Guns are for shooting people. Sure you can use them for other things, and it’s extremely unusual for any specific gun to ever be used to shoot anybody. People use guns for sport, fun, hunting, collecting, and tinkering. As David Yamane says, guns are normal and normal people use guns.
But after all that, you’re still left with the fact that they’re weapons. And weapons are for hurting people. When you train with a gun, you’re training to hurt people in the right way. Effectively and quickly, but most importantly morally. Most people don’t have trouble figuring out which kinds of harm are moral and which aren’t. But there is a common tendency to feel a little too secure in that morality blanket.
You see that in the terms “good guy” and “bad guy”. Or “room temperature challenge”. Or Instagram videos of robbers who “fucked around and found out”. It may be morally justified to kill someone. It may be the best (and only) available option. But blithe terms like these obscure a basic truth: it is never good.
Guns are valuable because they’re good for self-defense. Self-defense is good because life is valuable, and protecting life is a wonderful thing. But if you have to protect life by taking life, that’s something to be solemnly accepted, not celebrated.
— Open Source Defense in Instruments of death in the land of life
“But blithe terms like these obscure a basic truth: it is never good.”
Not really, the terms are expressions for the need to do it end result even though its not a good thing to live in a world where such may be necessary. But, when context is applied in terms of valid defense need it is a good thing because without it the defender was in peril of loss of their life and protecting their lives is a good thing and that should be celebrated. But at the same time its never a good thing from the view point of the ‘attacker’ or anti-gun.
Notice how the anti-gun say they are all about saving lives so ‘ban guns’, but never acknowledge those thousands of lives saved annually through defensive gun use and that should be celebrated.
“Guns are for shooting people.”
Wrong.
Just because guns are used to shoot people that doesn’t mean they ARE for shooting people.
Cars are used to run over people, either intentionally or accidently, frequently. Does that mean cars are for running people down?
Defective glass table tops (collectively) kill/injure over 30,000 people annually. Does that mean glass table tops are for killing/injuring people?
Around ~350,000 people are injurered, some killed, by medical mal-practice annually. Does that mean that doctors are for injuring/killing people?
This statement … “Guns are for shooting people.” … is one of ignorance and bias. Its a statement that has been used many times by the anti-gun agenda, its common among left-wing.
Guns are not anything by their selves. The person with the gun determines how its used and what its for.
So no, Guns are NOT for shooting people…even if they may at times be used to do that, in context with the article, in defense of life.
Ain’t good for nothin’ but puttin’ men six feet in a hole.
and, sadly, some ‘men’ need to be put six feet in a hole. Its the reality of the world we live in.
But take heart, in the 1.3 million (or more) valid defensive gun uses annually it becomes necessary to actually pull the trigger less than ~ 5% of the time (mostly because the bad guys run off when they see the gun) and out of those less than 1% of the bad guys die.
Ratio wise deaths from car accidents and medical malpractice and defective glass table tops compared to bad guys being actually shot that’s 2,500 (deaths from those other things) to 0.03 (bad guys die as a result of being shot by the defender) — 2,500:0.03.
Ratio wise a bad guy is more likely to die as a result of car accidents and medical malpractice and defective glass table tops than they are to die as a result of being shot in a valid defensive gun use.
The average innocent person is 1,500 times more likely to be run over by a car than they are to be accidentally or negligently shot by a law abiding person with a gun even if that person uses that gun in defensive gun use in the home or in public spaces.
In permitless (e.g. constitutional carry) carry areas only, the average innocent person is more than 1,600 times more likely to be run over by a car than they are to be accidentally or negligently shot by a law abiding person with a gun even if the law abiding person uses that gun in defensive gun use in the home or in public spaces.
A defender person (trained or not) who uses defensive gun use in an imminent bad guy deadly force threat situation has more than a 94% chance of surviving the incident without injury. A person defended by a person with a firearm has more than a 94% chance of chance of surviving the incident without injury.
A person defending (trained or not) with other than a fire arm (e.g. barricading, hand-to-hand, running away, pepper spray, sharp/edged weapons, blunt objects, calling 911, etc…) use in an imminent bad guy deadly force threat situation has less than a 15% chance of of surviving the incident. A person defended by a person without a firearm has less than a 15% chance of surviving the incident.
In 2023: Of the reported (to police – nation wide, police not arriving in time to stop the attacker in home break in situations despite 911 being called) 230,000 violent sexual assaults intended by the attacker – 38% of the female victims (actual biological females) were armed with a firearm and successfully employed DGU and escaped rape and serious injury. Of the rest, 2% escaped rape and serious injury by managing to get away and run away and the rest were either raped or seriously injured and some killed.