Another question about gun holding...

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Should people who have iq's below 85 be able to hold a gun....

If you know never to point it at something you don't want to kill, that you'll always keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target, that you're aware of what you're shooting and that it can contain the projectile/s (you don't want ricochets and projectiles flying off into the distance), and that you always treat every firearm as if it were loaded, sure. Teach your kids this if you have them when they're old enough, and keep them locked away from them when they're too young.

It doesn't matter what your IQ is. "Smart" people can be negligent and blow their foot off or send rounds downrange that endanger others.

In my opinion, no one (unless in a capacity of police officer or similar) should be allowed to own a gun.

Or a knife, or a baseball bat or other forms of club implements.

Yeah, that Warsaw Ghetto uprising was all because those disobedient Jews had illegal weapons that only Hitler's police state people were supposed to own. You feel that the my people should have given up their weapons and just gone peacefully to the gas chambers as per the mandate of the National Socialist system? That kind of Socialized National healthcare I can do without!

Sorry, but we are keeping our guns to defend ourselves against the Socialists who want to disarm us.
http://jpfo.org/

America's move towards gun registration occurred back when the Democrats were trying to keep the African Americans from having full civil rights. (Al Gore's father was a big time racist in Congress.) Watch the documentary, "No Guns For Negroes" -
http://jpfo.org/filegen-n-z/ngn-download-view.htm

Like it or not but an armed society is a free and polite society. You WILL NOT be taking my guns!

When it comes to guns, I'm not worried about intelligence nearly as much as I'm worried about common sense. For example, if you have an IQ of 150, untreated ADHD, twitchy fingers, and the tendency to become distracted by the shiny while holding firearms, you can bet I'm gonna keep that gun as far away from you as I can, whether or not you just got your astrophysics degree.

Not that attention deficit people can't handle guns; but if you're not compensating for the tendency not to pay attention to what you're doing (not necessarily a trait specific to attention-deficit), then you shouldn't be holding a gun. Or, for that matter, handling anything that could hurt somebody if you made the wrong movement or forgot a safety step--factory machinery, for example.

Seconded. The only people who benefit from laws against gun ownership are those who are going to break those laws anyway - the murdering and robbing thugs who know where to buy guns illegally. In my country it's (supposedly) very hard to obtain a gun, but this doesn't prevent people from getting shot, and murdered in other ways. Some of these murders occurred as "collateral damage" during unlawful entry, where the occupants were unfortunate enough to catch the thieves by surprise. I don't say guns are the solution to all such problems, but calling the police isn't going to help you much either, given that they often take half an hour to arrive.

Granted, the Dutch murder rate is lower than in America, but not nearly so much as to justify leaving honest citizens virtually defenseless against criminals who are every bit as ruthless as their American counterparts.

i am asking because people with iq's below 85 don't go to army and because Ali whose iq was 78(i assume except if he faked the results)was not trusted a gun...I mean people with low iq's not as low as 82 but as low as 74 may not even be given the license to drive...

Even in countries where guns are illegal, people can still get a hold of them or they can make them themselves. All that is needed to make a gun is a strong enough combustion chamber and an opening to allow the projectile to escape. A gun can be made from match heads in a pipe, wadding and a marble. Needles to say, it is a crude gun, but it can still easily kill someone. With enough time on one's hands, one can make even more sophisticated guns with few tools. Even in mud huts with dirt floors, people can manufacture guns such as AK-47's, etc. "Laws" forbidding average people from owning weapons to defend themselves and their families only puts them at risk of being victims of criminal activity or worse yet, government tyrants.

To answer the question about people with I.Q. lower than 85 being allowed to own and handle guns, I have no problem with it so long as they know gun safety and use them properly. Being ret*d does not make someone stupid. I know a couple of ret*d people who have better common sense than many more intellectually endowed people. Then again I know of ret*d people that I wouldn't want anywhere near a gun. The same applies to so called "intelligent" people. Being ret*d does not necessarily mean that a person is deficient in all areas, it means that an individual is mentally less functional than other people of their ages in one or more areas.

