SouthernDom
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Do you own a firearm?
- Thread starter WriterDom
- Start date
midwestyankee
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I asked for statistics that can be meaningfully compared. Good statistics can be highly informative, but very often I find that people pull together stats from different kinds of studies in order to make what they think is a balanced case but the two sets of stats are simply incompatible.
midwestyankee
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Truth + common sense tends to have that effect on the naysayers.
You and I don't know each other so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I think that others here will back me up when I say that I'm not averse to common sense nor do I ever dismiss the arguments of those with whom I may disagree on flimsy grounds, and an ad hominem such as this is as flimsy as possible.
Breaker_Morant
Shoot straight!
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Breaker_Morant
Shoot straight!
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packersfan
C'mon, Aaron!
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So very cool! My daughter wandered in while I was looking at the first website, and now her next science project is going to be trajectory studies, using a model trebuchet. Never knew my college dabbling would come in handy!
Breaker_Morant
Shoot straight!
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packersfan
C'mon, Aaron!
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And you were ready to dismiss the idea..
No, not me! I'm the guy who used to have one! Absolutely love 'em!
Breaker_Morant
Shoot straight!
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packersfan
C'mon, Aaron!
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No prob, I like the idea of overwhelming force applied with discretion. Discretion in this case is defined as correct aim.
JMohegan
.
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That Nugent quote makes me chuckle.*nods*
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/2nd_Amend/crime_rate_plummets.htm
http://www.cityrating.com/citycrime.asp?city=Kennesaw&state=GA
I was trained in the safe handling and useage of firearms long before I was old enough to legally drive an automobile. By the age of 16 years old I was considered by my peers to be an accomplished marksman and hunter.
I own handguns for personal protection. My long guns are for target shooting and sport hunting.
For those who live in locations that allow for legal gun ownership but choose not to own a firearm for personal protection: I do not see it as wise for anyone to broadcast over the web that they are unarmed. What's next..........putting signs in the yard advertising thet you're a potential victim in the waiting for any armed perpetrator?
OK.....I'll get off the soapbox for now, but I will leave you with this quote from Ted Nugent that I strongly agree with!
Ted Nugent: '' To my mind it is wholly irresponsible to go into the world incapable of preventing violence, injury, crime, and death. How feeble is the mindset to accept defenselessness. How unnatural. How cheap. How cowardly. How pathetic.''
In my community, I'd say that purchase of a gun for personal protection by a man would constitute an attempt to compensate for major inadequacies of some sort. Gun ownership would be indicative of a mindset of personal defenselessness, not the other way around.
Netzach is correct, as usual. Perspectives on this topic are entirely contextual.
Homburg
Daring greatly
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I was asking out of honest curiousity, not as some sort of attack. Just wanted that clear.
What would meet that criteria? Your argument against statistics was pretty broad (and one that I generally agree with, by the way)
I saw last year's Punkin Chunkin contest on Discovery Channel or some such. Our county parks dept (very cool guy in charge) tried to organize one five or six years ago, but could never get the catapults to work right so changed it to a Roll the Pumpkin contest, at least until the science dept. of one of our universities gets a reliable one built for us. Rolling them is just not the same kind of THUD and SPLAT!
I was deeply disturbed by your first link, specifically:http://www.trebuchet.com/toride
...and I thought jumping off a bridge on a dare was crazy....
launching oneself from a trebuchet into the river goes ~so~ way beyond that....
hahahahahahaha
PublicAffection
Queen of awesome.
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We have trebuchets, guns, battle-ready swords, knives...
All we need is a chainsaw and we'll be set if the zombies ever attack.
All we need is a chainsaw and we'll be set if the zombies ever attack.
<cheeky grin>
Electric or gas? I gave two away a couple weeks ago, leaving me with....<counts>.....four.
PublicAffection
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Hmm. Electric is more "environmentally friendly"... but the gas ones are more portable. Decisions, decisions.
Desdemona
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WriterDom
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PublicAffection
Queen of awesome.
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Armed girls are hot.
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packersfan
C'mon, Aaron!
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I've got a chainsaw. Never thought of using that for self defense.
Sure can! Also, see the A&E movie The Andromeda Strain about its use as a suicide weapon...
YourCaptor
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On guns for personal protection.
From experience I know that guns are very bad for protection. In a street fight guns are useless, almost totally ineffective, the only real advantage being psychological. A knife or a taser, in my opinion are ideal for urban protection.
Guns are an offensive weapon, in an urban setting the only thing they are good for are making threats, and gun fights. Meaning someone is shooting at you and you shoot back.
From experience I know that guns are very bad for protection. In a street fight guns are useless, almost totally ineffective, the only real advantage being psychological. A knife or a taser, in my opinion are ideal for urban protection.
Guns are an offensive weapon, in an urban setting the only thing they are good for are making threats, and gun fights. Meaning someone is shooting at you and you shoot back.
midwestyankee
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My concern was mostly with the use and interpretation of statistics and not statistics themselves. It's often the case that folks will cite a certain stat or set of stats to back up a claim in an argument. Unfortunately, there are almost always problems with doing so because few people ever get their statistics from the source.
Rarely does anyone have access to enough information about studies, particularly in behavioral matters, to make a sound judgment about the validity of a given stat from the studies with respect to any question other than the ones that were specifically asked in the study. Usually what happens is people paraphrase inferences that were made in the popular press reports about a given study. Very often it's impossible to judge the validity of those inferences without access to the full study report, including cross-tabulations of the data. Further, studies performed in such areas as crime rates and the like are frequently funded by groups with a dog in the hunt. The research methods may be suspect from the very beginning and so any conclusions drawn from the studies ought to be viewed with a truckload of salt.
Finally, because so many social behavior studies are biased from the beginning, it's rare that studies performed on behalf of competing interests are conducted in a way that allows for apples-to-apples comparisons of the results.
That's my issue with stats in discussions of social behavior.
DVS
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It couldn't happen. Cars kill many more people than guns ever have. If they gave them the same time in the news, there wouldn't be time for anything else.
DVS
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Oh, I have a S&W 38 Special, a S&W 9mm auto, an old Colt 32 auto as well as a 22 bolt action rifle and some assorted shotguns that were handed down to me, when my dad died. And, they were handed down to him, when his dad died.
Incidentally, my dad's father accidentally shot himself on his own back porch. He was shooting at crows, that were hanging out on his shed. It was a windy day, and somehow the porch door blew closed on him. The rifle fell and went off, shooting him in the chest. It somehow seems odd, but my dad kept that 22 rifle and I have it, today.
Incidentally, my dad's father accidentally shot himself on his own back porch. He was shooting at crows, that were hanging out on his shed. It was a windy day, and somehow the porch door blew closed on him. The rifle fell and went off, shooting him in the chest. It somehow seems odd, but my dad kept that 22 rifle and I have it, today.
WriterDom
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It couldn't happen. Cars kill many more people than guns ever have. If they gave them the same time in the news, there wouldn't be time for anything else.
I don't think the numbers are that far off. And if you count the people who get shot and don't die it is double car deaths. Of course many people get hurt in cars as well.
