Reply #52: Its not about weapon size; its about the pervasiveness of guns and the effect of that on mindset...

[arendt]

The average child witnesses tens of thousands of shootings on television before age 21. It has been demonstrated that televising violence raises the violence level of child behavior - more fistfights, pushing, etc. Every time we put our kids in front of a TV, we are deliberately training them to be violent. (Even the commercials are full of violent imagery.) Then the pro-gun people think its great to hand out guns to all askers.

Its the constant demands for guns everywhere that make me worried. Imagine if people demanded the right to drink liquor in church or in the halls of government buildings. We have laws banning public consumption of alcohol because it affects people's judgment and behavior. But it sounds like the RKBA crowd wants the right to wave a gun around whenever and wherever they feel slightly threatened. There is no acknowledgment that a lot of people find such behavior to reflect a worrying lack of confidence in their fellow man and in law enforcement.

Guns escalate, rather than diffuse, tension. They make little arguments into big arguments and big arguments into violence faster. There was a case in Boston a year or two ago in which some workmen in a car driving on an expressway got into an argument about the merits of the Red Sox vs the Yankees. The end result was that one of these guys was shot dead by another - co-workers, in a moving car, over a fucking sports argument. From being a boring cliche (Yankees suck) to homicide. What do you have to say about such behavior? Just the price of freedom?

The idea that all of us should be comfortable because some of us feel safer packing guns makes no sense to me. Guns are like bumper stickers. The fact that you have a bumper sticker was recently shown to be statistically correlated with belligerent behavior. I wonder what the result of a similar study about guns would be.

Of course, rifles aren't used in homicides. Most gun related homicides are either crimes or un-premeditated anger amplified by the firearm. Rifles take too much time, space, and skill to figure in homicides. Your statistics are classic boilerplate. I have pointed out in another post that cars kill (50,000 or so Americans per year) and are regulated, I use my figure to argue for passing a gun licensing test that includes shooting the gun, etc. You will dismiss my statistics as much as I dismiss yours.

The argument in the end is about mindset, intention, worldview. Its about the kind of society you want to live in. The Wild West is not my idea of a great society. To me the pro-gun worldview is depressing, dark, and violent. I'm sure you will tell me how my worldview looks to you.

arendt