Guns urban vs urban?
 

Like we needed another gun thread.:3_eyes:

I'm not sure if I see a trend here or not. Is most of the pro/anti gun rhetoric coming out of the densely populated areas? As an acknowleged bumkin, I just don't feel the passion that lots of folks seem to on the 2nd amendment fight. Looking at myself and my fellow hillbillies, I'd say that its because there is zero chance of disarming rural America. Pass the law, it won't happen. I don't see guns mainly as the conceal carry self-protection issue as urban pro-gunners do. Guns are to put down deer injured on the road, shoot the rabid fox, keep the possum out of the hen house, put meat in the freezer, and for the extremely unlikely home defense scenario. I just see gun confiscation as a silly unworkable thing city folk talk about doing. Is it really just urban vs urban?

I think that's a huge part of it.

My only real gun concern is with hand guns. I've got no real problem with shotguns, rifles, semi-automatic rifles, and even fully automatic rifles. What concerns me is concealable weapons that are designed to be used against human beings. Hand guns.

I think hand guns are more popular in cities, and longer guns are more popular in the country. It's easier to shoot a woodchuck with a rifle than get close enough to shoot it with a hand gun.

Pretty much, griff. Most of the urban or suburban pro gun people are dealing with antis who are acting out of fear of an otherwise useful object.

I agree with what you said here. I don't advocate legislation against handguns, I would like to see handguns owners voluntarily get rid of them. I am a suburbanite.

Something happens to people where they exist in high concentrations. They start thinking they're inherently smarter than those who live in the country. You might think that you know something about guns just because you've lived around them your whole life and you are familiar with what they can and cannot do. But you're just a hick. While you're at home whittling sticks, city folk are going to see The Vagina Monologues and listening to smooth jazz. They read thick newspapers, and as anyone knows, the thicker the paper is, the more smart it contains. I bet your newspaper isn't thick.

'Cause we are:D ;)

Listen, Uncle Jed, I'll bet my newspaper is thicker than your newspaper.:p

I know your post is sarcastic, but you are right with the newspapers. The thicker newspapers of a big city are far far superior to the crap they print in small town papers. There's simply far less news in a small town paper, and it's mostly fluff.

There's simply far less news in a small town paper

Less rapes , robberys , murders , carjackings , etc,,,,,

I disagree. Smaller newspapers aren't beholden to mega-advertisers to drum up buzz and sell copies. They talk about things that are of immediate concern to the readership, whether it's a "big" news day or not. There's plenty of fluff, but that's because fluff is what's happening. In a 8-inch thick newspaper, 4 inches of the thickness is advertisements, 2 inches is the editorial board attempting to indoctrinate the reader into its personal political viewpoint (invert the previous 2 numbers for the Washington Post), 1 inch is sports, and the last inch is divided between actual news and information about which Hollywood debutantes are catfighting that week.

Out of 100 pages, maybe 16 contain anything you might actually need to know. If you're an investor, add 8 for the stock report.

I agree with glatt on this thread. That's the legislation we have here and most people seem to feel quite comfortable with it. Also though (and something I disagree with) semi-automatic rifles are illegal to own now. Mostly only rural residents or people with links to rural areas have rifles. I'd say probably one in ten homes have a gun of any description in it...if that.

Quite true. Also home defense is more reasonably conducted with long guns when the nearest public thoroughfare is half a mile down a rural driveway.

Now you're just arguing for the sake of arguing and also making stuff up. I've read both small town newspapers (almost certainly not the same ones you have) and large city newspapers. They are like night and day. Small town papers don't even come close. They just regurgitate a small number of AP stories, and even truncate most of those stories. Having said that, if you live in a town, you should get the local paper, just so you know what is going on in that town.

I was the sole reporter for 3 weeklies in the San Luis Valley. I am, in fact, arguing for the sake of arguing.

