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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

#481
post #259

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?

If they can shoot the men trying to rape them maybe they won’t have to?

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

#482
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most incidents where people use firearms to protect themselves no shots are fired, just brandishing the weapon is enough. Those incidents don't make the news. Buy if you're looking for an actual news story, here's one. https://www.wtol.com/article/news/local/resident-shoots-woul...

> just brandishing the weapon is enough The comment is probably not meant this way, but brandishing has connotations of anger, excitement, or intimidation. I would caution one not to do this as it may be illegal in your jurisdiction. Only draw a firearm with the intent to use it, not with the intent to intimidate. Certainly, the intent to use it may have a side effect of intimidating an aggressor — I don’t dispute th…

You don't pull a gun unless you intend to use it. The law recognizes this. If you pull the gun with justified intent, and you end up not having to use it, that's just a happy circumstance. This has happened to me.

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Most people don’t even understand how a gun mechanically functions. It lives in the realm of magic for most people, despite being mechanically very simple. This base ignorance of the function of a firearm is one of the biggest reasons why firearm-related accidents happen. You might not want a gun, and fine—that’s your stance—but you should know how it works and how to use it. Unless you need to clean it and for th…

Surprisingly, no. The number of misses at very close range in high-stress situations is very high. Hit rates for cops are in the 25% - 50% range, and that's with training. It's easy enough to get a gun to fire. Hitting the right target requires practice.

I know NYPD had guns with really heavy triggers, far past anything reasonable. Lighter triggers (not really light, standard) and red dot optics would probably help a lot.

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

#484
post #141
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.

That is not actually true historically. That is popular talking point. On the other hand, quite a few authoritarian tyrannical movements started by arming themselves and taking it on themselves to get power. Both nazi and communists started as private citizens arming themselves and causing fights in the streets or robbing people.

Partially true.

"On Nov. 11, 1938, the German minister of the interior issued "Regulations Against Jews Possession of Weapons." Not only were Jews forbidden to own guns and ammunition, they couldn’t own "truncheons or stabbing weapons."

In addition to the restrictions, Ellerbrock said the Nazis had already been raiding Jewish homes and seizing weapons.

"The gun policy of the Nazis can hardly be compared to the democratic procedures of gun regulations by law," Ellerbrock told us. "It was a kind of special administrative practice (Sonderrecht), which treated people in different ways according to their political opinion or according to ‘racial identity’ in Nazi terms.""[0].

[0] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2015/oct/26/ben-carson...

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

#485

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…

> And the idea that physically weaker people (often women) can defend themselves against the strong.

> Does this idea work? Surprisingly well.

Does it?

> 11. Self-defense gun use is rare and not more effective at preventing injury than other protective actions

> Victims use guns in less than 1% of contact crimes, and women never use guns to protect themselves against sexual assault (in more than 300 cases). Victims using a gun were no less likely to be injured after taking protective action than victims using other forms of protective action. Compared to other protective actions, the National Crime Victimization Surveys provide little evidence that self-defense gun use is uniquely beneficial in reducing the likelihood of injury or property loss.

> This article helps provide accurate information concerning self-defense gun use. It shows that many of the claims about the benefits of gun ownership are largely myths.

> Hemenway D, Solnick SJ. The epidemiology of self-defense gun use: Evidence from the National Crime Victimization Surveys 2007-2011. Preventive Medicine. 2015; 79: 22-27.

* https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/gun-thr...

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

#486
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…

The US is not that bad compared to other New World countries. From your link we see Brazil at 27, Mexico at 29, Argentina at 5, Uruguay at 12, Greenland at 5, Panama at 9, and Costa Rica at 11. Canada is the biggest outlier, but the US still has less homicide than even relatively nice New World countries. If you’re going to tout France’s low homicide rate of 1.2, I’d invite you to observe that Japan’s homicide rate i…

I winced when you started the comparison with Brazil and Mexico. Those countries may be New World, but anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone.

In other words, if Brazil and Mexico are our points of comparison, we're... not in a situation I'd want to be in, to put it diplomatically. Reddit's running joke is that every gunfight happened in Brazil. In fact, I often wonder if most of the gunfight videos actually do come from Brazil.

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That study doesn't even say that. It doesn't propose causation, and looks at accessible firearms, not gun ownership. There's no way a gun kept in a safe or a nightstand reasonably affects your likelihood of getting shot, everything else being equal. > We also did not account for the potential of reverse causation between gun possession and gun assault. The study's methodology looks terrible. It's a case-control popul…

Even ignoring this study, there's the fact that sometimes we get sad and having a simple suicide mechanism laying around your home makes you dramatically more likely to kill yourself[1].

> Men who own handguns are eight times more likely to die of gun suicides than men who don’t own handguns, and women who own handguns are 35 times more likely than women who don’t.

I don't understand why the pro-gun crowd flails around trying to justify it. Just say you like guns, it's okay. Nobody is coming to take them (unless the recent Texas 'one weird trick to defeat the Constitution with civil lawsuits' plays out to its logical conclusion and we get states allowing anyone to sue anyone involved in a firearm sale).

[1] https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2020/06/handgun-owner...

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

#488
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence do you have for suggesting that a citizenry with guns serves to protect other freedoms? The US generally isn't among the top countries on the various international freedom indexes[1] despite our prevalence of guns. We are usually behind Canada, New Zealand, the Scandinavian countries, and a few other European countries depending on the specific criteria being evaluated. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

I have a very simple litmus test. In how many countries can you openly (with lots of publicity) organize "Draw a Muhammad" or "Burn the bible" events.

Interesting. Kids in many countries throughout the middle east and northern Africa have essentially unrestricted access to firearms, including shit you can't buy in most US states, but your "Draw a Muhammad" litmus test wouldn't fly. What does this indicate?

Let's burn the American flag instead. How's that gonna go in rural counties of the US? Will it be safe, or will the response be armed?

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

#489
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Furthermore, i find US fascination with their theoretical ability to fight their government with small arms adorable and misguided. So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul. not even counting accidents and suicides which are also made worse by the high availability of guns for everyone The suicide statistics from…

> So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul I sincerely doubt the average first world person has what it takes to sacrifice their comfortable life and go live in caves to resist a tyrannical occupation. And there's no need for them to do that, realistically.

I sincerely doubt the average first world government has what it takes to sacrifice its comfortable bureaucracy and inspire even a tiny fraction of 330,000,000 citizens to fight back against tyranny.

That’s why federal legislators freaked out when a few thousand pissed off voters simply walked into the Capitol without permission - and without weapons. Every one of those mostly peaceful demonstrators represented a thousand equally angry, and well-armed, citizens not visible on security cameras.

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

#490

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.

Hi there, I'm a member of leadership for a group called AAPIGO. The GO is Gun Owners. I'm one of the ally members, helping bridge the gap between Asian gun owners and your more traditional NRA member stereotype. This is the future.
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