I wonder if this will simply end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy of violence.
1. Expect violence 2. Think buying a gun will somehow help 3. Because you now have a gun it seems safer to turn to violence 4. Violence commences
1. Expect violence 2. Think buying a gun will somehow help 3. Because you now have a gun it seems safer to turn to violence 4. Violence commences
That's not how it works. I'm guessing you don't own any firearms and haven't had much exposure to them. Violence is never safe and the only people "turning to violence" after acquiring one are criminals or those soon to be one.
It would be interesting if a spike in sales also came with a spike in training, range usage or gun safe sales.
> I'm guessing you don't own any firearms and haven't had much exposure to them.
You'd be guessing very wrongly.
Anecdotally, I'd say yes.
The three ranges in closest proximity to me have hour long waits for lanes on weekends. Everywhere, dealers are consistently sold out of "beginner" type firearms: ruger mark iv's, 10/22s, sr22s, etc. It is a similar story with magazines for these types of firearms, and I doubt demand for these is being driven by existing gun owners (who likely already have them).
I also happened to order a new safe recently, and every dealer in my metro area had zero inventory on hand. The best you can get is an order allocation, or buying one of the safes they already have on order with an expected delivery of 1-3mo. Part of this is certainly supply chain disruption, but I heard the same story over and over again that demand was through the roof.
I wouldn't say it was always "turning to violence", but there are a lot of people out there that probably 'should' not have a firearm given things like poor impulse control, lack of knowledge/acknowledgement of dangerous they inherently are, or just carelessness:
* https://twitter.com/well_regulated_
Once someone owns a gun, or a household has a gun with-in it, there are all sorts of disasters that can now occur that were not possible without one being present.
Amen. The 'upsides' of owning a gun don't outweigh the horrible potential consequences for myself and others around me. I'm really glad that guns are not as prominent in my country compared to the US.
Of course other people make different value judgements as to the risks.
If I was in the US I'd be less concerned about general firearm ownership, and people basically being about to have whatever they want in their own homes, versus all the concealed carry and stand-your-ground laws, both of which impact public safety more. And it seems toward the negative (AFAICT).
> I'm really glad that guns are not as prominent in my country compared to the US.
As someone in Canada, the day-to-day firearms stuff isn't as prevalent, but we're tied for 7th in per capita ownership:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_civilian_g...
However, from a firearms death rate (homicide+suicide), we're lower than what many people would expect:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...
With a lower rate that Austria, Switzerland, Finland, and France. IMHO this is because (a) we have mandatory licensing/training, which works as a filter to reduce the cowboy types, (b) relatively lower rates of poverty which helps with reduce crime (most shooting seem to be gang-related), and (c) decent social programs which helps the less fortunate. Many calamities are also probably reduced through safe storage laws.
I don't think there's a need to even "ban" firearms or specific firearm types if these are implemented.
There's no one silver bullet that will solve gun-related problems, but there are a few policies that have been shown to work fairly well. It's 'just' a matter society choosing to implement them.
UKs gun ownership per capita is something like 30% of US’, but these are predominantly shotguns, and a few single-shot rifles. Legal ownership of pistols of any kind is essentially impossible (yes even sport 0.22 ones).
* https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/csj-sjc/jsp-sjp/wd98_4-d...
Hunting rifles and shotguns are not registered, but (many) semi-automatic rifles (e.g., AR-15) would have to be registered—as do handguns—so some ratio of licensees-to-'restricted'-class firearms can be estimated.
These restricted-class items can only be used at a licensed range, and so are generally used for fun/target shooting as well as sporting activities (IPSC, IDPA, three-gun).
(Note that this is still considerably less lethal than any major US city!)
> Note that the UK has police armed with guns, but not police armed with knives.
Yup. The set of qualities that make knives desirable weapons for criminals don't make them good weapons generally. The cops have very different restrictions (fewer restrictions, that is) and goals. A truncheon plus some strong mace are probably much, much better for their purposes than a knife would be.
I think the rationale is if the violence (real or perceived) comes into your own neighborhood/apartment/etc, that you’ll be able to defend yourself. Much better than helplessness.
