The Shooting Gallery: Police Violence MEGATHREAD

[Berkut]

A safe or a simple combo lock gun box should be enough to secure a gun properly. Proper gun safety training for everyone in the home including the children also is a must. The gun can be loaded and chambered at all times and still be safe if in a holster and either on the person or locked.

I disagree.  A gun should never be stored while loaded.  All it takes is one time forgetting to lock up the gun and a child can get their hands on a lethal weapon.

You always want it that it would take multiple mistakes before leading to a tragedy.

That I agree with - multiple levels of checks are important, and there is no particular utility in keeping the weapon loaded - it can be loaded as needed.

All this, of course, depends on your own personal situation, risk, and who else is in the house of course. But in general, I cannot really imagine a circumstance under which the benefit of keeping a weapon loaded outweigh the risk that go along with it.

[Razgovory]

But part of the problem is that the gun control crowd has their nutjobs as well, and for them, any suggestion that a gun can possibly be owned in a responsible manner is anathema - it is all straight up "Owning a gun is more likely to kill you than ever save you!" when in fact that is a rather ridiculous statistic, since it is so trivially simple and without nuance as to be nearly useless.

How is the former related to the latter?  And how is the latter misleading?

It is misleading because it is a general statistic that is so broad that it is not useful to evaluate a reasonable persons risk in owning a weapon.

For example, the story listed means nothing to me and my choice - I would never, ever leave a loaded revolver on top of the fridge, hence the fact that this tragedy occurred means nothing at all to me when it comes to evaluating my own risk in having a weapon in the house.

Similarly, I am 100% confident that I will never shoot myself or someone in my family, hence the risk of me committing suicide or being a murder-suicide victim/perpetrator, is for me, zero.

If I had a gun, I would never leave it anywhere my children could reasonable get to it, and the vast majority of times some kid accidently shoots someone, it turns out that the owner is an idiot who didn't secure their weapon. Again, not applicable to me.

Which isn't to say that there is no risk, but it is to say that the overall statistics are not illuminating towards evaluating a particular individual level of risk.

It is like the oft cited statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce. Does that mean YOUR marriage is 50-50? Of course not. There are so many obvious risk factors involved that it is silly to say that - the risk is radically higher or lower based on your demographic group.

There's a lot of "nevers" in there that you can not definitely say won't happen.  I imagine that the people who thought their kid could "never" get a hold of the gun and shoot themselves told themselves the same thing.  I doubt any parent bought a gun and said "gee, there is a 10% chance little Timmy will accidently shoot his neighbor with this, but lets just take that risk".  I think you might be guilty of confirmation bias.

[lustindarkness]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

[Malthus]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

Doesn't that hypothetical apply to everyone on this board, though? 

[frunk]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

Do you have to conceal carry inside your own house, and what if you don't wear pajamas?  Are there flesh colored concealing holsters?

[Malthus]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

Do you have to conceal carry inside your own house, and what if you don't wear pajamas?  Are there flesh colored concealing holsters?

Either that, or ... walk really funny. 

[lustindarkness]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

Doesn't that hypothetical apply to everyone on this board, though? 

[DGuller]

But part of the problem is that the gun control crowd has their nutjobs as well, and for them, any suggestion that a gun can possibly be owned in a responsible manner is anathema - it is all straight up "Owning a gun is more likely to kill you than ever save you!" when in fact that is a rather ridiculous statistic, since it is so trivially simple and without nuance as to be nearly useless.

How is the former related to the latter?  And how is the latter misleading?

It is misleading because it is a general statistic that is so broad that it is not useful to evaluate a reasonable persons risk in owning a weapon.

For example, the story listed means nothing to me and my choice - I would never, ever leave a loaded revolver on top of the fridge, hence the fact that this tragedy occurred means nothing at all to me when it comes to evaluating my own risk in having a weapon in the house.

Similarly, I am 100% confident that I will never shoot myself or someone in my family, hence the risk of me committing suicide or being a murder-suicide victim/perpetrator, is for me, zero.

If I had a gun, I would never leave it anywhere my children could reasonable get to it, and the vast majority of times some kid accidently shoots someone, it turns out that the owner is an idiot who didn't secure their weapon. Again, not applicable to me.

Which isn't to say that there is no risk, but it is to say that the overall statistics are not illuminating towards evaluating a particular individual level of risk.

It is like the oft cited statistic that 50% of marriages end in divorce. Does that mean YOUR marriage is 50-50? Of course not. There are so many obvious risk factors involved that it is silly to say that - the risk is radically higher or lower based on your demographic group.

Fair enough, but you can go too far the other way.  You may think that you're more different from the average than you really are.  It's the other drivers that are idiots, you'll never cause an accident.  I don't know how many people think "I may shoot myself one day, let's see how it goes", or "I don't want to fly into homicidal rage today and kill my family, but I like to keep my options open", or "My son may be clever enough to get to my gun, but oh well, whatever happens happens".

[lustindarkness]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

Do you have to conceal carry inside your own house, and what if you don't wear pajamas?  Are there flesh colored concealing holsters?

No. Use a belt for the holster only (or walk funny). I guess there are.

[Malthus]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

Doesn't that hypothetical apply to everyone on this board, though? 

ISIS wants to kill each and every one of us infidels, and I assume the Chinese have stolen all our identity data by now. 

[lustindarkness]

BTW, if ISIS tells you that they want to kill you, and the Chinese have stolen all your identity info including your address: would you conceal carry a loaded gun in your house while wearing pajamas? Just a hypothetical.

Doesn't that hypothetical apply to everyone on this board, though? 

ISIS wants to kill each and every one of us infidels, and I assume the Chinese have stolen all our identity data by now. 

True, but there are levels of threaths. They do want to kills all infidels, but they have also stated they want to kill military infedels more than civilian infidels.
And it has been confirmed that Gov employee's ID has been hacked.

[Malthus]

Fair enough, but you can go too far the other way.  You may think that you're more different from the average than you really are.  It's the other drivers that are idiots, you'll never cause an accident.  I don't know how many people think "I may shoot myself one day, let's see how it goes", or "I don't want to fly into homicidal rage today and kill my family, but I like to keep my options open", or "My son may be clever enough to get to my gun, but oh well, whatever happens happens".

As an aside, I'm kinda amazed I survived childhood - by today's standards, pretty well everything my family did was horribly, absurdly dangerous. From leaving shotguns and shells lying around in the cabin, to storing old dinamite in the outhouse (used for blowing stumps), through us kids riding in the back of the pickup truck down the highway (because mom wanted to smoke in the cab  ).

It was truly a different time.

[lustindarkness]

... why are we talking about gun control in the police violence thread instead of the multiple gun control threads we've had? 

[lustindarkness]

Fair enough, but you can go too far the other way.  You may think that you're more different from the average than you really are.  It's the other drivers that are idiots, you'll never cause an accident.  I don't know how many people think "I may shoot myself one day, let's see how it goes", or "I don't want to fly into homicidal rage today and kill my family, but I like to keep my options open", or "My son may be clever enough to get to my gun, but oh well, whatever happens happens".

As an aside, I'm kinda amazed I survived childhood - by today's standards, pretty well everything my family did was horribly, absurdly dangerous. From leaving shotguns and shells lying around in the cabin, to storing old dinamite in the outhouse (used for blowing stumps), through us kids riding in the back of the pickup truck down the highway (because mom wanted to smoke in the cab  ).

It was truly a different time.

Bike helmets, seat belts, walking to school alone, etc... the list is endless.

[Malthus]

Bike helmets, seat belts, walking to school alone, etc... the list is endless.

We even had a set of lawn darts!