How many people are seriously afraid of firearms?

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Oh, there is skill involved. You must have really good aim. I couldn't hit the side of a barn, I'm sure. I don't even have a gun now, and haven't in decades. I don't need one, especially living in this town where there isn't much crime at all. Back when I had a gun, I'd buy targets and go shooting, I was passable, but not great.


You would probably be safer if I were trying to shoot you, because that's almost always a guaranteed miss, unless you were about a foot away. Now, anyway.

Frances

OliveOil, it's just that to be good at shooting, you have to be calm and dispassionate. Perhaps I am a "natural" from my PTSD tendency to dissociate: to go cold and emotionless and terrifyingly pragmatic in a crisis. That, in itself, seems like the only real "skill" needed to shoot and kill another person with a handgun. Circumventing the morality that might stop you from taking a life, which seems to be the primary focus of military boot camp: to break a human's will so badly that they are unhesitant killers.

As guns have become more prevalent in large scale conflict, so the ratio of those that survive these conflicts and are able to continue breeding overtakes those who cannot overcome their moral qualms about hurting other humans.

At least in hand to hand combat, you have to face your victim and likely be splattered with their fluids as you slay them. Much more traumatic than "I think I got him!" from a distance, much more likely to reinforce the suspicions the killer has that, well, maybe killing isn't so great.

Well, I'm just as bad aiming at video games or paint ball. I shot at targets, the paper human form ones and also things like cans and rocks. I wasn't stressed when I did that. I just am not good at aiming at anything. If you ask me to throw something to you, move to the other side of the room if you want to catch it. It will probably either fall two feet from me, or sail above your head seven feet to your left.

I cannot aim.

Frances

Try shooting at a target 1,000 yards away in high wind then tell everyone that there's not any skill involved. Yes, it can be easier when you are shooting a firearm for the first time and you actually follow the instructions given you by someone who knows what they're talking about. However, if you just imagine everything to be merely "point and click" you are in for a few surprises.

Now, of course it does require more skill to use a bow and arrow or a javelin or other medieval and ancient weaponry, and they are just as lethal nowadays as they were in the past, however when your opponent wields a long range high kinetic energy projectile weapon with relatively rapid reloading times such medieval weaponry is obsolete in most circumstances - unless you know for certain that the firearm wielding opponent has depleted their ammunition and are therefore practically unarmed.

Touche! :D

I should have said "less skill," since if fighting with a bow, javelin, big rock or other primitive weapon, you would first need to close a lot more distance to come withing killing range, giving your quarry more time to notice your approach, anticipate you attack, set ambush or flee, forcing you to track. All of which adds to your physical exertion, which must be conserved in order to meet the more vigorous physical demands of operating a hand weapon. And all that time closing and tracking and considering the possibilities of the encounter also gives you more time to reconsider whether the violence is necessary or justified.

Oh, and for the record I received no instruction with the Glock. It was just point and click. My pa was an army sharpshooter, so maybe I inherited a firearm gene or something. :p I don't know. Shooting the pistol bothered me, and I haven't touched one since. I just don't feel like I should personally have access to something that easy. Or that anyone should, really.

The way my residual PTSD works: in a fight I go cold and disembody ... I watch myself utilize the quickest and most efficient means of severely incapacitating my opponent until they are unable to present any kind of threat ... I have absolutely no conscious control over my actions, but see everything happen with perfect clarity, wanting to stop myself but being unable to... and I will weaponize anything that is at hand. It's terrifying, when I process it after the fact. Messes my head up for months.



Absolutely, agreed. It is precisely the efficiency of modern weaponry that I find distasteful. Making it easier to kill people doesn't seem like much of a benefit to humanity, to me.

Difference is, I don't go around robbing people.

Still the case remains that whatever is outlawed remains with the outlaws, so the efficiency of modern weaponry is disallowed from those who care to do right but the disallowing of such weaponry means nothing to those who care nothing for laws or anything but their own benefit. The quick and easy murder weapon is within their reach alone then, giving them the tactical advantage to bully and silence easily while they make their financial goals at the detriment of others.

Just thought I'd point out that I'm a Brit and I disagree with fraac. Not because I'm obsessed with guns, or even because I personally am particularly interested in owning one, but because, as others and myself have already said, a gun is a tool which a malicious human can use to kill, and if they don't have one, they'll just kill using something else. You can't stop someone who has the intention of killing by taking one tool away from them, it's like speed bumps... Sure, you can hope speeding motorists slow down for them, but someone's who's determined to break the limit will buy a 4X4 and just speed over them like it's nothing. And if you want to kill someone, there are many, many, legal objects you can still use for the purpose. As I also stated before, people still get stabbed and shot regularly in London, despite many types of knives and all guns being illegal. Someone who wants to commit murder won't be put off by the fact that a tool they want to use is illegal - they'll either get one anyway or use something else.

If they outlaw guns, I'd imagie hammers would become the next best weapon.

At least that's what I'd choose.

Frances

Its still true that this is a deep rooted cultural belief linked to the gun-permitting provision of the Second Amendment (obvious but its still interesting to me). Generally Americans and Europeans feel so differently its one of those subjects where people may as well have not chatted - for all the difference they can make in learning from each other.

The only reason I'm pointing this out is this sort of deep mismatch between intelligent, rational, decent people fascinates me. I really like concilliation in day-to-day life and its very infrequent. I really like it when people are able to discuss massively different views in conciliatory ways - you think they are going to clash, and in fact they successfully learn whats its like to be in each others shoes. Its beautiful. This is a civilised thread. Usually this subject online elsewhere gets people shouting at each other. I dont think there are that many people who do shout at each other on WP (some, but they are already stressed). How do people ever hear each other when they are so firmly committed to their positions? How was there ever any progress towards reconcilliation in Northern Ireland? I dont know.




That has been answered. But it may as well have not have been because I dont think people can hear each other in faith-based discussions.The vast majority of Americans feel this deeply like a faith - they don't acknowledge theres a link between the disproportionate number of gun-related deaths in the US and the freely available firearms. Most Europeans feel the opposite.

Yes but the homicide and gun crime rate isn't anywhere as high as it is compared to somewhere like California. If guns were legalized, there wouldn't be any way to police it and I believe it would increase gun crime because people would have access to firearms regardless of their medical history.

Another point to make is that firearms usually escalate violence, for instance, if the shop owners in the London riots had guns, imagine what it would have resulted in if armed people started to take the law into their own hands to protect their property, many more lives would have been lost and the situation would have been far more difficult to control.

Why do you assume that legalising something means it can't be regulated?

It would have been f**king brilliant if the shopkeepers were armed during the riots, I would have loved to watch the rioters get shot as they tried to steal from hard working people and burn down the homes of innocent families. The riots would have been over a lot quicker too - the pathetic half-wits wouldn't have looked so tough against an AK47, I'm sure.

In fact, a game called Shoot the Rioters would be brilliant as well. It could be the next Call of Duty

'You would have loved to have watched rioters get shot'

'It would have been f*****g brilliant.'


No wonder you ain't scared of firearms. I'm scared of you.

What, you're on the side of the as*holes who looted shops and burned down homes of innocent, hard working people just because they thought they could get away with it? They should have been locked in the burning houses.

No of course I'm not. Violence scares me, in all its forms.