Where Does Our Fear Come From?

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Kylaen

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You know, I'm 24 years old. When I was a boy, my parents never locked our doors. Never needed to. In 24 years, there's never been a single break in to my parents' home, when I lived in the second biggest county, third biggest city in Maryland. Only Baltimore and Annapolis are bigger than our city. At least 80,000 people if I had to guess. Maybe even 100,000. This year marked the first shooting death in my city in years.

And hey, I know we're not New York, but honestly, it seems like folks around here aren't too afraid. So why are so many of us in the US afraid? Where does it come from? I don't think it's the guns, I shoot rifles. I like rifles and handguns. We have a couple ranges and gun shops here, we like guns over here. It's not "minorities". There's probably more black and latino here than there are whites.

You take a place like New York, they have more blacks and latinos, probably. But what do you guys think? My sister is in Canada. They've got 7 million guns for 30 million Canucks. They've got the violent video games and movies, just like us. They have a good mix of ethnicities just like us. But they don't lock their doors over there, either. They're not afraid. They even have more poor than we do, a higher unemployment rate, believe it or not.

Why are we afraid? Why aren't they?
 
I am not afraid. I like guns for collection, sports, hunting and self defense (just in case). I do not keep them because I am afraid.

PS
I am not sure why you keep making references to Blacks and Latinos as if they are responsible. And whats up with term Canucks?

I also believe this thread does not belong in General Handgun Discussion.
 
Robbery and assault aren't anything new. What is new is the breadth and speed at which the news media reports crime. That, in conjunction with the shrinkage of rural America and the rapid expansion of urban and suburban America, I believe has changed the way Americans view their own security.
 
You are posting in the incorrect forum; this probably belongs in ST&T, rather than here in General Handgun Discussion.

Regarding the topic, I am not afraid. What gave you that idea?

Regarding the locking of doors, well, people will walk in. It has happened to us, when my wife forgot to lock the door. Malcolm the Fur-Beast Dog chased the intruder away, giving the intruder a small nip on the arm, and thankfully, Malcolm waited on the front porch for us to
come home.

Another time, someone turned the front door knob, from outside, while I was home. The door was locked. By the time I got my ID, put on some shoes, and checked outside, the prowler was gone.

At our previous address, I heard footsteps on the roof, walking from the front to the rear. I went out the back door, shotgun in hand, with Malcolm the Fur-Beast, to see the prowler standing on the fence. The prowler very quickly decided to visit the neighbors, instead of us, for some reason.

At yet another previous address, I was burgarized twice while not at home.

Yes, I lock my doors, but simply becaus it is sensible. I do not live in fear.
 
Gun ownership, or carrying one for defense is not "being afraid" of anything. It's being prepared. Bad things happen to people every day, and it's a lottery.

They have a good mix of ethnicities just like us. But they don't lock their doors over there, either
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This is a pretty broad generalization, and a poor one at that. I'm from Canada. They have people who lock their doors, and those who don't. Same as here in the US. My grandparents live like a mile away from their neighbors. They don't feel the need to lock their doors. My aunt lives downtown, she most certainly locks her doors.

They also have extremely poor firearms laws, that do not allow you to protect yourself with a firearm, so keeping one for self defense isn't generally a good idea.
 
I'm not afraid, just prepared.

I like to know what is going on. What is the MO of the latest crimes....you know, like an innocent looking female knocks on door to see if someone is home (she pretends to be looking for Jane Doe) if you answer. If not she calls the goons and they go for the slider first, etc.............
 
I do not live in fear. But the situation you allude to causes people to distrust each other. Hence when a person really needs help, sometimes there is nobody willing to help simply because they do not trust the person who seems to need help.

I keep the doors locked at night and mostly during the day if I am inside my house. If I hear a sound, I want to be reasonably sure that the source of the sound is not invited inside my home.
 
Afraid?? No!! Paranoid?? I don't sit and dream about bad guys. Ah, Someone said "Prepared" and that is where I think I fall. Moved to the country in a very rural area. Sheriff told me when I inquired about some break-ins out on my ridge and he told me I needed to put myself in a position to protect myself and my home. Said he had 3 deputies to patrol the entire county that stretches 30 to 40 miles from E/W and N/S. A typical response time would be 30 to 45 minutes [more if on the other side of the county and all deputies not on duty].

Can't help you with the Canada thing. I'm not a militia guy but do believe in our constitutional right to bear arms. Most of my handguns are not registered having been purchased in private sales. In Canada [and Ill] they tell you that you can't own this or that. There is probably some correlation to having fewer firearms in circulation in Canada, but I just don't want to live in a country that sits on its citizens prevents them from defending themselves with a deadly weapon. Last year I flew to Alaska for a motorhome road trip. I took a handgun for "camp" protection mostly from big furry 4 legged things. Considering driving thru Canada to Ak next time and can not do it with a handgun even one that is broken down and locked up in a case etc. I can take a long gun and will but it must be unloaded to be legal. You can load it when you are where you can reasonably expect to encounter dangerous wildlife and are far away from any population of people.

