Convince me: Assault weapons edition

Ovid_and_Flem said:

I keep running across an interesting statistic that really makes me ponder the gun issue.  Best estimates suggest that there are about 101 guns per 100 people in U.S....by far largest number in the world by far.

But here's the odd statistic:  50% of U.S. civilian owned guns are in the hands of 3% of the population.  Doing the math that means the 3% each have an average of 17 guns.

FWIW I'M a gun owner...I have one handgun,  4 shotguns and a .22 calibre rifle. So I have six.   Just struck me as an odd statistic.

I came to this party late, I've made it to the end of page 2, it's nice of the mods to have allowed the discussion to continue.  I'll continue reading, or at least skimming.

This statement got me to take a mental inventory.  I'm well north of the 17 firearm threshold, and that's not counting air rifles, stripped AR lower receivers that are technically classified as "firearms," and family heirlooms that are housed at my parent's or in-law's homes.

Casual observation and reflection of the majority of other firearms owners I know, most own north of 10, and several of those are way more than 10.  I know a couple with literally their own private museums that make my collection look tiny. 

I say all that to say, from my perspective, I would have thought more folks owned greater than 17 firearms.

In reply to bigdaddylee82 :

True... I have 8 cars, around a dozen bicycles, and about two dozen guitars... when you get into a hobby you tend to collect items of that hobby. With my background in military history, I could see myself easily having more than 17 guns, although I doubt there would be much duplication in types. 

In reply to Ian F & bigdaddylee82:

Yup...we're a nation of excess.  My brother, who often takes guns on trade for his services, has acquired about 100 handguns and 250+ long guns over the years.  Most of it low end stuff but he has purchased some nice things along the way.

The statistic seems realistic enough....just suggests to me there are a lot of folks that don't own guns.

It seems to me that a lot of these school shootings and accidental shootings involving kids would be prevented by having safe storage laws on the books with people actually following them. If the kid can't get at the gun whenever they please or stumble upon a loaded gun while playing, how are they going to shoot anyone? 

It also seems to me that at the core of the issue is FEAR. Fear of the government, fear of criminals, fear of wild animals or whatever else, feeling that they need to protect themselves from it with a gun.

To quote Yoda: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you."

Ovid_and_Flem said:

In reply to Ian F & bigdaddylee82:

The statistic seems realistic enough....just suggests to me there are a lot of folks that don't own guns.

Hunting is declining as a hobby.  

Amazingly I also support better background checks and requiring all gun sales even private party to use one. I certainly wouldn't sell anything I own to someone without a background check and legally transferring the registration.

I find myself on the fence about this from a freedom perspective, but likewise, would not transfer a firearm to anyone other than immediate family / lifelong friend without going through a FFL, just from liability concern. Not just legal liability, but also moral.

RX8driver said:

... It also seems to me that at the core of the issue is FEAR. Fear of the government, fear of criminals, fear of wild animals or whatever else, feeling that they need to protect themselves from it with a gun.

In the same way that fear of fires has led to fire alarms and drills in schools, sprinkler systems in large buildings, and fire extinguishers in homes. There is a danger, a risk. Many people have realized that owning a firearm is a means to mitigate a risk. Will I ever need to use the fire extinguisher in a race car? Probably not. You could say that fear is why I would like to have one.

First off - the ability to have this discussion carry on for days is a testament to the ability of folks here to genuinely seeks and share opinions.

 This is my favorite place on the internet.

On this topic I find myself conflicted for the first time in my life.  I grew up in a middle class household in the middle of rustbelt USA.  Family background is catholic educated conservative.  

From age 8 I was out target shooting with my family.  We have a very structured firearm / dangerous stuff training process.  At a high level it involves a lot of observation and discussion before moving on to air rifles, single shot 22 rifles, then semi auto 22 rifles, then on to centerfire stuff at a later time.  Outside of air rifles all shooting took place at a gun club surrounded by a lot of generally like minded folks.  Everything was always locked up but things like reloading equipment and the associated stuff were always present.

Firearms were always a sport/modification/learning tool much like my skateboard, bmx bikes, and now cars.  This tweak, modify, right tool for right job thing is how my collection of firearms occurred.  Xmas or bdays were always an occasion for ammo or other firearm furniture to be gifted as it was something the family took part in together.

Starting 12ish on, the family got heavily involved with competitive pistol shooting.  Getting serious at shooting is like anything else.  We hit the range three days a week with a competition each weekend somewhere.   All the practice means a lot of work reloading.  When we weren’t out practicing we were doing some prep.  Think casting bullets with pots of lead, priming and depriving shells, or loading the brass polisher (a very GRM recycled 5 gallon bucket and ice cream maker).

As I grew up I realized that I could mention competitive shooting in discussion but needed to edit the rest of the discussion.  It was clearly a different thing that we did as a familiar vs other kids I was growing up with.

Fast forward to me as a 40 yr old family guy with school age kiddos watching the mass shooting vision tv.  I’m doing the same shooting, training, safety safety safety, and fun focus Dad used with me.  I’m using this a way to talk about fun thing but also danger and responsibility.

I struggle with the split I see in the firearm population between “traditional” and carry focused folks.  While I have brought a concealed carry firearm with the family on road trips when we were traveling in off hours I am not a ccw guy.  That isn’t a judgement good or bad on folks that do, many of my family and friends do the ccw thing.

As a statement I have found that when I have been in these life/death conflict situations in the past (multiple times but all self inflicted) I had no firearm, even when others did.  Because I had no firearm, I had to come up with an alternate plan.  When the gun is available it is where you think of first, based on the few times I have carried.  When there isn’t one available    you work plan a-z before thinking of it.

