overseas. I've travelled by plane, by car, and as a child my family spent three years circumnavigating the world on a yacht. At present, I have been to every continent bar Antarctica, and a total of 45 countries. Most of these countries have been third world, poor, developing, or war-torn, and as a consequence I am not exactly unfamiliar with situations that could, potentially, be very dangerous. And yet recently, as I said above, I went to the United States for the first time not too long ago and the experience seriously shook me.

The experience in question wasn't exactly anything major. We were stopping over in some town, I forget the name (we were only there for the night before driving on to Seattle), and I, the geek that I am, decided to go check out a local videogame store. While I was there, browsing the shelves, a guy walked in with a gun. Not to rob the store, in fact, I didn't realise he had it until I heard him talking to the guy at the counter, who I figure must've been some friend of his. He must've only bought it recently, or something, because he took it out and showed it off and then put it away again. And that was it. But it seriously, seriously scared me, and I spent a lot of the rest of the trip rather on edge.

Now, I've seen guns before, and they don't necessarily scare me. Yeah, I'm a pretty big pacifist and hope that I never come into a situation where violence is the only answer. Thus far, it hasn't happened yet. I don't like guns, and I rather wish the things didn't exist. At the same time, I can deal with them, given the appropriate time and place. One of my favourite travel stories goes back to eating at a local restaurant in the Sudan during their civil war (this would've been around 2002-3, I think). We were with some American tourists we'd become friends with, eating our meals, when one of the armed militia came into the store. He was a big guy, in a flowing desert robe and with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder. Within a few minutes, we'd all introduced ourselves and a few of the American kids were getting their pictures taken with him. Very friendly chap. The point of that story is that in a time and place, I can handle being around guns. A civil war in a third world country where terrorism is rife, that is a time and a place I can see a gun being acceptable to cart around in everyday life.

What shocked me about going to America was that I saw guns being carried as if people were expecting to be caught in a firefight just walking down the streets. Now, I don't live there, but is the reality of the United States really such that people feel the need to behave the same way as someone in the middle of a civil war? It just seems truly bizarre. When I'm not travelling, here in Australia, I never see a gun. Ever. Even farmers I know don't keep guns, and Australian wildlife being what it is, I can kind of see how a gun could help fend off the inevitable attack by the local super spider.

So this, odds are, will likely devolve into a gun control debate. That's not really what I want to talk about, though. I'm more interested into whether people in the United States are really so scared that they feel the need to carry a lethal weapon on their body at all times in order to feel secure. Because to me, knowing that everyone around me could be concealing a gun does not make me feel remotely secure. It makes me feel like I'd prefer to be back in the Sudan, where at least they tended to carry the guns out in the open.

Also, the captcha is "know your rights", which given the subject matter is pretty funny.

Firstly, do you not think it strange that the presence of an armed man in a zone in conflict does not unnerve you, but an armed man in a peaceful place alerts you? I believe you went to America with preconceived notions about Americans and that colored your experience more than the presence of an armed man.

I am an American. I live in the state of California which practices heavy gun control laws and has several of the most violent cities in the USA. I own a few guns and would perhaps keep one on me at all times if the state allowed. It does not, and they are therefore kept in my house.

I believe my rational is the same as most here: we are not expecting to get in a situation where a gun would be helpful, but we would prefer to have a gun handy should that unlikely situation arise. American's do not like being victims and we realize that law enforcement at the local level is not capable of preventing violent crime. Therefore one can only rely on himself to keep safe. With that established: crime is a way of life. It happens, and it happens often.

I store loaded gun near me when I sleep in case some druggy decides my apartment looks appealing. I image I will never have to use it, even in the event of a break in, because criminals look for easy targets, aren't generally seeking to kill someone, and the sound of a shotgun loading is scary as hell in a darkened two room apartment. I expect a firearm works best as a preventative measure. If I ever find myself dealing with someone who will not flee when he hears "shuk shuk", then I imagine I will be pretty glad I was armed.

To answer your question, I generally feel pretty safe despite living in a shady area. My feeling of safety is founded in crime statistics and the presence of fire arms in my control. If I did not have a weapon then I would feel somewhat less safe but still safe overall.

 

[Dense_Electric]

I've got to ask: just where in the US did you go? I've lived in Florida (one of the most lax states in the union when it comes to gun laws) for nearly ten years, and never once have I seen a person carrying openly.

Though to answer your question, no, I don't feel the need to carry a firearm on my person to be safe. I'd like to purchase a Ruger 10/22 (a semi-automatic, .22 caliber rifle) some time in the next year or two, but that would be almost strictly for shooting at a range. Home defense would be a purely secondary purpose. The only time I would realistically feel the need to carry a weapon would be going into some more shady parts of inner cities, by myself, at night.

