Only Livestock can be Defended with Firearms?
June 16th, 2009
Uncle points out the post Annie, Drop Your Gun which includes this bit of wisdom:
I lost three friends in gun-related accidents in High School and since graduation. Two were accidental. One was suicide. I grew up in upper middle class suburbia where everyone lived gated existences. There was NO REASON for them to have handguns in the house. None. If gun control existed, I would have three friends alive. PERIOD.
Do I carry a gun in my house? Never. Do I believe in the right to bear arms? Yes. But I believe there should be stricter regulations. I believe that fear is the worst possible reason to carry a weapon and therefor will never understand why so many feel the need to “protect their families,” especially when housed in gated communities in middle-class suburbs, alarms activated.
What are you afraid of? [emphasis in original]
Look! A “yes but” moment!
It’s little tough to get past the quote-marked “protect their families” bit, to be honest. What’s that all about? She not only seems to dismiss the idea that people believe they’re protecting their families, but he she goes on to claim that it’s unnecessary.
Which is interesting because, only three paragraphs above the excerpt I posted she wrote this:
We live in one of the largest cities in the world. Where drive-bys occur blocks from us. Where break-ins happen regularly. Where our own things have been stolen, our cars broken into, our things swiped from our porch. Three years ago, a man carjacked my husband at gun-point, stole his car and left him on the side of the road. He had just left the set of his job for his lunch break. There were dozens of witnesses. Everyone watched in shock.
What are you afraid of? indeed.
So she’s more or less established that families either shouldn’t or can’t be protected, and then there’s this in the comments section:
I do think there is a legitimate need for firearms…for SOME people. For example, we used guns on the farm…but is there a need for us to have a gun in our home now? No. We dont have livestock to defend, we dont have wild animals roaming our suburban street. And as far as Im concerned..there is no other reason to have a gun.
Sounds like protecting familes = bad but protecting livestock = good.
And the statement “we dont have wild animals roaming our suburban street” is quite amazing. We’ve got the wildest of the wild animals roaming our suburban streets. Hell of a lot worse than coyotes.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Very naive, really. Most suicides happen without guns. She could not have prevented the suicide, because apparently that friend of hers was determined to kill himself/herself. As for the accidents, how would she know that those two would still be alive today? Accidents happen. My own cousin, the son of my grandmother’s sister (who moved to the US after WW2 with her husband), was killed in a traffic accident with his friend when a drunk driver hit their car (long time ago.) The drunk bugger who hit them didn’t even have a scratch.
Love the comments. Love how the Euro-peons (spelling on purpose) weigh in their stupidity. Yep, we do have crime, as Elena (first comment) said. But we also have rising crime rates. And criminals get guns, bans or not. Not to mention that the criminals are becoming more brutal. In Austria the vast majority of crimes with physical injury or death is committed with knives and blunt objects. Legal guns make the smallest amount. Illegal guns pop up more often in crimes than legal guns. Why? Because criminals don’t care about laws.
Of course the media here is not saying anything about the rising crime rate. They’re too busy fainting over how cool Obama is. But you just need to get your hands on the crime statistics from the police, it’s scary, really.
Yeah, we don’t have the “fear propaganda” (whatever that’s supposed to be), instead we have the gun-grabbing propaganda. Cause… all guns are evil! So the media tells us all the time.
June 16th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
I’ve been an advocate of armed self defense for a long time, and have had the opportunity to debate some who are supporters of gun control.
One tactic that would end the debate quickly would be to ask if they ever lost anyone close to them through suicide. Close to 60% of all gun deaths are suicides, after all. More often than not, the person on the other side of the table would have suffered such a loss.
And, more often than not, they would become a snarling, spitting fury when I mentioned their loss. Reasoned debate need not apply here.
And that is pretty much the point. No one is responsible for suicide except for the person who commits the act, but it does tend to create profound feelings of guilt amongst those who have to carry on after. Hey, it can’t be their fault if it is the gun’s fault. Right?
And that is why you get people who absolutely refuse to see the self defense angle, refuse to even consider the facts, and refuse to consider those who advocate armed self defense as anything else but terrible monsters who want to see wonderful people in their grave. To even conceded otherwise is to admit that maybe it is their fault for failing to see the warning signs.
James
June 16th, 2009 at 8:23 pm
Wow, that is about the most absurd article and comment string I’ve ever read. Talk about naive.
