On Thu, 30 Jul 2015 22:04:25 -0500, "David R. Birch"
wrote:

On 7/27/2015 6:07 PM, Ed Huntress wrote:
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.

Are you trying to miss the point that its not the object, but how it is
used?

I'm trying to point out that your point is fundamentally wrong. If
you're unaware of what can happen with weeping (or "sweating")
dynamite, inanimate or not, you should look it up.

Beyond that, to pursue your line of reasoning, you have to ignore the
fact that the greatest danger lies in the unknown answer to the
question, "whose hands are we talking about"?

You may have a gun. I don't know who you are. I don't know about the
state of your mental health. I don't know what you stand for. I don't
know what your behavior has been in the past. I don't know what drugs
you've taken.

Or you may be the same person without a gun. You tell me -- what is
the INHERENT role of the gun in this circumstance?


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?

I have known people with an irrational fear of guns as objects.

Then you know a nuttier bunch of people than I do. Why that is, I
can't guess.



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.

The reality is that a child was suspended from school because a teacher
thought the bites from his sandwich made it look like something that
resembled a gun.

The horror! Did they kill the kid?



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.

Actually, no, it isn't. Interesting that you aren't seeing anything
else, though.

I see what is really there.




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.

I write "I fear hammers in the sense that some people can be dangerous
with hammers" and you see "I fear hammers".

Because that's what you said, your qualifier notwithstanding.

Look, David, this silly philosophical argument goes on all the time.
Guns are dangerous objects. To deny that, or to go off on a tangent
about nutty people who think they're going to spontaneously fire, is
nothing more than an intellectually feeble attempt to deny the
fundamental fact: Whether it's intentional or accidental, whatever the
motivations of the person with whom they come in contact, guns,
themselves, raise the level of danger in many circumstances.

There is no sane argument against that. But that doesn't stop the gun
nutz from making insane arguments.



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.

Yes, but, in my experience, common among anti-gun folks.

I have to wonder why you encounter more nuts than I do.


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 was taught at an early age to not point a gun at something I did not
intend to shoot. I would object and tell him to move it if someone put
the gun on the table pointing at me. I admit a gun pointing at me makes
me uncomfortable, even if there is no one holding it. It seems a
violation of what I consider basic gun safety.

It is. I believe it's founded on the idea that there are many
potentially dangerous situations that can occur with guns, and that,
as a principle, we must avoid all of them that we can, no matter how
remote they are, while still retaining the ability to use the gun for
its purposes. A harmless situation can evolve into a dangerous one
with alarming speed and can't always be anticipated.

But your reaction (which is exactly like mine would be) has no
relationship to the actual circumstances of the moment. It's part of a
safety routine. It only makes sense if you think the gun will go off
spontaneously.

And yet, that's how you and I both react. In itself, it makes no
sense.


Would you object to the person who left the gun that way?

I'd know the person did not have basic gun safety embedded in his
behavior. If you do, you would never do such a thing.




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's why, when I pull the trigger and the gun doesn't fire, I don't
look down the barrel to see what's wrong.

The trick there, with my Flightmaster pump, was to avoid quickly
chambering a new round after the first one was a dud. Without the
training, I might have done so, just in time for the ejected shell to
go off in my face.

--
Ed Huntress



David