Anti-Gunners are Unable to Separate Guns From Killing

I'm practicing to kill things. ...

Guns are for killing. No getting around that fact.

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^^ +1
Guns were invented to kill things. That's like saying a particular Ferrari F40 wasn't built to go fast around a track because the current owner installed a heavy stereo system and commutes in it.

That's hogwash. Some firearms throw projectiles. Some can shoot lima beans. Some throw lines. A huge percentage, probably on the order of 90% or more, of the "assault weapons" are never used for anything more than target practice and plinking. Many just stay in the safe. A fraction of the total are used in actual tactical training where you actually are preparing to shoot someone in self defense. And only an incredibly small number are ever used to actually shoot anyone.

If an alien was watching us, he'd conclude we are at war with berms of earth.

Guns were invented to kill things.

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What guns? What inventor? And why do I care what some ancient Chinese guy intended a thousand years ago?

They can be used to kill, to be sure. They almost never are. So while they are certainly deadly, it's a mistake to start down the road of "guns are for killing," since if this is true then we're misusing firearms when we're not killing or preparing to kill.

I've had similar thoughts, CmdrSlander - some people can't seperate the tools from the violence, and it colors their opinions. Irrational projection, mostly.

Cosmoline nails it, again.
The tool that was designed to harm people is a sword, and most of those are decorative/recreational, too.

wielding a sword in a public area like you mean to use it to cause harm to someone will still get you shot by the police, decorative or not. They won't look at its pommel to see if its a "target" sword first.

Exactly. Guns in general were indeed invented and built to kill things (In European terms, mostly armored opponents that bows/crossbows wouldn't stop fast enough). However, as everything else within the past several hundred years, firearms have evolved greatly. Just because the first guns were designed for war and later hunting, does not mean that many firearms designed and built in the past two centuries are meant for other purposes. Yes they CAN all be used to kill something, be it varmints, game, or humans, but they are not as individual specimens necessarily made for that one purpose at this point in firearms history.

For sure, guns have evolved, and gotten more complicated, but even most target models except for EXTREMELY specialized competition firearms are simply a small variation of some utility type gun.
If you break it down, almost all guns are built for one of two things.
Hunting,
Self defense or offense

guns used for target shooting, fun, plinking, are almost always variations on of guns built to serve one of those two purposes.
A heavy barrel, Bo-Mar rib, and a trigger job made my S&W M10 from a NYPD service pistol into a target pistol. It's still a NYPD service pistol though, and it was made and issued to a police officer, for a purpose other than shooting targets. The fact that I shoot nothing but targets does not mean that it was not a service revolver carried primarily to be used to kill people if the situation demanded it, and is still fully capable of doing so.

I just think its best to defend the right to use tools who's fundamental purpose is to kill people or animals, but thankfully in almost all circumstances don't have to be and aren't used for that, and in many of the cases it is, is justifiable. The whole "guns aren't meant for killing" argument feels like a cheap cop-out to me.

There is no point in denying that firearms were invented to kill living creatures, humans in particular--to do so would be downright disingenuous, in my opinion. In particular, the Second Amendment is primarily about killing people or threatening to--for the right reasons, of course. You can use guns for a lot of other purposes, including sporting purposes just for fun, and this is how they're mostly used in peacetime (thank goodness), but I don't keep my home defense gun loaded in case a paper target busts through a door or window (I would shoot an assailant only to stop, but any time you shoot any living creature you must be willing to kill it, period).

Mentally separating guns and violence requires one to be able to differentiate between the main types of violence, namely the evil criminal kind and justifiable violence in order to protect life and limb from acts of evil. Really, the issue is separating guns from the notion that they're inherently evil, which only exists because the media and some politicians have been unfairly demonizing them for decades. It also requires a broader view of violence, the evil forms of which can be committed with just about any object or one's bare hands. The whole notion of "gun violence" and the very phrase itself poison any discussion from the start, as intended--this must be addressed early in any discussion involving firearms.

Cosmoline said:

That's hogwash. Some firearms throw projectiles. Some can shoot lima beans. Some throw lines. A huge percentage, probably on the order of 90% or more, of the "assault weapons" are never used for anything more than target practice and plinking. Many just stay in the safe. A fraction of the total are used in actual tactical training where you actually are preparing to shoot someone in self defense. And only an incredibly small number are ever used to actually shoot anyone.

If an alien was watching us, he'd conclude we are at war with berms of earth.



What guns? What inventor? And why do I care what some ancient Chinese guy intended a thousand years ago?

They can be used to kill, to be sure. They almost never are. So while they are certainly deadly, it's a mistake to start down the road of "guns are for killing," since if this is true then we're misusing firearms when we're not killing or preparing to kill.

