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I made a post on this not too long ago about gun rights being civilization rights. If we don't trust Hassan to have a gun we don't really trust him to exist and live in our civilization.
I suspect this equivalence is true for most people:
(Number of people you trust to own a gun around you) < (Number of people you trust to live in society around you) < (Number of people actually in society around you)
The gaps in those numbers pose very thorny problems, and I think most people would prefer to sweep those problems under the rug.
I think someone like Hassan should be imprisoned and removed from society. We currently keep a bunch of criminals in prisons, and thus prisons are very terrible places to be. I would not want to condemn Hassan to such a place. Mental institutions used to be the kind of prison that would house people like Hassan. I don't think they were pleasant enough either. Either the nicest prison possible, or he remains a ward of his parents/the state.
I mean, you’re talking about a conservatorship. Thats thé most humane option. But Hassan is not going to react well, and the law gives a high bar because we are an individualist society that really values autonomy and freedom.
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This doesn't compute for me. It's true that I trust fewer people to own guns around me than live in society around me. That means that gun rights are not the same as civilization rights. Many crazies are harmless when they do not own tools that can kill at a twitch of a finger and steeped in the culture of using them against perceived threats.
And on a larger scale, do you trust the state to determine whether or not you're crazy enough to take your rights away more or less than you trust the presumably small portion of crazies in society to not kill you?
Apart from the vast wilderness of North America with natural predators (not super relevant because in such places in Europe you can also often own hunting rifles), I have always assumed that this simply has to do entirely with the number of black people around in the US metro areas and the general distrust of large segments of the population towards the government that it will actually protect them from these black people.
Can Americans sanity check me?
No.
The directional distribution of crime stats is widely known in America, but the specific stats are not- and most Americans do not feel threatened by high black crime, because 'not going into the hood'(the ghetto is not where most people want to hang out anyways) is a perfectly viable method of avoiding it. And political support for gun rights is mostly correlated with living outside of the inner city anyways. Distrust of the government is a real factor, but the driving factor for concealed carry is fear of mass shootings, or drug fueled 'random' crime. Not fear of gang related crime among the black population, which yes most Americans are aware is a problem but also is seen as something that is geographically limited to places you don't really want to be in anyways. The sentiment is more 'the police can't be everywhere at once' and less 'the police favor black gangbangers'- the latter sentiment would be seen as farcical among the vast majority of Americans, including the last pockets of red tribe racism.
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Uh, not really.
Political support for gun ownership is inversely proportional to distance from an urban center. It’s more a rural/redneck/rugged-individualist signal.
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There was a video on twitter recently of a PoV of someone having to shoot a charging boar utilizing a bolt-action rifle.
I couldn't help but stare at the set of circumstance and think to myself, 'In that situation, I really, REALLY would prefer a PTR-91. Or AR-10.'
Which are semi-auto magazine rifles chambered in 308. Which is a typical hunting round.
And boars have become an endemic invasive species in America as of late.
That aside... I know enough to say that gun culture overall in the US has undergone a quiet, seismic shift who's origins can date all the way back to the initial attempt at a gun ban in the 1920s, threading through the Firearms Owners Protection Act in 1986, Clinton's Assault Weapons' Ban in the 90s, up until today, where you've had a steady increase in constitutional concealed carry.
It's around this point I could probably fish around for how holders of CCWs having less crime rates than police officer, the twisted and uncertain number of defensive gun uses and so on and so forth... but there's still a very American cultural thread that basically boils down to, when the Government gets a bee in thier bonnet and tells thier citizens 'No', there's an instinctive reaction of 'Fuck you, now I want it MORE'.
1911's have become a default sidearm among hog hunters for a reason.
I'm surprised they haven't taken a page out of Alaskan bush hunters and use 357 revolvers or whatever Glock is chambered for 10mm.
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You have a link to that? One of my coworkers will definitely get a kick out of it.
Shit, I’d prefer an AR15 to my bolt-actions in that case.
Here you go.
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If it was actually possible to stamp down the number of handguns circulating in the US metro areas (and not just taking them from the law-abiding citizens), I'd expect a general reduction of crime for the following reasons:
In addition, while I'll let Americans correct me my impression was that the large segments of the population who are wary of black people and the segments of non-black population who live in the US metro areas were two circles that do not overlap much. Cities vote blue, rurals vote red, do they not?
