The Great ILX Gun Control Debate

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...okay, i think the idea that a gun stored apart from the ammo is still an effective home safety device (lol) is rooted in the presumption that you'll hear the dangerous gun-toting burglar (most aren't) before you actually confront them, giving you time to lock and load.

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:56 (nineteen years ago)

i love the fact that if you tell nabisco he is batshit wrong about something it's "pedantic," as if we're the ones writing 7 paragraph missives about things we're totally unfamiliar with.

i've known several people who don't really care THAT much about music or much ability to actually play with guitar collections, my dad is one of them. he also has a gun collection! he's got one or two for his occasional hunting, and then a couple that are just object value, i don't even think he owns ammo for them.

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:57 (nineteen years ago)

Well, most people who are keeping guns for the purpose of home protection are not expecting to rely on their lightning-fast reflexes in a time of crisis. By the time the imaginary armed criminal has suprised you in your home, you are most likely fucked, loaded gun or not.

xpost yep, what RW said.

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:58 (nineteen years ago)

i mean i dunno maybe like 5 les pauls etc aren't really a collection either, maybe we're only talking guys with like 20 of 'em and that's what i'm just missing here. i'm sure it's something.

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:58 (nineteen years ago)

Again, most gun owners really aren't angling for some quick draw McGraw fantasy, srsly.

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:59 (nineteen years ago)

Nabisco, there are collectors who are interested in the subject matter of their collections and there are collectors who are not. Your point is valid for the first group and invalid for the second.

Also DO NOT WANT to surprise fucking from armed criminal.

― HI DERE, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 17:59 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, that's what you always say.

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

dan you are more polite than i am.

― the schef (adam schefter ha ha), Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

I don't know, I'm feeling polite today!

― HI DERE, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:00 (nineteen years ago)

(I didn't even get into the collector phenomenon where people who originally are interested in the subject matter of their collections get subsumed by their interest in the act of collecting; see for example anyone with more than 100 CDs.)

(Yeah I did just call ALL OF Y'ALL out)

― HI DERE, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:02 (nineteen years ago)

"HI DERE" and "John Justen" have both been sockpuppeted for the purposes for injecting confusion into your virtual society. By tomorrow, both will return to non-sensical all caps statements or image posts as previously arranged.

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:03 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.nrastore.com/nra/images/detail/526detail.jpg

― ghost rider, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:09 (nineteen years ago)

Nabisco, I really don't get the assumption that because gun knowledge would have no immediate real-life application, it's inherently valueless. I've never been the victim of a crime, and I agree with most people in this thread who are saying that having a gun would be utterly worthless in the vast majority of dangerous situations. That being said, I did gain a very real appreciation for something I didn't previously understand and learned that a typical white/urban/liberal schmuck can handle a firearm just as readily as a gangbanger or right-wing hunting freak or whatever other cliche comes to mind. That does not make me more comfortable with the amount of guns out there or most of their real-world applications, but to come back to something River Wolf said before, holding a gun in your hand makes you understand that it's just a machine, and that what you do with it is a seperate conversation. If you're really sure that you wouldn't gain anything from the experience of handling a gun then that's cool, but I'm not sure how you can be certain of that.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:09 (nineteen years ago)

And so if you happen to collect deadly weapons, fired or bladed -- and especially if your interest is specifically in their deadliness* -- you're kinda gonna have to deal with people making assumptions about your interests in force, power, death, etc., right?

Ok, two examples I can think of collectors:

1. My father collects 'cowboy action' guns - single-action revolvers, old lever guns and a couple of double-barrel 'coach' shotguns. He has other, modern, guns but those are pretty much what he buys on a (too-regular, if you're my mother) basis. His interests are sport (cowboy action competitions are huge), target shooting and history/aesthetics. The last rifle he bought was a near-replica of the buffalo rifle from some movie (Quigley Down Under) he loves.

2. I don't know if I'm a collector per se, but I like older double-action revolvers (think film noir, Dashiell Hammett), 1911s (think The Wild Bunch) and WWII and before military-surplus rifles. Again, aesthetics, history and the guns as objects.

Why don't I just own a single .22 for target shooting and a bunch of non-firing replicas? One completely irrational reason: the bigger calibers are much, much more fun to shoot.

In my mind it's not that different from people who collect guitars (as noted) or modernist furniture or spend a shitload of money on customizing their car. (With the obvious exception that guns can kill and need to be kept in safes and so on.)

There are, undoubtedly, people (like Roger) who are obsessed with the power they now wield, but that's never been a factor with anyone I know who shoots.

― milo z, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:11 (nineteen years ago)

if Manalishi ruins the thread again I'm just going to start posting photos of guns I find aesthetically-interesting.

― milo z, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:12 (nineteen years ago)

holding a gun in your hand makes you understand that it's just a machine, and that what you do with it is a seperate conversation

Isn't that stating it a bit strongly? I mean, that's true of anyphysical object isn't it?

