I hate people who treat them like some toys and fantasize about them. That makes me think they are in some sort of death cult. That they found socially acceptable way to love violence.
I would still get one for safety but it is a tool made for specifically one thing. To pierce the skin and rip through the inner organs of a person.
They can serve a good purpose but they are fundamentally grim tools of pain and suffering. They shouldn’t be celebrated and glorified in their own right, that is sick. They can be used to preserve something precious but at a price to pay.
There are too many responses here to reply to all of them individually so I’m just going to post some quotes here, more in response to other comments than the OP, but perhaps also a perspective to consider for OP as well.
“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”
- George Orwell
And the shockingly only increasingly relevant full quote from one of the founders of the Black Panthers party:
“Any unarmed people are slaves, or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If the guns are taken out of the hands of the people and only the pigs have guns, then it’s off to the concentration camps, the gas chambers, or whatever the fascists in America come up with. One of the democratic rights of the United States, the Second Amendment to the Constitution, gives the people the right to bear arms. However, there is a greater right; the right of human dignity that gives all men the right to defend themselves.”
- Huey Newton
I’d really ask more people to consider their position of privilege, to be less afraid of state sanctioned or enabled violence of all forms than some crazy neighbor with guns who was likely failed many times by that very state to have come to this point. Please just consider the counterpoint, that armed minorities are harder to oppress, and that far, far more people have been killed by state sanctioned and enabled violence, than by access to firearms by “the common people”.
I’m not telling anyone that they’re wrong, I’m just asking that you really internalize and consider this perspective. Thank you for reading and thinking.
This is only unpopular in the USA, it’s the popular opinion everywhere where we don’t worship guns.
I am very leftist and somewhat split.
Modern guns are an engineering marvel and I can understand if someone is fascinated in the precision and engineering knowledge needed to construct them - the same way some people are fascinated by mechanical watches, steam engines, etc.
They are also a necessary tool for some jobs - I can worked alongside these and in theory am trained to handle one(but haven’t had a gun in my hand for 15 years if you don’t count two instances I had to take it from a patient before law enforcement arrived). So I am very happy that the people who need to have it have modern,safe, versatile and easy to handle guns at their disposal. And I want these people to have the best training,the best equipment and the best recruitment and background check possible.
This brings me to another point: I am sternly against people using “shooting” (large calibers) as a hobby and the whole gun culture around it - we see in the US this can easily become a purpose on it’s own and the detrimental effects it has on everything, from mental health care,policing, emergency medicine to the political culture, even influencing their neighbours negatively.
Go for small calibers all you want, no problems with that. But there is no reason an average private citizen needs a 9mm or a AR15 (even with manual fire)as a hobby or for self defence here. (There might be some very rare cases when people are under so much threat for their life that it is different - but these are really rare and tbh should require the same amount of training a professional carrier needs)
Hunting is a bit different, but even there I see problematic behaviour within recreational hunting. I am not at all against hunting per se, it’s absolutely an requirement in most industrial nations to keep the ecological balance in the few remaining ecosystems and is the most ethical source of meat available.
But again in some nations a subculture around it has formed that is not healthy,not required to maintain biodiversity and ecological balance, etc. My shire owns large wooden areas and has decided to switch to (semi-) professional hunters quite a while ago, they are payed to hunt according to a ecological plan, do not get less or more money if they are successful, the shire sells the meat to the inhabitants for relatively cheap prices. This model has been proven (scientifically) to be successful as it allows very targeted hunting, e.g. to keep animal tracks away from certain roads, to intentionally allow the reintroduction of larger predators,etc.
Let me preface this with I’m very liberal so I’m not attacking anyone but I’m also a physics nerd so…
Anyway, is a .22LR a small caliber? Because the difference between a .22LR (5.66mm) and the typical shell in an AR15 (5.7mm) is only 0.04mm, about the size a small human hair. A better distinction is muzzle energy which is a function of mass of the projectile and velocity of the projectile. I mean a typical paintball is bigger the a 50BMG. It just doesn’t weigh very much or go very fast. So caliber is a terrible measure for your purposes.
“very leftist” “wants police to have lots of versatile guns and the populace to not” I’m confused.
I hate why they exist. I like how they represent a mastery of engineering, material science, chemistry, and physics.
there are antimaterial guns as well.
