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Pistol sights

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Re: Pistol sights

#201

Post by cmyr »

mi100hael wrote: post #131
rhcom2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more with this. As a liberal gun owner I've often thought that some sort of class for other progressives on gun safety, gun history and gun culture would lead to better and effective gun laws. Yeah 50 caliber sniper rifles, fully auto machine guns and AR-15s look and sound scary... but when it comes to gun crime in this country they're a drop in the bucket compared to hand guns.

> Yeah 50 caliber sniper rifles, fully auto machine guns and AR-15s look and sound scary... The word you are looking for is "awesome"

I'm curious about how you think about your feelings here. What do you think makes these things seem 'awesome', to you?

When I was a kid, I definitely thought that guns were 'cool', in some sense. I thought about them, I read about them, and I desired access to them. As I grew up and came to understand that (in the general case, and certainly for hand guns and the stuff mentioned above) guns are tools designed to end human lives, it became very hard for me to see them as anything more than a tragic symbol of human littleness.

What does 'awesome' mean, to you? Does it mean that they are symbols of power? Something else?

Re: Pistol sights

#202

Post by maxerickson »

Karunamon wrote: post #198
maxerickson wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes both ways. People project their gun attitudes onto their grandma's that have never been attacked anyway and demand that we live in a less safe society because of it. My mom was pretty unnerved when her house got broken into (she was there, asleep, didn't wake up, wasn't attacked). She wouldn't be any better off with a gun because she isn't prepared to use it. Effective restrictions on guns would be a 100% win…

Effective restrictions on guns would be a 100% win for her "Effective restrictions on guns" don't exist in the same way that "effective restrictions on drugs" don't exist. So no, your conclusion is not "reasonable". It is completely unrealistic and runs contrary to the most basic laws, not to mention the culture of the country. I'm much more interested in realistic solutions that don't involve trampling on basic righ…

I initiated my comments in this thread by proposing to change the basic laws (or at least, acknowledging that they are a big factor).

And it isn't that I expect such a discussion to not be emotionally loaded, I'm just going to reject assertions that only one sort of emotional loading is warranted.

I agree it will take a long time to impose effective restrictions on guns in the US, we should get started as soon as possible. I think looking at Britain and Australia make it clear enough that gun restrictions do make a difference (even if their more generous social welfare systems tend to lead to lower general levels of criminal violence to begin with).

Re: Pistol sights

#203

Post by MrFantastic »

uberchet wrote: post #54
seibelj wrote: post #51

Anyone who is diehard anti-gun for personal use, I recommend taking a pistol class from a reputable organization, and keep an open mind. No one is telling you to get a license or buy a gun, just go take a class. They will teach you all about safety, how to shoot, gun cleaning and maintenance, and all of the basic skills needed to properly own a gun. Then if you are still diehard anti-gun, great! But if you have no ex…

This is good advice. I grew up hunting and shooting, but in adulthood have come to agree that reasonable gun control is really something we have to do. However, the gun vs. anti-gun divide in the US is as pure a split as exists on any policy position. Few on one side know or understand the thinking or positions of any on the other. People who don't shoot often don't know even the most basic things, like what differen…

It's sad that wanting background checks is seen as anti-gun.

The Conservatives think that HRC was going to their house and take all their guns. That wasn't her position at all.

I agree that everyone should familiarize themselves with guns but for practical self defense purposes a shotgun and a rifle are not that different. A shotgun only spreads about 8inches at a self defense range ( 10m or so ).

If the range is longer than that it's more a skirmish that Self Defense.

.22LR is the most common caliber in homicides. I'd rather have a 9mm, but the best gun is the one you can access when you need it.

Re: Pistol sights

#204

Post by LyndsySimon »

arethuza wrote: post #89
seibelj wrote: post #51

Anyone who is diehard anti-gun for personal use, I recommend taking a pistol class from a reputable organization, and keep an open mind. No one is telling you to get a license or buy a gun, just go take a class. They will teach you all about safety, how to shoot, gun cleaning and maintenance, and all of the basic skills needed to properly own a gun. Then if you are still diehard anti-gun, great! But if you have no ex…

Out of interest, do high schools in the US teach this kind of stuff? The reason I ask is that my son was taught to shoot, gun maintenance etc. at his high school in the UK and we're usually regarded as "anti-gun" as a country!

In most areas of the US, no. There is a resurgence of shotgun sports (sporting clays, trap, etc.) as school sports in rural areas, but not really anything specific to safety.