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The majority of the U.S. military's live arsenal sits in storage, or in safe spots, or gets shot at targets, and those are MOST CERTAINLY meant to kill people. The majority of the U.S. arsenal never gets shot at anybody either. While the percentage is probably not as small as non-law enforcement civilian firearms, I'd bet as a percentage of overall firearms owned by the military, its pretty small.

Second, we aren't talking about line guns, flare guns, peashooters, nerf guns, etc...

If an alien were watching us, they would probably conclude that we don't like each other very much and spend a lot of our time shooting at each other based on where invisible geographical lines are drawn and who people worship. I'd guess there are more guns worldwide being used to kill people or to keep people from killing other people, than are shooting at dirt berms.

Guns were designed to facilitate inflicting harm on a human enemy or to quickly kill an animal for food. Who knows which came first? I don't.

The same can be said for the sling, the spear, the sword, the arrow....

Since the dawn of man, there have been individuals who used these devices to instigate violence against a weaker victim, usually made weaker by the lack of a similar weapon. As we have seen in countries where firearms have been banned, violence and death don't disappear in the absence of firearms.

In fact, there will never be an absence of firearms. Even if the US instituted a total ban, it would take decades to bring it to even marginal implementation. Many gun owners, both legal and illegal, would decline to comply, and the resources to enforce compliance simply do not exist. Anti-gunners would find the "change" to a "gun-free" society agonizingly slow.

What would quickly change is that under a ban--a ban pushed by those unable to see a gun as anything but the facilitator of an eventual murderer's desire to massacre innocents--is that innocents would die in much greater numbers. Without legally armed citizens to deter such murders, the rate of slaughter would skyrocket before it ebbed.

If one wants to argue that guns are designed to kill, he is free to do that. But mine are not held for that use. Mine are for sport, recreation, and, in some cases, to demonstrate my willingness to defend myself and other innocents with potentially lethal effect. If I ran out of options, mine would be used to inflict injury great enough to quickly and reliably end the threat posed by an attacker. Such action could result in the attacker's death, but that would be incidental to my intent.

None of that means that my guns are in any way likely to be used to kill anyone.

If an alien was watching us, he'd conclude we are at war with berms of earth.

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Now, that's well stated and funny.

So, well, we are all in agreement.

Up until I broke my collarbone in a car wreck, I praticed with a old-fashioned recurve bow 'til I could consistently hit a 9" pie plate on a hay bale at 20 paces, just for funsies and recreation, regardless of the original bow designers of upteen centuries ago.

I have designated home defense weapons--.38 revolver and 12ga shotgun. I also shoot "assault weapons" in modern and vintage military matches out of interest in sport shooting and military history, and don't keep them as weapons.

When anti-gunners think of guns they think of crime and murder and project their obsession on us.

FBI UCR reports 430,000 gun crimes. Many gun crimes are tracked by the ATF NIBIN system (digitized crime scene ballistics events) to one criminal using one gun to commit more than one gun crime in the course of a year. BUT assume 430,000 gun crimes maximum one gun, one criminal. Estimates of total gun ownership is 80 million people owning 300 million guns. WORST (and impossible*) case scenario is gun criminal represents 1 out of 186 gun owners, and crime gun represents 1 out of 697 guns. (* I say impossible because it is not unusual for NIBIN to show multiple crimes committed in one year with one gun presumably by the same criminal.)

To gun owners accustomed to non-violent non-criminal users of firearms, the anti-gunners obsession with crime and violence focussed on guns is not comprehendible.

While most murders in the US involve guns, most robberies, assaults and rapes do not involve use of guns by the assailant. And of the murders with guns, the 2003 stats were 6,500 handgun homicides per year out of 65 million handguns, 1 out of 10,000.

The vast majority of guns are not used for crime or violence, and the mostr stringent gun restrictions will affect large numbers of the lawabiding with no guarantee of affecting the criminal or the lawless.

I just think anti-gunners hate the whole culture around guns. Not the guns, but their owners.

In most anti's minds, a gun owner is an ignorant, racist hillbilly, and they view themselves as superior and more "cultured" than gun owners.

John R. MacArthur, "My compromise in the gun debate", The Providence Journal, July 5, 2000.
Published under the title "Gun Culture Needs to Compromise" by Albany Times Union Albany, New York, and "A Northerner's fear and loathing in Kingsport" by Kingsport Times-News Kingsport, Tennessee.

MacArthur was the New York City based editor of Harpers magazine. When this was reprinted in my local paper, after he visited my hometown the weekend of a gunshow, it gound home the condescending New York attitude made famous by that classic New Yorker cartoon, that basicly showed nothing west of the Hudson River.

I knew a guy who actually was not fond of guns because "they killed things" (60's type), yet thought they were cool and collected them. Most of them he would never fire "because it devalues them", but he enjoyed looking at them and showing them off.

Now I suspect if he really needed one for self defense he would use one, but his ownership was based on solely collection as best as I know.

