"Guns don't kill people..."
That said, denying people access to guns does result in fewer gun related fatalities.
The only thing that happens when guns are denied is the rise of corrupt and totalitarian politicians, and that the common man is either oppressed by them or by criminal gangs. Enter guns, and the common man can defend himself against both, which is a blessing.
Thankfully it is now possible to print your own guns and build one easily, so this will become less of an issue in the future, when everyone, if they want, can carry concealed guns.
Doesn't seem to track in the US
Smartphones can be useful and valuable in many ways separate from the ways they can be used harmfully. Guns exist only for physical violence (or to threaten physical violence).
Skeet shooting? Targets? Most gun owners never kill anything.
1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.
In the case of the shooting examples the idea is to destroy the clay pots or damage the target. Baseball isn't quite on that level. I'm not sure what a gun can be aimed at without intent to damage it.
2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena.
A gunshot definitely feels like an intense force. You could argue it for a strike from a baseball bat but it's quite relative and of course you can strike gently much more easily than you can shoot gently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hunt
1984.
The point of clay target shooting isn't to destroy something, it's to build a skill and test yourself against an impartial system. That's what Duck Hunt captures and what made it popular. It's why shooting is a sport in the olympics.
Plenty of social reasons too, beyond hunting and self-defense, it can serve comradery and grounding. Some folks practice archery. Some folks fish. Some folks practice martial arts which they hope never to have to use in anger, but which they find calming, centering, and empowering.
I'm not debating that. I have no moral issue with shooting a clay duck, I just see using explosives to shoot anything as an act of violence. I would say the same about fishing and archery. There seems to be some confusion here about the moral aspect of this, I'm not saying it's anti-social or anything like that, only that the use of guns is inherently violent.
Blaming a tool does seem like a convenient way to avoid personal responsibility.
Violence, to me, is a verb someone can do to someone else, very specifically, with just about any object since the discovery of the rock and pointy stick.
That's fine, I already shared several dictionary definitions which differ from what it is "to you." To answer your questions above I would refer you again to those definitions.
In the system of thought I've expressed, this is easy: all are tools, all have potential violent and non-violent uses. Depends on the intention and choices of the user.
In the system of thought you've expressed, I'm asking about these specific objects, because the words you've provided aren't sufficient for me to tell if they are violent objects or not. I'd like to know how it works for you. How you perceive it. If you're referencing a previous comment could you quote it? I'd like to understand what you're trying to say.
But a loaded gun can only be fired violently. A clay duck can't explode non-violently when struck by a bullet. Nothing can be struck by a bullet without violence.
This sounds like you agree with my assessment, that violence is not inherent to the object, but a function of it's user's intent.
> But a loaded gun can only be fired violently. A clay duck can't explode non-violently when struck by a bullet. Nothing can be struck by a bullet without violence.
And yet you're back to assigning violence as an inherent property of an object here. Seems you are using two different and opposing systems of thought simultaneously.
Sometimes in my area of the US, people will fire guns into the air in reverie. Which most people would not describe as violent. Rather, celebratory. Rescue flares don't strike me as violent, but are fired from guns. Spin launch's projectile is another great example of something fired from a gun without violence.
On the other hand, if a person stood in the path of any of those while firing, the results could be quite gruesome, energetic even. But I wouldn't describe them as violent unless there was associated ill intent. Accidents are not typically described as violent.
To where and when are you referring? In most times and places, I'd guess the military had many more guns than civilians.
My understanding is that the mobilisation for the Civil War is the only time in US history that military stockpiles of firearms have outnumbered civilian gun ownership (although possibly also at the height of WWII).
Though large standing militaries (versus recruiting large numbers of civilians into militias) is a fairly recent phenomenon, so the calculation is often not as cut and dried as one might expect.