Psychology of Gun owners

[Rahheemme]

For a lot of people, I'm sure that it's more of an empowering thing. A large, metal penis to replace the unsatisfactory one in your pants. I own firearms for a sense of safety. I'm scared shitless of absolutely everything, so having any kind of weapon in my hand makes me feel better, especially at night. I don't even care if I have a reason to USE it. The fact that it's there if I need it helps calm my nerves immensely.

I'd also like to point out that the people we REALLY need to be scared of don't need guns.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

That said, I'd go with the Zero Sum argument, based on the intrinsic simplicity of the mechanics involved in firearms. I'm entirely certain a full-auto AK47 could be manufactured from memory by a child, using primitive tools. However, I disagree with your listed assumptions.

yes, but now what is the chance of the gun firing without catastrophic failure?

Probably about the same as a factory-build one. The AK47 is well known for being sturdy, even with less than optimal tolerances on parts. I meant only to illustrate the simplicity of the gun - "put heavy, roundish thing into sturdy tube, then make explosion on one side, while pointing at target." Anything else is improvement on the well-proven original design.

 

[Akai Shizuku]

On the government side of things, all the people who have spoken about the government not being able to completely sack your rights if you bear arms are absolutely correct. People with all the money and power can do many things, but if your entire populace is armed and you're trying to screw them, the oppressive silliness won't last long.

Personally, if my state or the US enacted total gun control, I would instantly become a criminal. I refuse to allow anyone to take away my basic right to defend my family.

On the other side of things, I wholly believe in partial gun control. There is no reason I can possibly think of why a civilian needs to own military grade assault rifles. That's going way beyond the scope of home defense. I mean, I'm not talking about an off the shelf AR-15, I'm speaking of a pimped-out, switched to full auto assault rifle with more military hardware than the actual military uses. It's just not necessary.

What kind of commie-speak is this?

Since when does necessary have anything to do with it? A gun is a gun is a gun.

I find your inquiry ignorant, as I myself am a communist and I support civilian ownership and carrying of most weapons (excluding explosives for obvious reasons). To answer the post you quoted, I'd love to have a military-grade assault rifle. Why? Because it's awesome. What's more effective will help you protect yourself better, regardless of whether the military has it or not. I also apply this point to ammunition. I would much rather have hollow points than FMJ because why use forty rounds when you can just use one?
/argument

 

[mobsterlobster]

I hate hunting. I can't understand how anybody can get enjoyment from hurting and killing an animal. It just boggles my mind that someone would see an animal in the wild and think "I want that dead".

On the other hand, I'd love to own a gun. I live in England so that's pretty much impossible. I don't know how I'd go about getting a gun. But I would love to threaten a burglar in my house with a gun, shoot him in the leg then stand on the wound and make him scream. Okay maybe I shouldn't own a gun. I think I need to see a therapist.

 

[FiveSpeedf150]

On the government side of things, all the people who have spoken about the government not being able to completely sack your rights if you bear arms are absolutely correct. People with all the money and power can do many things, but if your entire populace is armed and you're trying to screw them, the oppressive silliness won't last long.

Personally, if my state or the US enacted total gun control, I would instantly become a criminal. I refuse to allow anyone to take away my basic right to defend my family.

On the other side of things, I wholly believe in partial gun control. There is no reason I can possibly think of why a civilian needs to own military grade assault rifles. That's going way beyond the scope of home defense. I mean, I'm not talking about an off the shelf AR-15, I'm speaking of a pimped-out, switched to full auto assault rifle with more military hardware than the actual military uses. It's just not necessary.

What kind of commie-speak is this?

Since when does necessary have anything to do with it? A gun is a gun is a gun.

I find your inquiry ignorant, as I myself am a communist and I support civilian ownership and carrying of most weapons (excluding explosives for obvious reasons). To answer the post you quoted, I'd love to have a military-grade assault rifle. Why? Because it's awesome. What's more effective will help you protect yourself better, regardless of whether the military has it or not. I also apply this point to ammunition. I would much rather have hollow points than FMJ because why use forty rounds when you can just use one?
/argument

Well, we strongly disagree on politics but on firearms we're about even. I'd buy you a beer.

Then I'd like to pick your brain, but that's for another thread.

 

[CaptainCrunch]

so......... I should be worried if my child were to make an AK47 out of tinker toys........

Yes, if your child's tinker toys are made of high-grade steel, and you let said child play with machining tools.

 

[ipop@you]

Well i have never fired a gun and would only want to to shoot targets and i completely abhor the killing of anything whether they threaten me or not. I say this however i do have a small arsenal of (mainly foreign) close range weapons such as sai and a katana but i would never use these to kill someone merely to injure them severely enough to make them stay in place until police arrive but not severly enough to make them die.