Eh maybe. To start with, the black-hispanic... strong mutual dislike... dwarfs any other racial tensions in the US by the numbers, even if BLM shenanigans are more common in the media, and this is a mostly urban phenomenon. You're certainly correct that the blue tribe is less wary around black people but nice urban liberals are well aware that big crowds of blacks/majority black areas are not good news from a safety perspective. They won't say it out loud of course but they are aware of the general correlates of race and crime, even if they think 13/52 is exaggerated, blame racism rather than criminals, etc.
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Yeah Gun rights are a peculiar American psychosis where, if guns were to come into existence today, the current status quo would just have a 0% chance of being the way they entered 2025 American Society. Which isn't necessarily unique, looking at alcohol and a bunch of other 'oh we've kinda grandfathered them in with civilization' stuff.
I'm personally from a country with essentially no guns (Police are armed but I genuinely do not think I've ever seen one unholstered) and I just find it unfathomable why I'd want to change that fact. I'm sure shooting guns is fun, I've done it once on vacation and it was cool but I have no particular urgency for my next experience and I'd consider 'the rest of society is far more likely to be armed' would impinge upon my personal freedoms and vibes far more than the status quo.
Like whenever I'm in the USA and I feel an interaction is getting weird or somebody's notably antisocial-looking I've got something in the back of my head saying 'that guy could be packing'. Whilst illegal firearms exist in Australia, probabilistically the chances are so much lower and guys like Hassan just aren't gonna have the contacts to get them and then randomly overly escalate some shit.
I don't think you can separate the things that were grandfathered in from the current good state we find ourselves in. Alcohol is useful for proving trustworthiness within a group. We might never have gotten out of small-scale tribalism without its influence. Guns were a necessary tool for breaking the old social order of kings and nobility. The countries where guns are rare have at least a vibe that no one could ever upset the established order. In America there are times when states, and even smaller groups, defy the federal government using force. The threat of such defiance limits the extent to which the establishment boot can stomp on human faces before it is stopped by force.
I do agree they've helped with establishing the status quo, but they're also something where if they were a fresh addition to the status quo they would clearly not be given their current status.
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This isn't true, and we know it's not true because we've had a chance to test it: the modern equivalent of guns (in terms of a destructive individual technology) is the small drone, and you can buy them from Walmart (or whatever your Australian equivalent is) with no background check of any sort the last time I checked and only very minimal and nominal regulations on their use.
Drones aren't quite like guns since they require conversion and some significant level of skill to weaponize. Petrol-bombs are a thing but we don't worry so much about petrol like guns. Fertilizer -> explosives is a thing but fertilizer doesn't require special licenses to buy, though there is monitoring.
You can do vast amounts of damage with a laptop and internet connection but they're not too regulated.
Whereas guns, rockets, knives, high explosives are easy to weaponize if you have them.
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It is definitely a case where technology (batteries and motors) has outstripped politics, but drones don’t really compete with firearms against undefended targets. Other than aircraft, I guess, which is where we see the leading edge of regulation.
Handguns are useful for personal violence in a way that drones can’t ever be.
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Drones as sold aren’t destructive, surely? They need a gun or explosive to be attached to them, both of which are banned for being destructive.
During the Palisades fires some months back, a guy (one of the founders of Treyarch, the game development company) accidentally flew his civilian drone into a firefighting airplane and disabled it.
Now I imagine firefighting planes fly uncharacteristically low due to their mission, but the speed and mass of a drone is probably enough to cause severe injury in a direct collision, or to damage low flying planes (say, near an airport) or other vehicles, putting the lives of the people in them at risk. Imagine a drone going straight at your windshield while driving.
I might be mistaken, but I think most countries don't require a license to purchase a drone, only to fly it. Which, for someone planning mischief with their drone, is not a concern.
And this is without considering the additional homemade modifications one could make to make a drone more dangerous. Homemade explosives, yes, but that's hardly the only way to make it deadly. You could have them carry liquids (bleach, paint, lye, acid?) in a container that's meant to burst on impact, you could duck-tape spikes or knives to it... I'm barely even trying to be imaginative here.