Guns are made to make a tiny piece of metal go very fast. You don’t have to use them to kill or think about using them to kill. You can, for example, use them as a remote light switch or their most popular use: remote hole punch. Healthy society shouldn’t have to ban guns since they would be used for completrly non violent things, same a swords and bows.
I mean you could shoot at the sun to combat global warming even.
Making a piece of something go fast is a purpose of any accelerator. Trains go fast along the rail, and are driven by an engine - or, in case of maglev, sort of the rail itself.
Guns are engineered specifically to be most effective at killing or injuring people. Sure, it’s people who put them to action, but it’s also people who make them as deadly (or otherwise efficient at hurting people) as possible. It’s insane we just look at this industry and haven’t closed it for good, forever.
Please, use an electrical switch next time you want to turn the light off.
So are bows and swords and crossbows. But they don’t have hillbillies ruining their public image. I see no harm in having guns around for recreational and hobby purposes as long as they are only in the hands of people who can safely store and operate them.
Honestly I’d rather not have a man on the street with a real sword/bow/crossbow either, and the only reason we may find it less threatening nowadays is that we know there are more perfect weapons that could be used to take such a man down very quickly should he become a tangible threat - and that he himself would use should he go crazy about killing people.
Swords are actually the only weapons specifically designed to kill people. Every other weapon used by humanity is or was a tool for another task at one point. Axes can be used to cut down trees, maces are just fancy hammers, and spears were the first real hunting tools for large game. Swords stand above all other weapons in that it’s use is specifically engineered to be as dangerous to humans as possible. It’s too long to be used effectively as a knife and too fragile to use as any other tool. It’s almost as dangerous to the person wielding it as the person it’s used on. It’s remarkable how every other killing tool used by man has other purposes, but the sword really has just the one.
I can only hope that this is satire
Here in Germany this is a quite popular Opinion. If you have an open fascination for guns, you will be looket at like a serial killer or someone who will be going amok. And wont be allowed to be a police officer (the almost only people to wield a gun in public)
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess you live in the US - well, I sure hope you do.
In the US I believe that guns are like pick-up trucks: far more people own them to plug gaps in their personality than the number of people who own them because they need their utility.
My personal view - and a generally held one - is that guns are a tool and to fetishise a tool is… weird; and suggests to me a troubled mind.
You’ve never shot one and you’re trying to rationalize it,eh? They’re simply a lot of fun to understand mechanically and to use. I have mine for home defense and fun, nothing more. No fetish, no mental problems, I hardly even think about them. They’re simply an impractical tool.
I use guns. I use a lot of other tools, too. My chainsaw doesn’t define my personality, so why would a gun?
See I think that’s where you’re getting lost. Most gun owners are not defined by their guns. They just own them and mind their own business. You’re seeing all gun owners as those military cosplaying scared little boys that put bullets all over their trucks with gun maker stickers to let the world know they really like guns. The vast majority of gun owners are not tools owning tools.
Uh, that’s essentially what my first comment is saying… that’s why I assumed the poster was from over in the US - the rest of the world ain’t really like that. The vast majority of gun owners across the world are normal people; who just happen to own guns, amongst other possessions.
I really like my electric leaf blower. It’s a lot of fun to just turn it on and watch all the leaves and dirt fly off the sidewalk so effortlessly. You just squeeze the trigger and it blows, you don’t need to pull a string or prime it or anything.
I enjoy it so much that the path to the front door is always clear, despite being under a tree that constantly drops leaves.
But leaf blowers don’t kill, and I don’t have vinyl stickers on my car bragging about my leaf blower. Or shirts stating it’s my legal right to own a leaf blower. It’s just a tool that I enjoy using.
The rise of battery leaf blowers gives me hope that humanity can be saved. I hope you have many happy years with it. It’s an incredibly satisfying pastime.
High five! I just build a gas chamber in my basement. It’s simply a lot of fun to understand mechanically and to sit in, valves not turned on of course. ;) I have mine for home defense and fun, nothing more. No fetish, no mental problems, I hardly even think about the gas chamber in my basement. It’s just nice to have.
I hate that “playing a VR game” is litterally just gun slinging but with a goofy looking helmet
Some VR games, you have a sword. Some, you have a bow.
A bunch are very much like Wii-style bowling & sports simulations.
Some are adventure games. And some are puzzle games.
Maybe you’re playing the wrong VR games?
Gonna recommend ultrawings here. It’s an arcade VR flight sim. Keeps the flying fun and simple with different vehicles. I think it takes inspiration from pilot wings for the n64
and only the state should have them
God made man. Samuel Colt made him equal.
