Thankfully this is illegal and will remain so in most of the rest of the world.
3% means there are more than 9.4 million assault rifles in US homes. Are they expecting an invasion?
3% means there are more than 9.4 million assault rifles in US homes. Are they expecting an invasion?
(that being said, foreign invasion is probably not a large motivating factor for most civilian gun owners in the US, but your question was rather silly)
Could you provide at least ONE scientifically accurate source actually proving this obviously biased opinion? Can you provide even one?
Or is this just the standard liberal, pulling information out of your own ass to further your own viewpoint style of thought so common with your type and others on ycombinator.
Also your own words contradict themselves. You open your statement with, "most gun ownership is motivated by...". And then finish your statement with, "A small minority turn to...". Absolutely fascinating you couldn't even go more than a paragraph without contradicting yourself.
Secondly, the supposed contradiction you identified is not a contradiction at all, the first quote was talking about most gun owners the second about a minority of the entire population (who, the poster was arguing, makeup the majority of gun owners). Perhaps your reply would have benefited from you taking a few seconds to allow your masculinity to recover before you started hammering the keyboard in anger.
Thirdly, 30 seconds on google scholar will find you plenty of articles about the links between masculinity and gun ownership.
http://gas.sagepub.com/content/26/2/216.short
Stroud, Angela. "Good Guys With Guns Hegemonic Masculinity and Concealed Handguns." Gender & Society 26.2 (2012): 216-238.
In most states in the U.S. it is legal to carry a concealed handgun in public, but little is known about why people want to do this. While the existing literature argues that guns symbolize masculinity, most research on the actual use of guns has focused on marginalized men. The issue of concealed handguns is interesting because they must remain concealed and because relatively privileged men are most likely to have a license to carry one. Using in-depth interviews with 20 men, this article explores how they draw on discourses of masculinity to explain their use of concealed handguns. These men claim that they are motivated by a desire to protect their wives and children, to compensate for lost strength as they age, and to defend themselves against people and places they perceive as dangerous, especially those involving racial/ethnic minority men. These findings suggest that part of the appeal of carrying a concealed firearm is that it allows men to identify with hegemonic masculinity through fantasies of violence and self-defense.
Seriously? Go visit some gun forums or any generic conservative forums. Fantasising about how some criminals "picked the wrong guy to mess with" and "weren't ready for my $massive_gun" is commonplace. It's so common that it's a well established meme: http://i.imgur.com/TJUNFCg.jpg
As for your dismissal of a scientific article just based on worlds you don't like the look of and findings you don't agree with, well I think that speaks for itself.
That's a fantasy of violence not a fantasy of self-defense.
> As for your dismissal of a scientific article just based on worlds you don't like the look of and findings you don't agree with, well I think that speaks for itself.
I'm assuming you meant words not worlds (I'm not picking on your spelling just making sure I'm haven't misunderstood what you've written). The article is behind a paywall. The citation is pretty damning and doesn't look impartial at all. These aren't words I don't; like these are words that indicate a bias and I think I made it clear that I cannot disagree with the findings because I have not read the article. I'm assuming that you have read the article because you're calling it science.
The fact that you don't see these words as a warning sign and that you've made this personal tell me something as well.
Look, I've attended a CHL course. The course was a sham, there were people that had never used a firearm before and I did not have a high regard for the intelligence of the people attending. On the other hand I know plenty of people, who do have a CHL, who are responsible, who do not look forward to having to use a firearm and who carry a firearm solely because they see it as a tool, that one day, might help in the defense of themselves or others.
Edit: > It's so common that it's a well established meme: http://i.imgur.com/TJUNFCg.jpg
The image you linked to doesn't, as far as I can tell, depict a self-defense fantasy (again what is that). You'll notice the comic is far from, "the civilian with a handgun in a chaotic shootout." Instead it's riffing on the fact that active-shooter situations are hard and the misconception that the act of self-defense will not result in injury to bystandards. Call it a fantasy of self-defense if you'd like; not a self-defense fantasy.
Generally I agree that using this sort of thing to get a 'gotcha' moment out of it is a waste of time. The problem is that context doesn't help me understand what a person means when they say assualt rifle. I've had someone describe an assault rifle as anything that's specifically made to kill people.
For example, you mention the AK-47. I consider it to be a fully automatic, with selective fire, machine gun. You hold down the trigger, and the gun rapid fires until you remove your finger from the trigger, or you run out of ammunition.
Interestingly, and as far as I can tell, the author of the article did not make that. He assembled a semi-automatic-only version, based on the type that is available to gun enthusiasts. IE, not a full-auto machine gun.
But anyoo, just to be clear, you would term the following rifles to be assault rifles, correct?
The British ministry have so long hired their gazetteers to repeat and model into every form lies about our being in anarchy, that the world has at length believed them, the English nation has believed them, the ministers themselves have come to believe them, & what is more wonderful, we have believed them ourselves. Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honourably conducted? I say nothing of it's motives. They were founded in ignorance, not wickedness. God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, & always, well informed. The past which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive; if they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. We have had 13 states independent 11 years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century & a half for each state. What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? & What country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure.
Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to William S. Smith (13 November 1787).