One week they sold an extra ad and I had to fill up 4 pages at the last minute. I dug out the old issues from the morgue (a shelf in the back room) and created a feature called "100 years ago in the Del Norte Prospector" and copied from that issue verbatim. It was even more boring than the new stuff. Also, I stole a couple of stories from the Monte Vista and Center papers and put them in the South Fork and Creede editions. I was up for 36 hours trying to finish it in time. The front page story was about the progress of the highway project on Wolf Creek Pass, and it featured a picture of a bulldozer. I would've given my eyeteeth for an AP feed, but it was all the way in Alamosa. This was pre-internet days, too :(

I was going to be a stringer for the Rocky Mountain News, but my publisher was an idiot and wouldn't let me because he thought they wanted to siphon off his ad revenue :lol:

I read "real" papers, and the front sections are usually pretty good unless they're the same old tired conservative bashing. Even Le Monde -- just to get the frog version of our Democratic Party's talking points. But I stand by most of my numbers. There is no fluff as diabetic as the NYT society pages. I'd rather read about a small town guy who finally pulled together the loan to open his fishing shop. That I can relate to. Not "Mrs. Covington-Smythe (nee Walford) enjoys the companionship of chairman of the Committee to Resurrect Flapper Hats for AIDS in Africa Blansfield Xavier DuPont, of the Wallingshirefordbury DuPonts. A good time was had by all at the event, which cost $50,000 to attend and featured a cash bar."

Good locals are a thing of beauty, though. Ed what'sisname in the Salida paper is a good old fashioned independent. And not as in the party, but in that he's sick of these government idiots telling him whether or what he can smoke. Quinlan. Ed Quinlan. He's going to hell, but I love him anyway and will put in a good word should he not come to Jesus in time. The vibe of that whole valley really appeals to me, and will be my first house-shoppng destination if the band doesn't take off soon.

Tonight;s typing lube: Ambien. just so you aren't surprised by whatever comes out in the next 10 minutes or so. Dem is some good legal drugs, weezy.

But I don't stoned-love Ed Quillian, I love him period. In all his unwashed mountain crazy man glory. I really miss the southwest at the moment. Once you life there, it becomes part of you. Just like the plants must dig deep to find water, and when they pull up and move on, a little piece of em stays right where he at.

I'm searching for that moment where I remember something that happened that was so so definitive of the place and its people. When one that is strong enough comes up, I'm comin home. Damn bears in my garbage, woodstove running out of wood, crazy guys with guns up in the hills loading up for the big revolution (which would end after a brisk 5 mile chase, when they could no longer raise their white greassy leg/bag of lard and bowlinballs, even to keep from pissin on em. These men become "Independent" and go back to non-anarchist jobs that payy them well.

Allis well for a season, the boys they are in high spirits. Then someone finds some damn ol thing on the fuckin interweb, prints it out and brings it to the bbar. He sits gingerly, as would a statesman of his calibre, and orders, and I quote, "just red is fine with me. If it's red, it's good"

Here's a red beer: thanks. sip sip


ayoaaaaaaaauuu KnOE what this is about, dont' you run froom or porblems in Irak. But that.......get ready for it........is NOT the REAL Problem! We have spaceships that regularly kill our cattle and possiblu takd our babies

tToward the end of my tenure, I was going to run that series. "The BatShit Freakazoid LSD tabbin, alien watchers of the SLV"

Witha guest appearence of ashaman from some inbred little maybe-tribe, but the families involved kicked his dad out a long time ago.

What story am i telling again? Ed Quinlan.

Yah I like that guy. Good commentator and always always always looking out for is peooplsez

That is my problem with the whole thing. I move from the country to a smallish town and a bunch of idiots who have never held a gun think it is a good thing to get rid of them.
My side arm was used on the ranch plenty of times, as I had posted before, against varmints and, unfortunately, pulled against poachers when needed.
You try and call 911 and you get an hour wait... it just cannot be done. You have to take care of these things yourself. But that is true in your home with an intruder in the city as well.
People who don't know what they are talking about need not speak on a subject.
You are right about one thing, guns will not be taken... it is a pipe-dream.

Gotta agree. Guns are simply another tool to people in rural areas. I know of someone whose ranch actually falls under the jurisdiction of the Ute reservation. Well, his house is at the tippy most end of it, and last time he had to call the police, it took the Ute tribal cops 2 hours to show up. By that time the problem had been peacefully settled. My acquaintance shoot his rife over the top of the head of an individual who had driven 45 minutes down a very bad dirt road just to see the sights at 3:00 am and became inspired to attempt to break into one of the rancher's barns. The "sight see-er" got uninspired real quick and took off down the dirt road never to be seen again - at least not at that rancher's place.

Oh, the local 3 page paper put the incident on the front page.;)

You aren't kidding! The funny thing is you went back and edited that post. What was it, a typo that you found? :D

That should be a major consideration in the debate, right?
I hate to cite "reality" - but it does have some discernable characteristics...

But it does put a damper on the "debate", no?

Well, like I said: it should.

