Guns,guns, and more Guns

[D_W]

Saw some stats the other day:

In the first 48 hours of the new year, America has seen:

•85 gun deaths
•206 gun injuries
•9 mass shootings
•4 children shot
•21 teenagers shot
•4 incidents of defensive use
•6 unintentional shootings

There were 7 mass shootings on New Year’s day.

2021 stats


20,658 gun deaths
•40,358 gun injuries
•691 mass shootings
•1,055 children (age 0-11) shot
•4,585 teenagers (age 12-17) shot
•1,236 incidents of defensive use
•1,988 unintentional shootings
~24,090 suicides [CDC estimate]

Line 4, 1.000 babies and kids???

no doubt some of the 1055 are accidents from people not securing their guns or educating children and some are murders. But quite a lot of those are also parents having their kids in places where they shouldn't be.

I'll relay something that happened to my dad - he was student teaching in easton, pa. 6th graders - 12 years old. This would've been around 1971. He told me that a group of about a dozen of them cornered him and I laughed (unlike me, my dad has been in some fisticuffs and not gotten caught - he's also strong for his size). He wasn't kidding. he said one of the kids in the group accused him of something and they were aiming to get him on the ground and beat him unconscious. 12 year olds!!! )

As he was running down the hall, one of the teachers saw him coming, opened the door, and quickly closed it (steel doors with reinforced glass).

Easton still isn't a great place, but it's not as bad. I would guess the murder rate in the entire US was greater per capita back then. Those kids - some of them if their birthday hadn't occurred, would be in 0-11 and I could see them carrying a gun on the streets.

Now, here's where things go odd (50 years later). Those of us in the US figure other than london, you could just about go anywhere safely in the UK. I saw a narrowboat show on amazon and the fellow driving the boat was near birmingham or something (I'm sure I have the wrong town) and he said the canal stank of weed, and that wandering around there on foot would be unsafe.

in England!! Nobody in the US would give a second thought of going most places in England because we think most european cities are safe here save pickpocketing, perhaps and petty theft.

If the onion could be peeled back on the stats above (Aside from the suicides - I know nobody who has been shot or shot at, but lost a relative and two HS classmates to suicide ), I'd imagine we would find instantaneous "crimes of passion" and bedroom role playing didn't have too much to do with most of the above. And we're not doing a whole lot to solve what's behind most of the rest.

 

[Fergie 307]

My post " Works for a knife, golf club or bare hands just the same. "
was in reply to yours quoted below.
It's perfectly true.
You may not like it.
But You might have to go home for a gun.
Unless you have experience with a gun you could miss at ten yards.
And it's really hard to use a gun to shoot someone unless you've been trained.

Vann said:
And if you give them ready access to guns they can do it quickly and efficiently while they're still angry - before they've had a chance to cool down and think about it.

Artie.
I'd have to agree with you if we are talking about pistols. Take your average person out of the supermarket queue and give them a pistol, they'd be hard pressed to hit a man sized target reliably at even twenty feet, and that's a target that's standing still. Proficiency with a pistol takes a LOT of practice. People watch too many movies where the bad guys blaze away to little effect, while the hero nails his man first time with a pistol from 50 yards away, yeah whatever!
I think what people are referring to is more your semi and full auto assault rifles, where you can lay down so many rounds that, even without any real skill, you can still do an awful lot of damage in a very short space of time. Look at any of your recent mass shootings and the ranges at which people were killed, and the, God forgive me, deaths per minute figure. Can you seriously suggest they could have accomplished the same with a golf club? Or their fists?

 

[D_W]

My wife got in a school shooting pac or action group or whatever you call it. She wanted me to sign up for it and it was some huge time commitment. I said to her "I will not, not because I don't care about victims of school shootings, but because I think there are a whole lot more preventable deaths that nobody is looking for."

While parents are terrified off the relatively less common school shootings, nobody is interested in teaching their kids to spot friends who have started to use drugs, or friends suffering severe depression and flashing signs of suicide.

Like many males, my wife believes all of my ideas are stupid. But my kids participate in the "Kind kids" initiative now.

