On Mon, 27 Jul 2015 12:39:00 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/27/2015 8:10 AM, Ed Huntress wrote:
On Mon, 27 Jul 2015 05:41:04 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/26/2015 5:39 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:

Now, about "irrational" fear of guns. According to many sources, there
are a little over 600 accidental shooting deaths per year, and WISQARS
reports between 14,000 and 19,000 nonfatal, accidental injuries.

How irrational do you think those fears really are?

Guns are generally very dangerous devices. I was a certified rifle
instructor and taught gun safety in several environments. For anyone
who has little exposure to guns, fear looks like a rational reaction.
Their original and still primary purpose, after all, is killing things
-- mostly people.

Odd. I respect what guns can do, but they are no more inherently
dangerous than any other inanimate object.

Ah, no. Guns are inherently very dangerous. Cars are inherently very
dangerous. Explosives are inherently very dangerous. Strong acids are
inherently very dangerous. Poinsonous gases are inherently very
dangerous.

Some inanimate objects are very dangerous indeed. One mistake, and
you're dead. That's dangerous.

As I said, I respect what guns can do, but they are no more inherently
dangerous than any other inanimate object.

You list several inanimate objects that are dangerous, but they are no
more inherently dangerous than any other inanimate object. I didn't say
any of these wasn't dangerous.

Right. Teddy bears, for example, are no more dangerous than a bucket
full of weeping Dynamite.

This is the silly narrative that has grown out of the gun nutz'
narrative, based on a strawman argument, that people fear guns as
objects. No person I've ever known, and I've known plenty of anti-gun
people, fits that strawman suit. If they fear guns, they fear them
because of what can happen when someone gets his hands on them. Whose
hands?


You say no and then reiterate what I said.

Nonsense. I don't care who gets his hands on a loaf of bread. I do
care who gets his hands on a gun.

Again, you're building on a silly narrative, one that has been around
for decades, which has no relation to reality.


You seem to be developing a tendency to not read very carefully what I
write. This is recent. Are you OK?

I'm just fine. What you're saying is nonsense.



I fear guns in the sense that
some people can be dangerous with guns, but that is not an irrational
fear, quite the contrary. I fear hammers in the sense that some people
can be dangerous with hammers, but that is not an irrational fear, quite
the contrary.

I have to question the argument of anyone who fears hammers. Most
dangerous objects are dangerous when people interact with them. We've
been talking about accidental injuries and death -- the danger
associated with those events. In terms of accidents, hammers can be
rough on your thumbs. Guns can be rough on your life.

Again, you are reiterating what I said.

No, you're packing what you say with absurd equivalences and strawmen.

You're not alone. Give the gun nutz a cute narrative like that, and
they're off and running.



The danger that most people recognize in guns is their danger when
someone interacts with them. That's true with most inherently
dangerous things -- few of them are dangerous just sitting in a box.

But I've been involved in this for many years -- I interviewed the
incoming communications director of the Brady organization 24 years
ago, and also the spokesmen for the FOP and the NACP, plus state
lawmakers in NJ -- and I never heard anyone who fears guns locked in a
box. There are some who fear guns in the hands of people, and the fact
that guns sooner or later wind up in the hands of people. Which
people?

I talked with a guy once who feared that a gun sitting on a table with
no one near it would spontaneously fire. He didn't mean could, he
expected it to.

That was some kind of nut.

But let me ask you, assuming you've had solid gun-safety training:
You're sitting at a table, and someone lays down a loaded handgun,
with the barrel pointed straight at you. Then he sits in a chair away
from the table. Do you sit there, in the line of fire? Or do you move?
Or move the gun?

If you move, or move the gun, why? The gun is just sitting there,
right? It isn't going to spontaneously fire or anything, is it?



I agree that guns were and are designed for killing, yet mine have only
done so to kill deer while I've had them. I respect their potential for
destruction, but I don't irrationally fear it.

And, of course, you've never once said "Oops!"

I've had a couple of NDs, but I don't say "Oops!" A few years ago a Star
Model S I'd just bought doubled on me the first time I shot it.

And I had a hang-fire for about three or four seconds (or it seemed
that long) in a 20 ga. shotgun with a factory skeet load. Guns are
just such a mature technology that nothing ever goes wrong, goes
wrong, goes wrong...

That
possibility is why I load an unfamiliar semi-auto with only two rounds.
I didn't say oops then, either, probably something a bit saltier. Both
bullets struck the target a few inches apart. I couldn't make it double
again, trigger & sear looked OK, I detailed stripped and cleaned the
slide again. Maybe I missed a bit of crud the first time.

David