Is there anything difference between a gun and a toaster, because I could be bludgeoned to death with a toaster.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:14 (nineteen years ago)

Ally my world experience is not so limited that I'm "totally unfamiliar with" the idea of collecting things! I'm aware of the fact that people collect things they may not have STRONG involvement with, but I don't think it's odd to suggest that people's choices of what items to collect are not completely random and thoroughly unconnected from their interests. There are a million things a person can collect "as objects" or "as investments," from antique furniture to wine to guitars to motorcycles to guns. The ones they choose to actually collect would seem to say something about what they're interested in and drawn to, and apart from people who enter into collecting something PURELY as an income stream ("I collect tech stocks!"), even the guy who collects guitars but doesn't play or listen to loads of records is probably dedicating some amount of his brainspace to thinking about a particular musical instrument and what it does, and thinking of it as cool, even if it's just socially cool ("rock'n'roll!" etc.).

P.S. the post you're responding was ONE PARAGRAPH

C.A.D.: I wasn't saying the experience would be "valueless" -- it could be really valuable to some people -- just that it wasn't really a priority for me. (Hence saying my edginess around guns wasn't so debilitating that I felt like I needed to go get over it.) I'm sure it'd be an interesting learning experience; it's just not really high on my list!

P.S. fuck you 10x for your discovery that white people can handle guns, asshole

Milo: your family's collection sounds like the kind of perfectly normal interest in guns and gun history that I'm saying is 100% cool with me. Also I loved Quigley Down Under too. I didn't even say having a hardcore firepower collection wasn't cool with me, just that at some point people may inevitably think "hey, this guy seems rather interested in DEADLY WEAPONS and that weirds me out a little." I'm gonna try to stop arguing in defense of that point because I feel like in any other context this would be totally obvious, and anyway no matter how we hash it out here, people are still totally going to think that.

― nabisco, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:16 (nineteen years ago)

I think c.a.d.'s invocation of white liberals vs. rednecks/gangbangers was meant to be a deflation of those stereotypes, to be fair. i.e. white liberals SOMETIMES let condescending attitudes toward gunowners cloud their thinking about guns.

― horseshoe, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:18 (nineteen years ago)

Chill out broseph, I speak entirely self-deprecatingly.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:20 (nineteen years ago)

YAY SOMEONE GOT IT.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:20 (nineteen years ago)

more snapshots from my neighborhood

East Palo Alto police arrested two local teens Monday night in connection with Friday's shootout that left one woman dead and another seriously injured on the 2700 block of Fordham Street.

Police believe 18-year-old Absalom Tuimavave and a 17-year-old were firing on each other when the juvenile accidentally shot and killed his friend, 19-year-old Melevea Fifita of East Palo Alto, [b]whom he was defending ... Tuimavave allegedly injured 21-year-old Seu Tuim-avave, his sister from San Francisco, whom he was defending, in the pelvis with a stray shotgun blast.

so ... dudes rush in, with guns, to break up a happy slappy GIRLFIGHT on the street, and the one shoots his own girlfriend and the other shoots his own sister.

don't let this be you, people

(see: nonwhite gangbangers aren't necessarily well-trained with their weapons either)

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:22 (nineteen years ago)

~~my neighborhood~~

actually just work neighborhood, i don't live there

― moonship journey to baja, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:23 (nineteen years ago)

holding a gun in your hand makes you understand that it's just a machine, and that what you do with it is a seperate conversation

Isn't that stating it a bit strongly? I mean, that's true of anyphysical object isn't it?

Is there anything difference between a gun and a toaster, because I could be bludgeoned to death with a toaster.

I think that it isn't stating things strongly, because any argument otherwise implies intent to an object, which is flawed, and leads to the sorts of presumptions that keep popping up on this thread about the psychology of people who own/collect guns.

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:25 (nineteen years ago)

I feel like in any other context this would be totally obvious, and anyway no matter how we hash it out here, people are still totally going to think that.

I don't think it's that obvious, but I don't think most people do a very good job of judging other people based on the little information they have about them.

There are so many things that can factor into one's motivation for a gun collection.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:27 (nineteen years ago)

x-post to JJ--That's more or less what my little highly-misinterpreted anecdote was getting at. Holding a gun, I realized that I had a choice of what to do with it. I could kill somebody or I could shoot the target. If I extend that choice to all gun owners, and if I believe (as I still try very hard to) that there are a lot of basically rational people out there, gun possession took on a different kind of meaning.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:29 (nineteen years ago)

As logically obvious as that is, I had never really thought about it until that moment.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:30 (nineteen years ago)

hysteria: the girl that lived with my roommate before me basically moved out because she was uncomfortable with the fact that he had a gun that was locked up in his closet.

like, was fine living there before, moved out once she discovered that he had a .22 varmint rifle used almost exclusively for shooting cans every, oh, i don't know, 5-6 months.

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:30 (nineteen years ago)

then again, he's also pretty irritating sometimes, so maybe i'm not really being fair

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:34 (nineteen years ago)

I was going to mention the movie-watching as a far more life-threatening situation.

