Women are nearly half of new gun buyers, study finds

As far as guns, unlike your suggestion of right-wing authoritarian citizens enforcing government, there are many instances in history like Cuba, where the first thing a dictator does is take away civilian guns.

The point of the 2nd amendment, is for anyone and everyone to own guns. We can see this post and also last year during the riots (BLM, left-wing rallies arming themselves) that everyone goes against gun control once they realize they need to defend themselves.

Depends on where you live in the US; I don't think this is true for most of the country, but that's not clear to most people because the MSM is very anti-gun and very rarely reports on self-defense cases unless they're twisted into claimed crimes. Since there are millions of these every year, that statistic first gleaned from data collected by an anti-gun group....

Generally the rule on such matters is that there is no such thing as a warning shot, both ethically and legally. For the same reason that shooting for the legs is a bad idea, bringing a lower caliber firearm to warn someone off is kind of a no-no. You should either be shooting to end the engagement, or not shooting at all.

Obviously retreating from an encounter is always the best course of action (and a legal obligation in some states) if possible.

> It is interesting that 22lr hasn't really been technologically updated.

22lr has seen tons of advancement, just not as much in the realm of terminal ballistics. There is incredibly intense competition for more accurate and consistent 22lr ammo, as this is the caliber used for a lot of olympic shooting and some increasingly popular non-olympic competitions.

Fundamentally, it's really not possible to squeeze much more energy out of 22lr. Every production cartridge has a set maximum pressure and firearms are certified for this pressure by nation specific proof houses. For 22lr the max pressure is about 72% the pressure of a 9mm[0]. Squeezing more terminal power out of this cartridge would risk catastrophic firearm damage and probably company liability.

Making matters worse is the fact that semi-automatic (e.g. handgun) firearm design changes pretty radically around or above 380ACP pressures. Above that firearms must have some sort of mechanism to delay opening until chamber pressures fall to a safe level, otherwise cartridges will potentially rupture during extraction and hurt the shooter. All 22lr pistols are of a much simpler design that improves accuracy and lowers price, but makes getting 9mm pressures into an existing 22lr handgun an impossible task. Much easier still to just start with a 9mm, since those work and are well understood.

Also, it's a rimfire cartridge, and that's undesirable for a variety of reasons I'm too tired to explain right now.

0 - 64% of the higher spec +P ammo.

This constitutes the crime of brandishing. You should not own any weapons if you can't keep from fantasizing committing crimes with them.

Additionally, 9-1-1 simply does not work in many parts of the country. In rural areas, response times are on the order of half an hour or longer. In cities like Washington D.C., 9-1-1 can take FIVE MINUTES to pick up the phone. I could not believe it until I needed to use it. I was put on hold by 9-1-1, LOL. I was able to run away from the threat and hide in that case. I was attacked unprovoked near a dark wooded area while walking down the street. I got lucky then. The stories about Rock Creek Park disappearances are true.

The odds of that, vs just an armed burglary, are very small.

I never said they had a monopoly, but I'm not going let them off the hook just because they've got competition. Their displays of that repulsive tendency also clash more harshly with their rhetoric.

I find it ironic that so many on the right like to criticize the left for being "oversensitive snowflakes", and yet here we have you, presumably right-leaning (apologies if I've mischaracterized you), being upset about the difference between "appealing to masculinity" and "compensating for a lack of masculinity". I feel like if the tables were turned, someone on the right would accuse someone on the left of being oversensitive.

I say this not to insult or demean, but in a way that actually makes me happy, because it's another point in support of people on the left and right not being from different planets. Because I totally agree with the point you are making here. There is a difference between saying someone does something because it appeals to their masculinity, vs. saying someone does it because they feel unmasculine and need a boost. And I think you're right to be sensitive about it, and the parent should have worded it differently (or thought about it differently).

They do! They've been saying it a long time, but no one paid them any attention until George Floyd's life was slowly and casually extinguished by a police officer on camera. Go ask any black male from New York in their 20s or 30s what they think about "Stop and frisk" and the sense of being violated by over policing.

