General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDepressingly, Cracked.com has the best piece on guns I've read in a while
http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html(Each of the five is fleshed out in the NSFW way you would expect from Cracked.)
#4. The Standard Explanations for Mass Shootings Are All Wrong
#3. Two-Thirds of Gun Victims Live in the Same Body as the Murderer
#2. America Is Obsessed With the Idea of Guns, But Not the Reality
#1. Add All of This Up, and Gun Crime Is ... Down
Give it a chance. This is one of the more even-handed things I've read.
sadbear
(4,340 posts)Mostly.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)280 million civilian guns and 32,000 gun deaths, 2/3rds of which were suicides, so 10,000 or so accidents and homicides, about 600 of those are by law enforcement, so 9,400, means a given gun has a 0.0003% chance of killing someone else in a given year, which is slightly safer than a given car is (though cars are operated much more frequently).
Even that is overestimating the danger, since there is a subgroup of guns (cheap handguns) that are orders of magnitude more likely to be used to kill someone else than all the other kinds.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)In other words, are they obsessed with security, or are they obsessed with the idea of getting to shoot some motherfuckers? Are gun manufacturers selling guns they think people will actually use, or are they selling a fantasy? Are they, in fact, filling an emotional need?
Recursion
(56,582 posts)I see no reason we can't do the same with firearms.
Paladin
(28,272 posts)The Magistrate
(95,255 posts)They do some nice stuff there, actually.
Particularly cogent, and useful, is the emphasis the author places on the fantasy life, embodied in the marketing campaigns, and the fact that it is what the gun is taken to symbolize, rather than any actual use, which is the key to the virulence of the debate.
"Fetishists' fantasies are a poor basis for law and public policy concerning matters of lethal force."
spin
(17,493 posts)NickB79
(19,265 posts)Maybe this explains how hospitalization for gun injuries can be up even though the three types of gun-related crimes that cause such injuries (murder, robbery, assault) are all way down. Those ads that treat guns like toys for grown-ups worked, and people are treating guns like toys, instead of deadly weapons.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)and so is shocked and appalled that they exist. But there isn't enough exposure to the sort of people who would push to ban or regulate gun ads for them to push for it.
Paladin
(28,272 posts)frylock
(34,825 posts)cracked is blocked here at work ffs!