I am an ardent 2nd amendment fan but I struggle with the general capability/training of folks With firearms.  Out of time convenience mire than half the time I have a chance to shoot, I end up at some commercial range like a Readyline or Point Blank with no membership required.  These places are REALLY different from the private membership rages where you need to be vouched for by two members and voted in after discussion.  I think generally these places represent the average American gun owner much better than the niche ranges.

This is not to say there weren’t occasional bad actors at the private range but at the commercial ranges safety is really challenging.  At the private range it is your responsibility as a member to go correct the bad behavior.  As you can imagine this can sometimes be awkward or confrontational but it is everyone’s responsibility and generally is handled easily.

The unsafe manners, handling, and attitude of folks I see at the commercial ranges literally scares the e36m3 out of me.  Most folks haven’t had a teacher or taken a class.  Most folks didn’t have safe behavior drilled into them since third grade.  In summation most folks are really not capable of safe firearm behavior.  I get that this is very touchy  and in no way meant to be judgemental, just an observation.

In in general I see these folks having just purchased a gun for ccw, I’m guessing these folks spent a afternoon at the farm shooting cans with an uncle or something.  It’s great that they are interested but I suspect it’s more often out of fear than interest.

The issue I’d like to see improved is public safety and the volume of unintended shooting accidents.  I think this could be done reasonably simply with some addition classes, qualification to purchase, and storage laws.  I get how controversial this is and it depends on finding middle ground without overstepping.

We’ll never fix crazy but could make it harder for that group to get firearms easily.  We can fix that humans operate at two sigma and will make mistakes.  Safe storage/training could drastically improve user knowledge and safety. 

No clue how anything useful will come out of the polarized political environment or deadlocked government but at least there are discussions taking place.

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

I imagine it's being replaced by just shooting, since hitting paper is much less of a headache than dealing with the various government entities involved with hunting. Course I imagine that's also why so many states are starting to have problems with their deer population too.

Last I heard 3 gun stuff and long range precision shooting is gaining popularity.  Neat to me, but both are normally priced out of anything I can afford.

RX8driver said:

It seems to me that a lot of these school shootings and accidental shootings involving kids would be prevented by having safe storage laws on the books with people actually following them. If the kid can't get at the gun whenever they please or stumble upon a loaded gun while playing, how are they going to shoot anyone? 

 

It also seems to me that at the core of the issue is FEAR. Fear of the government, fear of criminals, fear of wild animals or whatever else, feeling that they need to protect themselves from it with a gun.

 

To quote Yoda: "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering. I sense much fear in you."

While i cant speak for everyone fear isnt a reason why i own guns nor the reason why i carry while in the woods.

People, especially on the antigun spectrum, assign a lot of emotion to guns. Guns are tools to me, i neither hate nor love guns anymore than i have feelings of longing towards my socket set or a hammer. I do carry in the woods because there are wild animals there, i would hate for my last thought to be "man, i wish i had a gun" while being mauled by a bear or whatever.

In reply to Grizz :

I don’t think thI government has anything to do with the decline in hunting. I believe that all outdoors activities. Fishing, camping, hunting all have seen a decline recently.  There’s a really neat book called last kid in the woods out there. People would rather not be outside.  Kids are involved in so much sports these days that trying to get mine out fishing is a chore. 

In reply to AAZCD :

Yes but statically speaking having a gun in your home makes you more likely to get shot.  Having a fire extinguisher in the hole does not increase the chance for fires. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-guns-in-home-increase-suicide-homicide-risk/

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

If I had a fire extinguisher in my hole the last thing I would be worrying about is a fire...

In reply to Nick Comstock :

Amy? Is that you?

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

That is because fire extinguishers do not emit fire. 

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

Fairly lucky in that aspect I suppose even though they ain't my kids. My niece is learning to ride a horse and her and the two nephews thought going fishing for smallmouth in a little privately owned pond was just the best time ever.

Ron Paul Said:

I like to divide things into two parts: authoritarianism and volunteerism. On the one side are people who think that your life ought to be done on voluntary terms, as long as you reject aggression. On the other side are the authoritarians and they think they know what’s best for others. They really do. People I knew in Washington are convinced that people are idiots and therefore they can’t be responsible for themselves.

That’s why they don’t want ordinary people to own guns — and government should have all the guns. If you wanted to compare the number of people who die from government guns versus private guns — historically, government kills about 95 percent of the people. Maybe it’s worse than that, when you think of the 20th century.

In interesting interview Here.

In reply to Grizz :

Yeah. We fish and camp. Ive always wanted to try hunting. But probably won’t.  I don’t have time for another hobby. 

In reply to RX8driver :

While we are wandering off course from the original topic.  I too wonder why we haven’t seen some prosecutions of the parents when their underage child takes the family firearm and commits a crime.  Should the parent be legally responsible at that point?

I sort of suspect the attention it would get to throw a couple of life sentences out there would do more to get other parents to lock their stuff up than any number of PSAs.

In reply to Dr. Hess :

I read all of it.  Doesn't really change my opinion of Ron Paul, but that opinion is beyond the subject matter of this thread.

My heart wants to be a Libertarian. My experience concludes it is a utopian point of view in the same way Marxism is.  The problem is a large percentage of the population are idiots and while they can usually be responsible for themselves for the most part, they tend to get selfish when looking at society as a whole.  It becomes even more difficult when that percentage represents a very large number of people as the general population grows. 

As his quote applies to the thread subject, it pretty much remains the same: the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

I think you'd have a hard time convicting parents if there's no safe storage laws already. It just seems to be such a common sense type solution that I would think would have widespread support that I find it baffling that it's not the case.

As for the fear comment, that was more pointed at the more controversial aspects, like full auto, large capacity magazines, concealed carry and the like.