I am wondering why people who dont like guns and people who dont like concealed carriers always say "Cowboy" Gun owners? and refer to people running around shooting each other. I am from Tx, and my nickname is Cowboy (Way before I bought a gun) I always saw being a cowboy meant you protected women, worked hard, has respect for everyone you met regardless of gender/color/religion. My favorite character growing up was Yosemite Sam BUT I also understood he was a CARTOON I watch Green lantern, Superman, Batman and know I cannot put on a ring to fly and have powers, I cant put on red underwear over tights and not fly and I cant stalk the night as a "vigilante" and fight crime. I know this is Cartoons. I do however have a plastic "Red Ring of Rage" (Red Lantern Ring) for when I play heroclix. This is a cartoon I have seen posted a lot and wonder why this is true. My question is when someone stabs someone its the criminal, owning a knife dosnt make you a criminal. But owning a firearm and you are a Gun toting cowboy waiting for a shootout like the "Old West" Or you are just someone who has seen a lot of westerns? Why?
Because those that want gun control basically fall into one or more of the following categories. 1. they hate guns 2. they have an abject fear of guns. 3. they know less the nothing about guns. 4. they have their armed protection but don't like those consider beneath them to have the same protection. Therefore any invented, unsupportable reason will suffice especially if they can get some of the sheeple to agree with it. By the way the cartoon has it nailed.
I disagree. There are a significant number of people who believe that guns do more harm than good. The harm guns do is irreversible (because guns are designed to cause lethal injury) and the good they do in civilian hands could be accomplished without guns. Many people believe that keeping guns out of the hands of criminals will reduce the need for "lawful citizens" to have guns, and the only way to keep guns from criminals is to ensure that they aren't stolen from "lawful citizens" and that no "lawful citizens" purchase guns for criminals. Pigeon holing people into categories that you can easily find contemptable and dismissable does nothing to reach an understanding of the issues and the varying perspectives. That holds true to both sides.
My question to this is then... Gun buy backs, Gun Education Why hasnt one of the groups (either side Really) Done Free gun trainings in all locations free Gun case for new gun owners, Free information on how to keep your gun safe in your home. I have spoken to a few friends and seen the way they take care of their 1911's and several have the magazine (factory 7 round one, with 5 rounds loaded) in the gun not racked incase something happens they can just rack and shoot. I dont like that (not that its bad, But A 1911 is just as safe racked and locked because of the safetys that are on it) So my magazine is next to my pistol with a kershaw skyline in the box incase I am rushed I can get to either one quickly. (one way of protection is not the best always have a secound)
I completely agree, and yes, this one issue seems to be one in which many of the most vocal people on both sides of the debate do an appalling job of pigeonholing themselves every time they speak. As a very liberal gun owner, I empathize and identify with both sides of the issue, but I have to say that - in all honesty - I'm consistently a heck of a lot more embarrassed by my fellow liberals than I am by my fellow gun owners. I've seen some pretty disappointing positions advanced on the pro-gun side of the debate, but the bottom line is, at least gun owners know what they're actually talking about when they discuss the issue, and that's a lot more than I can say for most (not all, but most) of the people on the anti-gun side. Sadly, the majority of people - both private citizens and those in the public sector - who weigh in against guns seem to have little, if any, clue about how guns work or who the people are who own them. Almost half the households in this country own guns, and simple logic will tell you that if that many people own guns, they're going to have a wide variety of motivations for owning them. Yet time and again, people who are against guns refer to gun owners with broad, sweeping generalizations, casting them all as a bunch of psychotic wannabe Rambos who live in constant fear and lie awake at night fantasizing about killing each other. I think it's very fair to say that this mindset is driven not by logic and reason, but purely by emotions such as fear and hatred, and a complete ignorance of the subject. I rarely see that kind of fear, anger, and ignorance reflected in the positions of gun owners. Granted, I see a lot of other unflattering characteristics represented from time to time on that side of the debate, but at least gun owners know what they're talking about. And that, to me, is the most frustrating aspect of the issue. Clearly, there are significant problems with guns in this country, and clearly those problems need to be addressed. That's going to require compromise and concessions on both sides of the issue. All i want is to have a reasonable, informed national dialogue on the issue; but it's impossible to have a reasonable, informed dialogue with people who are not informed, do not care to be informed, and are driven primarily by emotion. Until the people who are leading the fight against guns take the trouble to inform themselves about the issue, and commit themselves to approaching it from a position of intellectual honesty, gun owners aren't going to even listen, much less budge from their entrenched positions. Diane Feinstein's latest anti-gun bill is a classic example of why informed gun owners are unable to take the other side's position seriously, because it's blindingly clear that she either has no idea what she's talking about or doesn't care that she doesn't know, or possible both. She's banning guns not on the basis of which guns cause the most deaths, but which guns look the scariest - she's blatantly playing to the fears of the millions of Americans I was talking about earlier, those who don't know much about guns. For instance, she's banning guns that have shrouded barrels, which probably sounds pretty reasonable if you don't know anything about guns, but anyone with any knowledge of the issue will immediately recognize that the