On 4/1/2015 8:30 PM, LizR wrote:
On 2 April 2015 at 13:58, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:On 4/1/2015 5:48 PM, LizR wrote: By the way, Brent, your comment directly contradicts what the gun lovers always say - "but anyone can get hold of one if they really want to!" I'd say "...really want to!" is a big loophole in that assertion. Unless - gasp - most people don't actually want to! Sure, many people don't. And the mantra that guns are dangerous has made people unfamiliar with them fearful of guns. While people who grew up hunting and having guns around (like me) think of them as just another tool that can hurt you if used carelessly - like a motorcycle or dynamite. (Or can't, but that does seem unlikely). I've never wanted one myself, nor have I known anyone who's owned a gun, to the best of my knowledge - apart from a friend of my son whose father lives in America (the father has a gun). Well I don't know whether you count me as someone you know, I have six guns; two of which I bought and four and I inherited from close relatives. But I've never know anyone who was shot, even accidentally.I take it back, Kevin Ireland, the NZ poet who lives in Auckland some of the time and Oxford the rest, is a friend of mine who has owned plenty of guns. Indeed he wrote a poem about shooting his dog.
I assume that was to put a terminally ill dog out its misery (a sad duty I've done a few of times) rather than an accident.
I don't have a problem with guns being owned and used in the right place - for hunting, in the countryside and so on. However (as I assume, being a person of intelligence, you do actually realise) those aren't the guns I'm objecting to, nor are they the ones that turn the USA black on that map,
I don't think the map has enough resolution to show whether the guns are in the countryside or suburbs or city. I know that, per household, there are a lot more guns in sparsely populated areas, e.g. on western farms and ranches as compared to cities.
nor are they the ones toddlers get hold of, or 9 year olds kill their shooting instructors with.
Rare incidents are not a good basis for public policy.
I know you feel obliged to argue the contrary case, but I really would appreciate a bit of common sense on what the real subject of the argument is here, rather than what looks like a knee-jerk defence of guns just because you happen to have grown up with them.
I'm sorry I didn't know you were arguing a case. What case are you arguing? Did you assume I would join in a knee-jerk condemnation of US gun ownership? I wouldn't mind giving up my guns if I thought it would make me significantly safer, just like I'd give up my motorcycles if I thought they were going to kill me. Yes, I know the statistics. You're more likely to be shot if you own a gun (accidents, suicides account for more than half of gun deaths). And you're 30 times more likely to be killed on a motorcycle over the same mileage as compared to a car. But minimizing risk isn't an overriding value in my life.
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