> We look the other way when people are doing things that seem bad, until they pick up a gun, then we blame the gun for the outcome, not the fact that government agencies looked the other way instead of intervention.
This always struck me as silly excuse. The gun nuts are pretty obsessed with personal liberty. Taking their guns is already beyond the pale, so I have a hard time believing they're going to accept being thrown in a sanitarium whenever they do something antisocial like show up at a school board meeting foaming at the mouth about vaccines...
> So even when there are a lot of guns, and mental health issues, there is still a way to prevent daily mass shootings.
Sure. Except mass shootings aren't daily, and the way to do it is to raise the cost of doing so, not to take away the right of self-defense.
> People who are enthusiastic about guns are responsible for the culture you've created around guns, and the laws on the books for guns.
This is very wrong in my experience. I grew up in rural Idaho where people were enthusiastic about guns. They were incredibly careful around guns and always taught me that guns are tools, not toys.
You know what depicts guns as toys? Hollywood. Video games. Other pop culture. Gangs.
It's the depiction of guns as toys or as a method to get your way that is bad, and I never saw that growing up.
Perhaps that's why there really aren't mass shootings at rural schools.
> So then what good is it doing?
Peace of mind. More on that later.
> But... what you just told me contradicts this. You were so fearful of the world that you brought your gun, because you felt that you might be compelled to use it.
Actually, because I had the weapon, I felt less fearful. You said yourself that your experiences were terrifying. My experience was not for me because I had a backup plan.
You were terrified and fearful. I was not. Thus, it was not a contradiction.
And you say that plenty of terrifying experiences are resolved without guns. That's true, but it only takes once for that to be catastrophically untrue.
But plenty of such things are resolved because of guns. [1]
Also, the reason I bought a gun and started carrying? The George Floyd riots. There were shootings by rioters, which for the most part were not the people you claim are responsible for gun culture.
And by the way, I pulled a slight trick on you. Notice that I said I never drew my "weapon" in that experience. You automatically assumed I had a gun.
I didn't. I had a knife.
There is one big reason why. I'm more confident with knives than guns, to remain safe and reduce collateral damage. I carry this knife everywhere I can, even when I don't feel unsafe because it helps me feel less fearful and gives me another option.
As it turns out, that incident happened in a place I previously felt completely safe in. But I still had my knife which gave me another option should things have gone south.
"When seconds matter, the police are minutes away."
So I wasn't carrying because I was fearful. I was carrying because I was prepared.
It's funny, though; I could probably walk into a Rust event with this knife, and I would not be breaking any rules. Yet I'm sure you would not like it anyway. That shows how terrible this policy is because it only targets one thing that the Rust Foundation does not like and does not really address what people like you don't like.
As another nail in your argument that it's people like me responsible for this culture, those same people are the reason why I feel less confident with guns than knives.
I went shooting with those people a few times in my youth. In every single one, I made small mistakes with the guns, and every time, I got corrected strongly, even though I almost never made the same mistake twice. In fact, I often was corrected so strongly and publicly that I actually felt shame. It got to the point that I stopped using guns and never touched a gun for a decade and a half (except for once in basic training).
Those "enthusiastic" people actually put me off of guns. So much for spreading gun culture. Thus, I have a hard time believing your argument.
You know what would change the gun culture? Having everyone take the same safety classes that I did, to learn how to be safe, and if they are not safe, they should be chewed out by instructors like the people in my youth did me. Then the very poor depiction of guns in movies and pop culture would be more easily ignored and changed for the better as well since people will call out the people who make that pop culture.
Politics is a poor way of changing culture because "politics are downstream from culture." You would be swimming upstream.
And if the Rust Foundation are going to require events to not allow guns, then perhaps they should pay for armed security to compensate? Event organizers will probably have to.
> Unfortunately, Mental illness is largely not the cause of gun violence like the media says it is, the issue is that there are so many guns out there that are so easy to get a hand on by anyone, that gun violence is so bad.