True dat...

Who knows. :rolleyes:

I think I'm going to start going to sleep after taking a sleeping pill*. The recreational value of staying awake can't be denied, though.

* -- edit: okay, maybe 1 1/2 sleeping pills.

Glatt is unfortunately (and ignorantly, alas, also) subscribing to the discredited theory of "the evil gun," that certain types of firearm are inherently more wicked than others. The ignorant and neurotic ravers against human self-defense use this as an entering wedge to help get the rest of us as helpless as they are. Anyone accepting this theory has been pwned like a big dog!

Disclosure time: in my callow youth, that was me.

This "theory of the evil gun" is exploded by the fact that the same compactness and concealability, and not least their lesser weight, that make pistols suited to committing felonies with, and with a maximum of discretion at least until the shooting starts, are the very same properties that facilitate active defense against committing pistol-armed felonies, by the fundamentally simple expedient of blowing holes in the felon. Which isn't remotely part of his plans for the day.

Crooks can't gag down being shot to death. If this is a universal prospect, they perforce stop being crooks, either under their own volition or because they are too dead to do anything other than cool down to ambient. Either outcome dramatically reduces crime and attendant wastage.

You can shoot a crook with a rifle, too. However, bearing a rifle around with you means you have to carry it in your hand which means you haven't got both hands on your work. A pistol, you simply wear. It's emergency equipment for a specific kind of emergency. Wearing it makes it available in even the most pressing and immediate kind of emergency.

So do ordinary people walk around in the US wearing a pistol?

I'm not particularly extraordinary, and I've done that. Not often, but I've done that.

In the State of Vermont, anyone able to possess a gun can carry it concealed without a government permit of any kind. The one rule Vermont has about this practice is that thou shalt not do it in furtherance of any criminal activity. This is a tremendous improvement over the assumption that CCW is itself a crime, as is the attitude in Washington DC, New York City, and the State of Illinois.

And we know all about thousands of Vermonters killed in shootouts every month, don't we? :D

Very ordinary jewelers carry concealed pistols in their shops, as do pawnbrokers. Even pizza delivery men who'd previously been robbed in nasty neighborhoods -- petty theft can sometimes stoop to new depths of pettiness. This has saved innocent lives, and owing to the modest hitting power of pistol cartridges, doesn't necessarily take the perpetrators'. A rifle bullet is more likely to kill.

rifles are designed to kill things

Ignoring him for a moment, the answer is no.

However, he, for once, raises decent points. For certain people in certain circumstances, its a wonderful idea.

And Vermonters have a certain... mindset that helps prevent violence. I have never met a vermonter who was anything but chill, mellow, and cool.

A stone axe will do a good job of that too.

PeTA will tell you it's immoral to kill animals. Those people never took enough biology to know that all life springs from death, from dissolution. Even plants kill insects: the caffeine in a coffee bean, the cocaine in the coca leaf, and the capsicum in a chile pepper: all these compounds mess bugs up something fierce, generally by hitting them with a dose of something that wrecks their nervous systems. The dosages of these insecticides are too small to do more than stimulate the systems of large mammals like us.

You live, and not starve to death, because you kill stuff and eat it. Plant or animal, to fuel your life, it dies and is disincorporated.

That mindset is hardly unique to Vermont. It's generally prevalent in every State containing about Vermont's population: the Dakotas, Wyoming, Nevada, Oregon -- all kinds of places whose murder rate is about 2 per 100K persons/year, a rate closely comparable to England's, in places far more generally heavily armed. Other crime is similarly infrequent. The general rule is that counties that are not entirely swallowed up by cities have low rates of murder and other crime, with murders as an example in the range of 2-3/100K/year.

OK then, by that philosophy, people who live in cities are either 'more criminal' than people who don't, or that cities are more populated and therefor crime must be higher.

Where are you getting your stats from UG? I'd like to know what the ratio is for urban areas.

Wait a minute. You actually read UG posts?

Wow. People are really scared of guns. I've been around them my whole life, and I've only seen anyone act stupid with one a couple of times. Once was a newbie mistake, where a girl at one of our gun safety classes was still holding her riflein her hands and turned around to talk to someone. Don't ever do that. :cringe: She got blessed out (too hard) by the instructor and was in tears for 15 minutes.

A friend of a friend in hunting camp one year thought it would be a good idea to practice his "quick draw". He got made fun of instantly, which turned into genuine anger when it was discovered taht the gun was loaded.

