Sometimes a fallacy becomes accepted if enough people repeat it:
Guns deter crime.
How exactly do guns deter crime? Are people who own guns putting signs on their lawn, like people with security systems? “Warning: this home is protected by a trigger happy conservative who has a large backyard and shovel.”
I’m sure someone has done that, but I don’t see signs like that around. Yet, I know a lot of people own guns. Clearly there must be some other mechanism by which guns keep people feeling safe.
Maybe guns have an anti-bad-guy force field built into them. Maybe guns are to criminals what crosses and garlic are to vampires. Better buy a gun in the shape of a cross, just to be safe. The news sells us an image of a terrifying world out to get you, one which only a gun can protect you from, and this paranoia drives gun sales.
But how are people imagining they’ll get to their gun in the event of a break-in? Are people sleeping with their guns? That can’t be safe for them or their innocent neighbors. And if they aren’t sleeping with a loaded gun nearby, how are they getting to their gun in time to prevent them from being tied up and forced to watch as their wife is repeatedly sodomized in front of them by a huge black cock?
[It all derives from this weird, paranoid nightmare/fantasy, and don’t even try to pretend it doesn’t.]
It’s almost as if owning a gun… has no benefit to security. Either you leave a loaded gun lying around, which is not safe (regardless of how many weekend seminars one attends), or you have it locked out of easy reach, where it cannot be accessed in the kind of split-second danger it was bought for.
Just owning a gun to “exercise your rights” is tantamount to standing outside your house and shouting at every soldier who passes by, “Hey, you can’t stay here you son of a bitch! I’m exercising my third amendment rights here!” Yeah, you can do it, but why? No one will stop you, but we all think you’re retarded for doing it.
Owning a gun isn’t harmless. It doesn’t prevent you from being the victim of a crime. If anything, it ensures that if you are ever robbed, you will probably have the gun stolen, and it will now be in the possession of a criminal. Congratulations conservative homeowners of America, you are arming our thugs.
The only reason to ever buy a gun is to use it. Most guns are never used outside of target practice, which is a good thing. A gun is nothing but a tool used for a specific purpose. If you don’t hunt or shoot as a hobby, you should probably find some other way of expressing to the world how small your penis is.
Are people who own guns putting signs on their lawn, like people with security systems?
ReplyDeleteThey don't have to put up a sign, it's enough if the criminal can't be sure which house has a gun-owner living in it and which doesn't. That is the deterrent. It's also why burglary and home invasion occur at higher rates in Britain and Canada (with their strict gun control laws) than in the US.
If you're a sicko creep who wants a victim, someone's private home is safer than somewhere out in public, if, that is, you can be pretty sure there are no guns inside the house that your potential victims might use to defend themselves.
Criminals in the US are more afraid of targeting occupied homes for one reason; they know that about half of the homes here have guns, and that makes every break-in a coin toss. After all, they don't want to get shot.
Half of homes in America have an item easily sold on the black market for hundreds of dollars?
ReplyDeleteNo wonder they only have to break into half as many houses in the US.
Umm no, SE. Canada's burglary rate is lower, but similar to that of the USA:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.conferenceboard.ca/HCP/Details/society/burglaries.aspx
Home invasions in Canada run about 2-3% of the burglary rate depending on how you define home invasion.
Crime rates in the USA are higher than Canada across the board. Criminals don't give a shit if there are guns in the house beyond carrying one themselves - firearms related crime is much lower in Canada because the scumbags don't have to worry so much about running into a trigger-happy asshole with some god on his side.
You are correct, however, about the UK.
Could it be a cultural thing an not have anything to do with guns?