I would construe “defense” to include scenarios in which a criminal has a gun pointed at him and relents without the need to shoot, and possibly also scenarios in which a would-be criminal is deterred by the knowledge that his intended victim may be armed.
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So killing and threatening to kill.
And then we could split that into “people I want you to do those things to”, and “people I don’t want you to do those things to.”
In any case, I don’t think we can make guns safer until we can set them to “stun”.
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I’m not really objecting to the “to kill stuff” aspect (although I can see why you might make that observation).
I’m more objecting to the implication that “to kill stuff” = bad, without exception. Killing stuff should certainly be avoided, but heaven forbid, in the unlikely situation where you or a family member will be harmed unless a bad guy is stopped…
It’s a situation that happens a lot less frequently than some pro-gun folks seem to indicate, and arguably being in such a situation may raise some good questions about life choices that have been made.
(And yes, killing in defense, or threatening to do so, ain’t good. But there are times where it’s the least bad option.)
But my wife and I do spend time in an area where there is a problem with drug production, where sheriff response times are slow, and where it’s a poorly kept secret locally that a few folks in the sheriff’s department are crooked. And I grew up in a rough neighborhood, where returning as an adult I have found myself in a bad situation.
So, while I do think there are too many guns in circulation in the US, the “defense” point is one that does resonate with me.
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My family has one accidental gun death and a gun suicide that wouldn’t have happened if there hadn’t been a gun handy-by. (it was a fit of depression that likely would have passed.) So honestly, “defense” doesn’t resonate with me at all. I am convinced that the vast majority of homes would be safer without a firearm. Invest in solid doors and good locks if you need protection.
I suspect that having a gun tends to lead participants in altercations to escalate rather than to de-escalate, and to engage rather than to retreat. These seem like bad outcomes.
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What about setting them to “incapacitate”?
Can we make them so they only hurt the animatronics?
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they need to at least retire any replicants
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I was about a foot away from being shot in the head by my brother in an accidental discharge.
And a friend of mine years ago started dating someone who didn’t like his guns. He tried showing her how they work to convince her they were safe. And I don’t know what happened exactly, but it went off and he shot out a window and into his neighbor’s bedroom. Thankfully nobody was injured.
/anecdotes
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Yeah. Even in that rare situation, you have to wonder if pulling the gun didn’t increase the risk of you getting killed.
Anecdotally, I have:
1 boy-scout gun safety nerd who shot his TV. Lol.
1 friend I play games with whose father accidentally killed his sister.
1 BiL who is suicidally depressed and keeps a shorty shotgun in his house for himself.
1 neighbor… who kept signs like “do I have to speak to you in 12-guage” who is poor because he wasted all his money on guns and ammo.
(Most ironic was the time he ignored a hurricane evacuation to protect his safe from burglars.)
Agreed.
The bad situation I mentioned in an earlier post was when I was emptying my childhood home, getting it ready for sale after my father moved into a retirement facility. A couple of guys, thinking the house was vacant came in, presumably hoping to remove material to sell as scrap (a common problem in the area at the time). I didn’t really have a way to flee safely, but I had been carrying my SiG because of the issues in that neighborhood, so…
The rest of that trip, I had help from a friend of the family, who happened to be a colonel in the local PD.
That neighborhood has its problems. The last time I saw my mother before she passed was when she was in the background of the video shot by a local news crew when they were covering a “suicide by cop” event a few doors down. (My father actually made the initial 911 report, having been threatened by the guy while walking the dogs.) And a couple of nights before one of my house-emptying trips (my parents accumulated a lot of stuff over 40 years; it took me a while to get the house ready to sell), there was a murder down the street, in an open space where I used to play as a kid, and where folks like to walk dogs.
I may be a little sentimental about my childhood, especially now that both my parents have passed…but I probably won’t go back to that neighborhood.
Every time I’ve fired a gun it’s been at an inanimate object. I don’t think of myself as “killing” paper targets or clay pigeons. (OK, fine, I didn’t actually hit a single clay pigeon. But if I had I wouldn’t think of it as killing either.)
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I’m guessing that she wasn’t convinced.
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He sold the guns. They’ve now been married for quite a while, not sure if guns ever came back into the picture.
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Science overwhelmingly backs this up.
Sure. You could call that practicing killing. Or playing with a tool that is meant to kill.
Going back to the original point here-- we could play guns that aren’t capable of killing. And that would improve safety.
Funny; a lot of people call it “sport”. Is archery also “practice killing”? Javelin? Fencing? Karate? Greco-Roman wrestling? Rugby?
Karate, wrestling, MMA are play-fighting.
Javelin, fencing, kendo, and archery are SCA fanfic. 500 years ago they would have been called “practice killing”.
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