Just recently, someone let someone else borrow their car and didn't mention that there was a loaded gun under the seat. That was marginally dumb, but not criminally stupid.

That's it, out of thousands and thousands of encounters with "dangerous armed gunmen". Oh yeah. My dad put a BB through the back of a couch while showing me the safe way to put away my new BB gun. Poor dad. :lol: In his defense, the mechanism on that gun was complicated as hell, and it was impossible to get BBs out of the chamber without firing. Unsafe design.

Where does the fear come from? Stories? Ignorance (the dictionary definition, not the PC insult)? They can't hurt you on their own, and they're not more likely to hurt you when carried, unless the person has the intention of hurting someone. In that case, it's the person to be feared. It reminds me of a picture of me standing next to our horse Winterhawk. I was about 7, had never been around horses before, and was petrified. The thing was huge, and I was positive I would be devoured if I got closer than 6 feet. Of course, we became fast friends soon after (he was the world's smartest horse, you should know). But I still remember the sensations I felt when that pic was taken. I had been next to cows since babyhood, and was more cavalier around them than I should have been. But not horses. I had enough movie scenes of unbroken horses rearing up and stomping people in my head that I simply couldn't convince myself that he wasn't going to explode into violence as soon as I got within striking range.

I'm guessing fear of guns is something like that.

False. I don't think guns are wicked, and I'm not scared of them.

I'm subscribing to the idea that certain types of guns are more effective at killing humans than others. A gun is a tool. Yes. I agree. I don't mind tools that exist to kill animals and can also be used in a pinch to kill humans. A shotgun is great at home defense. I don't mind them, because they are hard for a criminal to carry down the street to use in crimes. (Yes, I know they can be sawn off to make them marginally more concealable.) I do mind tools that are designed primarily to kill humans, the way handguns are.

I wish there were no handguns. I realize that there are, in fact, handguns. I'd like to think that there is some way to regulate the amount of handguns out there. I don't know how to do that. What I do know is that when the guns rights supporters try to shut the conversation down by saying that violent crime would stay the same if guns were regulated or outlawed, they are shoveling a load of BS.

And finally, I don't think that the biggest cause of violent crime is the availability of guns. I think there are many avenues that can be pursued before trying to grab guns that will be more effective at reducing violent crime. A sane policy towards drugs would be a good first step.

do we have a "can of worms" smilie?
 

Crap. Was I that obvious? OK, forget the drugs comment.

It's a logical direction as any for this discussion to move in...

Although I know you're making a joke, I'd like to point out, in the interest of accuracy:

Home defense is about equally balanced between pistols and shotguns. Most instances of home defence invole a distance of less than 10 feet.

Yep.

Interestingly, cars, ball peen hammers, and chainsaws* aren't designed to kill things, but often do anyway ... but never on their own. They don't just leap up and randomly massacre folks. Neither do rifles. Or handguns.

Okay, so maybe chainsaws* do on occasion, I may have picked a bad example)

This is an extreme tangent, but guns and chainsaws are intended to do physical harm or damage to something (hammers, too, if you consider a pneumatic nailgun to be the nail-driver of choice, and a hammer to be mostly a demolition tool) while cars are designed primarily to transport. While a car can cause harm, it isn't the primary purpose of the device. This really has no bearing on anything whatsoever. Carry on...

Cars have bearings too. That's gotta count for something.

Consider ... when was the last time anyway called for a ban on cars, or tried to sue a car manufacturer because a drunk driver intentionally misused a perfectly legal and perfectly functioning product?

This is essentially the basis of the liability suits against gun manufacturers.

I'm not aware of liability suits filed on the basis of a gun simply existing, but if there are cases like that, I would hope they would be laughed right out of court. I assume cases against gun manufacturers to have some basis in the design or operability of the device, such as, in cars: seatbelts, airbags, etc.

The reason why I disagree with this is because much of the argument is centered around the cosmetic. People think guns are somehow "worse" or more powerful if they are black and have a military look to them. The round in the chamber is what defines the gun's lethality -- to a lesser extent, rounds per minute. IMO, given 5 seconds to do as much damage as possible, a 12-guage shotgun will outperform any handgun ever created, and most so-called "assault" weapons available to the public. Concealability =\= lethality. Concealability =\= more ability to commit crime. All they have to do is get it from the car to the front door, and from there, concealability means nothing -- they have the damn thing out and are waving it around. It's an argument based on emotion, not practicality. If you have a handgun and I don't know it, I'm not in danger. If you have a gun pointed at my head, I am, concealability be damned.