Before you accuse me of having a "white saviour" complex, I'm black. Speaking of "saviour", I'm curious to know if you have experienced american policing, outside of youtube? No snark at all, this is a legitimate question.

From what I've seen at least, when more leftist parties like Green, DSA, the various communist parties, etc, talk about reducing gun violence it's in the context of eliminating poverty and other environmental contributors to the problem.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-290.ZO.html

Because the former is pretty clear and unambiguous, and it is the part that actually describes the limitation of the power of the government.

You can quibble over the meaning of well regulated militia and whether or not it is necessary for the security of a free state then or now, but that is clearly separate from the prohibition on infringement of the right to keep and bear arms.

It does not state if a militia is necessary then people the right to bear arms. It does not state that people who are members of a militia have the right to keep and bear arms. It says all people have that right.

Here's something to think about -- Why do people think hunting or personal protection have anything to do with the second amendment?

EDIT: I'll give my answer to my own question, because it might be too ambiguous or obscure. It's actually not that I believe the second amendment has nothing to do with hunting or personal protection, actually the opposite. Those were such obvious things for people to use guns for that back then they did not even have to be listed. That obviousness is why those things still come up today in discussion about the second amendment despite being enumerated nowhere. It would have been utterly absurd when the document was written that people should not use their guns for hunting or self defense. Clearly statement about the militia in there had no intention of the restriction of the right to have and use guns.

I also believe the security of a free state begins (and more or less ends) with the security of the free man so I think guns are a very important tool for self sufficiency, but that's another story.

Today, we use "militia" to mean any unofficial group of armed people, but the common law militia was and is (it is still part of the laws of the USA, see 10 USC § 246) something more specific. The idea is that every potential lawful combatant -- every free man neither too old nor too young to fight -- could be summoned and they would supply their own weapon, clothing, and other supplies. The authorities did not expect to have to supply these things; people were supposed to have them already; and these people were not professional soldiers, with security clearances, government jobs or something like that. They were just regular citizens.

Now, what if they tried to make some kind of law like, only people officially registered in the militia can have guns? This creates a tremendous enforcement burden and does not serve much purpose, because militia membership is supposed to be something that's extremely widespread and so guns would be all over the place. Such a rule would have run-up against another factor, which is that many people who might have been technically too old or too young, or even not eligible at any age because they were women, would still have other reasons that were perfectly reasonable for using guns -- like hunting and shooting pests around the farm. If you see a non-eligible person with a gun, it does not necessarily mean anything; maybe the gun is their dad's or their husband's or their son's; hard to say. It's not really sensible that someone in the same house, and sort of the same legal person due to coveture (the merging of a woman's legal personhood with that of her husband), could not use or put hands on the gun. Enforcing any provision like this would have been extremely tedious and involved, given that the militia relied on people storing and maintaining weapons in their homes. It would, I think, result in something that everyone familiar with the Anglo-American legal tradition, in those times and in ours, would recognize as government overreach.

In fact, the situation was that people had arms for many purposes in England and the colonies, not just for militia purposes, and this was a social institution that went back to at least the 900s in England. The militia as an institution relied on the institution of private weapon ownership, but private weapons ownership was independent of the militia, and people treated weapons like any other article of private property -- they were free to modify them, sell them, and assign them in their wills.

That's why we interpret the amendment the way that we do: in order to have a functioning militia, people need to have weapons and be familiar with them. The militia relied on a prevalent social institution of private weapon ownership: "the right of the people to keep and bear arms". The 2nd Amendment says, more or less, that obstructing private ownership of, commerce in and training with weapons would undermine the militia, and so such obstruction is prohibited.

You're essentially saying that if the majority of the country votes to change one of the rights, then what? You'll no longer recognize the government as real?

Strictly mechanically speaking, the constitution can be amended by a certain majority of voting in a national campaign, and those amendments can override any other amendment as the voters see fit.

Sure it can. The "Bill of Rights" is just a term for the first ten amendments. The 21st Amendment reads:

"Section 1. The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed."

