I'm getting myself a revolver for my birthday!

I'd like to be more into firearms. They cost quiet a bit of money though, so I can't really afford one right now.

Congrats on your new gun though, sounds like a lot of fun!

- Jeremiah

http://inlovewithGod.com

Congrats! That is so awesome!

Thanks guys! I got the gun and its perfect for me. Going to try to find a shooting range tomorrow and test it out. I'm kind of nervous since I have never fired a handgun before. Safety first, always.

Here's a picture of my new Taurus .38 Special

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v690/upb/?action=view&current=PA090063...

Looks Cool! I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with it on the range.

- Jeremiah

http://inlovewithGod.com

Go more shooters on the boards.

I've been shooting since a young age, and am currently a member of a junior bullseye pistol team which contends for a national title every year :D We're sponsored by these guys: www.ottawasportsmen.org

Keep the hammer falling :D

Live forever in that one white-hot moment, when the crowd screamed. When every note was a heartbeat. Burn across the sky.

/\/\from Soul Music by Terry Pratchett.

NaNo 08: In A City's Ashes
Dystopian horror/scifi.

Congratulations! I've seen a couple of those (pink ones) at gun shows. I'm kind of holding out for a laser sight, though. :D My dad will buy it for me, but we're having a hard time coordinating the time to get familiar with it + the money available. Erp.

That, and we keep blowing our money on old bayonets. Oooops.

------------
What am I doing still awake?

...Oh wait.

Congratulations! This post has managed to freak me out and inspire me. Guess it's a British thing that guns just worry me. But my FMC needs a gun and I would never have thought in a thousand years to give her a pink one! It's so right for her character too. Thank you.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty sinister too. In fact, I thought it was a joke, but clearly not.

I love the diversity of the NaNo forums. You learn all sorts.

Ben..

2008 - Copernicus Undone
2007 - Monument (winner!)
2006 - Some Solitude for a Social Species (winner!)

Ben..

2008 - Copernicus Undone
2007 - Monument (winner!)
2006 - Some Solitude for a Social Species (winner!)

same here
guns just freak me out.
I would never even touch one..
all weapons seem to scare me

Nano 2007: Schuldgevoel (won)

----

Nano 2007: Schuldgevoel (won)

Guns are very much a part of American culture, without being sinister at all. :) It's one of the fundamental rights we've come to enjoy.

--
Heather Dudley
Forums Moderator - Broke? You can still donate!
Couldn't verify your winning novel? Contact the general hotline for help.

That's freakin sweet! A pink handle! So awesome. Haha. I'm from TX so I believe in handguns. Here in L.A. people kind of have a cow when I talk about guns and how I wish I could carry one with me for safety. My dad has some and took me out to shoot on a range once which was cool, and I used to shoot with JROTC in high school. Even in TX when other students realized there's a shooting range inside the school, they kind of made crazy eyes LOL.

************************
2004: Sending Letters (50k)
2005: Journey to the Dragon (57k)
2006: Things Alter (56k)
2007: By Heart (67k)
2008: Willow Twins

Congrats, Lilly! Have you seen the Hello Kitty variations?

Hey Everyone, sorry to have freaked some of you out. Guns are pretty scary and safety has to be your top priority every time you handle one. First rule of a gun----its always loaded. Even if you just unloaded it you still treat it as if it was loaded. Never point a gun at something you do not plan to destroy. Common sense lesson, but one people fail too often.

There was a shooting range in a school? That's just too cool.

Glad I could help someone with their character accessories, lol.

Thank you all for the congrats, I am still excited about it. Hoping to find a range a shoot it soon...but its 3:21pm and my boyfriend is still in bed so I doubt we'll be doing it today.

Oh, and I have heard of the Hello Kitty ones, but have yet to see one for myself.

There's quite a lot on this thread that I find uncomfortable. It's no more than a matter of cultural differences I think, but have a couple of questions.

At what point is it reasonable self-defence to shoot at someone? What needs to happen to make that okay? Does someone need to threaten you with one? Break into your home? Shout abuse at you across the street?

Hypothetically speaking - what would be lost if personal ownership of guns was outlawed altogether?

Ben..

2008 - Copernicus Undone
2007 - Monument (winner!)
2006 - Some Solitude for a Social Species (winner!)