This is interesting. I hear so many people say drugs should be made more available, guns less available -- when half the time, the reason someone commits a crime is because they're high. [offtopic]Coincidentally, these same people often think life is more sacred for a person on death row than in the womb, or that habitat for the red-eared screeching jungle mouse is more important than someone being able to feed their family.[/offtopic]

BTW, I am not applying that to you. I agree with you. I just find some people's logic amazing.

...you didn't read it, and you wanted a jumping off point to rant about what you wanted to rant about?

If we could bring drug-related crime down to just the crimes committed by users, that would be a vast improvement.

Just like drunk driving, barfights and weekends on college campuses are a vast improvement over the prohibition era.

As Flint pointed out, guns were developed to kill things. That's the history of them. None of the other things mentioned were developed specifically for killing things and other than cars I'd suggest to you that 'often' is probably quite an exaggeration.

As most of the other 'anti-gun' posters have also mentioned, I don't percieve guns as being evil. I, like most of the other posters here recognize that they don't kill anything by themselves, but thanks for pointing that out for us.

There is no point to your argument. It's only a rationalisation.

It is ironic that you say that, they two most popular weapons for violent crime are shotguns and revolvers.

bzzt. reread.

no rant here, jsut trying to help the misinformed understand that handguns aren't nearly as powerful as shotguns, and any concealability they offer has little to do with the crimes they're used for.

i.e., just because it looks like something you saw on TV shooting 300 rounds a minute without missing doesn't mean it can.

There is also the fact that in-home self defense with pistol shots fired will cave your ears in much less than trying the same shots with a rifle -- rifle cartridges, anyway. It's a similar story with using shotgun loads, especially light loads as is recommended: basically skeet loads of powder and large shot. All you need is to damage the invader satisfactorily; there's no need to bring down the ceiling plaster.

It's a good idea not to cut loose with too powerful an arm, so as to contain or reduce problems with overpenetration. Do not shoot a Barrett Light Fifty in your living room. A .380 is a better bet.

A gun intended for fighting humans is hardly an unprecedented piece of equipment: consider the sword. A sword is not, properly speaking, a knife; even its fighting technique is completely different from that of a knife.

For me, it's the intent behind the fighting that saves or condemns. It is not sensible to concentrate exclusively on the hardware, for the reasons of effective opposition that I gave earlier. It is entirely in that part of the combat that contains the volition -- and the arm is emphatically not that.

I don't believe half the crimes commited by junkies are when they are high. On smack or crack, that would be near impossible. I think the crimes are committed by junkies who are not high, but want to be, and are trying to gather the price of admission.

Hense, a change in our drug policy would lead to a drastic price reduction and keep these people stoned in the corner, rather than waving their Saturday Night Special around the liquor store.

This is my feeling, but statistics could prove me wrong....anybody got some?:confused:

Absolutely correct, but I don't have stats.

If misuse of healthcare services is a crime, then I've seen an awful lot of it ... and never when someone is actually high ... usually I get folks when they are at the cranky, irritable, starting to hurt phase of either coming down or withdrawal.

People who are high are sitting on a couch, being high. Getting enough money to stay high is the challenge. And, on to of that, coming down from a high is what would make someone irritable and aggressive (the opposite of euphoric and complacent). So, then you have an aggressive person who needs money (or more drugs). I don't have any statistics to support this, but I agree that more crimes would be committed at that point.

You can't shoot a Barrett in your living room. You can only shoot it *through* your living room. :-)
That might be going a little too far in the other direction.

In Virginia, you can carry a gun in a holster in broad daylight. The crime rate in the suburban DC part of Virginia is very low - very low. The crime rate in DC is astronomical by comparison. DC is fond of blaming their crime problem on the availability of guns from Virginia.

Which is DC's way of saying that when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. Oops.

In Taiwan, guns are illegal except for the military, and the crime rate is the lowest of anywhere i've ever seen, including pseudo-police-state beijing.

That is all.

Yeah, but missing persons is high. Must be a high flying saucer visit area, picking up people that irritate the government. :lol:

Nah, people just get squished in the streets a lot.

I guess you think an innocent person getting injured or killed by a bullet coming out of a house is funny? You like to joke about death and injury, huh?

Spexx, Maggie made a statement of fact, illustrating why longarms are not used for home defense.