Gun Worship
Over in the comments at Cathy’s that I linked yesterday, Barry says:
Opposed to the use of guns…opposed, too, to the somewhat “awe” of guns some folks have that approaches a kind of hyper-hobby, almost a worship.
I think the issue (though I promised not to mention the specific incident ever again) is that the anti-gun folks are the ones who display awe at guns. There’s this irrational awe or abhorrence of guns from those who either fear them or are against them. Barry, based on prior comments I can’t mention again, fears them. I think his fear of them is why he views someone who is into guns as one who worships them. There are gun owners (like me) who like them, collect them, shoot them, and buy accessories for them. Just like there are people with an obsession with, say, Disney. The reason people are passionate about their gun hobby is because it’s under attack. Maybe if we attacked Disney, Barry would then understand. There are also gun owners who own them to hunt. And gun owners who own them for protection, though they’re not really into guns.
Here’s the deal, guns are a tool and are inherently neutral. Guns do not kill on their own. They don’t have magical powers. And, truthfully, nobody fears (nor should they) gun nuts. They fear criminals, who happen to have guns or bats or knives. No one walks down the street saying Man, I hope there’s no gun nuts out today. They keep an eye out for criminals. If someone were to encounter a criminal who was doing them harm, they’d probably be glad if one of us gun nuts showed up.
If you saw me on the street, I’m a clean-cut, thirty-something who is probably wearing khaki pants and a collared shirt (business casual looking). But I also have a Glock 30 and 34 rounds of 45ACP on my person. There’s no need to fear me, I’m one of the good guys.
October 21st, 2005 at 9:46 am
[…] From SayUncle: […]
October 21st, 2005 at 9:58 am
Don’t be picking on my man Barry. He’s one of the good guys.
October 21st, 2005 at 10:11 am
I like barry and read his site regularly. We’ve even met. but this is an issue on which we disagree.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:00 am
Uncle:
I’m sympathetic, I really am, but this strikes me as disingenuous:
Sorry, but guns are a tool whose purpose is to kill stuff. Whether or not they’re actually used for this is another matter, but it’s a bit dishonest to suggest that a gun is like a hammer (which can kill stuff, even if that’s not what it was designed for).
To use an absurdly extreme example, substitute “nuke” for “gun” in your sentence, and see how well it still works.
I dunno, man, your haircut borders on McVeigh-ish. 🙂
October 21st, 2005 at 11:11 am
A gun is a tool, like a fire extinguisher is a tool. You have one and hope you never use it.
McVeigh-ish? not so much anymore, though I did like the low maintenance of it.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:50 am
A gun is a tool and inherently neutral. There is no doubt that the original hammers WERE designed to kill stuff, and happened to be good for other things. Native Americans had hammers long before they had ten penny nails. They used them for bashing heads in.
Besides, killing stuff is morally neutral. We kill livestock and game for meat. We kill bugs and varmints because they are pests. We kill people because they are a danger. None of these are immoral.
October 21st, 2005 at 12:01 pm
Phelps:
OK, so hammer wasn’t the best example. How about a screwdriver?
Uncle:
Again, I still say that’s disingenuous. Sure, guns and fire extinguishers are both tools, but so what. What is the purpose of those tools? It is the tool’s purpose that some people object to, not the simple fact that it’s a tool. Whether they’re right or wrong about this doesn’t mean it’s okay to dismissively claim that they’re afraid of a simple tool. Purpose matters.
October 21st, 2005 at 12:04 pm
Tom,
What’s the PURPOSE of a knife?
October 21st, 2005 at 12:10 pm
the tool’s purpose that some people object to
People object to lots of things and that doesn’t make them right.
October 21st, 2005 at 12:33 pm
1) There are some people who love their guns in an almost carnal fashion. That, as the kids say, is not right. There are some people who own guns becasure they just like killing stuff. Those people do not inspire confidence. There some people who own guns as a penis substitute. I am not sure if they are better or worse than people who own SUVs as a penis substitute. And while I am perfectly happy to stipulate that, even in aggregate, the three categories mentioned are not the majority of gun owners. But they are certianly present, and present in number smuch, much larger than one.
