[kenberg]

As mentioned, separating our views on guns from expressing concern or support or grief over the events in Las Vegas seems like a good idea to me. So I am offering this.

Not that I really think there is anything new to be said.

[kenberg]

I'll offer a couple of thoughts.

I know people who keep a gun in the house for self-protection. For the most part, I think this is a bad choice. Often they seem way too confident of what a gun can do for them. If the other guy in a confrontation also has a gun, someone will die. The argument is that if a person has a gun then at least he has a chace of surviving the confrontation. Yes, there is some truth to this, but the best approach, usually, is to avoid the confrontation. Most, not all, violent confrontations could have been avoided. A person without a gun sees a good reason to avoid a violent confrontation. A persoon with a gun often has a very unrealistic idea of how safe this will make him in a violent confrontation, and so he has less reason to avoid it.

We need some new laws. I believe that. But laws are at least partly an expression of attitude and culture. We need proper priorities. We need to praise those who can find ways to avoid confrontation rather than those who successfully prevail in confrontation.

I do realize that there are bad people out there and that we need to protect ourselves. But reaching for a gun should be near the bottom of the list of options. Far too many people place it near the top.Changing our cultural attitudes, even if this is sort of vague, would help a lot I think.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2017-October-03, 10:09, said:

There's a good article in this month's Scientific American about the widespread belief that owning a gun for self protection makes one safer, and the fact that the majority of research contradicts this notion.

And to the point someone made in the other thread that crazy people will do crazy things even without guns. While that's true, guns make it far easier to do mass violence. Probably no argument in a bar or road rage incident has ever spontaneously erupted into a poisoning. You can kill or maim someone with a knife, but you can't kill 50+ people from a safe perch hundreds of feet away.

I saw that article, my son-in-laws sent it.

Phil has invited further discussion about guns on the thread he started. Since he is ok with that. I would be fine with you pulling your comment and my brief response here over to that thread and erasing this one.

I already copied my first response to myself onto that thread.

[barmar]

OK, I've moved my post and closed this thread.