Nothing in the Constitution forbids doing the same to the First, Second, or any other, should enough Americans agree on the point.

The 28th Amendment could read "The President shall be selected by the Prime Minister of Canada, and all redheads shall be put to death" and it'd not only be the law of the land once ratified, but there'd be no legal recourse except another amendment. Even more fun; include a "The Constitution may no longer be amended" as an additional provision.

(Of course, you have to get that through the amendment process, which is fairly obviously unlikely.)

The constitution of the USSR guaranteed the privacy of citizens' communications, freedom of religion, and doesn't just allow citizens to criticize public organizations but prohibits persecution of critics. You know what happened in reality.

The US is by no means immune to that - we've seen last year that the President can easily send some of the millions of armed people he has under his direct control to crack down on protests and disappear some people -- while the constitutional legitimacy gets debated months later once the damage is done...

Why are you talking about the "average first world person"? IIRC, Afghanistan is a country of ~30 million people, and the most recent estimates I saw said the Taliban only had ~75 thousand fighters. That's 0.25%. So not even the average Afghan did that.

Also, guerilla warfare isn't so much about living in caves as melting into the population.

I think the people seizing those weapons should be less concerned about "average" gun owners, and more worried about fringe citizens willing to die to detonate a high yield explosive in the centers of power.

That’s why federal legislators freaked out when a few thousand pissed off voters simply walked into the Capitol without permission - and without weapons. Every one of those mostly peaceful demonstrators represented a thousand equally angry, and well-armed, citizens not visible on security cameras.

>> So did our Deep State as they lost a twenty year fight against the Taliban. Who immediately started seizing the people's guns upon capturing Kabul.

> Blaming the Afghanistan War on the "Deep State" is a very odd choice to me. Does the Deep State ratify authorizations for the use of military force and approve military spending budgets?

You missed the point, which was the kind of thinking that says armed civilians stand no chance against a modern military also says the US should have prevailed in Afghanistan.

I believe "deep state" here is a tendentious term that refers to the permanent, unelected parts of the executive branch. Their expert analysis said the US was just about to "turn the corner" for 20 years. It's not about the decision to go in the first place.

Which is exactly why we resist laws that ban rifles.

> You’re not going to get that in appreciable quantities in the middle of the US without Uncle Sam and several three letter agencies noticing.

I don't think you fully grasp the extent to which the US population is armed.

Your odds of being murdered in the U.S. are very low compared to many other ways of dying (see e.g. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm), so yeah, it'd be great to see the murder rate lowered (that's always good, right?), but even if you did something drastic that managed to cut the odds in half, it would not have any discernible impact on most people's day to day lives nor on their ultimate cause of death because so few people end up dying that way.

The average murder rate in the US is a distraction, except to point out (as I did) that obviously people aren't dropping like flies. If any significant fraction of those 300M guns were killing people, the average would be several orders of magnitude higher than it is.

Go ahead and exercise your personal rights to defend yourself and your family as you see fit based on your values and risk profile.

The averages neither support the idea that we should ban guns, nor that we should all get one. Because, again, averages are pretty useless -- but that's the context of the current thread of discussion, so I felt a need to respond.

EDIT: major rewording for clarity.

Don't forget the history of the 20th Century where such "outlier events" included 100 million previously disarmed people killed by Communists running their countries, and the Left likes to remind us of the small death tolls in right wing countries, although many of those were fighting communists. See also the WWI era Armenian Genocide which was so ignored by the rest of the world it convinced Hitler he could do as he pleased.

I don't feel paranoia. Maybe most people are fine except people who consume too much fear-driven media?

I mean, it's not like paranoid people are only paranoid about guns. They are paranoid about everything.

For instance, Japan, per capita, has fewer firearms-related suicides than the US, but it has more suicides. I’d be willing to bet it has more train-related suicides than the US. Does this mean Japan’s suicide rate would go down if they had fewer trains and more guns? No, it just means that suicidal Japanese use the tools that are available to them, as do suicidal Americans.