2) In many place, people don’t actually worry abot the Big Bad Criminals because they have to worry about the neighbor who gets drunk every Saturday hunting and staggers back into the neighborhood still carying his loaded shotgun, or the neighbor who shoots at targets in his backyard — the backyard that faces OTHER backyards on every side — or the paranoid freak that brings out his pistol every time the neighborhood kids get all uppity and play in the street in front of his house. So, yeah, Uncle, people do worry about gun nuts.
3) Knives cut bread. Guns don’t do anyyhing other than kill things. Pretending that guns are just like other tools is beggining to get a little silly. Every other tool mentioned is multi-purposed, with it’s non-lethal purposes being used in an almost overwheliming fashion.. I have live din some really bad places, and even in the worst, people used knives primarily for slicing pies, not people.
October 21st, 2005 at 12:42 pm
Kev,
1) And some people love football and hockey in a carnal fashion.
2) The cases you listed are also most likely criminal. Drunk with a gun is probably a crime. Firing a gun in a residential area likely is too. Etc. And, you know, those pesky football fans have been known to riot! If hockey had enough fans, they might too! 😛
3) guns are a tool, just with a different purpose. This lie that they do nothing but kill things is stupid. Other things they do: save lives, punch holes in paper, win money at competition, etc., etc.
October 21st, 2005 at 12:47 pm
Guns don’t do anyyhing other than kill things.
I’ve fired guns a number of times. I don’t remember killing anything.
October 21st, 2005 at 1:41 pm
Knives also cut flesh.
The purpose of a knife is to cut.
The purpose of a gun is to propel a small projectile at high velocity.
Neither is good, bad, or otherwise. Both are tools. Both have a specific function.
It is up to a PERSON how that function is APPLIED.
Why is that so hard to see for some people? Blaming the TOOL ignores the PERSON using said tool.
October 21st, 2005 at 1:57 pm
I use my firearms for competiton, recreation, and, if needed, killing.
My firearms were originally designed to kill. Get over it. Some folks just need killing.
You certainly don’t seem to have a problem with cops, acting as your agents via the electoral process, using their firearms to make real the threat of killing me to enforce laws you happen to like.
If it is OK for you to use firearms via government agencies, then I have as much of a right to do so as an individual. Last time I checked, government agents didn’t have any special privleges in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
October 21st, 2005 at 3:29 pm
tgirsch:
I’m torn between answering “You say that like it’s a bad thing,” and “I guess all of mine are broken.” 😉
October 21st, 2005 at 4:19 pm
Uncle:
True, however one gets the impression this isn’t the type of “criminal” you were talking about when you said “people fear criminals.”
Jay G:
Come off it man, you’re not that naive. Few knives are specifically designed to kill stuff, particularly not from a distance. Virtually all guns are designed for precisely that purpose. No, that doesn’t mean that everyone who owns a gun (or even most people who do) uses it to kill stuff, but that’s not the point and it never was. My wife owns a gun, and to my knowledge has never killed anything larger than a bug (and didn’t use the gun to do that). I’ll likely own my own gun in the next couple of months, and I have no intention of killing anything — I’m strictly a recreational shooter.
Nor was the point ever to say that it was right to blame the object rather than the person using it.
The point is simply that it’s incredibly disingenuous to claim that a gun is merely a tool like any other, or that someone being afraid of guns is every bit as irrational as someone who’s afraid of phillips screwdrivers. Neither my wife nor I (nor, I imagine, my gun nut father-in-law or gun nut uncle) view a gun as a “tool like any other.” It’s a potentially very dangerous object — even more so in irresponsible hands — and should be treated as such. Yes, the same can be said of other tools, but name one other tool with which I could potentially kill ten people from 25 yards away in less than a minute.