Re: Pistol sights

#205

Post by Bartweiss »

rkangel wrote: post #114
dfsegoat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I think guns belong on shooting ranges, and nowhere else, unless used for a practical purpose, such as hunting. I take great issue with this. You say you came from 'country living' - but I find that hard to believe in light of your comment above. Anyone who lives in the country, where it will take the cops 10-20 minutes to respond, knows damn well why we have the 2A and the right to keep firearms in our…

I'm interested that you don't see this as an issue mostly with police response time. In the UK, the situation is a bit different: Rural/Country living is still much closer to urban areas because the country is much smaller The strict control over firearms means that it's very unlikely that a home invasion robbery is going to involve guns on their part. Personally, if that happens - despite the fact that I own 3 shotg…

> I'm interested that you don't see this as an issue mostly with police response time.

I think this marks some confusion over exactly what constitutes 'rural'. The UK certainly has rural settings in terms of town size, small access roads, culture, etc. But having spent time in both, the UK just doesn't have anything like the US in terms of distance.

Salmon, Idaho is several hours from... anything, really. You could go from Inverness to Glasgow in about the time it takes to get to an actual city. It's down in a canyon, so there's no FM radio, much less cell phone service. The police force is eight people, with a guarantee that at least one will be on duty 24 hours a day.

If that one officer gets a call about an issue, he might well have a 20 minute drive - speeding, on empty roads - to the farm where there's a problem. And Salmon is the county seat. There are much smaller towns and farm communities out there. This isn't a problem you can realistically solve with better policing or more money, because things legitimately are that far apart.

---

Someone in my extended family spends winters snowed in - some years there's simply no access in or out of a 'town of 50 people for ~4 months straight. He keeps a rifle handy to shoot coyotes that come for his livestock. Are we really going to go with "he should wait for a police response, or insurance compensation"?

A friend of mine, with an exceedingly liberal family, grew up with a high-powered rifle at home, the sort of thing people regularly try to ban. For fear that in his town of six people, there was no other way to deal with a bear or moose that got aggressive.

A friend of a friend is disabled and chronically unemployed in the rural midwest. Hunted meat makes up a nontrivial percentage of his diet, because ammo is cheaper than food. This being America, saying "take away his gun but give him lifelong welfare" isn't going to work, and he'd hate you for it anyway - he's proud that he feeds himself just fine.

I'm not trying to be snarky here. In very rural America, this is the situation for a lot of people. These are people who don't live near any gun crime, but own and use guns for everyday purposes. It has more in common with northern Canada than any place in England or western Europe.

Re: Pistol sights

#206

Post by Bartweiss »

TallGuyShort wrote: post #185
Bartweiss wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't they pretty consistently pass on Second Amendment cases? I know they argue that it's a collective right, not an individual one, but I'm not making a moral or legal claim. All that seems relevant is "the ACLU does not litigate cases to expand legal gun ownership". So now it's chicken-and-egg. Is the ACLU better than the NRA, but uninterested? Or are their different tactics and results a product of the differ…

Oh I was just highlighting them as staunch advocates for the 1st and 4th amendments. If one is looking for a staunch advocate of all those rights, I'd suggest the Libertarian Party but they haven't been able to gain that much traction in elections and consequently haven't been as effective as they could be, IMO. edit: as an aside, I'm big on the second amendment but stopped contributing to the NRA precisely because,…

Yep, agreed on all counts. I was mostly just curious about whether the NRA is worse than it needs to be, or whether 2nd Amendment issues are so warped and conflicted in the US that any group entering that space will become something ugly.

The ACLU has a great record on 1 and 4, as do several of the groups they work with. "Restore the Fourth" is fantastic, and you can guess which amendment they care about.

The NRA is strange and uncomfortable to a lot of people, I think. I share your complaint, but they have strong stances on so many different issues that I've met people who object to them for half a dozen different reasons.

Re: Pistol sights

#207

Post by Bartweiss »

adamsea wrote: post #189
Bartweiss wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But don't they pretty consistently pass on Second Amendment cases? I know they argue that it's a collective right, not an individual one, but I'm not making a moral or legal claim. All that seems relevant is "the ACLU does not litigate cases to expand legal gun ownership". So now it's chicken-and-egg. Is the ACLU better than the NRA, but uninterested? Or are their different tactics and results a product of the differ…

May be relevant - from the ACLU website: "In striking down Washington D.C.'s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court's decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia. The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court's conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendmen…

Yeah, that's what I was thinking of with individual versus collective rights. The final sentence is a nice acknowledgement of the collective right, but as far as I can tell the (national) ACLU has never taken a rights-expanding stance on a specific gun issue. (Some state orgs may have.)