Any tool used incorrectly is a significant danger.
I already found the ideas and the people who hold those ideas that you’re referencing are a minority who are scared fanatic and unreasonable and those are the type of people that should not have guns or tools of any capacity.
However, someone like you who wants one for protection and the ability to protect those around you regardless of circumstance are why it’s important to protect gun rights in my opinion.
The thing is, using the gun for killing is exactly the correct one. That’s the intended purpose. Then you may threat to use it correctly as a means of protection.
But there are other ways. Gun rights are almost universally revoked throughout Europe, for example, and barely anyone fears for their close ones, because of a working police and professional army, as well as, exactly, less access to guns that could be used to perpetrate violence.
As the result, banning guns normally leads to a decrease in the number of homicides and assaults.
Honestly the bigger factor is social cohesion and combating criminogenic factors. While far from perfect, European societies are doing much better here than a proudly hyper-individualist US.
Also true, but having wide access to guns is one of those factors, even though it’s not the whole story.
Finland has very similar access to guns, yes it has much fewer total guns but that is much fewer people having many guns, they have a very similar percentage of homes with at least 1 firearm in them as the US currently does. It is actually a myth that they control the ammo, they control their military ammo, not their hunting/personal ammo. Switzerland is not THAT far behind though they I believe do have tighter restrictions on ownership. Also the percentage of households with at least 1 gun in it has remained mostly unchanged in the US for the last 60+ years, and the types of guns available have also remained largely unchanged, intermediate caliber semi automatic mag fed rifles have been shockingly cheaply available in the US since the M1 Carbine became available as military surplus after WW2. Something other than “availability of firearms” is very different now to explain the gun violence (it’s mostly culture and systemic poverty).
We still have people atacking people with axes and knives. Thing is you can at least try to run away from an idiot with an axe, unlike an idiot with a gun.
I would have considered this the popular opinion, but it seems I’m the odd one out. The comments here defending it are hard to read.
Like, Farmers and Hunters: You know you are like 8% of the population at most, right? Killing animals should have maybe been mentioned as an alternative use for guns, sure, but come on: most gun nuts, as most people in general, are city folk. They buy a gun to shoot or threaten to shoot people exclusively.
Couple things.
First, firearms are used for sporting and competition of marksmanship by millions of Americans, and Europeans.
IPSC / USPSA are massively popular and all you ever do is put holes in paper or hit steel targets. The gear is purpose designed explicitly for this. So is the ammunition. Even down to the holsters and mag pouches. It’s ALL for the game of the sport.
The civilian marksmanship program is again, millions of Americans across many cities nation wide. A rifle designed to shoot a Palma match, or an F-class match, or benchrest rifles are specific to those disciplines. Nothing about a 37 lb sled riding benchrest rifle is designed to harm a person. It’s a purpose built tool for competition where mostly old people drive them with dials on a sled and put small groups on paper far away. They often don’t even get shouldered.
Sporting clays, variations of this are Olympic sports. There is no possible way to say an over under shotgun has been designed from the ground up for harming people. It’s a tool built around the rules of the sport. 2 shotgun shells. That’s all it can hold and is long as hell with a massive choke on it to control spread of small pellets precisely, pellets that are very bad at killing. Birdshot is almost never lethal past extremely short ranges and they are engaging clays at 40-80 yards.
PRS competitions are bolt action rifles with physical exercise and difficult physical stages under time pressure to shoot steel. Most have transitioned away from high energy calibers, like military chosen caliber that are for imparting energy into a target, and to small bullets you can watch trace in the scope for… you guess it, the specifics of the sport.
.22 long rifle is extremely popular in sports speaking of small cartridges. It’s what we use in Olympic competitions and bi-athalons that ski and shoot bolt action rifles. We use it in small bore pistol and rifle matches the world over. It’s terrible at killing a person, but is great for target use at 10 meters. Which is what the Olympics world over do.
I could go on and on with more examples. Firearms are just not used for killing things. They have in many countries beyond the US, a strong and friendly competition community for sport that only sees paper hole punching. The UK had a thriving and popular rifle community. France, Sweden, Finland, and Italy have thriving sporting gun competition cultures as well.