Britain has very low rates of gun violence. But it has increasing rates of knife violence. Is this because Brits have too much access to knives? Or is it because violent people use the tools that are available to them? Britain is cracking down on knives, but even if they make it nigh-impossible to peacefully chop vegetables in your own kitchen, British criminals will just switch to screwdrivers or cricket bats or the Millwall Brick. But hey, at least you won’t have any more British toddlers getting hurt by playing with kitchen knives.

> I wish Americans could get a feeling of how different a society without a perpetual feeling of danger and paranoia feels like. Where children just go to school without security checks, amok drills and bulletproof safe rooms.

Americans a century ago were just as well armed as today (perhaps more so) and had none of that nonsense. It used to be that if you were an American teenager in a rural area, you could even drive to school with your hunting rifle still in your pickup and nobody would care.

You must mean the others are suicides. Why not say so?

> The multiplier for all firearm-related deaths between the US and EU average for example is around 12X, more than an order of magnitude [1].

Ah, because by not saying so you can make up this 12X figure, by comparing firearm suicides in Europe where in many cases there is marginal civilian gun ownership with firearm suicide in the US where there is widespread civilian gun ownership.

Of course this is a flawed comparison, because Americans don’t commit suicide at 12x the rate of Europeans, they just happen to use guns rather than other methods.

The giveaway that your comparison is deliberately misleading is that you don’t mention suicide. You intentionally hide how you get to this 12x figure.

The Switzerland outlier is explained by a culture of safe handling.

If you read the distorted stories in the news media you'll get a completely unrealistic impression of how most Americans actually live.

Me too, but that will never happen. Consider America's past: armed revolution, native genocide, violent [secret] coups with foreign governments, murder of its' own citizens by "peace officers", it goes on and on... It's not a peaceful place with a peaceful history, so I don't think your wish is too realistic. That said...you did say "wish", and I wish it also.

We don't perpetually feel like we're in danger or feel paranoid.

>Where children just go to school without security checks, amok drills and bulletproof safe rooms.

You are describing most of the US.

[0] https://heyjackass.com/

Do you think having fire drills and extinguishers is "a perpetual feeling of danger and paranoia"?

> Where children just go to school without security checks, amok drills and bulletproof safe rooms.

Maybe try to do something against bullying? It might seem a bit harsh but having been on the receiving end of that, it's hard to find empathy for those people that panic once the victims start fighting back.

And I wish you could better grasp just how big and diverse America is. :) There are parts with terrible problems that make for scary headlines, but those parts are not in any way representative of very large swaths of the country. Where I live there is essentially zero violence (of any kind). We don't live with perpetual feelings of danger or paranoia - heck, we often forget to lock our doors at night.

States in the US have significantly more difference than the regions in France (or whatever they are called). It is probably more accurate to compare the US to the EU and France to an individual state.

There's also politicization of reporting, at least in the U.S. I recall some states (Maryland?) have laws that mandate reporting of any injury related to a gun (could be a minor burn or a cut finger web that needed stitches) as a firearm-related injury. The intent, of course, being that people wrongly infer that these were injuries inflicted by bullets traveling at high rates of speed.

Dead's dead, though. We don't lose track many of bodies in the developed world.

I hear this a lot from the right, and I think it's hogwash. The Biden administration has already begun ideological screening of military personnel. If the government is forced to go to war against its own people, it will be mostly aging, out-of-shape fanatics on one side and highly-trained, highly-motivated, younger loyalists to the legitimate government on the other. It'll be a rout.

This is totally speculation on my part, but it could be important to have a armed civilian resistance to create a "permission structure" for military defection. My understanding is that military strongly inculcates loyalty and obedience to the organization. Those seem like they'd be hard feelings to overcome, especially in isolation when the defection would be solitary and likely pointless. I'd think that in a lot of cases people would just muddle along for lack of options. Having a group to join and take your equipment to seems like it would make the decision much easier.

The Taliban is "backed" by external powers to about the same extent the IRA was.