 

[D_W]

Artie.
I'd have to agree with you if we are talking about pistols. Take your average person out of the supermarket queue and give them a pistol, they'd be hard pressed to hit a man sized target reliably at even twenty feet, and that's a target that's standing still. Proficiency with a pistol takes a LOT of practice. People watch too many movies where the bad guys blaze away to little effect, while the hero nails his man first time with a pistol from 50 yards away, yeah whatever!
I think what people are referring to is more your semi and full auto assault rifles, where you can lay down so many rounds that, even without any real skill, you can still do an awful lot of damage in a very short space of time. Look at any of your recent mass shootings and the ranges at which people were killed, and the, God forgive me, deaths per minute figure. Can you seriously suggest they could have accomplished the same with a golf club? Or their fists?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/
look through this - the unidentified weapons are probably mostly handguns - a rifle just doesn't make much for concealment and as damaging as they are when they're used, it's seldom.

..and ..fists, hands and feet

I'd bet the bulk of these handgun murders are at very very close distance.

 

[D_W]

They had a turbillion movement

(!!) the one in the wards catalog does have a minute hand.

I can't imagine that copyright law covers 1895 catalog content, though this book is copyrighted (there is commentary in the beginning of it by whoever reprinted it - I'm guessing it applies to that).

One of the other great things that I've never seen before is "the shower ring", which is literally a hose with a ring at the end that you put over your head and in the days before showers being common, it would dispense water down your body in a way that you could wash, and the ladies could get clean without messing up their favorite "hair did".

 

[D_W]

we now interrupt this solving of the worlds worst first world problems with a picture of a $1.35 accurate timekeeping device - even includes a porcelainized dial. (sorry about the blur)

 

[artie]

Can you seriously suggest they could have accomplished the same with a golf club? Or their fists?

No of course not.
But can't you see that is not the statement that my reply for given to?

 

[artie]

Take your average person out of the supermarket queue and give them a pistol, they'd be hard pressed to hit a man sized target reliably at even twenty feet,

I would wager if you took your average person out of the supermarket queue and give them an assault rifle they might not even get it to work.

But before we carry this discussion any further, should we define "assault rifle" and find out just how many are in private hands?

 

[Fergie 307]

we now interrupt this solving of the worlds worst first world problems with a picture of a $1.35 accurate timekeeping device - even includes a porcelainized dial. (sorry about the blur)

View attachment 125836

That's really interesting, shame it doesn't say what model it is, but with the sub second hand it's a Series J or later. Never seen them advertised at that low a price before. I have a couple of Series J watches. They pioneered the use of modern mass production methods in watchmaking, but even so this is much more complicated than the earlier ones so amazing they could turn them out for that price. if you see one in the flesh they are actually very nicely made, certainly don't look or feel cheap like some of the later Ingersoll ones for example. Did you say this catalogue was 1895? The single hand dollar ones were made in about 1870. Like everything as they got into their stride prices tumbled. Like Ford with the Model T, about $900 at launch but more like $300 a few years later.

 

[Fergie 307]

(!!) the one in the wards catalog does have a minute hand.

I can't imagine that copyright law covers 1895 catalog content, though this book is copyrighted (there is commentary in the beginning of it by whoever reprinted it - I'm guessing it applies to that).

One of the other great things that I've never seen before is "the shower ring", which is literally a hose with a ring at the end that you put over your head and in the days before showers being common, it would dispense water down your body in a way that you could wash, and the ladies could get clean without messing up their favorite "hair did".

Love the shower ring. And They tend to have all sorts of similar weird but ingenious stuff in those old catalogs.

 

[Fergie 307]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195325/murder-victims-in-the-us-by-weapon-used/
look through this - the unidentified weapons are probably mostly handguns - a rifle just doesn't make much for concealment and as damaging as they are when they're used, it's seldom.

..and ..fists, hands and feet

I'd bet the bulk of these handgun murders are at very very close distance.

There is a very interesting book titled I believe "Shooting to live" or similar. This was written by a chap who was responsible for training police in the far East back in probably the 1950's or 60's, Shanghai I think. Lots of cops we're getting killed and he realised this was because their training, largely firing at static targets at some distance, was completely unsuitable. He looked at the incidents and realised that the vast majority of engagements were taking place at very close quarters, a few feet typically. He overhauled the training with the emphasis on being able to get the weapon into play quickly and shooting accurately at short range by good hand eye coordination. This proved very successful. It's a good read for anyone interested in pistol shooting.