October 21st, 2005 at 4:34 pm
“If hockey had enough fans, they might too! ”
You know, if your just gonna be mean :).
The point, though, is that the presence of a gun makes the situations more dangerous than they would have been otherwise, and that people are justifiabbly more worried about the crank with the pistol than the crank without one. And, depending on where you live, you may be much more likely to run into a crank than a criminal.
And try getting someone arrested for shooting in their own backyard. Not as easy as one would think.
As for three, I don’t agree. If a gun wasn’t designed to kill things, it would be useless. A weapon that doesn’t kill things is not a weapon, it’s an object of ridicule. The primary purpose of a weapon, the thing it is designed to do well, is to kill or injure things. There are no other modern tools that I can think of that have the primary and express purpose of death. Guns are different — in the same fashion that an electric chair is not just another kind of chair. It doesn’t make guns bad, or unjustified, or unciviliazed. Butsince they are different, people are fully justified in regarding them differently than other tools.
Kristopher, let me applaud you. That was a masterful strawman. Did you build it yourself, or did someone help you? To come out with a rant about the Big Bad Government using guns to Oppresses you and all the Meanines who Approve of Such Perfidity and would Deny your Right to Own Arms in a thread in whihc no one has mentioned regulation or arms control or even the right to bear arms is truly, truly impressive. I doff my cap to you, sir.
October 21st, 2005 at 5:13 pm
Uncle:
And how do they do this? Oh, yeah: With the credible threat that they might kill someone (namely, the personing threatening the lives). So again, even in the lifesaving context, the killing part is an inextricable component.
October 21st, 2005 at 7:57 pm
I didn’t say they weren’t designed to kill (they are). I said that’s not their only purpose.
October 21st, 2005 at 9:09 pm
I’m with Jay. A gun is designed to hurl a projectile over a distance. Where that projectile is headed is the issue.
It seems some folks want to score some morlality points with the fact that guns are for killing, when in fact it has evolved into much more than that. More so than knives, a gun has had it’s use changed over the years. Shooting is an Olympic sport, unlike knife throwing. There’s the hammer throw, I guess…
[quote] Every other tool mentioned is multi-purposed, with it’s non-lethal purposes being used in an almost overwheliming fashion..[/quote]
I’d put a month’s pay on the fact that more bullets are used in recreation than in killing people. Which would put the gun in the same category as knives, ie non-lethal use in an overwhelming fashion.
And what’s with the “penis” argument I hear? A penis replacement? Geez Louise, what kinda hogwash is that? How many of our female shooters have a need for a penis replacement? None that I know of. That’s more of a personal attack, really. It has no place in a rational discussion.
October 21st, 2005 at 11:10 pm
Tom…
“Few knives are specifically designed to kill stuff, particularly not from a distance.”
ALL knives are designed to cut things. ALL knives can be used to kill all kinds of stuff.
Same as guns.
It is the human that determines the focus of the blade or the bullet. It is the human that aims the weapon. Without the human, the weapon is no more dangerous than a rock stuck in the ground.
ANY knife COULD be used to kill someone. Distance is irrelevant for the context of this exercise – the focus is the killing ability.
Kevin,
“A weapon that doesn’t kill things is not a weapon, it’s an object of ridicule.”
You’re joking, right?
You think single shot .22 rifles (like the ones used in the Olympics) are “objects of ridicule”?
Because they’re awfully hard to kill things with, being as how they’re single shot and fire a small, low-powered round.
Yes. Guns can be used to kill people (I won’t get into the semantic game that guns don’t kill people, the bullets do) 😉
But they absolutely CANNOT do it without a human to employ them.
October 22nd, 2005 at 12:44 am
Uncle:
Well, no, actually what you said was that “guns are a tool and are inherently neutral.” Which isn’t really true, because your clear implication (based on subsequent remarks) is that guns are really no different than fire extinguishers, and it’s no more rational to be uncomfortable about one than about the other. Which, of course, is bullshit.
