I would submit that this isn't a social reason, or at least not entirely; it's a political reason, and actually quite a smart one.

Morally speaking, there's absolutely nothing wrong with "We like us some guns for no practical reason. It's fun to talk about them and buy them and smith them and then haul them out to the backyard and see what we can do with them. Sort of like guys who are gearheads, except, you know, with guns." My brother is one of those guys, my maternal great-grandfather kind of was, as was his son-in-law (my maternal grandfather) and other sundry people I know. It's an eminently reasonable position.

However, when it comes time to craft public policy, that position is... somewhat weak. There are lots of people who are, in fact, crazy nuts who are gonna kill their neighbors. Or their ex-wives. Or their current wives. Or leave the damn things somewhere their eight-year-old can get at it. Or start a shootout in a movie theater. Or think that walking down main street with a full-auto assault rifle strapped to their back is an act that contributes to public order and safety.

Coupled with the fact that there's pretty solid evidence that restricting access to firearms does in fact result in radically lowering the incidences of people shooting themselves and others up (England and Japan are pretty good examples of this; hell, in England the police don't carry guns as a matter of course and adamantly resist efforts to try and get them to do so) "guns are fun" starts to look like weak tea when people start saying things like "Maybe assault rifles and extended pistol magazines should be illegal" and "Perhaps there should be an extremely comprehensive and robust registration and tracking regime." So you want to lay your hands on actual, practical arguments for your arsenal.

There are lots of those, and appeals to Cultural Heritage are one subset of them. It's the smart play, really, especially if you're economically invested in Shooting Culture. It's one of the four most common ones; the other three big ones, in my experience, are "you need to be able to go to war against the government if the need arises", "you genuinely need firepower of this magnitude to be safe and defend yourself and/or your home", and "FREEDOM!".

-Merc
Keep Rat

Given the blatantly suicidal nature of any endeavor to take on an Army Of Oppression as untrained civilians carrying any level of firearm (as opposed to the sane man's option, the Quite Large Bomb), the way general availability of firearms acts first and foremost to arm the criminal element, and the blatant and contemptible lack of logic in the emotional appeal, my own position is that Cultural Heritage and Gun Fancying are the only two actually legitimate arguments on the list of five.

It's a pity that we have people actually drinking the Kool Aid of the other three who are likely to make a sensible legal middle ground unachievable. They're going to ruin the hobby for a quite considerable number of more sensible people by locking out compromise positions and leaving what they think they're fighting as the only option.

-----

"V, did you do something foolish?"

"Yes, and it was glorious."

On a related note, I sometimes wonder what would happen if one were to set off a string of firecrackers at an NRA convention?

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

I don't know the answer to that, but I imagine it would be such that your sig fits better above that paragraph.

---

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Probably not as much as one would fear: While the NRA is normally against restrictions on where you can have a gun, them make an exception for their own facilities, (and probably their events).

This hedges awfully close to politics and is sort of tangential, but nonetheless...

The argument (stronger gun restrictions lead to less violence) to which you are referring is predicated upon two things: the perception that the restrictive gun laws of Japan and the UK are causally linked to the low incidence of gun violence, and that gun violence is in some qualitative way worse than other channels of violence; e.g., that dying from a stab wound or a bomb is in some way not as bad as dying from being shot. (There's some interesting stuff to explore in terms of human perceptions of risk and such in that, come to think of it, similar to the perception of safety in an airline vs. in a car -- something about control, perhaps?)

In any event, there may be a causal relationship between the restrictiveness of gun laws and the incidence of violent crime (not just gun violence, but violent crime in general); I don't have the references to hand, but there have been some studies that have found some statistically significant correlations that actually controlled properly for confounding factors (ISTR one looking at Philadelphia, but even that one was imperfect). Not only that, but while there are US states with liberal (i.e. low-restriction) gun laws and high violent crime rates, there are also U.S. states with liberal gun laws and low violent crime rates (Vermont has almost no gun laws to speak of), and there are U.S. states with long-standing extensive gun regulation and perennially high violent crime rates.

Furthermore, there are countries that have restrictive gun laws and very high crime rates (Russia's at the top of that list, AIUI), and still other countries with gun regulation more restrictive than most of the U.S. but far more liberal than the UK or Japan, but low violent crime rates. In rural Finland, for example, it's not unusual to see people walking around with semi-automatic AK-47-type rifles slung on their back, and nobody thinks anything of it, because such firepower is sometimes necessary to deal with particularly ornery wildlife. (Handguns are heavily stigmatized there, mind, and very tightly controlled.)