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

xpost

Some of you are coming close to pretending there's not intent in the design of an object, though. I mean, it's not just "a machine," it's "a machine designed to injure humans and animals from a short distance." Agreed that objects themselves don't have intent, but let's not stand around with an egg whisk saying "it's just an object, I could sculpt with it, or use it to store orange juice."

(C.a.d., for the record, I actually do have faith that the vast majority of gun owners in this country aren't ever going to do anything crazy with them; I've lived in places where everyone hunts and known countless rational gun owners, both sport shooters and home-defense holders. So yeah, I don't seek reassurance on that point; I worry more that given how many guns are floating around this country, even a "vast majority" of sensible still leaves a really significant population of not-sensible.)

― nabisco, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:35 (nineteen years ago)

Ojects are designed for a purpose and guns are designed to be held in the hand and propel projectiles at high speed in the direction that the gun is pointed.

The projectile will damage whatever it comes into contact with.

river wolf, I completely respect the gun owners I know and I've fired a few guns myself, but I don't think the girl was hysterical.

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:36 (nineteen years ago)

I mean, why do we go to war with guns instead of cotton balls wielded with deadly intent?

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:38 (nineteen years ago)

oh she was, trust me, but she's a pretty irrational person anyway, and i was being unfair on purpose.

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:42 (nineteen years ago)

wait.. you DON'T use cotton balls!? /canadian military

― The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:45 (nineteen years ago)

I'm guessing the first knives were designed with the intent of stabbing living things with them, but when I see a dude with a bunch of Wustofs on his kitchen table, I don't back slowly towards the door.

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:49 (nineteen years ago)

i sit down and wait for him to prepare me dinner

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:50 (nineteen years ago)

Right, so... we should wait for the guns that are used to make scrambled eggs?

― max, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:52 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.davedouglass.com/illustrator/SALADSHOOTER.jpg

― ghost rider, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:53 (nineteen years ago)

xpost - Actually pretty sure blades were used first for cutting things in parts, but anyway you're kinda fudging: seeing as you can't cut your steak with a gun, a better analogy would be the machete on the kitchen table I mentioned earlier. And like I said, if someone silently put a machete on the table, I would totally be alert, weirded out, and very attentive to what was happening.

Haha, Fluffy, egg whisks are designed to be held in the hand and used to agitate liquid-like substances to produce various states of emulsion, suspension, or mixture -- but mostly to whisk eggs, you know? I'm trying to think of what you could claim the whole history, engineering, and refinement of most gun-types are for, if not for shooting people/animals, but there's not much there: from low-power rifles for practice shooting to range targets with, umm, pictures of people on them, it's all at least a very slight abstraction of the original point. (But fair credit to that realm of competitive long-range rifle shooting that actually manages to feel like a pure technical challenge, like guns were invented for that competition and people only figured out later that they could fight with them.)

― nabisco, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:54 (nineteen years ago)

I mean this doesn't hit on the scary things about guns to any of you guys? Most other common weapons--say, knives or axes--are designed to do more than kill people/animals (including skinning those animals, preparing dinner, cutting string or trees or whatever).

Maybe I don't know that much about guns, but I can't think of a single other use they might have besides killing living things. (Blasting the lock off a door?)

And to say "I like shooting at cans"--well, why not get a BB gun? I mean, if all you want to do is shoot projectiles at immobile/nonliving, what's the matter with an airsoft or a Red Rider?

― max, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:56 (nineteen years ago)

(Single other use besides the competitions that Nabisco talks about, I mean, which are as he points out abstracted from shooting living things)

― max, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:56 (nineteen years ago)

how about bbq?

http://www.neatorama.com/images/2006-06/hand-gun-shaped-grill.jpg

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:57 (nineteen years ago)

i don't think anyone has denied that guns are only designed for killing things

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:57 (nineteen years ago)

Knives kind of scare me, too, to be honest.

― jaymc, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:58 (nineteen years ago)

No--they haven't--I'm just wondering out loud why some people are OK with that and it scares the shit out of others.

― max, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:58 (nineteen years ago)

(xpost to rw)

― max, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 18:58 (nineteen years ago)

To keep the irony from growing too thick in here for the people who know me IRL (re: nabisco's last post), I was actually a competitive high-power rifle shooter of the exact type he speaks of, which is a considerable part of my stance on this issue.

many xposts

― John Justen, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:00 (nineteen years ago)

nabisco, I was making the same point as you, re the nature of the tool, but I was being a little more general. I wasn't arguing with you.

way xpost

― Fluffy Bear Hearts Rainbows, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:01 (nineteen years ago)

well, and this is a bit disingenuous, BUT: guns are, I guess, designed to throw little bits of metal very fast. which happens to be very good for killing.

like, what do you guys think of archery?

xp no wai

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:02 (nineteen years ago)

i could really get into archery, i think

― river wolf, Wednesday, 18 April 2007 19:06 (nineteen years ago)

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