I live in a city of 2.5 million people in it and he surrounding area. I shoot every weekend for sport, as I have done since I was on a shooting team in high school, run by my high school. I won a junior olympic medal in that team. I love the engineering and competition elements of the sports and would highly encourage you to try one to see if your view might be expanded to see how kind and friendly the sports are to anyone new coming to try them.
I disagree. I only see one “thing” here, and that’s “shooting as a sport”. I also didn’t consider quail and deer hunting separately, so I don’t know why you wasted so much time writing all the different forms down: to an outsider, the are the same in this context. Maybe 2, the sports that arose from hunting and the ones that arose from the military, the latter often drawing human outlines on their targets which just adds to my point.
And unfortunately, I already was at such competition as a visitor. It’s a sport like any other, your enjoyment largely depends on the people there, and guns attract the kind I want nothing to do with.
If you have been to an Olympic village match or sat down to enjoy the sun at the preside t’s 100, then your words used before, “they buy a gun to threaten people exclusively”, we’re a known misrepresentation. Exclusively is an absolute word. An absolute with no possible other options.
You would have seen the other reasons for yourself and still chose to lump every single person who competes in marksmanship into a camp of this opinion.
Take a look what subject “they” is standing for in my sentence. And then the quantifier before that subject.
Don’t lecture me on semantics.
I’m about as left as they come but weirdly enough I’m also a hunter, and I have to disagree, the guns I own are tools designed for specific purposes that aren’t killing humans. Hunting turkey, hunting deer, hunting duck, I even have a muzzleloader for that season, and a gun for back packing and hunting out of a saddle in a tree.
Hunting IMO is way more sustainable and ethical than buying store bought meat and it connects me with nature and let’s me first hand observe, appreciate, value, and want to protect ecology of my area.
How is hunting sustainable? It’s currently sustainable because a small number of people do it. I can’t see how it would be more sustainable than farmed, storebought meat.
From what I understand, it’s sustainable because hunters kill overpopulated species like deer. The deer become overpopulated due to lack of predators in the area and end up damaging the ecosystem by eating all the plants
Indeed. “Hunting is more sustainable than farming” is an idiotic assertion.
It might be if all the humans not hunting their meat starved to death - orwere never born. I think it really depends on what counterfactual you want to dream up.
You could argue that modern farming techniques created the agricultural surplus and enbled population growth and urbanisation and maybe helped the human population to grow to a level that hunter gatherers woud not be likely to have reached.
I think it is the scale of human population that is challenges sustainability of any tech, either method would be sustainable at some scale. I’m not convinced that modern farming practices are very sustainable for 10+bn people , for all that long. But I guess we’ll see.
Over the long term i think hunter gathering humans were around a lot longer than farmers have been, and a much much longer than modern intnsive monocultural/ pesticide / fertilizer based methods. So you’d have to wait a few thousand years to know how sustainable modern farming is.
Killing animals isn’t ethical. Inevitably the false dilemma gets painted between killing them or overpopulation, but the overpopulation is also a human-created problem, both through overdevelopment and killing off natural predators - the actual antidote is to scale back our development, or reintroduce predators, or simply let other natural stressors manage the population. Plant-based/vegan diet is far more ethical (nonsense about “plants feel pain”, “mice killed by plows”, “I can’t eat vegan because of my blood type” and other vegan bingo card BS aside).
Inevitably the false dilemma gets painted between killing them or overpopulation
it’s not a false dilemma. it’s a real dilemma. and your solution is also to kill them.
Taking just the “solution” of reintroducing predators - it’s still not the same. Predation specifically targets old, weak, sick members of a herd. What do hunters do? It’s what, a tag limit and age limit, and that’s it.
This whole conversation always seems so disingenuous. People doing hunting claim these altruistic motives, but have every adverse incentive that has nothing to do with those motives, from stocking their freezers to just bragging about what they hunted. Let’s be for real here, you’re not scientists or veterinarians carefully monitoring and managing a population, what you’re doing is taking the first justification you can find for what you already wanted to do.
it’s still not the same.
no, it’s not the same, but your solution is also to kill them. if that happens, and people can benefit above and beyond balancing the ecosystem, that’s even better.
Uh-huh. So of all the options - just shooting adult deer, or restoring the ecosystem to the way it was, or actual scientific approaches like sterilization, you’re only interested in the one that benefits you, and then you start ignoring the moral implications, and associated risks like humans getting shot. See, the conversation would go smoother if you just declare from the outset that you only care about what benefits you, and we could drop the pretense that this is about what’s actually the best solution.
the conversation would go smoother if you just declare from the outset that you only care about what benefits you, and we could drop the pretense that this is about what’s actually the best solution.
being snide is unnecessary. you can apologize.
you start ignoring the moral implications
you didn’t raise any moral implications. like what?