 

[Fergie 307]

I would wager if you took your average person out of the supermarket queue and give them an assault rifle they might not even get it to work.

But before we carry this discussion any further, should we define "assault rifle" and find out just how many are in private hands?

Indeed, my point was simply that most people aren't going to hit a damn thing with a pistol at any great range, without a great deal of practice. If you can make it work then the long gun is easier.
I am sure that there is probably a definition somewhere, but I would say anything from the good old 30 calibre carbine onwards. The point being that many of these incidents do seem to feature this type of weapon, relatively compact and capable of semi or full auto. Out of interest I know there are some restrictions on full auto, does that also apply to the burst fire capability, where you can select to fire say three rounds for each trigger pull.
As to the number owned, I have no idea, but suspect it would be quite an alarming number, or alarming to us in the UK anyway.

 

[Fergie 307]

No of course not.
But can't you see that is not the statement that my reply for given to?

Come on Artie, you certainly implied that a golf club, knife or fists were equally capable of being used to kill people, which in absolute terms is of course perfectly true. But the context was a discussion of mass killings, and in that context it really doesn't work.

 

[GregW]

Back in the 1700s a muzzle loading musket was the pinnacle of cutting edge technology and rightly or wrongly it was broadly accepted that a freeman had the right to own one.

Later Samuel Colt invented a six shot revolver giving a single man the firepower of six.

Walter Hunt came up with a repeating rifle

Winchester lever action rifles

John Moses Browning produced the 1911

Gaston Glock. etc etc etc

Nobody said O hold on the constitution only applies to muskets.

Why now?

because it applies to well trained militia, and all of them, should be well trained to open carry 24/7 and act as militia.
Public is the great threat to any criminal - having ALL MEMBERS AS PUBLIC WELL TRAINED, AND CARRY TO KILL CRIMINALS. It works great on Holland, where ALL police is in casual wear conceal carry. I witnessed attempted robbery in sandwich shop, with 2 police standing in the queue… 2 seconds arrest

 

[BucksDad]

Moderators can we move this topic to Off Topic 2 forum please.. I think this counts as controversial and to be honest topics like this really should be "opt-in" viewing which Off Topic 2 is designed for

 

[artie]

Come on Artie, you certainly implied that a golf club, knife or fists were equally capable of being used to kill people, which in absolute terms is of course perfectly true. But the context was a discussion of mass killings, and in that context it really doesn't work.

My reply about golf clubs etc was to this statement made by someone else.
" And if you give them ready access to guns they can do it quickly and efficiently while they're still angry - before they've had a chance to cool down and think about it. "

Which if you read it, it doesn't mention assault weapons or mass shooting.
But refers to the speed that an action can be carried out.

You're trying to say because it's in this thread you can give it different meaning.

Can I take your posts about watches and apply them to guns just because they're in the same thread.

 

[artie]

I am sure that there is probably a definition somewhere, but I would say anything from the good old 30 calibre carbine onwards.

That's not the definition adopted by even the most controlling states.
Why call a semiautomatic rifle an assault rifle?
Only reason I can think of is that it sounds more threatening and makes for more emotive headlines.

 

[Vann]

That's not what it was about.

Yes it is!

You're trying to argue that just as many people would be killed by golf clubs, knives and bear hands if people didn't have access to guns.

I'm trying to argue that that's not the case because people with guns can kill more efficiently with guns than with your alternatives.

Selectortone just suggested you imagine trying to do each other in with various weapons, and when you didn't get the gun you backed out. How come?

If you were right armies would still be armed with spears etc instead of guns. But you're wrong. It's obvious that people with guns can more easily kill other people.

But you're still defending guns. Why are you against making it harder to kill others?

Cheers, Vann.

 

[Jacob]

A bit weird these long thread about guns. Unhealthy and creepy - maybe some people need a bit of counselling?
Can we change the subject - how about 'guillotines' instead? Then we could move on to nooses and scaffolds?

 

[D_W]

A bit weird these long thread about guns. Unhealthy and creepy - maybe some people need a bit of counselling?
Can we change the subject - how about 'guillotines' instead? Then we could move on to nooses and scaffolds?

Not every single thing needs to go back and forth between corbyn and starmer.