Of course, all of the following are just my opinion - I am no kind of an expert. However, based on my experience and military training:

"At what point is it reasonable self-defence to shoot at someone?"
- ONLY and ONLY when your own life, the life of your family, or the life of someone else is in mortal danger, AND when the use of deadly force is the ONLY reasonable way to prevent loss of life. Loss of property is (In My Opinion) not a reasonable justification for deadly force. (In the military the exception to the property rule was if the item being stolen was a matter of national security or could be used to inflict harm ie: weapons and/or ammunition.)

What needs to happen to make that okay? Does someone need to threaten you with one? Break into your home?
-Certainly if someone threatened me with a gun it would be a dangerous situation, but there are many other variables to consider before I could say with certainty that I would feel justified in using deadly force. Certainly if someone came into my home while I or my family were there and brandished a firearm, I would call that justifiable. However, if I am simply out and about, and someone waves a gun at me I would be more inclined (even if I were carrying a firearm myself) to simply vacate the area and call the authorities. In every case, escaping the situation is preferable to responding in kind, even if fired upon I would still look to first find a way out before returning fire.

Shout abuse at you across the street?
-To even think of using deadly force against someone for nothing more than a verbal insult, especially from a distance is absurd. No law-abiding gun owner who cares the least bit about their continued ability to bear arms would ever consider such a thing.

Hypothetically speaking - what would be lost if personal ownership of guns was outlawed altogether?
-It has become something of a cliche here in the states, but: "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." If we look past the corny "sound bite" of this phrase we can see a distinct truth: The people committing crimes with guns; those who would fire on someone for a verbal insult from across the street for example, already have a demonstrated lack of regard for the law. In addition, the guns these types of people own are generally already outlawed and/or stolen to begin with. If a law was passed tomorrow making guns illegal, these are not the types of folks who would immediately shrug their shoulders and bring their guns to the authorities. On the other hand, those of us who legally and responsibly own guns WOULD most likely shrug our shoulders and bring our guns to the authorities. (Fiery rhetoric of the NRA notwithstanding...) Then you would literally have a population with a demonstrated lack of regard for law possessing deadly weapons, and a population of law abiding citizens now wholly dependent on the police for their personal safety.

I'm sorry for such a long response, but I appreciated your thoughtful questions and decided they deserved a thoughtful and complete answer.

And let me repeat, I am no kind of expert on the topic. The above is simply my opinion based on my life experiences and training.

Tweetywill
The Piker Press
Tired of messing with my siggy!

tweetywill, I agree with you 100% on all of your points. I'm going to spew some stuff, so hopefully it will make sense.

Yes, I now own a gun. Its a big responsibility. When I'm not at the shooting range I keep mine in a safe place, unloaded, far away from where I keep my ammunition. I agree with without being able to own guns we are then at risk and have very little to do to protect ourselves. Even though I keep my revolver unloaded, I do live a seedy kind of area where murders and other violent crimes have been committed and I feel safer knowing I have a way to protect myself if anyone would ever break into my home and try to harm me or my roommates.

I understand having a fear of guns. They should be feared. Feared as in: "Oh this could end badly if I don't use my brain and use it properly" Not fear as in being terrified of even touching one. They won't hurt you. They are only dangerous when they are put into the wrong hands. They are just machines. They are only dangerous when used improperly. We have open carry laws here and people will freak out if they see someone with a holster and gun on them just walking around(even the police will harass these people when its perfectly legal for them to carry their weapon). Well, IMO, that's overreacting. Unless that person is holding to gun and acting like they might fire, no should one be worried. Criminals don't usually openly carry their firearms unless they are already pulling it out and shooting. I definitely understand why people may be against open carry laws, but here it is legal so I still don't get the immense fear people have of just seeing a gun. Law abiding gun owners aren't going to hurt you or anyone else unless you're trying to harm them. We just like having the protection, and like to shoot paper targets for fun(or hunt)

I went to the shooting range today, and I will be honest I was a little afraid because 1. I have never shot a handgun before and 2. We had never shot these guns before, period, because we had just bought them. We were all prepared though with our cell phones and first aid kit in case anything would have gone wrong. Thankfully, our guns are in fine working order and we used all the safety techniques to make it a fun yet safe time. I suck though I didn't hit my target but once lol. It was 15 yards away. I wish they had some closer targets.