addition of a barrel shroud has absolutely no functional purpose whatsoever in terms of making a weapon more lethal. Therefore, she is banning guns not because they are dangerous, but simply because they look dangerous, and she's selling this to the public as a legitimate safety measure. She's also trying to ban semi-automatic weapons that have or can be fitted with rocket launchers, for god's sake. There is no such thing as a commercially available firearm that has a rocket launcher attached. I'm not sure the military even has an assault rifle that has an attached rocket launcher. It's ludicrous. She may as well include a ban on rifles that can be modified to fire photon torpedoes while she's at it, because that makes just about as much sense. But boy, it sure sounds scary as hell, doesn't it? So yeah, let's do it! So we can all sleep safely in our beds at night! The sheer hypocrisy of this is why gun owners don't trust the people who are leading the discussion on the other side, because it's obvious that people like Feinstein are either completely ignorant or not being intellectually honest, and you just can't negotiate effectively with people who do not make informed, good-faith arguments. And if private citizens on that side of the debate want to create an atmosphere that allows for a productive national dialogue, they need to accept the responsibility to inform themselves and act in good faith as well. And demand that their political leaders do the same. Until my fellow liberals recognize this and act accordingly, my fellow gun owners are not going to listen. And we, as a nation, are not going to get anywhere on this issue.
The thing you forget in your reasoning is that a gun is an inanimate object that doesn't do any of those things. The good or bad comes from the person holding the gun. That's why the cartoon in the OP is a perfect illustration for your argument. I refuse to try to understand people who wish to limit MY self defense choices. If others wish to be disarmed themselves I have no problem with it but do NOT EVER force me to take that as my choice.
I dont know about anyone else BUT I cannot hit a bird from 20 feet away on a post with a rock and kill it quickly as I can with a pump action bb gun o.0
I can agree with that, and have said similar things previously... The government should teach people how to safely utilize and store firearms so there will be fewer stolen weapons and fewer accidental shootings. My preference would be that knowing HOW to use and store a firearm be a condition for having a license, and having a license be a prerequisite for purchasing one. This is the same model we currently use for cars, and nobody seems to think these control measures are tyrannical... - - - Updated - - - Actually, the cartoon would have been more accurate if the last frame showed 20 dead bodies. That's the difference. As for the limitation of YOUR rights, or MY rights, or the rights of any other individual person... It's not about that. It's about something slightly larger than any individual person - the best interests of our society. Nobody thinks morons, crazies or criminals should have guns. Do you have an idea for how to keep guns away from them? If so, your idea would be "gun CONTROL".
OK, this was a lot of text, so I may not have given some (very well thought out) viewpoints the full attention they deserve... But: There is a huge difference between believing in gun control and believing in Diane Feinstein's "plan". I've been called a nazi, a socialist, a fascist, a hippie, a murderer, a coward, a moron, and any other number of names on this forum and ones like it simply because I don't believe that EVERY person should have access to EVERY weapon in EVERY location. Is that the sign of being listened to by people with a rational and educated point of view?
Since I was the one who authored the post to which you were responding, the likelihood that you missed any well-thought out viewpoints is very slim. But just to clarify; yes, I do fully understand and acknowledge that a lot of people on both sides of the issue are far too quick to resort to unnecessary and inexcusable personal attacks against people who just happen to see things differently than they do. Neither side can claim any sort of inherent moral high ground in this debate. All I'm saying is that any time I see a discussion break out on guns, it's consistently the most vocal and most influential people on the anti-gun side of the argument who demonstrate a disturbing level of ignorance of the subject which they are attempting to debate, and the people to whom they are talking. And yes, i understand that Feinstein's bill is not the definitive representation of the entire gun-control argument; I was only using it as an example of a gun-control bill written by someone who has no clue what they're talking about, and no apparent genuine interest in solving the actual problem - because it focuses on problems that do not even exist, and ignores many aspects of the problem that could be much more effectively addressed if your motivation is really to find a solution. My point is simply this. I'm both a borderline-radical liberal, and a gun owner. I understand and empathize with both sides of the argument, and I'm disappointed and disgusted by many of the positions and arguments advanced by both my fellow liberals and my fellow gun owners. I want a productive and intellectually honest national dialogue on this issue, and I want it now, because there are things we can do immediately to make a difference and the longer we wait the more people die. But such a dialogue is impossible unless the opinion leaders from both sides of the issue have taken the trouble to make themselves well-informed on the basic details of the subject. And I have never seen a gun-control bill that sounds as though it was written by someone who knows even the first thing about guns. If you (generic you, not you specifically) are going to talk about gun control, you need to know a thing or two about guns, and if you don't, you have absolutely zero chance of winning any kind of an argument with people who do. If the anti-gun side wants to work together with gun owners to find an answer, they need to educate themselves on what guns really do and who gun owners really are. Until they do, we can't communicate, and if we can't communicate, there can be no solution to the problem of gun violence in our country.