If I have a family, and never owned a firearm, and now you see the state of affairs (again, in reality more at risk vs perceived more at risk is beside the point - user still takes action on their perception), I would feel compelled to defend my home and family. Regardless where one stands politically, we did have violence of some form break out in many cities in the US.
So buying a firearm and some ammo seems to me a reasonable step.
And yes, I agree in part on the self-fulfilling prophecy. People buy ammo, shortages occur despite supply chain getting better, prices go up, people buy more.
There is of course the idea that if you don't have it, you are 'helpless' as you might put it. That is just a precursor to an arms race. You can always retreat, delegate to a specialist (if there are any, i.e. a capable policing system) etc.
The issue with 'I might get violenced upon!' is that even if that happens, you having your own source of violence only means that the next incident requires more violence from the attacker's side, and more returning violence from the 'defender'. This is an endless loop that just ends in MAD (as posted below). The only thing it can do is escalate. Someone who already made to choice to attack/invade/break-the-rules is not going to be 'deterred' by someone owning a source of violence. They will just bring their own.
A while ago I read an article about a family man with a hidden 'gun room' in his house, which was 'for protection'. Turns out you can't actually carry 20 assault rifles in your two hands at once. Perhaps one might think this is for redundancy. But if you are in a situation where you need redundant firearms, those are unlikely to be the deciding factor, and investing in a car so you can simply drive away might have been the better choice. But it seems people would rather try to get some illegal RPG 'for protection' instead.
Now whether you agree with the legitimacy around said regulatory framework, and the severe magnification of sentences for what amounts to glorified tax evasion, and it being a poll tax (a tax which renders a Constitutionally guaranteed right conditional), and in light of the 2nd Amendment, that is a completely different story.
Again. As mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I try to avoid this now, because the regulations are as fickle as the night is long, and I despise having to stay tuned to figure out if some swath or another of the population is in threat of getting turned into felons overnight because someone in the Executive branch got into a tizzy. Nobody else seems to lose sleep over that sort of thing, but I do.
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shootings-gun-violence-polic...
I guess they should have applied the "You can always retreat, delegate to a specialist...etc"
You may argue about whether chicago police department is "capable" - they certainly have very strict gun laws which don't seems to be preventing this gun violence. But if they are not capable, "retreating" doesn't seem to be helping these people. Or are they doing it wrong?
The trouble with a raw list of stats is that there's no context; why are all these shootings happening? They don't all or even mostly seem to be armed robbery.
Unlike the vast majority of US states, Illinois requires any possessor of firearms or ammunition to have a state issued license.
Illinois bans the possession of Class III firearms.
Certain jurisdictions in Illinois, such as Cook County, ban modern sporting rifles.
A criminal who plans to intrude will still intrude. One case you have a chance to defend yourself or family, the other you’re left to “retreat” (which I think, perhaps controversially, if it’s your property you shouldn’t be obligated to retreat it if someone is criminally trying to enter). That also assumes you can retreat.
In a vacuum sure the arms race would escalate, but this assumes infinite resources. If I get a pistol, then the lower “bar of entry” becomes a pistol for the intruder.
If I get a heavier weapon, such as a shotgun, the intruder is gonna have a harder time (even if slightly) buying or finding the more costly (resource wise) weapon.
what I think is more likely to happen, is unless you have an organized gang, solo criminals will just go for easier crimes. They won’t risk entering a neighborhood that is armed.
Because then the cost to enter the house, and come out safe/successful, drastically increases once the home owner has capable self defenses.
If the violence/danger is only perceived/imaginary and not real, then someone going out to "deal with it" will create calamities where otherwise nothing bad would happen without the firearm being present (and that person feeling 'empowered' or some such).
I meant perceived as in, things seem worse than they are, versus someone thinking “hey QAnon said my neighbors are false flags, let’s go” (hyperbolic, but you get the point)
I understand the confusion though without the assumption laid out.
If people follow the rules, and also try to be civil in general, and just enjoy guns, you get a combination of foresight, expectation and planning.
Usually, when something goes wrong (be it 'being the baddies' or just accidentally have your children shoot themselves because you keep a loaded firearm in your nightstand) I'd expect it to be unplanned, unexpected and a lack of thinking. And therein lies the problem: we cannot assume everyone has the same skillset, same mental capacity and the same outlook.