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Correct, but on balance I'd say it's much easier to manufacture an explosive device (a bottle filled with gasoline, for example, at the simplest) than it is to manufacture a drone. Imagine if you could just walk into a department store and buy a fully-functional guided anti-tank missile with everything but the warhead. That's what a drone is.
Certainly, but either of those raise the bar significantly from ‘here is your human-killing device, here is the stuff to put in it, press this button to make it go’. To my mind, this is beyond most psychotic murderers. Our Hassan treats daily life as a Herculean task, he’s not going to build improvised explosives.
I think I agree that a firearm has a lower entry point. However the drone might pose a greater threat at relatively similar skill levels, although it's possible that counter-drone tech advances and popularizes quickly enough to once again raise the skill level necessary to use a drone competently.
The truth is that a low-functioning psychotic with a gun (or a drone) does not pose a threat to society even if he poses a threat to individuals in society. It's intelligent and organized individuals that pose the threat to social stability, and guns and drones are a force-multiplier to that effort. Drones are to modern society what firearms were in an earlier: an extremely powerful tool – or weapon – that allows relatively under-equipped groups to reach parity with professional soldiers. The drone is to the tank what the musket was to the knight.
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If it's equivalent why don't I hear of drone gang wars, or drone robberies, or drone school shootings?
You do if you know where to look.
Things will get worse on this front as the technology and expertise necessary to operate it (which is low, but there is an entry barrier) percolates through society.
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Keep in mind that the U.S. is not just LA, DC, and NYC - it is also Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho.
I'm pretty much most countries like the US have gun rights.
How much? Okay that can be a problem, but when social services are three hours away and wild animals are an actual threat....you have to.
Europe is not the US
Canada is the closest analogue and has much stricter gun laws than the U.S., although laxer than most of Europe. Russia also has very strict gun control, although I don’t know how enforced that is in Siberia. India, dangerous wild animals living alongside humans- super strict gun control, and villagers are too poor to buy guns anyways.
South Africa has a large rural population and still has dangerous wild animals. I’m aware that there is an Afrikaans speaking gun culture but I don’t believe that the actual laws on the books are notably loose, and anyways crime rates are so high there that self defense is just mathematically dominated by common criminals.
Where else? I suppose Australia technically has dangerous wild animals in great variety, but guns are tightly controlled there.
While this is strictly speaking true it is slightly (and inadvertently) misleading. Australia's most dangerous animals are not ones that you can stop with a gun - an assault rifle will do nothing to stop you from being bitten by a funnel web spider that had moved into your shoe, a perfectly camouflaged snake that you stepped on or a small, transparent jellyfish floating 30 metres away from you. People in rural areas still use them and don't have much difficulty getting them.
Carrying a gun for snakes isn’t totally unknown.
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Vast majority of Australian wild animals are only really going to cause you issues if you step on them or you're pretty far off the beaten track.
Dingos and saltwater crocs are technically dangerous to people, are they not? No bears, snakes and monitor lizards avoid people, no big cats. I suppose guns are pretty useless against saltwater crocodiles in general but still.
You’re not going to get attacked by a grizzly in a suburb either, you’d have to be way off the beaten track.
Grizzlies no, black bears maybe.
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I know somebody who just got back from safari in South Africa. Apparently suppressors are near-universal there; it’s considered rude not to use one. But accessing guns was extremely lenient.
Argentina is another lax one. Big history of ranching.
Argentina has no dangerous wildlife(to humans) to speak of- argentine pumas are known for not even being willing to defend themselves against human assailants, jaguars have only a marginal presence, and the South American canid species are too small and tame to threaten people. I suppose theres bushmasters and rattlesnakes but guns are less helpful against snakes than macro predators.
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Not really, not to the same extent or of the same kind. Europe broadly doesn’t allow handguns or concealed carry, and makes getting a rifle difficult. The same is broadly true for Asia, Russia and a bit less so for India. Africa is unable to enforce this kind of thing.
The map of worldwide gun ownership per capita (which was made by the Swiss) is teal and blue globally, with a black blobs for America, Alaska and Yemen.
America doesn’t have handguns, ARs etc. because of its size and wild animals, it has them because it is (ironically) a very conservative country based on armed revolution.