No I don't think Fear has anything to do with gun ownership any more than SPEED is why we drive cars that can go 100mph or more. There are times you need to GO and there are times you might need to defend yourself.
 
Most of my handguns are not registered having been purchased in private sales
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NICS is NOT registration.

Considering driving thru Canada to Ak next time and can not do it with a handgun even one that is broken down and locked up in a case etc.
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You can bring it in/out of Canada, you just need to go through the motions/procedure's. You may not have a loaded gun in your car there, though. I'd be very weary of keeping any gun for self defense up there, though, long gun or handgun.
 
Did you just watch "Bowling for Columbine" or something?

I am not afraid. My wife is not afraid. We are prepared to deal with a threat to our family. I am also aware that rural living reduces but does not nullify the risk of home invasion & other violence; My father and stepmother were murdered in their bed in a Montana town that had a nearly homogenous (98% white) population of less than 1,000 people at the time.
 
smalls said:
Gun ownership, or carrying one for defense is not "being afraid" of anything. It's being prepared. Bad things happen to people every day, and it's a lottery.
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That is a broad generalization also. Read the hunting forum here and read the fear many have acquired about bears and cougars. Folks that have never seen either in the wild are buying hand cannons they cannot afford or even shoot accurately enough for protection. That is not being prepared, but being scared. Same goes for SD/HD discusions here in most any forum. Many of the emotions that come from the caliber/bullet wars have nuttin' in common with preparedness, but are fear induced. Wearing a firearm 24/7/365 even behind locked doors as posted in many of the threads found here are also not about being reasonably prepared. While locking ones doors and exercising their 2nd Amendment rights is not a sign of being scared poopless, many out there doing that are. Fear is a great motivator. Within reason it can be a good thing. Anyone here that claims they are not afraid of being in a scenario where they need to use their guns in SD is lying thru their teeth. If there was no fear of a possible threat, none of us would carry concealed. If there was no fear of being attacked by a large predator while in the woods, there'd be no reason for anyone to ever carry a back-up gun. Just sayin'.
 
I've had one break-in. I was asleep for it but my wife was awake and luckily had a firearm within an arms reach. That apartment never got broken into again.

I would not ever say I am afraid. I am prepared. I didn't survive three nasty deployments to get greased back here on my own soil.
 
There's little fear here. One of the few times I felt fear when unarmed was when I took the wrong exit from the Underground in Atlanta and found myself in the middle of a street full of stopped traffic for Freaknik in 1994. My girlfriend at the time (who later became my wife) and I were of the wrong skin color to be welcome, and were subject to some hostile attention. A pistol wouldn't have helped us and we successfully defused the situation and got to a safer place, but it's quite possible to end up in a dangerous area unintentionally. I'll leave out the time I tried to refuel my car in Compton while taking my teenage sister and her friends to Knotts Scary Farm also in the 1990's.

Nowadays any fear I have is warranted: my wife is a pediatrician, and one of her jobs is to facilitate the removal of vulnerable children from parents who beat them. There have been death threats, and we live in a small town and are easy to find. That's life in small town America, I'm afraid, where one can choose to live 10-20 minutes away from a police response.

I'll say this though: for reasons y'all can discuss on other forums, Americans are more violent than other cultures. When I was stationed in Germany my friends and I would typically go to the more questionable parts of town when off duty, and the only time we had a weapon pulled on us was by another American stationed there. Discussions with cab drivers indicated that many simply wouldn't pick up Americans -- in the previous year to my most detailed conversation > 12 cab drivers had been killed in Germany, and all had been killed by American GIs. We're just a violent people.

You can drive into Salzburg, the 4th largest city in Austria, in the middle of the night and walk around unafraid without any knowledge of the area. Doing so in any similar-sized city in the US is foolhardy. This isn't fear; rather it's an honest assessment of the social situation we live in.
 
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Did not mean to start a war here, guys. Sorry. I didn't accuse anyone of being afraid, there were no personal attacks at all, but I was referring to the news. I should have been clearer. Yeah, the news is full of violence and death that we don't usually see in our lives, and I wondered why. That's it. That's all I was trying to say.
 
not afraid either,just know there are some oddballs wandering around that have nothing better to do than break in and steal things for money to buy their drugs..
 
We, Americans, all of us that watch the damn news. I've come to be disgusted with the fear in the news anymore.
 
Anyone here that claims they are not afraid of being in a scenario where they need to use their guns in SD is lying thru their teeth
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I'm not saying that you shouldn't be afraid of an attack. But to live in fear is completely different.
 
I've come to be disgusted with the fear in the news anymore
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Ratings. That's what they're there for. Think of it like reality TV, because it's hardly "news" anymore. Same reason people go to see horror flicks.
 
That's what I'm saying. All the news, every news outlet, wants us to live in a culture of fear. Why? We're not buying it. Are we? Y'all don't seem to be, and I'm glad. I'm not buying it either.
 
Speaking as an American, I can say that I do not fear for myself or my own well-being.

I prepare for the worst but I expect the best.

Any fear that I have is for my daughters.
 
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