I won’t insult their intelligence by insinuating that they actually believe what they were writing.
I grew up in a house with guns, almost all of my friends did the same, and you know what? I believe only one of my friends’ fathers had a guns safe, and not one time did we ever try to play with one (we all knew where every single one was stored too). It might have had something to do with our parents explaining that they were dangerous, and letting us shoot them when we went camping and to the range.
Or maybe none of my friends were stupid, I’ll never know.
Anyone that knows me would probably say I am very pro gun, but I’ll be the first to admit; if it would work, I’d be all for gun control. If we could wipe out the knowledge of firearms from the human race, I’d be for that too. Unfortunately, we can’t, and it won’t. We have countries that have outlawed private firearm ownership, and without exception, violent crime (specifically rape and MURDER WITH FIREARMS) has risen once firearms are outlawed. Criminals will never obey firearms laws or “regulations” (please don’t insult my intelligence by claiming there is a difference), because they are criminals!
GRRRRRR! And you know who suffers for this? Children and the weak, who will be victimized because of people that are too blinded by their own fear to see that all they are doing is making everyone more vulnerable.
Sorry, end of rant. I’m gonna go buy daughter a pistol.
June 16th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Two accidental deaths? I don’t believe it. Either her friends are the stupidest people on Earth or something else was going on. I’ve been in the field with tens of thousands or soldiers and Marines all armed to the teeth – no accidental deaths.
June 16th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Bram: I have trouble believing that, too. But if we consider the writer’s position on things and assume that these other folks had a similar outlook, perhaps it’s reasonable to accept that, against all odds, two people died as the result of cluelessness, ignorance, and willful disregard for a little common sense.
If true, it shows the danger of the writer’s plan for instilling complete and total ignorance about guns into her kids. She says she’ll teach “gun safety” but not “how to properly use a weapon.” That usually means “gun safety = don’t touch = bad and evil” which isn’t safe at all.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:18 am
I agree with Bram. Accidental deaths due to firearms are… well… The first thing I learned when I was drafted back in the 90s here in Austria and when they handed me the Steyr AUG was… gun safety. We didn’t have any ammo in our hands. But we spend a whole week in basic training taking apart the rifle, putting it together again, and then checking whether it’s loaded or not. A whole week. Hours after hours. The first time we saw life ammo was on the firing range. Throughout basic training we did the gun safety lessons. And even after basic it continued.
Gun safety = don’t touch = bad and evil” is actually amusing, because any criminal who has a chance to get on a gun… WILL touch it.
My father was a cop (retired in April this year). We always had guns around at home. His Glock and his old PPK. Always. I would have NEVER even remotely thought of toying around with a loaded gun. NEVER. It was clear that a loaded gun was no toy. It was just clear for me. When I picked them up -and I did that often, especially with the PPK which was usually at home- I always made sure that there was no round chambered. Always. Because I knew that thing was no toy.
My father’s former superior owns a house. He once said to my father (that was a discussion due to our rising crime rates) that, should someone break into his house and he’d find the burglar standing in his bedroom at night… he’d fire the first round into the robber and the second into the ceiling. Then he could always say that he fired a warning shot (nobody would be able to tell which shot was fired first.) Mind you, that’s coming from a cop who lives in Austria, a country with extremly tight gun control.
Oh yes, a few days ago the latest crime statistics for Austria were published. Guess what. Crime’s going up up and up in 2008 as well, and the trend of 2009 so far is: more crimes than in 2008. Burglary and forced entry into houses is the one crime with the biggest upward trend. And, what people usually don’t know, armed self defense (i.e. someone fending off a burglar in his house with a gun) happens quite often in Austria these days.
June 17th, 2009 at 9:42 am
Takekaze – Our training was pretty similar. I saw one accidental discharge in my entire time in the Marines and Army National Guard. Nobody was hurt but the idiot who was cleaning a loaded pistol was immediately demoted to E-1 Private.
June 19th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Her reasoning (sic.?) appears to be, “Because I am afraid of guns, and I can’t think of any reason to own a gun, therefore no one should own guns.” This pattern is another example of the contemporary “I decide what is right and what is wrong” moral reasoning (sic.). Regarding the “This country, (usually France, never Mexico) doesn’t have any firearms and their murder rate is thus and such, therefore… But I’d reply with the contrary. Assume the same firearms density. Then what is their murder rate?”