Plus of course because you need them to protect yourself from all the people with guns. I’ve never seen posters here advocate for gun ownership to protect from wild animals, it’s always as a Schelling Point against government overreach or for self-defence.
It’s worth noting that self defense from wild animals is written into the gun laws of Canada and Norway, I believe. Now gun politics in those countries are not a big topic of discussion, but it does seem to be a recognized use case.
In the US nobody really cares about Wyomingites and Alaskans having handguns, so this topic doesn’t come up as often.
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Worth noting that this is a very common use-case IRL, although the self-defense question is of course much more interesting and gets more "air time." I've personally used an AR-pattern rifle to shoot predators in defense of livestock.
Defending oneself against predators is very rare but it's enough of a problem in bear territory in North America that ammunition sellers will advertise ammunition as being relevant against bears. Mountain lions (and maybe wolves) are also a potential threat that might warrant a handgun in some places, but don't pose the same challenges that killing a bear does.
I might just be falling for toxoplasma, true.
Very cool, care to tell more? The closest I’ve got is a friend using a BB rifle to fend off monkeys, which can get very vicious.
Not much to tell! Shot and killed a coyote off of the back porch with an AR (chambered in .223) while growing up. Probably at 75 yards? It had come up to steal a chicken. This was a not-infrequent occurrence back on the farm, and we've killed a variety of predators though a variety of means, but the AR-15 was our typical go-to because it's reliable, relatively light, didn't require cycling a bolt for a follow-up shot, and of course it's easy to put whatever sight or other attachments (such as a flashlight) on there that you want. Plus, of course, if you had to you could grab the same gun for a defense against a (human) home invader.
I'm not going to pretend I couldn't have done that with another weapon, but a semi-automatic "sporting" rifle in a small caliber like .223 is ideal for dealing with predators like coyotes and foxes.
Hunting rifles are overkill – they are often heavy, use a larger and more expensive round with more recoil, and you typically mount optics on them that might be more suited to longer ranges and actually hinder target acquisition at closer ranges (this depends entirely of course on your property layout – on a ranch you might prefer a scoped weapon.) Also, I think I prefer the pistol grip on the AR rifle if I am shooting standing. But a less powerful round like a .22 is not generally considered powerful enough to reliably kill a predator, particularly at longer ranges.
An AR is cheap, reliable, and lets you get the first and second shot on quickly. It's also very modular, meaning you can easily adapt the same gun for different situations (so for example I used the same lower but a different upper receiver chambered with a larger round to kill a deer while hunting). This can save you a few bucks, and also it's cool.
Obviously it's not the only option, but for that specific threat (predator, relatively close, say expected at 200 yards or within) I would want a rifle with the same characteristics: small and fast rifle round with a flat trajectory, iron or red dot sight, semi-automatic. And that's a very similar problem to the one the military is trying to solve (especially for dismounted urban combat) so the design convergence is natural.
I admit that the English solution for foxes is less convenient ;-)
More seriously, I think in the UK we would usually use a shotgun. Even rural UK is much more dense than the US and people worry about a missed shot or ricochet killing someone in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not that sticking to non-rifles keeps things safe… In a quite staggering display of insouciance both of my grandfathers managed to shoot a friend or significant other at some time in their lives, thankfully causing little damage in both cases.
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Most countries allow for hunting rifles and such, no?
For a very specific value of "allow", maybe.
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Yes, certainly. But I don’t think that ‘some farmers have a rifle in the barn’ is what we’re talking about here. A Hassan wouldn’t be able to get a hunting rifle, and certainly wouldn’t be allowed to carry it into town or anything. There is essentially no probability that someone you meet is ‘packing’.
I made a post way back saying that lots of countries and England in particular are fine with sporting/hunting guns to some degree, but are absolutely rock-solid on forbidding personal weapons (with some unavoidable fuzziness in between).
My understanding of American gun rights supporters is that it’s the opposite: they feel it’s existentially important for their civilisation to allow people access to personal weapons specifically.
Yes "gun culture" is more American, but my point is that the access to guns is there in most countries should you wish. Most gun control advocates don't realize this though.
I'm aware that isn't you but might have been OP.
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