 

[FiveSpeedf150]

That said, I'd go with the Zero Sum argument, based on the intrinsic simplicity of the mechanics involved in firearms. I'm entirely certain a full-auto AK47 could be manufactured from memory by a child, using primitive tools. However, I disagree with your listed assumptions.

yes, but now what is the chance of the gun firing without catastrophic failure?

Probably about the same as a factory-build one. The AK47 is well known for being sturdy, even with less than optimal tolerances on parts. I meant only to illustrate the simplicity of the gun - "put heavy, roundish thing into sturdy tube, then make explosion on one side, while pointing at target." Anything else is improvement on the well-proven original design.

so......... I should be worried if my child were to make an AK47 out of tinker toys........

Assembly/Disassembly of the AK47 is childishly easy, but the manufacture would still require machining tools and some good hunks of metal.

Now, bombs are easier....

 

[Pletch]

here here mobsterlobster. I definitely agree, maybe not about making people scream, but about the whole hunting thing. I don't really like the idea of hunting. I just don't like killing things... unless they're mosquitos.

 

[The_ModeRazor]

So why do people want their guns so badly?

You pretty much summed it up. They want power - to take a life if they wish.
Isn't that convenient.

 

[Raregolddragon]

self/home defense, that and my family has a rather long history of being A a law man or B a outlaw.

In fact I am a decedent of Sam Bass. (look him up)

My Grandfather was the serif of Sweetwater and before that his dad was a Texas ranger and before that a long line rangers or marshals or an outlaw.

Basically my family is made up of cowboys.

 

[SomeUnregPunk]

Gun laws are overated,
Just watch Penn and Teller on Gun Laws
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCXtfR0_roE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtqufzEFCzw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoIKlO20RqM&feature=related

Penn and Teller? Are you kidding me? People actually take those two sensationalists as source material to prove their arguments?

 

[mdk31]

I plan on eventually owning a gun. I have several reasons for it. First and foremost is home defense. I want to be able to ward off or even apprehend a home invader until the police arrive, or, if absolutely necessary, shoot him.

I'd also like it for use in the extremely unlikely case of foreign invasion. There's a quote I heard once, from a Japanese World War II General. It went something like this: "We could never invade the United States. There would be a rifle between every blade of grass." If someone invaded the US, I'd want to defend my home and country against the invaders.

 

[solidstatemind]

Some scattershot (HA!) thoughts:

-I own a pistol, and had a permit to carry concealed up until I moved from the East coast to the West coast. Never have drawn it or fired it outside of a shooting range, but there certainly were a couple of times where I felt much safer for having it.

-Related, when I was going to school, we were pretty poor, working part time. No support from my family (my father had passed away by then). Lived in a BAD neighborhood-- gunshots heard on most nights. Crackheads tried to bust into my car and my house more than once. That's why I bought the gun and got the permit.

-Do not confuse 'communist' and 'socialist' and 'fascist'

-Don't get overly reliant on statistics to prove your point. To quote Disraeli, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Numbers can be manipulated to support a particular position, and often are.

-The biggest issue with gun control is that there is absolutely no way in Hell that the US government could collect all the firearms that are out there. Only the people who are law-abiding citizens will voluntarily turn in their guns because the gov't tells them to. You really think the criminals are going to care if it suddenly is illegal for them to own guns? So, the only people who have guns will be the criminals (well, and those civilians who choose to flaut the law... and by definition, they would be criminals too). Need a good example? It's illegal for a convicted felon to be in possession of a gun, or even try to get one (in all States, I believe). Go look up the reported number of violations of that law... and remember, those are just the ones they caught.

-For those who dismiss the concept of the Second Amendment to the Constitution and the need for a populace to protect themselves against the tyranny of the government, please go read up on the history of gun-control in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany.

 

[heyheysg]

Ok let me try to summarise the thread so far

1)Cops are a deterrent, but they are pretty useless except for clean ups. Just note: In cities with strict gun controls, cops do have guns as well as other non-lethal weapons like tasers. In Japan cops train in Judo and Kendo many hours a day so that in case of an arrest, there is no need to fire upon the suspect (innocent or guilty).

Solution? Fitter cops who have to undergo mandatory fitness tests like the military, martial arts training, non-lethal weaponry for regular crooks (rubber bullets, riot shields, tasers)

2) Criminals do use guns, So despite 64999 gun owners not committing crimes, crimes are committed with weapons that are made to kill people.

Question: If it came down to it, would you have guns removed from all citizens and criminals and left in the hands of the authorities, or have a anyone can own a gun policy?

It is much easier to run away from a man with a knife than a man with a gun. If Colombia was besieged by a pair of knife wielding madmen, would they have been stopped easier?

