Ummm, with an almost insignificant change of circumstances, attacking a guy with a rifle could be an act of heroism. The guy who rushes an armed shooter and saves lives would be viewed in a very different light.
All your responses about gun matters focus heavily on the right to self-defense. I don't think this is a central concern with …
Ummm, with an almost insignificant change of circumstances, attacking a guy with a rifle could be an act of heroism. The guy who rushes an armed shooter and saves lives would be viewed in a very different light.
All your responses about gun matters focus heavily on the right to self-defense. I don't think this is a central concern with firearm ownership; yes it does happen but most statistics on its frequency are muddled by the RKBA crowd determined to push their arguments, and being able to purchase assault rifles from vending machines in airports is more important to them than any honest discussion. The same people who say Stalin killed a hundred million people say that guns are used in a hundred thousand acts of defense every year.
It's like the old argument about having the runaway train kill one person or six people; I don't say this of you, you strike me as reasonable, but the strident arguments about self-defense show a fascination with helplessness only mirrored by the S&M bondage crowd. Right now gun ownership in the USA is simply doing too much harm, not only the mass shootings but the fanaticism and rage.
The small difference was that the guy with the rifle did not initiate the violence.
I suspect that self-defense is often sighted as a response to "need." The world would be a very different place if we were limited to needs and most people wouldn't like that world. I don't respond with that to the "What does anyone need with..." argument because I don't really care about what people think others need a need for. Next thing you know they'll say I don't need my banjo. ;0)
The odds of me needing to defend myself with a gun are almost as low as the odds of me being a victim of a mass shooting and both are probably overemphasized in the discussion.
In a recent conversation with my wife, she revealed for the first time just how afraid she was that I would be killed on my last return to Vietnam. For some reason it inspired me to reread James Webb's classic "Fields of Fire" for a trip back in time. Things shoved down the memory hole returned which are making me think about how much those formative years shaped my views for a lifetime. Things no longer relevant. A productive thing for the discussion is to honestly address why we hold the views that we hold which are not as often about pure logic as we like to believe. People are very good at bullshitting themselves. Not as some accusatory bullshit to insult or win an argument in your own mind, making the divide worse, but genuine self-assessment.
If you like to read, I recommend it. It is a book that could not be written today. Brutal honesty with all the magic racist words of that time, place and people meant to dehumanize. That is why I so often address the issue of demonization and dehumanization, something I never chose to forget its purpose.
If you want to talk in generic terms about presumptions of what other people need you're wasting your time. Do I *need* a room full of boxes of physics books I don't have shelves for? No. Do I *need* saxophones and flutes I don't play? No.
Does anyone *need* a firearm? That gets hazy. In a high crime neighborhood where burglary and robbery are common it would be hard to justify denial.
But: does anyone need a military weapon of massacre for self-defense? Absolutely not. Homes are not invaded by armies, they're invaded by addicts looking for a stereo or an iPad to steal and sell to buy dope. You don't need to be able to kill dozens of people in a minute to defend against that, and the availability of such firepower to demonstrably unstable people is doing the nation a lot of harm.
Ummm, with an almost insignificant change of circumstances, attacking a guy with a rifle could be an act of heroism. The guy who rushes an armed shooter and saves lives would be viewed in a very different light.
All your responses about gun matters focus heavily on the right to self-defense. I don't think this is a central concern with firearm ownership; yes it does happen but most statistics on its frequency are muddled by the RKBA crowd determined to push their arguments, and being able to purchase assault rifles from vending machines in airports is more important to them than any honest discussion. The same people who say Stalin killed a hundred million people say that guns are used in a hundred thousand acts of defense every year.
It's like the old argument about having the runaway train kill one person or six people; I don't say this of you, you strike me as reasonable, but the strident arguments about self-defense show a fascination with helplessness only mirrored by the S&M bondage crowd. Right now gun ownership in the USA is simply doing too much harm, not only the mass shootings but the fanaticism and rage.
The small difference was that the guy with the rifle did not initiate the violence.
I suspect that self-defense is often sighted as a response to "need." The world would be a very different place if we were limited to needs and most people wouldn't like that world. I don't respond with that to the "What does anyone need with..." argument because I don't really care about what people think others need a need for. Next thing you know they'll say I don't need my banjo. ;0)
The odds of me needing to defend myself with a gun are almost as low as the odds of me being a victim of a mass shooting and both are probably overemphasized in the discussion.
In a recent conversation with my wife, she revealed for the first time just how afraid she was that I would be killed on my last return to Vietnam. For some reason it inspired me to reread James Webb's classic "Fields of Fire" for a trip back in time. Things shoved down the memory hole returned which are making me think about how much those formative years shaped my views for a lifetime. Things no longer relevant. A productive thing for the discussion is to honestly address why we hold the views that we hold which are not as often about pure logic as we like to believe. People are very good at bullshitting themselves. Not as some accusatory bullshit to insult or win an argument in your own mind, making the divide worse, but genuine self-assessment.
If you like to read, I recommend it. It is a book that could not be written today. Brutal honesty with all the magic racist words of that time, place and people meant to dehumanize. That is why I so often address the issue of demonization and dehumanization, something I never chose to forget its purpose.
Headed for bed but let me tell you one quote I live by: people are far better at rationalizing than at rationality.
But yeah so much discourse online is childish competitiveness. I will admit when I am wrong, that's very important to my sense of who I am.
Words and a philosophy to live by.
If you want to talk in generic terms about presumptions of what other people need you're wasting your time. Do I *need* a room full of boxes of physics books I don't have shelves for? No. Do I *need* saxophones and flutes I don't play? No.
Does anyone *need* a firearm? That gets hazy. In a high crime neighborhood where burglary and robbery are common it would be hard to justify denial.
But: does anyone need a military weapon of massacre for self-defense? Absolutely not. Homes are not invaded by armies, they're invaded by addicts looking for a stereo or an iPad to steal and sell to buy dope. You don't need to be able to kill dozens of people in a minute to defend against that, and the availability of such firepower to demonstrably unstable people is doing the nation a lot of harm.