I.Q. tests are not necessarily a good measure of whether a person is smart or even intelligent. I was given I.Q. tests and the results have shown I was "ret*d." However, I know how to handle a gun safely. I also know how to program, repair and design computers and other electronics. I have experience in several different trades and professions as well. The so called "experts" were willing to condemn me to a life in an institution. Needless to say, I do not put much stock in so called intelligence quotient tests.

Thirded. ed. As the saying(s) go:

"Criminals prefer unarmed victims";

"Politicians prefer unarmed peasants";

"A man with a gun is a citizen - a man without a gun is a subject";

"You'll take my beer when you pry the can from my cold, drunk...wait...that's a different sticker...

I'm not being sarcastic, I actually had those first three on the back window of my truck until they curled up and peeled off with age.

I sometimes puzzle over the fact that in the US, the lone gunman who walks into a crowded area and opens fire on strangers was unheard of before 1968. I mean, there was the occasional 'Bonnie & Clyde' type crime spree, and gangland massacre, but until the late sixties, nobody had ever just snapped and started wasting innocent strangers by the handful. Its as though there are Manchurian Candidate signals being broadcast on random television subcarriers. And America was a gun-toting society long before that started happening - and those incidents have nothing to do with intelligence (or lack of), either.




Now that's a curious factoid - I assume you're referring to Muhammed Ali? So...the government who imprisoned him for refusing to participate in a military draft would not have issued him a weapon even if he had become a soldier? If they thought he was too dumb to carry a weapon, why would they want him in the first place? And if they were convinced he was mentally impaired, how could they imprison him for not serving? All moot points - in those days, anyone who took an anti-Vietnam-war stance was persecuted by the established order. Still, it's a curious bundle of contradictions. Only bureaucracy can create such convoluted logic...

Or did you mean a different Ali?

I think things like impulse control or rage issues would be so much more important as to make 85 IQ by itself irrelevant. As others have said proper firearms handling is not complicated (in fact it's an area where a literal, rule-bound ASC person could excel, 85 IQ or not).

using a gun is nothing complicated i think even a person with an iq of 45 could use a gun the thing is should they be trusted???

"Proper firearms handling" is first and foremost about SAFETY. See Danielismyname's post for examples.

My point was that the safety rules are straightforward and applied without exception, so there isn't a lot to think about. So I think a person with an 85 IQ could handle it.

Now, deciding whether or not to kill someone in an moment, in a situation where you aren't expecting to make that decision, is something probably beyond most people even with 180 IQ's.

I think deciding by IQ alone isn't useful. Someone can have a normal or higher IQ and still whip out his pistol because someone cut him off in traffic. That's not an issue of IQ; there are more important criteria to be looked at when determining whether or not someone should be trusted to carry a gun.

The special driving instructor who taught me has taught more than one person with Down Syndrome how to drive as well. Especially on a familiar route, they apparently do fine, which makes sense to me because the reason we don't let kids drive isn't a lack of skill but a lack of maturity; and DS or not, they do grow up and gain that kind of common sense, even if they never master algebra.

Re. the army, you have to remember that the army means more than guns. It also means having to learn to work as a team and think fast in difficult situations. I can see them refusing entry to people with lower IQs, on the somewhat legitimate assumption that they may not have these abilities; but I would much prefer if there were a military aptitude test specifically aimed at testing these skills--the more academically-oriented IQ test does not really gauge the same set of abilities that are necessary to join the military; and a specific aptitude test would be better at filtering out people with IQs above 85 who wouldn't be any good at it, and catching people with IQs below that who are bad students but make good soldiers.

Edit: You know, maybe they do have an aptitude test--only they call it "getting through boot camp"!

I think things like impulse control or rage issues would be so much more important as to make 85 IQ by itself irrelevant. As others have said proper firearms handling is not complicated (in fact it's an area where a literal, rule-bound ASC person could excel, 85 IQ or not).

Can I make a little observation? You people are being FAR more civil about this whole thing than most are. That ITSELF shows something.

Frankly, I think a low IQ is like poverty. It means you have less upward potential and might be more subject to issues that COULD cause problems, but doesn't mean much else. I HATED it when so many equated income with class in a traditional sense, Some RICH people are very low class, and some very POOR people are high class.

Willard,

GOOD POINTS!