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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

#991

Post by proc0 »

orestarod wrote: post #989
proc0 wrote: post #984

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lack of historical awareness to imagine that gun ownership in private hands will be default mobilized "against tyranny" Why is it so hard to believe? You really think the military would drop bombs on cities and destroy infrastructure just to control the populace? The nature of tyranny is about instilling fear in the populace in order to control them. If you destroy your own cities it defeats the purpose of being in…

I'd be interested to know how you concludes the military would have no luck against armed civilians.

First, the military would need to have its own fight, which would probably reduce its numbers, and then it's a matter of sheer numbers which is on the civilian side. Again, I'm assuming cities won't get bombed, what's the point of destroying your own country. On the ground, there are potentially many strategies that could defeat the military if there are way more armed civilians.

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

#992

Post by proc0 »

glangdale wrote: post #986
proc0 wrote: post #984

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lack of historical awareness to imagine that gun ownership in private hands will be default mobilized "against tyranny" Why is it so hard to believe? You really think the military would drop bombs on cities and destroy infrastructure just to control the populace? The nature of tyranny is about instilling fear in the populace in order to control them. If you destroy your own cities it defeats the purpose of being in…

It's remarkable how little you engaged with what I actually wrote, in your haste to deploy the usual LARPing tropes about freedom fighters and "armed civilians" and such nonsense. Once again, for the slow kids with reading comprehension problems: Armed civilians are not a reliable source of resistance against certain types of tyranny - notably right-wing authoritarian tyranny. They are, in fact, more likely to crop u…

I quoted the part I was responding to. The other part seems not true to me. Trump was extremely overblown by media and many believed it. He stepped down... that's not what dictators do, and it was Trump that as LARPing as a dictator just to get reactions. The evidence is that he was an entertainer and had a TV show. How many dictators in history had TV shows? He played the media, and then everyone went insane. Sure, he's an idiot, but thinking he's a dictator? That is also LARPing.

As far as guns, unlike your suggestion of right-wing authoritarian citizens enforcing government, there are many instances in history like Cuba, where the first thing a dictator does is take away civilian guns.

The point of the 2nd amendment, is for anyone and everyone to own guns. We can see this post and also last year during the riots (BLM, left-wing rallies arming themselves) that everyone goes against gun control once they realize they need to defend themselves.

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

#993

Post by smsm42 »

glangdale wrote: post #687
greenie_beans wrote: post #160

i live in the american south, where everybody owns guns. i own a gun for hunting. but for self defense, i have pepper spray and bear spray instead of guns because i don't want to kill somebody regardless of their intentions. i'd be curious to see the stats of self-defense/firearms, because it seems like self-defense gun owners are LARPing over imagined intruder situations. they're definitely not about to take up arms…

The thing I always find astonishing about the LARPing element of "taking up arms against the state" is how one-sidedly political it is. An authoritarian right-wing state - say, an alternate world where Trump had somehow seized power and suspended democracy - would find large numbers of American gun owners who would be very happy about this and serve as a pro-government paramilitary (coordinating the police/military a…

> LARPing element of "taking up arms against the state" is how one-sidedly political it is

Did you look up any news from Portland lately? Because looks like you didn't, otherwise you'd know about people that has been successfully fighting the police and causing a lot of damage to the state, and the state basically retreating before them with the tail tacked between its legs (the reasons might be complicated but the fact is pretty obvious). And those people don't have much love for Trump, to say the least.

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

#994

Post by smsm42 »

kelnos wrote: post #683
teakettle42 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You live somewhere with strict gun laws, and in your own words, serious and obvious crime problems. You think the people living in much safer places have a viewpoint that’s “silly to the point of absurdity”. Yet, they’re the ones living somewhere with much lower crime and murder rates. How is this an argument for the efficacy of your preferred policies?

I don't think you can draw causation between "strict gun laws" and "higher crime" at all.

Causation - no, correlation - very likely. Policies and politicians that cause strict gun laws also cause higher crime, and conversely, politicians, when faced with higher crime, would reflectively reach for the only leverage they have - stricter laws. Which would usually be futile (at least without many other measures, which aren't used that frequently). Thus, in practice, strict gun laws and crime - at least in the US - often go together. There are exceptions of course - very safe places could introduce strict gun laws out of virtue signaling, moral panic or other considerations. But the common case is as per above.

