Why do Americans love guns so much?

Post Reply New Topic

Actually, most New Yorkers who live in Queens and Staten Island own cars.

Gun control is pretty strong in Massachusetts--but there's probably a higher rate of gun ownership in rural than in urban areas.

The gun is not actual protection but a tool that, if available, can be used for protection. To simply have a gun guarantees nothing. Situational awareness and not appearing to be a soft target is the better part of self protection. The gun is the tool that can be used when other options are not an option.
Yes, I carry a handgun.


You may actually be f*cked in this situation, or maybe not depending on several factors.
It is at least possible to defeat someone with a gun pointed at you.



It's better to also take turns practicing this drill with two other like-minded people using toy guns or blue guns. The actually shooting part, of course, is be done against cardboard targets as seen in this video.
Again, this would be for a scenario when little other option is available.


That's a new one on me. An assailant can be armed with any kind of weapon or improvised weapon.
I don't see it being even attempted in the foreseeable future
You don’t target the tank but the tank commander when he’s exposed in the turret hatch while the tank is not buttoned up. This is ideally done at long distance from cover.

Here’s a few ideas from Wikipedia
"Unconventional attack
Especially in urban guerrilla warfare, improvised methods, not requiring purpose-built equipment, has been known to immobilize or destroy tanks. In the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, for example, one of the simplest measures was to spread brown dinner plates on a street, plates that looked, from a distance, like a Soviet antitank mine. The tank driver turned away, into an ambush.

During the same fight, one tank was put out of service when a high-voltage electrical line was dropped onto it. Another tank was immobilized, again by predicting its probable route, when a depression in a sloping road was filled with liquid soap.
Tanks have been destroyed by luring them onto weakened bridges over water, or even over covered pits or faulty roadway. Daring Hungarians would jump onto a Soviet tank, put a Hungarian flag on its antenna, and then either shoot crewmen trying to remove it, or wait for other Soviets to turn heavy fire on what they believed to a tank captured by the rebels.

Incendiary attack is classic if one can get close enough to throw a gasoline-filled bottle with a fuse, usually called a "Molotov cocktail" after the early WWII use. The bottle must break on an air intake to the crew compartment, in the engine compartment, or other location. Modern tanks are much less vulnerable to such attacks, given that they have fire-extinguishing systems and, as part of protection against chemical, biological and nuclear attack, air filtration systems."

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Anti-tank_warfare

In a nutshell, it would be about guerrilla warfare that relies heavily on hit and run ambushes and raids, IED’s, booby traps, long range rifle work (sniping), etc. It’s about improvisation, and demoralizing a superior force. Any able bodied person that says they are totally defenseless probably can’t find their own tallywacker in the dark with both hands.

Yes, people in Mass (including Boston) own guns. The laws are much stricter but they still have them. Even if there was an outright gun ban they would still have them.

There are plenty of people in rural Massachusetts who own guns -- it's part of country life as it is in other parts of the world. Many people are hunters, and bears and coyotes have been increasing dramatically in the last couple of decades. If you worked outdoors in bear country, you might want to keep a gun handy too.

At the time that the Second Amendment to the Constitution for the United States of America was adopted and ratified, many of the American colonies had included similar protections of arms in their own constitutions and charters. This is because they had learned well how Britain had disarmed certain people, and then enslaved, starved and killed such people ... with arms. So, protecting the idea of owning and using arms is the direct result of government run amok. The phraseology of the Second Amendment also gives a hat tip to this fact. Fast forward more than 200 years, and we see the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the original meaning of the Second Amendment in its Heller and McDonald opinions which incorporated the Second Amendment to the states and their communities prohibiting the states from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.

Now, compare the Second Amendment to your own favorite constitutional amendment like, say, the First Amendment (speech, Internet, blogging and all that). Are you forced to speak out? Are you forced to buy a firearm or use it? Are you required to get a permit to describe your ideas on WrongPlanet.net? No, because abuse of the Second Amendment is now treated by state and federal courts exactly the same way that such courts treat the right of the press, religion or speech. Both amendments protect individual rights whether a specific individual chooses not to enjoy them or not. For many U.S. citizens, owning and using arms is an expression of their rights, and there are many citizens who don't own firearms but support them anyway.

After all, nobody is holding a gun to the head of someone who doesn't want to buy ... a gun. Get it? To paraphrase a pro-choice slogan: "If you don't like guns, don't buy, own or use one."

Last edited by AspieUtah on 11 Mar 2017, 2:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You can own guns in England. The laws are stricter (read draconian) but guns are not illegal like you believe.


Illegal doesn't mean diddly. Besides, it's not all roses over there according to this:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jan/21/england-wales-homicides-rise-knife-gun-crime



Elicit drugs are illegal as hell in the US (e.g. the War on Drugs) but I can drive five miles from my house and buy all the meth I want with little to no fear of being busted. So much for illegal...

As for this first paragraph: It's a 50/50 chance----but, I'd rather the opportunity to go-down, fightin'. Criminals are often not very bright----so, there's a chance the idiot will actually answer a phone call during the commission of a crime, and then it's:



As for your second paragraph: I AGREE----and, whoever said that, was an IDIOT!!

As for your third paragraph: I agree that it's unlikely that a small arm could penetrate a TANK----but, someone has gotta get IN the tank (and out-of), and while they're walking to/from (and, any time that hatch is open), there's vulnerability. Also, surely you've heard there's all kinds of homemade bomb recipes, on the Internet----like, it-seems-to-me, all one needs is a glass bottle, gasoline, a thin piece of rope, and good aim, when that hatch is open.