The gun charges were dropped.

Are you seriously comparing what happened on January 6th to 9/11? How about the Oklahoma City bombing? Lockerbie bombing? Get some perspective dude.

"It became clear to them that giving women the right to vote was only way they could ban alcohol."

That said...I'd take being shot by a bullet any day compared to being shot by a modern bow/crossbow. Definitely a better chance of surviving the bullet.

You can see for yourself what actual Americans think the "most important problem" they're facing is:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/Most-Important-Problem.asp...

Global warming and income inequality are so low they barely register in the poll at all. Representatives follow their constituents.

> In December, a jury in Corpus Christi, Tex., acquitted a 48-year-old man who spent 664 days in jail after being charged with attempted capital murder for wounding three SWAT officers during a no-knock raid that targeted his nephew. The jury concluded that the man, Ray Rosas, did not know whom he was firing at through a blinded window.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/18/us/forced-ent...

Strange, isn't it, how polling organizations don't quite seem to capture what the people actually want and vote for.

Actually, your list of "banning automatic weapons, screening psychiatric patients and criminals" is already in place, although the first is limited to a few hundred thousand in civilian hands. Two last time I checked had been used in crimes, the first incident a murder by a policeman.

Specifically, there are already heavy restrictions on automatic weapons, which are basically never used in criminal acts. Every automatically gun in the US has to be registered with the federal government for $200 and a lot of paperwork. In effect it means if you’re wealthy you can own automatic guns, which is a violation of the 2nd in a lot of people’s opinion.

What I think you meant when you said automatic is “assault “, which is what most of the gun debate is currently center on, so called “assault rifles”. The issue is that the term is not clearly defined, and under most proposed bans would include many rifles which were traditionally considered hunting tools. Even that is a bit of moot point, because the 2nd was not written with hunting in mind.

Another hot point recently is “ghost guns”, which like “assault rifle”, sounds scary enough on the evening news to grab eyeballs. “Ghost guns” are being used to justify government overreach by banning the sharing of gun plans for DIY construction. The issue is that again, almost no DIY guns are used in crimes. What are used are stolen handguns that have had the serial number scratched off. The stolen guns are grouped in with DIY guns as “ghost guns”.

People with money and influence will always try to impact law. In EU it happens through actual bribes which is far worse. (Pretty much like India). In USA an immigrant like me can join hands with 10K immigrants and find enough support in congress openly by hiring lobbiest to advocate for the cause I care about. That is how democracy should work.

It is easy to see lobbying as bad by taking examples you don't like but in reality it is a great example of how people can convince their representatives to pass right kind of laws, legally and with enough regulation. In most countries this happens to secret middleman and nights in shady hotels.

> a majority of US people is in favor of more limitations to gun rights

It is not clear if that is the case. Of course majority of people is irrelevant because this is not a mob rule. That is why we don't allow crowd in SF determine what people in Montana want. It is all fair game.

Secondly, people like me who care about guns care about it lot more to actually form lobbies. On other hand folks who dislike guns only talk about it but will not lobby or donate for the anti-gun causes.

I recommend this excellent video about why NRA despite with a shoe string budget is so much more influenced than many other lobbying groups.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pdt6Jj64TVU

No, because there _are_ armed activists.

Were there violent uprisings against censorship in the UK, Canada, or Australia that failed due to a lack of access to arms?

See Hong Kong of late. Many banners seen during free-speech protests there lamented their lack of a "2nd Amendment".

The argument that you need guns for personal defense, against the government or as part of self-reliance is extremely rare. Also legally there are not many cases where their use would be considered justified self-defense by a court.

There has been some "americanization" in recent years with people copying NRA arguments but not a prevalent mindset anywhere in the country.

The reasons why there are some many guns around are simply because people often take (or had to in the past) the military service riffle home and because shooting is a fairly popular sport. Not because of a perceived need of needing it for defending oneself or family.

It's usually the opposite sentiment for gun owners- I trust my fellow citizens with arms.