This is close to the position I used to take. I now believe it's incorrect, mostly because (I am speaking of the United States in particular) you aren't going to get people to give up their guns. It's just not going to happen on a foreseeable timeline. Add in the existence of 3D printed firearms, and it becomes a laughable prospect. If you accept that as a premise, what do you do next if you want to reduce gun deaths? Probably what you should have done in the first place, which is to attack the cause rather than the method of death.
> People act like guns are only useful for committing crimes and mass shootings. Guns are a tool; we have a cultural problem, not a simple gun problem.
You have: a gun problem; poverty; a lack of opportunities (education); (mental) healthcare problems; police violence/murder; drug problems; prison condition problem; a sentencing problem; money in politics; issues with due process; ... the list goes on.
These all contribute to people feeling powerless, which presumably causes things like this. You should fix these issues, the rest of the civilized world has.
But hey, an obvious start to fixing this is strong regulation of firearms.
> If guns were meant to protect us from our government--well we already have an overtly anti-constitutional, criminal government with disproportionate powers residing in unelected individuals.
You don't really believe that otherwise you would've left to one of the other hundreds of countries in the world, unless you believe all governments are criminal.
> Ah but you just want to "save lives?"
I'm interested in saving my own life if I'm ever in danger. I already have a brita filter.
> Giving your populace easy, uncontrolled access to this technology is actually causing rampant shootings.
Notice how one is “just asking” for a hypothetical risk while the other is an everyday fact of life.
The relationship between availability of guns and the amount of gun violence is extremely well-established. I personally am sympathetic to the view that an armed population is a meaningful deterrent against tyranny, but it’s hard to compare a hypothetical to a growing number of deaths. And the odd fact that firearms’ primary political role in our society is to intimidate people while voting doesn’t help either.
> It's not the gun. It never was the gun. It's the person.
this is such a bad argument. of course its true that the person is responsible, but that's not an argument against gun control.
we can't just lock up everyone that could possibly go on a shooting spree, but we sure can make it harder for a person to go on shooting sprees. make it harder for people to get guns!
> Guns exist, that can't be stopped any more than preventing alcohol from existing
great, but if access to guns was restricted, it would be harder for crazy people from going on shooting sprees.
nobody thinks that all access to guns can be eliminated, but its pretty reasonable to say that if it were hard to get guns, fewer shooting sprees would happen.
> guns are just tools, as are knives, and diesel fuel, and even explosives
this comparison is so clearly bad:
the tradeoffs for society are obvious in each of these cases. knives are pretty dangerous, but they don't really enable someone to rampage through an elementary school to kill 27 people. diesel fuel is pretty dangerous, but it's also really useful to society. i'm pretty sure we already have controls on who has access to explosives.
> Just from personal experience among my friends and acquaintances
This is significantly biasing your perspective, and I don’t think you quite realize by how much.
There are many, many gun owners who are incompetent and irresponsible. There is an entire spectrum, and it’s not a purely bimodal distribution with 95% safety-conscious owners and 5% hoodlums.
> The fact that there are so many of these situations points towards a different and bigger problem in society and I would much rather energy was spent on fixing them than treating symptoms with firearms.
Of course there's a bigger problem. But I would much rather own a gun and actually be able to protect myself and my family, than refuse to have a gun on principle and just pray that one day I get to effect all of society. The latter is like refusing to wear a seat belt, because people should really be driving safely.
> There is something deeply flawed in the whole system if that can happen
This is just it. Carrying a gun is so normalised in the US that people are admitting that they forget that they are carrying a device which has the sole purpose of killing or injuring.
This is not ok in my opinion, but apparently everyone is ok with living in an environment where you all believe you need a gun for protection (which, if it's buried at the bottom of your bag, is going to be hopeless). I can't fathom that a person could be happy with this, but there you go.
> 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.
It's usually the opposite sentiment for gun owners- I trust my fellow citizens with arms.
Guns are seen as an integral part of self-reliance by many. They provide you with a reasonably effective defense. One way to significantly erode individual's/citizen's power, and in turn give power to government, is take away their ability to defend themselves. People worry that as government becomes more powerful and citizens more reliant there is greater likelihood of oppressive government, in other words disarming populace is step down a slippery slope
>Long story short, don't fear shooters that are having fun at your local gun range, they wouldn't do anything that stupid and they know damn well the dangers.