I get what you're saying here, but - in every instance - the voices of those attempting to change the status quo NEED to be louder than those who choose to maintain the status quo. It is unfortunate that the representatives of gun owners who actually have a platform from which to influence what "gun control" looks like are equally fanatical (though diametrically opposed) versions of Feinstein's lunatic fringe. If people are going to insist that they're the only ones with the knowledge required to address the issue, why not actually address the issue? ...of course that's a rhetorical question, I'm well aware that it's due to the funding received from firearm manufacturers... talk about a conflict of interest that negates all credibility.
I assume it's because they've never met a real cowboy, and they have preconceived judgments about them. Every real cowboy that I've ever talked to was literally the most mild mannered, soft spoken, gentle people I have ever met.
Agreed, I'm a liberal (left of center really) gun owner like Winter Bear but I think he went too easy on the right-wing gun nuts when criticizing those who don't think logically. I haven't seen much reasoning or logic in any right-wing position, including on gun control. The main accomplishment of Feinstein's bill was to incite the rabids to even more fear and paranoia, not a good thing. They're foaming at the mouth on some gun forums. Gun control/rights may be the most contentious discussion in America today and is serving to increase the size of the wedge driven between the red and blue states.
There are conservatives and then there are "right wing gun nuts", just like there are progressives and there are "gun fearing neo-socialists". The fact that any position has its fringe extremists is not a reflection of the entire position. That being said, I agree it is very easy - and damaging - to generalize.
I'm a moderate wing gun nut. Of all the polls that I saw the last few weeks, these were imho very telling on what most people agree with. Two thirds of people want stricter gun control laws, and two thirds of people do not think that the proposed gun laws will lessen crime. Most gun owners, and almost everyone want guns laws that could limit accessibility to criminals. Problem is, almost none of them have any effect on anyone except law abiding citizens. You find a gun law that overwhelming keeps guns out of criminals hands, and actually(no speculation allowed) lowers gun crimes and it would pass overnight. Joe Biden came out the other day and said that none of the proposed gun laws would have prevented Newtown or mass shootings. The whole point for the last two months was we need to pass gun restrictions to stop these crimes, and then they spend many meetings coming up with a plan that they later admit is completelly ineffective. That's insane......... By the way, I was a born democrat and was blue on every issue for my whole 29 years alive except guns. The saying rings true that, "democrats think republicans are evil, and republicans just think democrats are wrong." It took me all of six months to swing to the right or moderately right on every issue after I started watching ALL NEWS CHANNELS objectively, with no preconceived notions or judgements. I gave them an equal chance and tried to understand their viewpoints, instead of dismiss them as evil automatically. All the garbage I was told about the right was wrong, and most of the stuff my far right friends say about the left is wrong as well. Democrats have great intentions, but they don't have a clue in the world on what is practical or even possible sometimes.
Hemenway and Richardson (1997, Characteristics of Automatic or Semi-automatic firearm ownership in the US, American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 87 Issue 2, pp 286-288 ) did an interesting study of 800 gun owners. These individuals own a gun for work and protection. So far so good. However, they were also more likely to be binge drinkers. Ouch!
Wow. I know my dad used to drink heavily and liked to hunt, I cant stand liquor unless useing it for cooking so this is intresting. Thanks
Alcohol consumption is a good indicator for further social ills: domestic violence, violent crime and for murder. We'd have to assume that somehow binge drinking gun owners are somehow different to the norm. Good luck with that!
makes sense my dads gone to jail (Divorced my mom for spousal abuse) so glad I never walked that path. Thanks for the information
That you can be so flippant about such issues doesn't help the gun owner position dear boy. Binge drinking is a key risk factor for many horrendous social ills. Its certainly disturbing that auto and semi-auto owners stand out.
Sorry if I seem like I babble some I do however like to talk to people. Not sure how it affects gun owners positions. You are saying up to 1/3 of gun owners are binge drinkers yet when I say something about it, my story causes more harm?
