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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

#181
post #106

Excellent. There's no reason defensive gun buyers should be demographically different from the general population. It's understandable that gun sales for hunting or other activities might show differences, but we all have the same personal security needs. Side note: I'm one of the people here with a large collection of firearms. One thing to realize when you see the statistic that the US has more firearms than people…

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.

Your comment seems to be a bit of a non sequitur. GP said they were not combat-worthy due to being collectibles/antiques, not due to... whatever it is you're talking about.

Among my collection is a 100-year-old 16ga. H&R single-barrel shotgun passed down through four generations. It hasn't been fired in decades, and hasn't seen an armorer in longer than that. Not only is there no semi-auto, there is no magazine at all, and even if you'd be willing to go to war with something that needed to be manually reloaded after every shot, I am not altogether convinced the breach wouldn't explode upon firing.

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

#182

Everyone should own a gun, and most more than 1. If we were to maintain public education (which... just no, please) gun education should be standard.

I'd rather reduce my chances of being shot, which is a thing you can do by simply declining to purchase a firearm[1] > Overall, Branas’s study found that people who carried guns were 4.5 times as likely to be shot and 4.2 times as likely to get killed compared with unarmed citizens. When the team looked at shootings in which victims had a chance to defend themselves, their odds of getting shot were even higher. [1] h…

Yeah, this is the problem with relying on statistics to determine your life choices. Real life isn’t a series of probabilities, it’s a series of events - for which you can prepare for and plan to protect yourself.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bill of Rights cannot be. This is the fundamental difference between the US and other Western democracies. Consent to be governed rests upon said government respecting those inalienable rights that we have. Those rights are not granted us by the government, they are the rights that we created a government to preserve. Any government violating those rights no longer has the consent of the governed and should be ab…

That's absurd. The Bill of Rights is literally a list of changes to the constitution. Any one of them can be changed at any time by a majority of states. You're essentially saying that if the majority of the country votes to change one of the rights, then what? You'll no longer recognize the government as real?

Take that argument to an extreme. If the majority of the country votes to suspend democracy, would you stick around? If not, then doesn't that imply that there exists a set of underlying principles that you believe are fundamental to a government? That's exactly what the Bill of Rights is, an enumeration of what were viewed as the fundamental rights for which the point of government is to preserve.

The mistake so many people make is thinking that government is the lowest level. It is not, government is downstream of culture and is a reflection of that cultures values. Without a unified culture that agrees on certain prerequisits of government, for example from this case elected representation, there can be no functional government.

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

#184
post #96

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…

> 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…

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

Taliban? Vietcong?

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

#185

My wife (and many women) has felt that the only way to effect change in our gun laws would be for white men to feel like targets. I used to do iss that idea somewhat but as I've paid more attention to things over th last few years, I no longer dismiss the notion. I don't wish many people dead but if women and minorities start buying up a lot of guns, maybe they'll start shooting back. Then we'll see how many times th…

> My wife (and many women) has felt that the only way to effect change in our gun laws would be for white men to feel like targets. That's literally a joke. I heard it on a Dave Chappelle special. IIRC, actual gun rights groups like the NRA want black people and women to buy guns, because they're about gun rights and realize they're better secured if their constituency is larger.

Wrong. They are about gun ownership. Any rights are simply to enable more purchasing. Buying more guns makes the manufacturers happy.

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

#186

My wife (and many women) has felt that the only way to effect change in our gun laws would be for white men to feel like targets. I used to do iss that idea somewhat but as I've paid more attention to things over th last few years, I no longer dismiss the notion. I don't wish many people dead but if women and minorities start buying up a lot of guns, maybe they'll start shooting back. Then we'll see how many times th…

You've payed no attention whatsoever to US gun culture 2.0, we welcome women and minorities with open arms, and women were always welcome, every heard of Annie Oakley?? Seen the NRA celebrating on the front page of their membership magazine women who won all gender national championships? You completely misunderstand our motivations for keeping and bearing arms, and thus your hope is doomed to not come true.

As an unfortunate life member of the NRA, I get the magazines. I also don't agree with you. I think the NRA is what's wrong with gun culture. There are much more sane organizations in the US who support both gym ownership AND common sense gun laws. The NRA is a lobbying group and they're soulless. They fight against any reasonable change that isn't purely for show (and they fight the useless laws too that try and band forearms for looking scary because they're too stupid to see how useless laws would further their agenda).

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

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> thus ending this culture war and forcing the politicians to fix actual problems You think guns are the core of the culture war? Even if the SCOTUS did make such a ruling, the culture war almost certainly would not end.

It's been shown that many people would side with democrats on the majority of social issues and vote for them if not for their stance on firearms. If the democrats lost their ability to use that as part of their culture war platform they'd likely gain a ton of people who don't vote or vote R simply to retain their rights.

You can't reduce the culture war to gun ownership. The Dems are doing just about everything they can to alienate traditionalists in the U.S., including gun owners. It's not even the most important wedge issue anymore. Rather, gun owners are concerned about defending themselves in a country organized by Democratic party policy. They'll need the guns when the police are defunded, or when the social workers come for their children.

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

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a great comparison. I've never heard of a toddler accidentally murdering someone with a fire extinguisher, yet that's an everyday occurrence with guns.

Really? Show us the link for yesterday’s occurrence.

This took me 15 seconds to find, here's a 2-year old and a 4-year old shot yesterday because of a gun lying around at home.

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/marietta-man-arrested-after...

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

#189

My wife (and many women) has felt that the only way to effect change in our gun laws would be for white men to feel like targets. I used to do iss that idea somewhat but as I've paid more attention to things over th last few years, I no longer dismiss the notion. I don't wish many people dead but if women and minorities start buying up a lot of guns, maybe they'll start shooting back. Then we'll see how many times th…

> My wife (and many women) has felt that the only way to effect change in our gun laws would be for white men to feel like targets. That's literally a joke. I heard it on a Dave Chappelle special. IIRC, actual gun rights groups like the NRA want black people and women to buy guns, because they're about gun rights and realize they're better secured if their constituency is larger.

You must not live in a place with many NRA stickers. Look closely, they also have that fancy thin blue line sticker too.

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

#190
post #96

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…

> 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…

> Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided.

Didn't a couple of unarmed protestors take the capitol building on January 6th?

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