There are many other factors that are much more strongly correlated with, and probably causally related to, violent crime in general and gun violence in particular than the restrictiveness or liberality of firearm legislation, such as poverty or corruption. While there's psychological and political reasons why the discussion around reducing violent crime in the U.S. frequently revolves around guns and gun laws, I've long been of the opinion that passing new gun laws while neglecting social welfare is at best inefficient, given the costs of enforcement, and most likely completely ineffective.

Fuck public policy. I'm tired of being circumscribed because other people can't be bothered to do things right.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I would submit, sadly and without an ounce of snark, that "being circumscribed because other people can't be bothered to do things right" is sort of the bedrock of a lot of policy crafting.

It's sort of the political equivalent of "this is why we can't have nice things."

-Merc
Keep Rat

And you'd be quite right! Ergo, "Fuck public policy."

I had more, but my interclass gap is too short.

Fermat's post, as it were.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Oh man, can we get into a discussion about Exit, Voice, and Loyalty? Because I bet that argument would consume, like, two or three days at least.

(Two or three awesome days.)

-Merc
Keep Rat

Magic Eight-Ball, what do you think?

Signs point to no.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Seriously, I'm still leery of letting to many people have massive firepower near me simply due to the law of averages, but people like you don't worry me at all, if for no other reason than you're honest about it.

Offsides

[...] in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
-- David Ben Gurion
EPU RCW #π
#include <stdsig.h>

DaemeonX

"Never memorize anything that you can look up."

Of course, there are those of us who just carry big sticks around to deal with them. I am not one of these.

To heck with the snakes, I've seen the Russian boar reports from various state and federal agencies. *Those* are what I'd worry about.

(You're probably more likely to encounter snakes. My hindbrain ignores this logic.)

Also, given how much facenoise has been spent on drone warfare, I think it's kind of adorable that people in the US think armed rebellion'll accomplish anything other than being a large Predator-provided blast radius.

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

Also, how kind of you to acknowledge US sovereignty in US internal affairs. Very magnanimous considering how fresh the memory of the revolution must be. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Guns, on the other hand, well... they're something I can relate to. Just sayin'.

Plus, y'know. Lurker.

... what?

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I presume 'Asami=Green Lantern-image, and this is why I didn't say anything about it, but have said things about guns.' Sort of, at least.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

Oh.

That's not the post I was talking about, though. Hence my confusion.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Which is entirely understandable. Personally, didn't think you were.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

Living in a country about on the same geographical level as Alaska, and thus having about the same chance to see interesting aminuls of the type, I still have to say that the day I see myself successfully arguing 'big gun' to any of those animals is...far away. If I point anything at Mr. Bear, Mr. Wolf or any of their friends, they generally tend to ignore that as being irrelevant. So, I'm much impressed with the level of comprehension of the wildlife of Alaska...

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

I thought so too, but at the same time, if you click in the first place...I don't see how the bear is going to be any too interested in the salmon? Ah, well.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!

The way it works out in my head, at least, is thus:

- Bear sees fish.
- Bear wants fish.
- Fisherman gives bear fish.
- Bear sees fisherman.
- Bear decides he wants fisherman, too.
- Fisherman displays gun.
- Bear ignores gun; guns can't talk, silly.
- Fisherman fires gun in air/into river/somewhere he's not likely to hit something accidentally.
- (AP1) Bear gets message, leaves with fish.
- (AP1) Fisherman enjoys rest of morning.
- (AP1) Bear perhaps remembers that guns can, in fact, talk. Loudly.
- (AP2) Bear ignores message.
- (AP2) Fisherman fires gun again, this time at bear.
- (AP2) Bear either gets message and runs (possibly with fish), or bear gets dead. Follow either outcome to logical conclusion.

There is of course a third alternate path, but it's a bloody mess.

There's a long-standing argument in Wrangelia about which bears are smarter, the ones from Alaskan stock or the Siberians. (The Greenlanders and Norwegians stay out of it because they're each convinced that a) it's them and b) there's no point in entertaining anybody else's arguments about it; the Canadians don't get involved because they perceive the entire controversy as specious anyway, since all five groups came up through the same genetic uplift program. :)

It also depends on the type of bear. Alaskan polar bears get advanced technology, no problem. Those brown jagoffs, though? Dumber than a bag of hammers and wouldn't know what one was for anyway. Grizzlies are the frat boys of the bear kingdom.

This Guide entry was written by Ragnar Ragnarsson, who may have a personal bias against brown bears.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"Christ, man, why didn't STAY in the hole?!"

"There was a bear in the hole..."

>This Guide entry was written by Ragnar Ragnarsson, who may
>have a personal bias against brown bears.

Just maybe. A little.

...!
Gott's Leetle Feesh in Trousers!