Further, killing stuff is the only purpose of a gun. If you use it for what it’s designed for, then you’re killing stuff, or trying to. That isn’t to say that it can’t be or isn’t used for other purposes. Of course it is, just like I’ve seen people use the back end of a screwdriver to pound nails. But just because people can and do use guns for things other than killing stuff doesn’t mean that those other things are the purpose of a gun.
Jay:
Fair enough, but nobody here is arguing otherwise. If you can show me where they are, by all means do so. Our sole objection is the notion that a gun is “just a tool like any other.” It isn’t. Nevermind without the human, consider with the human. With the human (even a well-intentioned one), a gun is far, far more dangerous than a knife. A human with a gun could accidentally kill someone some distance away (however unlikely that is), and could intentionally do so at an even greater distance. Whereas someone with a knife would have a much harder time killing someone accidentally, and would find it nearly impossible to intentionally do so at 25 yards.
And again, you’re trying to divorce the stated purpose from the issue, which you cannot do. Lots of things can be used to kill things, but very few of them are specifically designed to do so. And distance is relevant, whether you want it to be or not, unless you think a terrorist with a backpack bomb is no less dangerous to you than a terrorist with a cruise missile. Both are dangerous, and both can kill people, but that does not make them equally dangerous. Since the danger level varies, it’s not at all unreasonable for someone to have varying levels of unease concerning these potential threats.
So my sole point is (and has been all along) that it’s disingenuous to describe a gun as “merely a tool,” because that downplays the tool’s intended purpose and the danger posed by the tool as opposed to other tools. This is true even of non-gun tools: a nail gun is vastly more dangerous than a C-clamp, even though they’re both technically “tools” and both could potentially kill someone. But somehow as soon as guns enter the equation, common sense goes out the window, and we’re not allowed to distinguish between the gun and, say, a T-square.
Gimme a break. A well-placed .22 shot can kill somebody just as dead as a .45, if not quite as easily. And don’t snipers sometimes use .223 rifles, essentially a .22 cap with a bigger powder load?
October 22nd, 2005 at 8:42 am
Well, no, actually what you said was that “guns are a tool and are inherently neutral.”
And somehow that means that I said they were not designed for killing? I did say they were tools because they are. They are tools with a different purpose. Those are not mutually exclusive statements.
Gimme a break. A well-placed .22 shot can kill somebody just as dead as a .45, if not quite as easily.
Only with a headshot.
And don’t snipers sometimes use .223 rifles
Rarely. 223 is usually used by varmintets and is used by the US military in the M-16.
essentially a .22 cap with a bigger powder load?
No. A 22 is .003 inches smaller than a .223. A 22 bullet weighs (usually) 17 grain. A 223 is between 52 and 65g, typically. A 22 travels at about 1100 FPS while the 223 travels at about 2400 – 2700 fps. They are only similar in diameter. Saying they’re the same is like saying a pencil is the same as coax cable because they have roughly the same diameter.
October 23rd, 2005 at 7:34 pm
Indeed, they are different from other tools. The ownership and carrying of them was deemed so important by the founders of our country that it was protected by the Constitution. I am carrying out a Constitutionally protected act by bearing arms, as important as voting and using free speech.
They are neutral tools, designed to protect me from criminals, foreign invaders, and a tyrannical government. If someone misuses their tools and causes harm, they can be punished. If they get in a 2 ton auto, and drive 90 miles an hour, causing the death of a pedestrian, the driver is punished. We don’t decide that autos are evil, and take them away from everyone. And private ownership of autos are not protected by the Constitution.
Firearms kill things, and if mine failed to do that when properly applied, I would want to sue the manufacturer. If a drug crazed criminal busts into my house, I absolutely want my firearms to function flawlessly. If the stove catches on fire, I absolutely want my fire extinguisher to function flawlessly. The odds of either one happening is small, but still real.