REALLY?? Tell that to the 300 victims of gun homicide in Baltimore, ALONE, in 2015----and, considering we only have just over a half-million people.....


Someone's "giving" (-away) guns, in America? Where's the line?


Oh, my----you really should know your country, better:

http://www.bbc.com/news/10220974


All I can say is, it's really fortunate for those 4,275 people that Parliament banned handguns, in 1997.


Exactly----so, what's the problem!!

The right to own a gun is closely associated with ideas of American patriotism and American ideals of freedom, self reliance, personal responsibility, and control over one's estate and government. Most legal gun owners are also conservatives, and conservatives tend to value traditions.

Yes there are several options for gun training. It won't nessessarly make you more skilled than your assailant because if I was an armed criminal I'd want to ensure I was well practiced.That's a new one on me. An assailant can be armed with any kind of weapon or improvised weapon.[/quote]Why would they want to use a knife when guns are available?

If I was burgler, mugger, etc I wouldn't bring a knife when dealing with a population that has a high rate of gun owernship.Don't tank commanders generally keep the hatch closed? If I was in a heavily armoured vehicle I wouldn't want to lose that advantage by sticking my head out the top.Those are pretty good ideas. Is there also an article on antihelicopter warfare?

Raptor wrote:

Daring Hungarians would jump onto a Soviet tank, put a Hungarian flag on its antenna, and then either shoot crewmen trying to remove it, or wait for other Soviets to turn heavy fire on what they believed to a tank captured by the rebels.

Clever but there must have been at least a few Hungarian tanks or the Soviets would never believe one of their own could be a Hungarian tank. A US tank commander fighting US civilians wouldn't believe one of their tanks belongs to the enemy because there are no civilian tanks.

I wonder if the present day US civilian population is as unified as the Hungarians in the 1950s.quote="Raptor"]Incendiary attack is classic if one can get close enough to throw a gasoline-filled bottle with a fuse, usually called a "Molotov cocktail" after the early WWII use. The bottle must break on an air intake to the crew compartment, in the engine compartment, or other location. Modern tanks are much less vulnerable to such attacks, given that they have fire-extinguishing systems and, as part of protection against chemical, biological and nuclear attack, air filtration systems."[/quote]As you say, modern tanks would be much les vulnrerable to such attacks.Their tallywacker would make a poor weapon and I wouldn't recomend wipping it out during battle

I know this is just hypothetical since most Americans aren't planning to revolt but I'll admit that they might have a good chance since the American armed forces seemingly never learned how to deal with assymetric warfare.

Ahh politics. I find it rather infuriating because I can't agree with the conservatives or the liberals. Both sides have a lot of bad ideas. I don't understand why most people want to choose one crazy side or the other. Siding with crazy liberals or crazy conservatives. I'll pass on both thanks

Let's see, 500,000 over 300 is 1,667. So the odds of surviving the year are 1 to 1,667 in favour of survival.I think she meant being able to buy them.I wouldn't infere a trend from this one incident. One is not a statistically significent sample size.

Does the pro-gun side or the anti-gun side have any national statistics on gun homicide in America vs countries such as the UK, Australia, Japan, etc?

Understandable that you'd want a gun if you're facing an armed assailant. I have no doubt that criminals from any country would use a gun if they could get their hands on one. My question is, does reduced availability of guns in a country reduce the number of armed homicides in that country overall?That's rather like saying the beuracracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding beuracracy. Needing to have a gun because everyone else has a gun is not an argument in favour of everyone having a gun. I'm sure we can both agree that if you get into a gun fight against an armed assailant your survival is not guaranteed.I get that you'd rather take the 50/50 chance rather than just get shot but I prefer my one hundred fold reduced probability that I'll ever meet an armed criminal over your 50/50 of beating him.

Last edited by RetroGamer87 on 11 Mar 2017, 7:03 pm, edited 3 times in total.

I'm not into guns. I never owned one but my grandfather had a hunting gun but that's different. Now we have it and it's somewhere in our garage but I don't know where it is and it doesn't work anyway. A part in it is busted.

I don't know why people here like them so much. I wonder how people hunt in other countries that have very strict gun laws. Do they not go hunting at all?


Also the right to own a gun is in our US constitution.

I live in the US and it's not bad as you are making it out to be about guns. I don't feel the need to own one and not everyone owns one because I don't. People don't carry them with them like you have seen in US movies(I think it's illegal?) and no one points guns at each other and start shooting at each other. Has it happened? Yes but so have car accidents and assaults and sexual assaults. Just don't enter peoples homes without permission and you won't get shot at very likely.

Im sure not all gun owners are like this but the way some of the gun lovers on Facebook talk gleefully about how they'll shoot anyone who pulls a gun on them, it's almost as though they expect their assailent to politely stand still as they shoot them.

Yes it is because in 1791 a well regulated militia was nessessary to the security of a free state. Nowadays the state uses a military, not a militia.

Does civilian gun ownership protect the security of the state in 2017?

I'm not going to tell you what to do with your constitution but it's not unchagable. Look at how the 21st amendment repealed the 18th amendment.

If the constitution was unchangable then the second amendment wouldn't exist because it wasn't a part of the original text.