Hunting IMO is way more sustainable
Right whales would like a word.
sustainable and ethical than buying store bought meat
- it doesn’t scale
- it’s inconsistent
- zombie deer
Hunting […] [lets] me […] want to protect ecology of my area
Sorry, which part of killing animals fixes a landscape or its residents? What are you protecting by killing something? Does Fonzie need to give Ritchie another speech about Two Wrongs and a Right?
WTF, whales have NOTHING to do with anything they said.
Derailing with strawman fallacy and red herrings undermines anything you say coming across as broken AI chatbot
I am anti gun in almost every way, but I know where I live, deer populations get out of control. I’ve never hunted, nor do I have any desire to, but the fact is that if we didn’t cull the deer population periodically, they would breed themselves into starvation and cause who knows what kinds of damage to themselves and their ecosystem.
As unfortunate as it is, it’s a thing that has to be done for their own good and for the good of this area. I’m sure it’s like that in lots of places with lots of different species.
Agreed; and want to add it’s probably because people killed off the predators that kept the deer population in check.
Either that or they were brought to places where they didn’t have predators. Either way, it’s definitely our fault. We love fucking up natural habits.
You pushed the predators out of the area you live by living there. Not just your ancestors are guilty, you participate in disrupting the ecosystem by simply living. Without predators, prey animals overpopulate and destroy the ecosystem themselves.
Either give up your living space for the predators to balance out the ecosystem you live in, or do the balancing yourself. Don’t sit here being a self-righteous prat and bitch about people hunting when you’re fucking up the local habitat yourself.
Yes, I think mostly it was farmers who deforested the planet; and are still doing it.
That’s not an impopular opinion, that’s the opinion of normal people, firearms are not toys, unless you are in murica of course; then it’s like a Barbie, you buy the Barbie itself and then collect all the accessories
This seems like a very urban viewpoint. There are still places in the world and in the US in particular where a firearm is tool for safety that has nothing to do with other humans.
Not to mention hunting is a thing.
Bows and crossbows exist.
But are comparatively wildly inefficient and cause more pain before the death of the animal.
Not disagreeing with that, but the topic at hand were alternatives to hunting with guns. I think bolt action rifles should be the only allowable gun for hunting.
Just out of curiosity, would you please point out your approximate location on this map of invasive feral swine distribution:
My thumb isn’t big enough to point it all out.
I will do the people reading along the favor of not posting images from an article titled “Penetrating Anorectal Injury Caused by a Wild Boar Attack: A Case Report”.
Suffice it to say, hunters in the marked areas have a distinct need for semi automatic rifles.
Yer not gonna get a tasty bird with a bolt-action rifle or a bow!
You’ve obviously never had a grouse, or are just a bad shot. lol
I hit my bag limit with a 22lr all the time.
Okay but I’m talking about sky birds.
That seems like a very I have nothing to fear from other people viewpoint. Lots of places in urban areas where a firearm is a tool for safety that has everything to do with other humans.
No, it’s just that rural people expect their opinions to count more, as though their lifestyles are more authentic or honorable.
And where exactly is it that a firearm is necessary to protect from wildlife? Kodiak Island?
As far as the safety argument goes, let’s examine Police. The number one cause of “in the line of duty” fatalities is auto accidents, the second is heart disease, with COVID jockeying for position. If guns were a prophylactic, you’d expect them to shoot cheeseburgers and their cruisers. But as Richard Pryor observed: “Cops don’t kill cars…”
A firearm is necessary literally anywhere that has predators, unless you want to have all your livestock killed.
Also necessary if a tweaker decides on a midnight visit, as the police are half an hour or more away.
Counterpoint: cities shouldn’t exist
There should be a commission that caps the local human population at sustainable levels
Cities are a way better way of sustainably housing our population than suburban or rural sprawl. We get to be a lot more space efficient by living in multistory housing, having public transportation, etc.
Counterpoint: we don’t need to be that space efficient, and are better off in smaller communities
With the amount of people existing, yes we do. Otherwise there will be no nature left.
Your both Right there are too many people also look what influencers have done to nature. But bro walkable cities with safe reliable affordable public transportation is something everyone should experience.
