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Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

wsj.com

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

#361

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

brodouevencode wrote: post #257
chmod600 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rational person compares risks on an absolute scale first. Out of all the things that could happen on a given day, is getting murdered a real concern? For people in the U.S., it's not really worth worrying about unless you have some other risk factors for murder, like criminal activity. If you are selling lion repellant that makes a lion attack 80% less likely, that's not something I'd be interested in. That being…

> Probably more to do with policing structure. And culture.

Specifically, cultural homogeneity makes a nation much easier to run. Boring food, though.

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

#362

Post by nradov »

asdff wrote: post #313
Glyptodon wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To begin with you're creating a premise that the only reason gun legality can be justified is self defense, particularly against other people. I do not accept this premise. There are many other premises for gun legality. That said, when I was very young my grandfather had to shoot a number of stray dogs out his car window while driving through a rough pasture because they'd killed a couple calves and were attacking h…

Most people would have just called animal control

In most US counties animal control responds late or not at all. Obviously you can't seriously expect farmers to just wait around while feral dogs kill their livestock.

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

#363

Post by content_sesh »

01100011 wrote: post #243
rossdavidh wrote: post #221

Hypothesis (which I have given about 30 seconds' thought): buying a gun was formerly a way to feel masculine, or to feel potent, or for use in a sport such as hunting or target shooting. In these situations, women found them to have little appeal. Recently, buying a gun is more often because of an actual concern for safety. Women are about as likely as men to feel concern about that. Hence, the numbers are now more e…

> a way to feel masculine, or to feel potent 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. Guns are largely a tool to the people purchasing them. They are also mechanical objects which give pleasure to people who appreciate craftsmanship. I generally agree with your post, but I think it would be better witho…

The left (both modern and not) is much less self-defense averse than you think. There's plenty of leftist gun clubs; the Socialist Rifle Association and Redneck Revolt, formerly John Brown Gun Club, come to mind immediately.

There's also the long history of unions literally going to war against capitalists, like in the Battle of Matewan.

Also worth remembering that leftist groups like the BPP encouraging its members to legally own firearms led to significant gun control expansion in California.

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

#364

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

Maarten88 wrote: post #340
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…

> In my experience USA lot less corrupt than most other countries. Lobbying overall is a net good thing for a democratic society. You rightly mention lobbying and corruption together. But somehow you miss that they are on the same continuum. From my EU perspective lobbying in the US is corruption, as the lobbying comes with money and paid-for political promotion. The situation around guns itself is a clear example: a…

The situation around guns itself is a clear example: as I understand it, a majority of US people is in favor of more limitations to gun rights (banning automatic weapons, screening psychiatric patients and criminals) but politicians are only expanding gun rights (open carry etc).

Strange, isn't it, how polling organizations don't quite seem to capture what the people actually want and vote for.

Actually, your list of "banning automatic weapons, screening psychiatric patients and criminals" is already in place, although the first is limited to a few hundred thousand in civilian hands. Two last time I checked had been used in crimes, the first incident a murder by a policeman.

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

#365

Post by Zababa »

xdennis wrote: post #242
jvanderbot wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your standard of combat is obscenely high. Any weapon that can kill an animal can be used quite well against humans in defense. Would they be standard issue arms for a modern army? Irrelevant.

I've never touched a gun, but as far as a know hunting weapons are not optimal for self defense. When you hunt a deer you try to hit from far away and if you miss, well, you'll find another. When someone is trying to harm you (even with a knife), you want to shoot multiple times and as fast as possible. If you shoot once and miss, by the time you manually reload, the attacker can get to you. If you do hit, but with a…

Sure, but if I had to choose between a hunting rifle and a knife I would still take the hunting rifle.

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

#366

Post by onethought »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #236
onethought wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the countries that have greater gender equality have strict control of firearms. (Sorry for the inconvenient facts down voters) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_Inequality_Index

Gun's per capita seems to be very high on that list? Top 3 (all per 100 persons) 1. Switzerland 26.3 2. Norway 28.8 3. Finland 32.4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...

Is guns per capita how you measure gun control?

- do you factor in urban vs rural gun ownership?

- do you factor type of gun?

- do you factor whether ammunition is available for those guns?

My earlier statement still holds true.

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

#367

Post by Zababa »

archontes wrote: post #75
cdiamand wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it illegal, taboo, and bred out though? We live in a culture of glorified violence seen widely in film, print, pop culture. We've got an enormous catalog of shooter videogames going back decades that our youngster clamor to purchase and play. We've got a set of laws that allow you to take steps to defend yourself in your own home, with varying degrees of strictness and leniency. Anecdotally, I know many people in…

A gentleman's cane used to be a bludgeon in addition to being a fashion accessory. Video games are the furthest thing from physical defense. They're amusement. Do you really think that playing video games leads to increased skill and confidence when engaging in a fistfight in the street? In schools in the US, children are punished for defending themselves in a fight. There is a vanishingly small percentage of people…

> In schools in the US, children are punished for defending themselves in a fight.

Not only in the US. In France, I had troubles in middle school because I reacted physically to bullying.

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

#368

Post by mmmpop »

redstripe wrote: post #323
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…

What's admirable about it? This is just a fiction that you Americans tell yourselves about the next revolution. Name one, just one way, that ease of gun ownership has protected Americans from their government in a way that citizens of other western democracies have suffered? There is no scenario in which any citizen with a gun in any country defeats their government. Your gun will keep you safe about as well as your…

If you were an officer of the law pressed to go door-to-door to say, purely hypothetically, take the oldest child by force to inscribe them in some dystopian military program, you'd probably be a lot more hesitant if you knew that there was a chance you'd get shot in the process right?

I believe that's the security that us Americans (I imagine your sneer with that) feel by being armed.

Isn't it that the Swiss are all armed as well? They seem to have fared rather well in a 20th century Europe fraught with conflict. Tell me that's a coincidence with absolutely no correlation to their pro-gun culture.

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

#369

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

Someone1234 wrote: post #169
NikolaNovak wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, how come we always only count murder, as opposed to gun violence? How many times is a gun pointed at somebody, or fired at somebody, or accidentally discharged, vs somebody actually dead? I don't only fear for my life; I fear for my limb and safety and all the other good stuff too :) (mind you, FWIW, and hopefully lateral to above questions, I'm not necessarily in the full "prohibit guns" camp, more of a "regul…

> Also, how come we always only count murder, as opposed to gun violence? Because other countries use different definitions for those things. The definition of a "firearm death" is consistent, someone was shot they're now deceased. The definition of "gun violence" could be a gun that wasn't even loaded or fired in some countries (e.g. pointing it menacingly), bullet-injury in others, pistol-whipping in yet others, fo…

Yeah, I can corroborate this. I've looked into the reporting details here and there, and reconciling even the U.S. and the U.K. is basically impossible.

There's also politicization of reporting, at least in the U.S. I recall some states (Maryland?) have laws that mandate reporting of any injury related to a gun (could be a minor burn or a cut finger web that needed stitches) as a firearm-related injury. The intent, of course, being that people wrongly infer that these were injuries inflicted by bullets traveling at high rates of speed.

Dead's dead, though. We don't lose track many of bodies in the developed world.

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

#370

Post by newfriend »

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.

Which authoritarian policies are the right wing in the US increasingly leaning towards again?

As far as I can tell, most "right wing" individuals mostly want liberty from government interfering in their lives.

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