I watched a series on the History Channel, or PBS, on the temperance movement.

The tactics and propaganda of the anti Alcohol movement are very similar to the Anti Gun crowd. The Woman's Temperance League called it “demon rum” and the abolition of alcohol would cure wife abuse, crime, fear, poverty, children education would improve, etc. Basically once alcohol and now guns, are taken away, peace and harmony will establish itself and a utopian society will emerge. But we have to ban guns first to get to Perfection.

As we all know, it is BS.

SlamFire1 said:

I watched a series on the History Channel, or PBS, on the temperance movement.

The tactics and propaganda of the anti Alcohol movement are very similar to the Anti Gun crowd. The Woman's Temperance League called it “demon rum” and the abolition of alcohol would cure wife abuse, crime, fear, poverty, children education would improve, etc. Basically once alcohol and now guns, are taken away, peace and harmony will establish itself and a utopian society will emerge. But we have to ban guns first to get to Perfection.

As we all know, it is BS.

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It was PBS and was a great multiple-part show that went through the purpose, execution and results of prohibition. As we all know, an unmitigated disaster.

RiverPerson said:

I just think anti-gunners hate the whole culture around guns. Not the guns, but their owners.

In most anti's minds, a gun owner is an ignorant, racist hillbilly, and they view themselves as superior and more "cultured" than gun owners.

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If you look where all of these murders are happening, the cities, the "culture" is the major issue. I'm talking about fatherless children, poor or no role models, no discipline, no god, cycle of poverty, not cool to talk right or be successful, gang culture, etc... There are all sorts of hurdles to go through before having an honest dialogue about such topics (cries of racism etc.). It will not be discussed on a national level and the situation will continue to deteriorate. I would not want to be anywhere near a city should a national or man-made disaster take place...

Anti-Gunners are Unable to Separate Guns From Killing

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The problem with anti gun folks is that for one reason or another they don't trust themselves to make responsible decisions with firearms and they arrogantly assume that every one else is just like them.

I think it is important to recognize that many gun owners do own guns these days simply for marksmanship and recreational shooting with no intention of ever using that firearm in a lethal confrontation. That said though, we look really, really silly if we try to claim that guns aren't lethal, aren't designed to be efficient killing machines.

The vast majority of firearms were and still are designed with that intent. I'm big into milsurps. Over half of my collection consists of old military arms which clearly were designed to kill efficiently and some of them may have well done that. I collect them for the history, to see the interesting engineering developments and because they're a lot of fun to shoot. It would be ludicrous for me to try to argue though that they were designed for my purposes when that clearly wasn't the case. It makes gun owners look like we've got our heads in the sand to suggest otherwise (all my other non-military arms are also clearly designed with the intention of being effective). If you want to make an argument with antis (I wouldn't bother, see below), try to to stress how often guns are not used in that lethal capacity.

Frankly though, to me that's kind of the point of the 2A (ie firearms for defense, etc)...if we try to argue that our guns aren't designed to be lethal, than next you know the anti is arguing you could just be using an air rifle. You sort of buy right into their "sporting uses" BS.

TL;DR There's no point in arguing with antis that guns aren't designed to be lethal. It's simply not true and doesn't help our case for 2A rights at all. You can point out though that they have many other uses besides the designed role and that the vast majority of gun owners use them for recreation/hunting/sport/self-defense.

The problem with anti gun folks is that for one reason or another they don't trust themselves to make responsible decisions with firearms and they arrogantly assume that every one else is just like them.

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Haha. That does rather seem to be the case, well said jbrown50.

AethelstanAegen said:

we look really, really silly if we try to claim that guns aren't lethal, aren't designed to be efficient killing machines.

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I think the bigger problem isn't that the Antis can't separate guns from killing, but the fact that they can't, or refuse to separate gun owners from murders.

The people who look the silliest are those holding signs saying things like "NRA has blood on their hands"

They look even sillier when they claim that the NRA is the voice of the "gun industry" instead of the gun owners. Never mind that the NRA has 4.5 million members

I don't refer to them as anti-gun.
They say they are anti-gun and I believe them and they are welcome to be so.

They call me a nut, dangerous, a sociopath, selfish, a child murderer by proxy, an ignorant redneck who not only should be run off the road and set on fire, I deserve to be shot with my own guns. They goad, they gloat, they threaten and they demand. What the anti-folks aren't is anti-violence as long as violence is done to the "right" people.

I think I am more charitable.
I call them anti-gun Rights nuts.
I used to be Liberal, but Liberal has become a pejorative.

With regards to the intended design of a firearm, this is how I see it:

The firearm functions, by design, to direct a projectile at a select target that one may or may want to make dead. If one is to take issue with lethality-designed-in then take issue with the bullet.

There are only two weapons with no alternate design purpose but to kill, and no nonlethal use, those are chemical and biological weapons.