Guns are seen as an integral part of self-reliance by many. They provide you with a reasonably effective defense. One way to significantly erode individual's/citizen's power, and in turn give power to government, is take away their ability to defend themselves. People worry that as government becomes more powerful and citizens more reliant there is greater likelihood of oppressive government, in other words disarming populace is step down a slippery slope

I can't speak to the parent, but I take pride in self-reliance, and taking responsibility for securing and defending the well-being of myself, my family, neighbors, and community.

I also am a volunteer, state-certified structure firefighter, and take pride in that for the exact same reason.

You might find it interesting that, as part of our classroom instruction, my structure firefighting class was asked how many of us owned guns — all of us raised a hand.

This mirrors my experience in the broader fire service.

> Perhaps I could interest you in some Iain M Banks (taken from Excession).

I love Iain M Banks' Culture series, but they live within a utopian, post-scarcity benevolent dictatorship managed by AIs with powers verging on that of a demigod.

We most certainly do not.

As for the quote? Any tool can only be fully appreciated within the context of its intended purpose, and the effects that it can produce in the world around us.

The value of a gun as a tool is a tragedy, but the tragedy isn't the gun, but the necessity for one, and it's a tragedy inherent in our mortal existence.

It is other way around. People who want gun bans do not trust the fellow citizens and hence want to restrict their freedom of owning firearms. Gun lovers on other hand are some of the nicest people around, we want everyone women, lgbtq, blacks, whites, asians and everyone to own firearms and we trust them to be responsible for it.

Pride part :

1. I come from a long line of fighters. Weapons are part of our lifestyle and no government or law can stop my family from being armed. (Though we will always obey law).

2. Guns are a symbol of individual freedom. There is an inherent responsibility to protect one and their private property and community. I will not hesitate to use violence to fight a tyranny.

Australia is practically under house arrest today and we see articles like :

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/coronavirus/nsw-covid-upda...

Of course this is all theorizing. I don't America is in danger of that sort of civil war just yet.

Government isn't going to attack lots of individuals via tanks/artillery/etc scattered thru innumerable suburban neighborhoods.

Every year >20,000,000 US individuals partake in live-fire live-target drills, acting practically as lone wolves, as well- and self-equipped snipers in Operation "Deer Season". Just 0.001% of those, sufficiently motivated, would paralyze an oppressive government.

Yes, most "plinking" aren't practicing for serious combat. But they are practicing, and even with a high attrition rate they would, as a diffuse group, take down and/or demoralize violent oppressors. And that's not counting the small but far-from-trivial number taking CQB training seriously.

This year's legislative freak-out over thousands of unarmed & mostly-peaceful protesters occupying the Capitol wasn't so much what they did, but that they represented an enormous number who are well armed.

Societies with an impoverished underclass is what causes higher crime rates, regardless of whether or not the underclass is mainly comprised of ethnic minorities. France (heterogenous) and Japan (homogenous) take better care of their poor than the US (heterogenous) and Guatemala (homogenous), which is what causes the disparity in murder rates.

There are places in the US where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised.

There are places in the Baltimore metro area where you can go random places alone, and places that it would be ill-advised.

Numbers wise, we are doing much better than Mexico and Brazil, by about the same factor that France is doing better than we are and Japan is doing better than France. US homicide rates are a lot closer to Greenland or Argentina, and significantly less than a lot of nice LatAm countries that are popular with Western expats such as Costa Rica or Panama or Uruguay. The legality and availability of firearms cannot fully explain these differences, and it’s incomplete to simply compare the US to the EU.

What about Greenland?

> ...anybody who's visited Mexico knows not to go random places alone.

It's the same in the US, and basically every country in the world. Some places are dangerous, others aren't.

> ...if Brazil and Mexico are our points of comparison, we're... not in a situation I'd want to be in, to put it diplomatically.

Put it undiplomatically. What exactly do you mean by that? Draw me a picture with crayons, I want to understand clearly what this means.

An important point in the comment you replied to was that maybe demand for firearms is the result of the crime rate and not the cause. Care to address that?