One last thought. Guns don’t kill people. Gaping wounds in vital organs kill people. How those wounds get there, by knife, club, gun, bomb, etc. is just details. If somehow all the guns in America disappeared tomorrow, would crime go away?
October 24th, 2005 at 5:00 pm
Context is everything. You said they are tools not simply because they are, but to set the table for ridiculing people who are made uncomfortable by them. And to try to make the point that there aren’t really “gun nuts” out there who take a wee bit too much interest in them. They may not be as common as the anti-gunnies claim, but they’re not as rare as you seem to suggest, either.
So? Dead is dead.
Re: .223, I stand corrected. (I knew the .223 was a very high speed round; it’s part of what makes them so much darned fun to shoot!)
ASM826:
Nobody is arguing otherwise. Again, the sole quarrel is with the idea that it’s somehow unreasonable to be uncomfortable with the idea of certain people having guns. As far as I can tell, the world would be a better place if more people had a basic fear of firearms (in the way they fear fire and heights, at a primal level).
October 24th, 2005 at 7:42 pm
I did?
I did?
Are suggesting there’s also no difference between, say, a fighter jet and a rifle?
So, if I say that a wrecking ball is only made to destroy, that conjurs up bad imagery. However, since wrecking balls are usually used constructively, I have no fear of wrecking balls. Is that a better analysis of a tool?
October 25th, 2005 at 12:14 am
Well, in my book painting them as silly is the same thing as ridiculing, yes. And maybe you didn’t argue that there aren’t any gun nuts, but you did argue that people aren’t afraid of them. They are indeed.
Only to the same extent that you’re suggesting that there’s no difference between a fire extinguisher and a gun. There’s a big difference. A difference you trivialized above, and by continuing to insist that it’s “just a tool.”
Well it’s a wee bit different, in that we don’t have too many ordinary citizens carrying wrecking balls around with them. And we don’t have people driving around with bumper stickers that say “you can have my wrecking ball when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” Oh, and to pick a nit, I’d bet you’d have a hard time finding incidents of people intentionally using a wrecking ball to kill someone. Much less go into an office with a wrecking ball and kill a dozen people or more. 🙂
October 25th, 2005 at 12:15 am
You’d also be hard-pressed to find a “constructive” use of a wrecking ball. They’re used for destroying things. True, this might clear the way for some other constructive task, but the clearing is not in and of itself “constructive.”
October 25th, 2005 at 8:28 am
Perhaps you should look up the definition of constructive.
I didn’t paint it as silly. I said it was unfounded, a bit different.
So, now you’re arguing my point for me?
That’s irrelevant to this discussion.
October 25th, 2005 at 12:12 pm
What’s relevant to this discussion is whether or not there are people who fear gun nuts (there are), whether it’s unreasonable to do so (it isn’t always), whether or not a gun is “just a tool” like a fire extinguisher (it isn’t), and whether or not fear of guns and gun violence is “unfounded” (in some cases in may be, but in many it isn’t).
On “constructive,” my sucky abridged dictionary says “tending to form a basis for ideas.” So I don’t think a wrecking ball fits that one. 🙂 Although I knew what you meant, I was just being a smart-ass. You, of all people, should recognize the tactic… 🙂
November 2nd, 2005 at 1:58 am
[…] Enough with the negative stuff, and on with the positive stuff. From the very beginning of the class, the instructor made no bones about what we’re talking about here: using a deadly weapon to kill someone. Period. No sugar-coating, no fancy platitudes. Sure, the instructor felt the need to regurgitate the “gun is just a morally-neutral tool” line (in, fact, his description of this was almost verbatim identical to SayUncle’s rant to that extend, leading me to wonder if every predominantly right-wing constituency is so inclined to regurgitate talking points, but that’s another story), however he made no bones about a gun’s intended person: to shoot someone until they’re dead. And that’s where, I think, he differed greatly from the Uncle thread, where people did pussyfoot around a bit and talk about the other purposes. To him, a gun is for killing first, and everything else second. […]