3) Which leads to the next question. Is a citizen's revolution possible? The Police, Military, Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service all own weapons, are better trained and have better weapons. The only way to overthrow a corrupt government would be for the military to act on it, then it would either be a revolution or a coup d'tat.

Would you attack one of the uniformed guys on the other side if it came down to it? What if some of them are on your side? SWAT vs Delta Force? Which side is right, which side has the constitution on their side?

4) One thing I would agree on, it would be very hard for a country to invade the US using conventional forces.

But suppose I was invading the US and there were pockets of resistance everywhere. I would make a simple ultimatium.

"If you do not surrender, we will nuke a city every hour"

So it's basically back to an arms race, your pistol/assault rifle/tanks/planes/bombs vs theirs

 

[Skratt]

I own a gun and I do not hunt. Instead, I refuse to fall prey to criminals who seek defenseless victims. Anyone who asks why people own guns shows their naïveté. Must be nice in their hide-your-head-in-the-sand world. On a tangent note, gun owners will never decrease crime as criminals commit crimes regardless. Gun owners are simply less likely to be DEAD.

Statistics conducted in USA shows that you are more likely to get shot in your home if you own a gun, and not by a perpetrator, but by another member of your home.
Discuss.

Oh, and about the head in the sand: Guess what, no one IN MY CITY owns a handgun, and as far as I know, the worst that has happened this year is that a bike got stolen. You just have a violent example of tunnellvision ignorance.

Statistics can be summed up in one simple statement: Correlation does NOT equal causation. That being said, you are more likely to get in a car accident if you drive a car. You are more likely to get in a plane crash if you fly in a plane, and you are more likely to get your bike stolen if you own a bike. If you just didn't drive a car, fly in a plane or own a bike, none of those things would ever happen to you. Here's your sign...

Also, where you live is completely relevant to the level of violent crime you will experience - regardless of the number of guns owned. Guns are simply a means to an ends, and do not actually perpetrate the crime, nor do they prevent it by being absent.

 

[solidstatemind]

I'll address a couple of points:

Ok let me try to summarise the thread so far

1)Cops are a deterrent, but they are pretty useless except for clean ups. Just note: In cities with strict gun controls, cops do have guns as well as other non-lethal weapons like tasers. In Japan cops train in Judo and Kendo many hours a day so that in case of an arrest, there is no need to fire upon the suspect (innocent or guilty).

Solution? Fitter cops who have to undergo mandatory fitness tests like the military, martial arts training, non-lethal weaponry for regular crooks (rubber bullets, riot shields, tasers)

The problem isn't the training or methods of the police. The problem is their response time. Just because of the distances involved, even a cruiser out on patrol is going to take a few minutes to reach the scene, and by then the crime has already been committed. This is entirely unavoidable.

2) Criminals do use guns, So despite 64999 gun owners not committing crimes, crimes are committed with weapons that are made to kill people.

Question: If it came down to it, would you have guns removed from all citizens and criminals and left in the hands of the authorities, or have a anyone can own a gun policy?

It is much easier to run away from a man with a knife than a man with a gun. If Colombia was besieged by a pair of knife wielding madmen, would they have been stopped easier?

As I mentioned above, there are approximately 192 MILLION firearms in the US today (probably more), and those are just the legally obtained ones. And even if you did try to round them all up, there are going to be those folks who absolutely will not give theirs up, and as a result, you've only disarmed everyone else and not the ones that probably are most likely to misuse them.

3) Which leads to the next question. Is a citizen's revolution possible? The Police, Military, Coast Guard, FBI, Secret Service all own weapons, are better trained and have better weapons. The only way to overthrow a corrupt government would be for the military to act on it, then it would either be a revolution or a coup d'tat.

Would you attack one of the uniformed guys on the other side if it came down to it? What if some of them are on your side? SWAT vs Delta Force? Which side is right, which side has the constitution on their side?

Uhm, yes, a citizen's revolt would be entirely possible. You're discounting a couple of things: soldiers and policemen are citizens as well, and likely at least some would mutiny, particularly if they were ordered to put down widespread insurrection. And regardless, technology and training do not necessarily guarantee victory. See: Vietnam.

4) One thing I would agree on, it would be very hard for a country to invade the US using conventional forces.

But suppose I was invading the US and there were pockets of resistance everywhere. I would make a simple ultimatium.

"If you do not surrender, we will nuke a city every hour"

So it's basically back to an arms race, your pistol/assault rifle/tanks/planes/bombs vs theirs

Well, see, that wouldn't work: if you've invaded a country, why would you render portions of it unusable to you with nuclear weapons? And besides, the partisans would welcome that, because you'd just rally more citizens to their cause.

EDIT: wow, had to clarify a couple of points. That was pretty sad in the initial form.