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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

#491

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#492

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

thebooktocome wrote: post #224
natmaka wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't 'strict control' imply that few legally detain guns? Gender Inequality Index: #1 (best nation) is Switzerland. This country is shock-full of firearms, there is an assault rifle in many (most?) homes (a weird way to 'control', in my opinion). #2 is Norway, where 9% of the population legally owns 1.3 million guns (population: 5.4 million) #3 Finland. 12% of Finns legally detain a firearm

Switzerland's famous assault rifles are not kept with ammunition, and are mostly useless. (I suppose you could bludgeon a home invader with one.) Firearms are more heavily regulated there than in most of Europe. "He shakes out the gun holster. "And we don't get bullets any more," he adds. "The Army doesn't give ammunition now - it's all kept in a central arsenal." This measure was introduced by Switzerland's Federal…

Question I've never been able to get an answer to, although I haven't tried hard: is it illegal to keep your own supply of ammo for the rifle?

Possibly confounding issue: with the new SIG 550 the ammo was changed to use lead free primers, just like the GP 11 1911 ammo was changed to use non-corrosive primers far ahead of other nations (in the US, our first example was for the WWII M1 carbine). I wonder if the Army discovered those primers didn't last as long as projected....

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

#493

Post by oh_sigh »

GiorgioG wrote: post #131
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…

The murder rate varies widely by state/area. Chicago's murder rate is significantly higher than its suburbs. The murder rate in the town (37k residents) I live in (in the south) is effectively zero. I wouldn't doubt that all of my neighbors around me (most of us are originally from a northern state) have guns and we've managed not to kill each other. Do you think the French revolution didn't require violence?

There are also fairly basic lifestyle choices that drastically increase your odds of being murdered. If you aren't part of a gang, and you don't have a male partner with violent tendencies, your odds of being killed are much lower than the national average.

I wouldn't be surprised if the murder rate of my town of 100k people is about on par with a British or German town of 100k people, since we don't have any gang presence here.

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

#494

Post by simonh »

bequanna wrote: post #470
simonh wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not at all accept that guns empower the weak. We can see all over the world they are a massive force multiplier for criminals, the violent and the murderous. Guns are only potent in the hands of those willing and able to use violence. For those unwilling to do so, they are massively disenfranchising. They essentially tilt the balance of power in society decisively in favour of those most willing to kill, and mos…

> It hands an implicit veto on opinion to the violent. Utterly shameful. Except that isn’t how it has worked in the US at all. Can weapons be used to intimidate and coerce? Of course. But we’re civilized. We have freedoms and we are protected from unlawful force by lawful force. Speech is virtual limitless. Non violent protest has and will continue to be a fruitful avenue of change. Self reliance and individual empow…

My comment is not limited to political discourse. The rates of firearm use in domestic and personal disputes in the US are a disgrace. Half of women killed in domestic disputes are shot. But even then, it only shows those cases where guns were actually used. We can only guess how often the threat of such violence, either explicit or implicit is enough to coerce or intimidate. The attitude that the correct way to fix this is for women to also become killers is frankly vile. Promoting willingness to kill as a path to a voice or Liberty in personal relationships or society is utterly immoral. That is not the kind of society we should be aspiring to build.

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

#495

Post by aidenn0 »

rpmisms wrote: post #439
aidenn0 wrote: post #136

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. I don't know; roller-delayed blowback took me a long time to wrap my head around.

Now take a look at the H&K G11 schematics. It's mind-boggling.

If you're talking the feeding mechanism, the FN P90 has something similar (though the ammunition is stored longitudinally rather than vertically).

[edit]

Oh wait, I see now it's the burst-fire mode, where it doesn't buffer until after the 3rd round has been fired. I remember seeing that a while back; it is crazy.

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

#496

Post by jdkee »

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…

Comparing the relatively densely populated, ethnically homogenous, lower income inequality E.U. states to the U.S. does not make for an equal comparison. Simply look at how the bulk of firearm homicides are restricted to perhaps a hundred or so ZIP codes nationwide to see the disparity. See Chicago for example. [0]

[0] https://heyjackass.com/

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

#497

Post by wittycardio »

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…

There is nothing admirable about it . If the military actually turns against its civilians then the civilians stand no chance despite whatever guns they own. All it does is increase the total violence in American society and all the neighbouring countries

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

#498

Post by bm3719 »

torstenvl wrote: post #181
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.

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 al…

This is correct. My current collectables (C&R and antique) are all capable of being fired, but I almost never do due to their value and risk of damaging them. Many are over 100 years old and there's a decent enough chance some irreplaceable part will break during use. I can also easily reduce their value by 1000s of dollars by doing something like this. I keep them because I enjoy their historical significance and the interesting mechanical solutions they embody, not for their ability to launch projectiles. When I'm ready to go to the nursing home, I'll sell them and get my money back or more.

A good percentage of the firearms out there are like this, which was my point for those not aware. Another good percentage are specialized for sporting use. Some are so inappropriate for combat that you'd be better off with a spear (e.g., if given the choice between a 50lb benchrest rifle and a spear, I'll take the spear).

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

#499

Post by Jedd »

KorematsuFredt wrote: post #239
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…

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…

> PS: I am strong supporter of Gun rights and proud gun owner.

I don't understand the pride bit.

It seems like a regrettable situation where your distrust of your fellow citizens is so strong that you are comforted by the ability to kill them with minimal effort.

(I'm in Australia, where we have some truly horrendous legislation, but I totally agree with our gun ownership laws here, and echo other people's observations that gun ownership does not seem to equate to, or ineluctably lead to, better laws / more freedoms outside the right 'to own lethal weapons' itself.)

Perhaps I could interest you in some Iain M Banks (taken from Excession) :

"It could see that - by some criteria - a warship, just by the perfectly articulated purity of its purpose, was the most beautiful single artifact the Culture was capable of producing, and at the same time understand the paucity of moral vision such a judgement implied. To fully appreciate the beauty of a weapon was to admit to a kind of shortsightedness close to blindness, to confess to a sort of stupidity. The weapon was not itself; nothing was solely itself. The weapon, like anything else, could only finally be judged by the effect it had on others, by the consequences it produced in some outside context, by its place in the rest of the universe. By this measure the love, or just the appreciation of weapons was a kind of tragedy."

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

#500

Post by mike00632 »

akira2501 wrote: post #455
GiorgioG wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The murder rate varies widely by state/area. Chicago's murder rate is significantly higher than its suburbs. The murder rate in the town (37k residents) I live in (in the south) is effectively zero. I wouldn't doubt that all of my neighbors around me (most of us are originally from a northern state) have guns and we've managed not to kill each other. Do you think the French revolution didn't require violence?

> The murder rate varies widely by state/area. One fact about murders that has exceptionally low variance is the likelihood of personally knowing the person that murders you. This is 90%, in almost all circumstances and areas. Means, the gun, is only one part of the equation and has been noted generally the smallest. Motive is far more important when attempting to put murder rates into context.

Ok, so we can either enact gun reform like most of the entire world has done or we can completely alienate ourselves from other people in hopes they don't shoot us. Do you see why gun-ownership is an anti-social trait?
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