The thing I’m finding interesting about most of the comments here is that the focus is on the dangers of having a gun in the home
But in nearly all comments there is an implicit assumption that carrying a gun makes you safer outside of the home. And I’ve yet to see really convincing statistics that this is in fact true. My understanding is that generally speaking defensive gun use is incredibly rare, and when defensive gun use actually happens, it can escalate a situation and actually put you in even more damage than before. And there’s the issue of even if you’ve trained to use your gun, will you react properly and justifiably when faced with real danger ?
I’m a trans woman in Canada, so my life and safety aren’t under the same level as threat as my trans siblings to the south, and I don’t have the same cultural forces around gun ownership. And I know that “safety” is rarely about how safe or unsafe we actually are, but rather it’s an emotional feeling about how safe we feel. So a gun can be powerful in that regard, and I would understand why someone who’s life and rights are under constant threat in Tiff would be allured by the feeling of safety a gun offers.
I’m just not convinced it actually makes you safer.
In my opinion, if someone wants to hurt you, they're not going to play fair. Someone who legit wants to hurt and/or kill you, is not going to walk up to you and tell you that. They'll attack you while your back is turned, they'll run you over with their car, they'll pull their gun on your first.
I also think that if you're in a group that gets regularly persecuted, having a gun on you makes all the bigots feel suddenly justified in killing you...
I think you're glossing over the risk assessment that the potential attacker does prior to attempting to kill someone. If they know you're unarmed or armed only with a knife or chemical spray, then they can confidently assume attacking you with a vehicle or gun will be safe for them. If they know you're armed or potentially armed, then they have to account for the possibility of their own death if they don't manage to kill you at the start of their assualt. Going from "no chance of dying" to "chance of dying" will stop many folks from carrying out assaults.
As an American, it absolutely doesn't. Literally every study that's ever been done on gun ownership and personal safety has shown that owning a gun just leads people to end up in more situations where they'd use it
I wonder how you control for causation in those studies. If someone expects to be in a situation it would be needed (ie they have a stalker, they'll be travelling in a difficult neighborhood, etc) then they're more likely to seek out a gun.
Having a weapon on me has made me more aware of situations that could go sideways. I don't want to use the thing or deal with the aftermath so the second it looks like a situation might go bad I GTFO.
My problem with those statistics is that I personally spent a lot of time in different gun stores and I’ve heard a variation of “I’m just going to buy it just in case and never touch it until I need to” dozens of times. It’s normal to have some kind of fear and respect for a firearm but so many people have such a weird fear that they’ll buy one but never actually learn how to use it and just expect to be able to John Wick their way out of a situation. Or that just seeing a gun will send a would be attacker running and pissing them selves.
I think owning a gun makes responsible and emotionally intelligent people safer because they are hyper vigilant about gun safety and avoid situations where they would need to use a firearm. But for people who are irresponsible, aggressive/looking for altercations, have poor emotional regulation and impulse control, or people who have suicidal thoughts, it makes them unsafe.
For every moron that blows their hand off because they didn’t clear their firearm properly, there are hundreds of people who carry a gun every day completely safely because they check their gun every time they pick it up and respect guns as tools that can kill people if used improperly. My point being gun safety is an individual choice, I do not think guns are systemically unsafe just because we have high rates of suicide in the US, and irresponsible people not checking their firearms before pointing them at themselves or others. Open to counter arguments in good faith.
41
u/Madman200 25d ago edited 25d ago
The thing I’m finding interesting about most of the comments here is that the focus is on the dangers of having a gun in the home
But in nearly all comments there is an implicit assumption that carrying a gun makes you safer outside of the home. And I’ve yet to see really convincing statistics that this is in fact true. My understanding is that generally speaking defensive gun use is incredibly rare, and when defensive gun use actually happens, it can escalate a situation and actually put you in even more damage than before. And there’s the issue of even if you’ve trained to use your gun, will you react properly and justifiably when faced with real danger ?
I’m a trans woman in Canada, so my life and safety aren’t under the same level as threat as my trans siblings to the south, and I don’t have the same cultural forces around gun ownership. And I know that “safety” is rarely about how safe or unsafe we actually are, but rather it’s an emotional feeling about how safe we feel. So a gun can be powerful in that regard, and I would understand why someone who’s life and rights are under constant threat in Tiff would be allured by the feeling of safety a gun offers.
I’m just not convinced it actually makes you safer.