 

[SFMB]

Where I'm from, Finland, guns are mostly considered retarded. For hunting and skeet-shooting they're ok, but swinging out in each others face you just get beaten to a pulp. Most of our firearm-based crimes are accidents, and there is a good reason for that: when one pulls out a gun in a middle of of a fight, all of the other participants tend to team up and beat up the loser with the weapon. Mind you: we don't kill the sonofabitch, we just take away it's "manhood" and let the cops take the rest.
In other words, guns do not bring safety: it's the retards who do not know how to use them property (ie the pro-gun-people, over-all) Luckily, most of the "accidental shootings" hapen in the United States of America

 

[NiPah]

Where I'm from, Finland, guns are mostly considered retarded. For hunting and skeet-shooting they're ok, but swinging out in each others face you just get beaten to a pulp. Most of our firearm-based crimes are accidents, and there is a good reason for that: when one pulls out a gun in a middle of of a fight, all of the other participants tend to team up and beat up the loser with the weapon. Mind you: we don't kill the sonofabitch, we just take away it's "manhood" and let the cops take the rest.
In other words, guns do not bring safety: it's the retards who do not know how to use them property (ie the pro-gun-people, over-all) Luckily, most of the "accidental shootings" hapen in the United States of America

Why is that lucky? Has this debate already folded into a "haha it's funny when Americans shoot themselves because they have lax gun laws"? I would expect that kindof stuff on Youtube but please don't joke about how lucky you are they all the accidental deaths happen in America and not your own country.

 

[Gavmando]

Fun fact: Psychopaths make up 1% of the population. And 2% of men are psychopaths. That means that there could possibly be up to 3 million male psychopaths in the US.

Your numbers imply that all psychopaths are men (assuming 50/50 gender split in population). Is this consistent with your assertions? Also, if psychopaths are in every nation, why do guns scare you more than psychopaths themselves?

Um. Ah. Yep. I'm wrong. I suck at maths. For some reason I cant think straight today.

Guns are a tool for killing. Simple as that. And they make it easier to kill than say, stabbing someone or beating them. Yes you can use it to defend yourself... By killing whatever is attacking you. The fact that guns are so easy to get in the US means that there would be psychopaths with guns. And a psychopath with a gun scares me more than a psychopath with a knife. (Not much more mind you.) The psychopath is still scary, just even more so with a gun.

And if you couple this with the American ideal of, "I will make it by any means." You start to run into some problems when you have desperate people who's version of "any means" is by taking it from someone else. And guns mean that it becomes far easier to kill or threaten someone to get what you want. I'm not saying that the removal of guns will stop crime, i'm just saying that it will become harder for criminals to do bad things to people.

It's almost like the whole ideals of working hard for what you've got have been taken to the extreme degree. "I've worked hard for this, and if you try to take it from me, i'll kill you. And I have a gun, so it will be easier for me." And this becomes a problem when it comes up against the "I will make it by any means" ideal that has also been taken to the extreme degree.

Unfortunately, I think this is a by-product of capitalisim. Not everyone can win, so they start acting outside the rules of the game. With very little safety net for people in the US, ie: lack of universal healthcare and low social security payments, people become desperate very easily when they fall on hard times. And if they have a gun, then they can start taking what they want far easier than if they didnt.

 

[False Nobility]

I'm an American against the right to bear arms.

I'm also a fetus that is pro-choice.

And a homophobic lesbian.

 

[aeroblaster]

If anything America is the place where you should feel SAFEST. Since everyone has guns, no one's gonna use them cause there's a super high chance the other guy has one too.

Annually, less than 0.44% of guns in the USA have been actually fired at someone.
So yeah, America is pretty safe. There's a crap ton of laws involved when you simply fire a gun, so people aren't really going to start randomly shooting each other at any time. Everyone's just like hey, check out my gun. Cool.

 

[CrazyMedic]

Exactly where abouts do you live in Australia? Where I'm from I'd sure as shit feel a lot safer walking around with a firearm strapped to me at all times.

It would depend on the area, your experiences in the area and how you generally feel walking about that area. You didn't know the town and you only spent the night there, you don't really know if it was a dangerous place or not.

from what I understand their basic logic is the same as your grandmother who makes you bring a coat, "better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it" and I understand their reasoning, I more just don't trust myself enough with a firearm, other wise I would get an open carry.

 

[floppylobster]

Have you not been to South Africa? Like Johannesburg? I seem to have traveled as much as you (I live in NZ), I grew up in a shitty neighborhood and lived in a shitty part of Sydney for a while. But I have never felt as unsafe as I did walking around some parts of South Africa. Botswana and Namibia to the north are fine, but SA. Makes the US feel very safe.

 

[Souleks]

Depends on where you are most people around here don't carry guns and more people have guns for fun and hunting as opposed to feeling unsafe I really wouldn't worry about it.I personally don't own a gun and have never felt that I might need one unless its 11:00pm in Downtown Detroit.As long as you keep your hands clean and don't associate with the wrong kind of people you never really notice how many guns there are I guess.

 

[sunsetspawn]

EDIT: This is a country where you can drive a car at fifteen and a half years old (depending on the state). I'm much more terrified of those idiot drivers than any amount of guns.

This. There are a fuck of a lot more vehicle fatalities than gun fatalities, and most of the gun fatalities are due to illegal guns. When you add alcohol to the vehicle it becomes almost insane how dangerous it is, and you NEVER know who's been drinking and driving, so every time you get behind the wheel you SHOULD BE TERRIFIED!

But you're not.

 

[FaceFaceFace]

I live in Texas. TEXAS. And I have never seen a gun in a someone's possession outside of police officers or people at shooting ranges. So I don't really know what any of you are talking about, sorry.