Lol wut? My entire family is "responsible gun owners" who repeatedly engage in harmful gun culture stuff, keeping guns around young kids, mixing alcohol and drugs with firearms, and NOT STOPPING EACH OTHER FROM DOING THAT
I have no trust in people who say "no no no the responsible gun owners are fine" because they always claim that the people who did dangerous things were "no responsible gun owners" when stuff inevitably happens. It's a tautology to try and pretend like the people doing all the stupid things aren't very similar to the people who say we should trust them.
> You came to believe that guns create mass murderers?
I came to believe that the institutions which continue to not just protect widespread proliferation of firearms, but to rally around it as a culture war battle, are the ones failing children. I’m not sure how to engage with the phrasing “create mass murderers”. But those institutions are certainly enabling those who would be.
> Either you never really held a belief in the right to self-defense and are arguing in bad faith (which, frankly, is most likely)
Oh I still believe in the right to self-defense. And in all honesty I haven’t moved much philosophically on the subject of firearms specifically. But in terms of the practical reality, I just don’t believe we’re going to solve the problem without addressing our gun culture and significantly reducing availability/access.
> or if you did change your mind due to such a ridiculous premise, you never had a coherent argument for gun rights in the first place.
Oh it was coherent. The shift came at the same time as I shifted away from anarchism towards communism. Can’t really get more coherent than a fundamental question of the role, if any, of the state in dictating what’s permissible. My attitude toward that question has shifted on a great deal of things. Not to serve the ideological shift, but causing it. It hasn’t shifted far, granted.
> If I’m choosing a house to rob, sounds like a really really dumb idea to choose one where the person owns a gun.
Unless you want to steal a gun of course.
> If anything the gun owners should be happy, the government gave them free deterrence from being the target of crime.
Unless they are the kind of person exposed to abnormal risk. The same people who are more likely to need or want a concealed weapon. Examples include judges and correctional officers who are called out in the data explicitly. Or anyone with an abusive partner or stalker who can look them up by name.
> You think that once we get rid of half a billion guns in America somehow (lol) the criminals won't be able to get them anymore.
It would definitely be _harder_ for them.
The latest school shooter bought a rifle from an officially sanctioned store. Others just went to gun conventions and bought them from other individuals.
> How do you explain continued criminal access to guns in very restricted parts of the world, like Europe or Australia?
I'll explain it by the fact that shootings are extremely rare, and mass shootings are almost unheard of.
> If your solution has leaks like that, it's not a solution.
This is akin to saying that if a medical treatment doesn't have a 100% efficacy, it shouldn't be considered. Well, it is just not how it works.
>You don't wish to go here as the statistics are against you.
What a hilariously arrogant statement.
>Gun owners are far more likely to have their gun fired in an accident or in a suicide than as genuine defense against a criminal.
Whether your gun is more likely to be used against you or in an accident is almost entirely in your power to control. Whether someone else decides to attempt to make a victim out of you is much less so. Wealthier people may be able to take precautions like avoiding areas frequented by certain groups of people and strategically choosing where to live but that is out of reach for many.
>As the victim, you are far more likely to survive an encounter if a gun isn't involved.
You're also vastly less able to prevent yourself and your loved ones from becoming victims in such an encounter if you aren't armed. That's why criminals in the US have a much greater tendency to avoid occupied homes than do criminals in other parts of the world. I would much rather take my family's safety into my own hands than leave it to the benevolence of violent thugs.
> I've heard people jokingly say, "One side collects guns and the other collects mental disorders."
> That's obviously an unfair shot but there's some truth to it.
No truth to it at all really. I'm pretty much a full-on socialist and I own firearms. In fact, I'm not sure I know anyone who doesn't own a firearm.
There are more firearms in the US than there are people, so what kind of fool honestly believes they are all in the hands of less than one half of the population?
This always struck me as silly excuse. The gun nuts are pretty obsessed with personal liberty. Taking their guns is already beyond the pale, so I have a hard time believing they're going to accept being thrown in a sanitarium whenever they do something antisocial like show up at a school board meeting foaming at the mouth about vaccines...
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