I always wondered what people think who produce weapons and such and how they go about their lives knowing what things they are making are doing. Now I have some idea.
Weapons are just tools. The CDC did a study that showed guns are used 360% more often to protect than they are used by criminals. I would be proud of making a military weapon used to actually defend our country. The problem is our military isn't used defensively.
This is actually what the study you are referencing said:
"Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive
gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by
criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to
more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent
crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010). On the other hand,
some scholars point to a radically lower estimate of only 108,000 annual
defensive uses based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (Cook
et al., 1997). The variation in these numbers remains a controversy in the
field"
So a woman in a car with a gun in her glovebox sees a group of young boisterous men approaching her. She gets the gun out of the glove box and brandishes it at them. They go away. Was this a "defensive gun use"? She will certainly report it as a defensive gun use. But we don't really know what those guys were doing.
I'm really trying to find where I saw 360%, it has been a while, I might have to update if I find it. The 2001 Kleck study was 4 years newer and gave the range 166% to 1000%. And it says in the context of 300k firearm crimes in 2008 so I'm not sure how that works and whether an adjustment gets made for a reduced 200k firearm crimes in 2017.
I’m assuming you’re American then. I don’t think it’s the offensive vs defensive nature of your army. I think it’s the arming smaller groups and letting them descend into chaos that is the problem. Arming a group to fight another group that they also armed while occasionally intervening. It’s like modern day cockfighting at a higher level. Except when one group loses the guns and weapons remain for next batch of fighters.
Their intentions are to help end the conflict but they fail to remove the weapons from the society afterwards. I realize this is implying the next batch carry the same views as the previous but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say your parents influence your outcome.
Well said. Those efficient killing tools patriotic people like GP want to invent end up in the hands of Taliban or Colombian drug lords or on both sides of a civil war between African warlords making the lives of ordinary civilians in such places incomparably worse. A few will also end up on the streets in America or in the hands of mass shooters, though this is more tightly controlled and less of a problem.
That's fair. Still, I suspect the use cases are very different. People who use guns for hunting and defense against large animals don't need concealed carry permits, nor do they need to carry their guns in the city. People who use guns for sport don't need their guns anywhere except at the firing range.
Be careful with that depending how you do it. It is highly recommended to not modify your carry gun in any way. A trigger job will be spun by a prosecutor as blood lust.
The CDC is non exactly an unbiased organization. They ultimately report to the president, and there has not been a president in recent history who did not push for a fat 'defense budget'. Got a link to this study you are referring to?