In practice, they don't advocate for Second Amendment protection. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think it would destroy their effectiveness elsewhere without achieving much, but their acknowledgement of the right hasn't involved them actually getting involved with legal cases so far.

Re: Pistol sights

#208

Post by Karunamon »

maxerickson wrote: post #202
Karunamon wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Effective restrictions on guns would be a 100% win for her "Effective restrictions on guns" don't exist in the same way that "effective restrictions on drugs" don't exist. So no, your conclusion is not "reasonable". It is completely unrealistic and runs contrary to the most basic laws, not to mention the culture of the country. I'm much more interested in realistic solutions that don't involve trampling on basic righ…

I initiated my comments in this thread by proposing to change the basic laws (or at least, acknowledging that they are a big factor). And it isn't that I expect such a discussion to not be emotionally loaded, I'm just going to reject assertions that only one sort of emotional loading is warranted. I agree it will take a long time to impose effective restrictions on guns in the US, we should get started as soon as pos…

So allow me to get meta for a moment here. Do you want to be right, or do you want to change people's minds?

Ignore the fact that we see this on two different levels and don't even agree on first principles for a moment. Let's just talk about the pure practicality and rhetoric involved.

From a purely objective standpoint, a great many people in this country believe in the 2nd amendment as written.

There is no legislative solution that doesn't involve their consent. As much as you'd like to drag them over kicking and screaming, you can't. Our legislative system has safeguards in mind to prevent minority opinions from being imposed on the rest of the country. You're talking a 2/3 majority in both houses of Congress, or a constitutional convention involving 2/3 of states, to amend the constitution.

Please realize this. It's important. There's your goal which even I can agree is admirable, and then there's talk of realistic ways of achieving it, which is a much more interesting conversation, and one you sadly don't seem to want to have.

So that said - why the tone-deaf posturing? Do your comments here advance your goal of reducing gun violence in any way?

Or rather, do they confirm every stereotype of anti-gun people ever cooked up?

Do you realize your earlier conversation could be run verbatim by the freakin' NRA as an example of what they fight against, generating more support for the exact opposite of what you hope to accomplish?

Re: Pistol sights

#209

Post by solatic »

anologwintermut wrote: post #98
seibelj wrote: post #51

Anyone who is diehard anti-gun for personal use, I recommend taking a pistol class from a reputable organization, and keep an open mind. No one is telling you to get a license or buy a gun, just go take a class. They will teach you all about safety, how to shoot, gun cleaning and maintenance, and all of the basic skills needed to properly own a gun. Then if you are still diehard anti-gun, great! But if you have no ex…

I happen to like guns and shooting. It's a good point to understand the appeal of guns and also "the other side." But there is a point you are leaving out that comes up if you talk to anyone who does treat firearms seriously: many people do not take those classes and/or do not treat guns safely. Go to a range on Sunday and that will be really clear. Or read the comment history by people who bring this up whenever gun…

But it gets to the heart of the matter of why responsible people who are pro gun rights feel like progressives aren't willing to consider productive compromises that address the real fundamental problems. Banning "assault weapons" would be largely ineffective. Requiring people to demonstrate basic safety as determined by an apolitical third party (National Guard in their state?) before being licensed would probably dramatically cut down on gun accidents and nobody would have to be afraid that their right to self-protection is being taken away from them.

Re: Pistol sights

#210

Post by madengr »

adamsea wrote: post #184
coredog64 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always shocked and amazed that progressives rail against "abstinence only" sex ed and then turn around and promote the same thing for firearms.

Why compare sex and firearms? Sex: - Fundamental to life - Something every human is capable of, and that (except for Slashdot users ;), most experience in their life. - If consensual, a source of pleasure and love. Firearms: - A tool which can be used for a varierty of purposes - Must be purchased, i.e. it is a choice. - I suppose one could compare firearms training/use to martial arts, in that it can have personal b…

You forgot about the STDs.

"And no firearms (unless carried by an officer) in schools, on campuses, or in places of worship."

Why? It's legal in my state (KS) and there have been no shootings.

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