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

#995

Post by unanswered »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #832
ashtonkem wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard of a defensive caliber is that it needs to be capable of immediately halting an attacker with the kinds of shots a scared defendant can pull off [0]. Not killing them immediately or eventually, but halting the attack. Plenty of gun shot wounds are capable of killing eventually even if they’re not immediately disabling, and it does you no good if your assailant eventually bleeds to death after they’ve fin…

Thank you for the detailed response. I guess my dreamed up scenarios were more vague "shooter/assailant in the area" whereby I figured I'd want to "make myself less desirable to bother with". Hence small caliber, lots of noise/attempts and if - god forbid - anything connected it would still hurt/slow them. I never really contemplated a "someone intent on killing you" scenario. It isn't something I think of much and I…

> I guess my dreamed up scenarios were more vague "shooter/assailant in the area" whereby I figured I'd want to "make myself less desirable to bother with". Hence small caliber, lots of noise/attempts and if - god forbid - anything connected it would still hurt/slow them.

This constitutes the crime of brandishing. You should not own any weapons if you can't keep from fantasizing committing crimes with them.

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

#996

Post by beerandt »

ahtihn wrote: post #903
beerandt wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet every swiss male citizen does military training and is issued a weapon to keep, to use in staying proficient. There's no need for a military culture, when the government has already mandated it for you. Not that it isn't popular: >On September 22, 2013, a referendum that aimed to abolish conscription was held in Switzerland. However, the referendum failed with over 73% of the electorate voting against it, showing…

Military service isn't popular at all, but the majority of people do agree that it's necessary to have a military and they don't want a professional army. So that leaves the current system.

The popular mechanism remains- there's no need to encourage a voluntary interest in military culture and therefore military readiness, when it's already a popular idea to mandate the readiness.

In the absence of that mandate, there would be a vacuum in which citizens suddenly have self-interest in promoting voluntary readiness, which is implemented culturally.

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

#997

Post by sytelus »

It's amusing to see how various gaps are shrinking between two genders. Although still a long way to go, pay gaps are starting to shrink, at least at big corps. On the other end, for things like marital affair rates, both genders are now pretty close. Right now there is still huge gap in violent crimes between two genders but I wonder if this will shrink as well with new stats like in this article. A lot of our pre-assumptions about genders were either plain wrong or evolution is working its way towards equality as there is no longer need for hunter-gatherer social roles.

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

#998

Post by [deleted] »

unanswered wrote: post #995
_carbyau_ wrote: post #832

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the detailed response. I guess my dreamed up scenarios were more vague "shooter/assailant in the area" whereby I figured I'd want to "make myself less desirable to bother with". Hence small caliber, lots of noise/attempts and if - god forbid - anything connected it would still hurt/slow them. I never really contemplated a "someone intent on killing you" scenario. It isn't something I think of much and I…

> I guess my dreamed up scenarios were more vague "shooter/assailant in the area" whereby I figured I'd want to "make myself less desirable to bother with". Hence small caliber, lots of noise/attempts and if - god forbid - anything connected it would still hurt/slow them. This constitutes the crime of brandishing. You should not own any weapons if you can't keep from fantasizing committing crimes with them.

[deleted]

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

#999

Post by Glyptodon »

kelnos wrote: post #774
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…

> you're creating a premise that the only reason gun legality can be justified is self defense What other premise is there, when we're talking about a device that is designed to seriously injure and kill others? It's either a defensive weapon, or, worse, an offensive one. I think hunting is a totally legitimate use for a gun. I think your grandfather's case is as well, though there certainly are other solutions to hi…

> " A gun for fun? No, not fine (let the properly-licensed gun range own and store guns, and you can go and shoot them for fun)."

Looking at some other comments, and it crossed my mind that this perspective is very urban-centric. If you live in the country, it's pretty safe and cheap to shoot some cans with a .22, but pretty expensive in time (and maybe money) to travel to a range. And it's that way in a way that makes socioeconomic class way more centric to shooting - more like a racket club.

At the same time, arguably concentrating all the shooters in one place might make things less safe: if you do something stupid on your own property with no-one around, there's nobody to get hurt. But if the person next to you at the range is a moron and does something idiotic like shoot at 90 degrees to the firing line trying to check if a round is chambered with their finger on the trigger, doing it at a range is way less safe than doing it in the middle of nowhere.

Now you might argue that people who've been trained won't do stupid things like that, but despite drivers being licensed I still see a lot of stupid on the road and don't really believe that it'd be any different with guns.

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

#1000

Post by garmaine »

qball wrote: post #530
garmaine wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea that people should not have to give up all of their ability to fight. Fight...whom? How? A gun is a very blunt instrument. If you want to learn how to defend yourself, take a self-defense class and buy something non-lethal like mace. Why is a gun necessary for self-defense?

Because "in case of emergency, press button" works when issued from the hands of a 5' 110-pound woman against a 7' 250-pound man in a way that the other options simply do not.

Guns aren’t as simple as “in case of emergency, push button” and stopping power for handguns is nonexistent.

If you want a defensive weapon that is easy to use and hard to screw up, buy mace. If you want stopping power, buy a taser.

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