I've found myself thinking about this today a bit. I can totally get the guns as a hobby thing. Target practice at a range is fun, I've shot in those conditions myself but it wasn't my gun and I (obviously) wouldn't have been able to take it away with me. I could neither threaten nor protect the public with it.

So, that's target practice - the next type of gunplay is hunting. Owning a gun to kill things. Now, I'm no animal lover, but I can't say I agree with killing for sport - for food, yes; for sport, no. It seems arrogant and unnecessary, but that's just my feel. Objectively i can see that if you're responsible, as I would guess 99% of hunters are, it's still confined to being little more than a hobby, albeit a morbid one.

But finally - and here's the thing - guns for protection. "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." To me, that says society has already gone too far. The criminals have guns, so if law-abiding people gave theirs up, they would be defenceless against the lawless minority. Putting aside the validity of the argument, the thing that's bugged me is how pessimistic that is. Earlier someone said, "Here in L.A. people kind of have a cow when I talk about guns and how I wish I could carry one with me for safety." That is a terrible thing, that this person feels so unsafe that they feel a need to carry a gun in public. And that's in America, no less - one of the most affluent countries in the world - a country seeking to assert its own system as the best model for society. But that's a digression, politics isn't the thing I was thinking about. Mainly it was just sad, I thought, that some people feel so unsafe that they need a gun. The other side of the "only the outlaws have guns" argument seems to me to be that if every criminal knew that a resident in the house they were about to break into was likely to be a gun-owner, they would take a gun. It's a vicious circle.

But most of all, it just seems a very sad state of affairs.

Ben

Ben..

2008 - Copernicus Undone
2007 - Monument (winner!)
2006 - Some Solitude for a Social Species (winner!)

So... if guns are sinister and scary, what does that make bayonets?

------------
What am I doing still awake?

...Oh wait.

Close range and personal.

Ben..

2008 - Copernicus Undone
2007 - Monument (winner!)
2006 - Some Solitude for a Social Species (winner!)

Most people I know who have a permit to carry a concealed handgun say something along these lines: "It's not that I can't live here / go there without having a gun with me. If there's somewhere that it's unsafe to be unless you have a gun, I don't go there at all. I carry because I want the option of defending myself with it if necessary." It's the same argument as "I wear a seatbelt even though I think I'm a safe driver, have never been in an accident, and don't drive in a manner that'll put me especially at risk for an accident."

If every firearm were to spontaneously evaporate, crimes would be committed with knives, or pointy sticks, or chains, or the brute force the criminal was able to exert. Criminals, being cowards in general, would also know that none of their victims could shoot them, and worry less, which is bad - someone who wants to mug me should be worried that I might be able to defend myself. In the state I live in now, I derive this benefit even without having to carry a firearm myself, because there are women who do carry concealed handguns, and a woman with a gun is at no disadvantage against an attacker without one, unless the attacker sneaks up on her. ("God created man, Sam Colt made them equal," as the saying goes.)

Additionally, in the United States, states and cities that have made it easier to obtain concealed handgun permits have not seen an increase in gun crime. There are two states where residents may carry concealed weapons without a permit; they are not notably more-violent than the rest of the country. States where homeowners do not have a "duty to retreat" (i.e. if someone breaks into my house I do not need to attempt to flee before being justified in using deadly force) have not seen an increase in homeowners being shot by would-be burglars - if anything it seems that burglars make more of an attempt to commit burglary when they're reasonably confident of finding no one home. So it looks like the vicious circle doesn't happen in the US. Somewhere with different attitudes towards guns would very probably have different results.

-----==========-----
Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor?
It's simple, Skyler. You've seen what food processors do to food, right?

-----==========-----
Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor?
It's simple, Skyler. You've seen what food processors do to food, right?

I'm quite strongly against the right of the ordinary person to possess a firearm. I think it's a bad, dangerous, right-wing ideal that needs to be destroyed.

But a PINK REVOLVER? Dude, I totally want me some o' that shit [grin]

When she was good she was very very good - but when she was bad, she was fabulous.