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Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

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Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#301

Post by philwelch »

xadhominemx wrote: post #227
sofixa wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the U.S. murder rate is not all that remarkable, really The US is at 4.96/100,000 for 2012. For reference, Angola is better at 4.85. Bulgaria and Romania, the poorest countries in the EU, are at 1.3. France is at 1.2. If by not remarkable you mean 3 as bad as other developed countries, sure. The numbers are only for intentional homicide, not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the…

Agreed with all of the above, but it addition, isn’t it obvious gun owners in the United States are much more likely to support any likely authoritarian government? They are mostly right wing, and the right wing in the US increasingly leans authoritarian.

This is an oversimplification to some degree, but even if we take this for the sake of argument, isn’t the obvious solution to stop treating gun ownership as a right wing issue?

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#302

Post by akomtu »

disneygibson wrote: post #139

God created (wo)man. Sam Colt made them equal. (This is an old tagline for a gun company, in case you are unfamiliar.)

Some off topic here. The origin of word "man" is manas - an old word for mind. A man is basically any creature with mind.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#303

Post by tootie »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #18
itsme-alan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns are not the way to do anything

In unequal power situations, guns are mighty useful. A world where no one needs firearms is a nice ideal, but unfortunately we don't live in that world. The police cannot be trusted to show up anywhere in time to defend you, and in fact might shoot you instead of whoever is attacking you anyway. Are many firearm proponents ideologically crazy and/or reckless? Unfortunately Yes. Does this have negative societal conseq…

Women have been fighting for representation in government, pay equality, education equality. None of those are helped by owning a gun. How many women have had their access to personal development opportunities restricted by their inability to apply deadly force? I'm guessing it's a trivially small number.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#304

Post by trhway »

csours wrote: post #259
KorematsuFredt wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PS: I am strong supporter of Gun rights and proud gun owner. I fully agree with anti-gun crowd that having vast majority of guns in hands of citizens (legally or illegally) leads to more deaths. USA's comparison with Angola is actually more serious than the numbers tell you because you need to realize that USA has far better medical response and doctors trained to handle gunshot wounds. So to truly compare Angola and…

So if more Texas liberal women were armed, they would still have the right to choose to get an abortion?

No. The point of trade-off is that you get some you lose some. They got guns rights and lost abortion rights. Or like back then with the Prohibition and women's suffrage https://time.com/5501680/prohibition-history-feminism-suffra...

"It became clear to them that giving women the right to vote was only way they could ban alcohol."

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#305

Post by zepto »

endymi0n wrote: post #235
phendrenad2 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3x a small number is still a small number. Your chances of getting struck by lightning increase if you live on a hill, but no one is basing home buying decisions on that. The real argument is that guns enable acts that, while rare, and while they affect few people, are so egregious that we as a society will go to great lengths to ensure they never happen (school shootings).

Note this is just murder, but murder is merely a small fraction of gun deaths. The multiplier for all firearm-related deaths between the US and EU average for example is around 12X, more than an order of magnitude [1]. The elephant in the room however is that the main argument simply doesn't hold up. Owning a gun doesn't just make the owner slightly more likely to get shot, but also everyone around them [2] Or, as th…

> murder is merely a small fraction of gun deaths.

You must mean the others are suicides. Why not say so?

> The multiplier for all firearm-related deaths between the US and EU average for example is around 12X, more than an order of magnitude [1].

Ah, because by not saying so you can make up this 12X figure, by comparing firearm suicides in Europe where in many cases there is marginal civilian gun ownership with firearm suicide in the US where there is widespread civilian gun ownership.

Of course this is a flawed comparison, because Americans don’t commit suicide at 12x the rate of Europeans, they just happen to use guns rather than other methods.

The giveaway that your comparison is deliberately misleading is that you don’t mention suicide. You intentionally hide how you get to this 12x figure.

The Switzerland outlier is explained by a culture of safe handling.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#306

Post by jaywalk »

Hamuko wrote: post #165
clon wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, one of the first signs of a society approaching tyranny is the government cracking down on guns. So if nothing else, it serves as a great canary in the mine.

Australia doesn't seem that tyrannical to me.

Haven't really been paying attention to the news out of Australia over the past year and a half, have you?

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#307

Post by majormajor »

chmod600 wrote: post #73

There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight. The idea that people should not be entirely dependent on police for their defense. And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong. Does this idea work? Surprisingly well. If you had to guess the…

> The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight.

If you're pro-democracy/pro-republic/pro-anything-other-than-might-makes-right why is this admirable or desirable?

Weapons are a force multiplier, and they can make a minority with extreme desire to fight very strong. A Taliban, a Castro, a Confederate States of America...

It's naive to think that guns will only ever be used by defenders of freedom. Take a look around the world.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#308

Post by tablespoon »

ssully wrote: post #287
tablespoon wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This smacks of the modern left's derision for self defense tools. It's a nicer way of saying someone has a gun to compensate for their genital insecurities. One of the biggest issues I have with the modern left is their tendency to let their prejudices dictate their perceptions like that. It's annoying and repulsive, and it should be embarrassing for people who say stuff like they "believe in science."

Luckily the modern left is the only group of people who let their prejudices dictate their perceptions.

> Luckily the modern left is the only group of people who let their prejudices dictate their perceptions.

I never said they had a monopoly, but I'm not going let them off the hook just because they've got competition. Their displays of that repulsive tendency also clash more harshly with their rhetoric.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#309

Post by bitwize »

brodouevencode wrote: post #252
monoideism wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided Taliban? Vietcong?

The whole argument that small arms are of no comparison to tanks and nuclear weapons are made by people who have no experience with firearms, fire fight and perimeter and assault tactics, or any type of military strategy. To even get to this point you would have to assume that the US would devolve into a civil war, in which you can also safely assume that many in the US military would be defectors (leaving a lot of e…

> To even get to this point you would have to assume that the US would devolve into a civil war, in which you can also safely assume that many in the US military would be defectors (leaving a lot of empty tanks and airplanes, if not turned to the "other" side).

I hear this a lot from the right, and I think it's hogwash. The Biden administration has already begun ideological screening of military personnel. If the government is forced to go to war against its own people, it will be mostly aging, out-of-shape fanatics on one side and highly-trained, highly-motivated, younger loyalists to the legitimate government on the other. It'll be a rout.

Re: Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

#310

Post by jaywalk »

jfengel wrote: post #232
chmod600 wrote: post #73

There's something admirable about the idea that a government would not take away all the guns. The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight. The idea that people should not be entirely dependent on police for their defense. And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong. Does this idea work? Surprisingly well. If you had to guess the…

Murders aren't the only issue, though. Just the possibility of a gun being present changes a lot of interactions in the US. Every police encounter has to assume you have a gun. A lot of innocent deaths at the hands of police are treated as "I thought he had a gun", which makes everybody scared of the police -- especially minorities. School children go through metal detectors every single day, never turning up any gun…

Wow, you really managed to paint a completely distorted and scary picture of daily life in America. Well done.

Hopefully I don't get gunned down by a cop thinking I have a gun when I leave my house tonight, although I probably will.

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