It's really hard to be a good guy with a gun
I hope the recent events make guns fall in the big news exceptions - because this thoughtful article should have wider circulation than the gungeon.
It's Really Hard to Be a Good Guy With a Gun
I come from three generations of gunsmiths and armorers and collectors. By thirteen I had shot all manner of weapons, from a plinking .22 single-action Ruger revolver to an 1886 Winchester lever-action rifle with a cartridge the size of my middle fingerthe buffalo gun, my father called it. In the military, I was an expert with rifles and pistols. I taught colleagues at Mother Jones, that venerable lefty mag, how to handle and fire an AR-15.
<snip>
Back when the licenses were still a new thing and the required instructional classes weren't a joke, my dad's class was run through a host of scenarios: You're broken down on a dirt road in the middle of the night. A black dude in a Cutty pulls up behind you, gets out, comes out with a tire-iron. What do you do? Half my dad's class said to shoot the black man. That was not the answer the instructor sought. He put a premium on restraint, on knowledge that the lethal tool in your pocket or waistband was just that, a tool, and one with a limited range of uses. You don't bring a gun to a fistfight. You don't wave it or brandish it in a threatening manner, because guns rarely de-escalate a situation. And you don't shoot someone just because you're scared.
<snip>
The cultural effect of all these {expanded open carry} laws {covering virtually every space} is to encourage a kind of hypervigilance that's simultaneously paranoid and arrogant. It encourages armed citizens to seek confrontations and escalate them, confident that they can end them definitively. That hypervigilance looks at my questions and scenarios and doubts and says, like a drill instructor in a true army of one: "Then don't carry a gun, you equivocating pussy. Leave the defending to us real men."
Fine. I leave it to you, the hypervigilant. Even though the statistics show mass shootings are on the rise, and not one has been stopped by armed good guysarmed civilian good guys. In fact, they've been shot more often than they've shot the baddies. Which is natural, since assault weapons are on the rise, and it's hard to conceal a weapon that can outshoot someone with a Bushmaster. I leave it to you, because I still puzzle in my mind over all the tactical difficulties posed by someone in civilian clothes carrying a gun during a shooting. (How do you telegraph your goodness to the cops and bystanders?) I'd like to support you in your supreme confidence. I'd like to stand up for your right and trust that you take care in the responsibilities that come with it. But I can't be certain of that, any more than I can be certain that my aim is true, or that in the heat of the moment, another Amanda Miller isn't waiting for you or me.
http://gawker.com/its-really-hard-to-be-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-1588660306
daleanime
(17,796 posts)phantom power
(25,966 posts)Hard to improve on that summary.
tosh
(4,422 posts)Good stuff.
valerief
(53,235 posts)and then clamp down with martial law to complete the ruling class coup. They've already done their second Pearl Harbor, and now they need a new tactic to bring the troops down on us all.
Why do I let my mind wander like this?
alp227
(32,006 posts)I don't get your post.
valerief
(53,235 posts)Stellar
(5,644 posts)would be a cop. Not Joe Citizen that would take his word and the law in 'his' hands. What does Joe Citizen know about the law....'Stand your ground'?
And in most cases they are. But we see how murky situations are even when good police are involved.
billh58
(6,635 posts)including American gun owners, understand and agree with this observation. It is the very vocal right-wing gun lobby and it's NRA/ALEC apologists who hide behind the Second Amendment and scream about "self-defense" from boogeymen and unknown scary assailants.
In reality the OP nails it: hypervigilant gun fetishists are a product of the gun manufacturers' (read death merchants') marketing campaign to sell more guns to people who do not need them and inundate our streets with gun violence. The Second Amendment does not protect a right to use deadly weapons for recreational purposes, no matter what semi-literate gun nuts proclaim.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)...how would you motivate voters?
As much as I despise the Tea Party types, it must be admitted that they
took their thumbs out of their asses and *voted*, instead of
settling for clicking "Like" on Everytown For Gun Safety's Facebook page
and/or writing Internet posts for the amusement of those who already agree
with them...
Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)than 95% of voters. We have our thumbs on the voting lever. What would you have us do?
billh58
(6,635 posts)are qualified to have opinions on the Second Amendment, or on any gun control measures being considered. They believe that they are oh so superior to the rest of us "keyboard warriors" that our input doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of the gun violence epidemic in this country.
The fact of the matter is that the grass roots gun control movement is growing daily, and individual activism is increasing by leaps and bounds. The gun nuts parade around carrying guns in public and call that "activism." In the mean time gun control advocates are donating money, writing letters to the editor for local newspapers, signing petitions, and contacting their political representatives. We also vote for gun control advocates, and against Democratic NRA A+ assholes in the primaries.
The truth is that the general American public is sick and tired of hearing about one gun tragedy after another on a daily basis. As much as the gun nuts would like to believe that they can't be regulated, the swelling tide of opinion will prove them wrong.
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)I find it difficult to reconcile your claims of a "swelling tide of opinion" with the
observation that an organization one can join essentially for free (clicking "like" on one
of their Facebook pages suffices) is drastically outnumbered by one that costs a
minimum of $25 a year to join - the ratio was ca. 20:1 the last time I looked.
False consensus effect is not your friend.
I'll say it here: The NRA needs taking down, but the current approach taken by
most gun control advocates will not do so
Response to billh58 (Reply #6)
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billh58
(6,635 posts)Mr. "Conservative."
billh58
(6,635 posts)troll has been shown the door. Good riddance...
japple
(9,809 posts)has been confronted by bystanders. The shooting at the school in Washington last week when a student used pepper spray and then tackled the gunman. The gunman at the Naval Yard incident was shot/tackled by an employee. Gabby Giffords' aide who tried to wrestle the gun away from the shooter.
Where were all of the good guys with guns?
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)confronted and killed 3 "good guys with guns."
More guns equals more deaths.
PatrynXX
(5,668 posts)that when you go to a gun show if your a Democrat your banned. have no idea why. We aren't anti gun. Oddly enough most Republicans are.
For driving another nail in the coffin of the right-wing gun lobby.