If you owned a gun, how afraid of it would you be?

I was on an Apple Computer forum right when the new PowerBooks came out ... someone posted pics of their recently arrived laptop, sitting next to a martini glass and a 9mm handgun.

I thought ... what the fuck is that? Like ... is the gun there in a sort of "don't fuck with my PowerBook" sort of way? What about the martini glass? Why would you want people to know this about you?

Bleurgh.

Ruger .357 revolver
Ruger .22 rifle
Walther PPK/S

I don't keep ammo in my place though, just because I see no need. If I'm going to the range, I'll pick up ammo on the way.

(xpost with fellow texan haha)

obv. was James Bond

well, apparently they do ... let's examine murder statistics, and then cross-reference those with "how many people have owned guns for X years, and of those people how many of their parents owned guns"

sweet.

If anybody's Bond it's milo with his Walther! Milo those are some classix there, I hope you keep em clean.

The "House of" street tops it, though. I'd move there, just to bask in the glow.

Humperdink's is vile, food-wise. I spent a lot of time at the Bennigan's off of 820 - and one very bad drunken night in the nudie bars across the highway. I'm fairly sure abject terror wasn't the owners' goal, but it was too disturbing for me. The Circus Circus scene from Fear and Loathing, minus lizards.

Really, it's all in what bnw and Hurlothrumbo mentioned up above this post o' mine. They said everything succinctly.

And I'm all about law-abiding citizens owning firearms. Why let the criminals have all the fun? </body part="tongue" location="cheek">

And yes, the PPK/S purchase was straight outta Bond. And a mistake, at that. I traded in a CZ 75B (Czech military sidearm) that was just as classic as classic gets, and the PPK is less fun to shoot.

I've been threatening to get an AR-15 or Kalashnikov (Che chic!) to hang above my mantle, but I have a feeling that might scare off prospective lady-types.

guns fucking suck. i really don't give a shit how you can justify owning something that has only the purpose of taking something's life.

That's my justification, right there.

In owning and using them, I pose no danger to any other living being on the face of the planet.

So you picket mousetraps, bug zappers, and roach motels? What about bacteria killing soap and antibiotics?

You abort whales? That doesn't come under standard health-care plans, does it?

I think the rule is that killing all those things is ok.

I once spent a night on holiday at a friend's place in Knoxville after I had left college and joined the USAF. In the meantime I had qualified on the M16A1 and he had become something of a 2nd Amendment nut. He handed me a steel service revolver, I believe it was a .38, and I worked the action on it a few times. It had the smoothest trigger of any weapon I had ever touched. After handling it for about a minute I mentioned to him "If I ever purchase a gun, I will have to put my name on a list that prevents me from ever purchasing matching ammunition" or something to that effect. I am no longer completely convinced that this is entirely necessary,, but having such a deadly weapon in the same house that I live in still strikes me as a supremely stupid proposition.

This has nothing to do with the gun and the bullets, mind you. It has everything to do with me.

Thank you, Captain Sanctimonious.

I seriously do not like having guns anywhere near me at all because of personal background but like I said, my dad apparently is trying to build a one-man militia and it's ok, as long as I can just avoid seeing the whole spectacle of the gun range. Hell, one of my closest friends (who is this tiny little 90lb asian girl, which makes this kind of a funny visual) straps at all times, this big huge ass revolver. There was an incident with one of the 81s* one night that it almost became necessary, which is when I fucking booked the joint and took my crew with me but whatever. Most things can be used to take life; it's not like people didn't kill each other before guns existed. It's a matter of people being proper and responsible--if going to a range is something a person derives pleasure from, or legal hunting, or whatever, then what the fuck?

* This is ungoogleable code but think about it in Alphabetical terms, it was a bad goddamned scene and I'm not sure why we were there? They all strap too and most are responsible but you always get the newbie recruit fuckwad who has to front.

Montel is the King of Sanctimonia. I seriously want to punch him every time I see him on TV.

(a) I'm not a man because I'd be afraid of a gun.
(b) I'm not a man because I would eventually not be afraid of a gun (and real men are realistic enough to be afraid of them).
(c) I'm not a man because I would kill myself.]

and i always thought Rockist was a man!!
-- Tracer Hand (tracerhan...), July 17th, 2003.

Rockist likes tha guns, tha guns that go BOOM! (granted, in order to understand this you had to have read posts besides your own, difficult i know, but possible)

Oh. Well yeah, I completely agree with them on that. The disagreement is that I don't that argument in and of itself justifies free access to guns for everyone.

yes, but people with guns have it way easier to kill people without much effort.

So do people with knives, cars, gasoline, hammers, rat poison, etc etc etc. The fact that you can kill people with them doesn't make guns special and, as has been pointed out, anyone who truly wants to wreak havoc and harm can do so without a gun (see, for example, the news story about the elderly man who ran over a bunch of people at a farmer's market in CA yesterday, killing more people than the average workplace shooter).

The accidental death/giving the criminal a weapon to use against you thing is a better argument in my eyes, although proper precautions can guard against the former (the closest you can get to guarding against the latter is not acting like Cockfarmer Vigilante if someone breaks into your house).

Cockfarmer Vigilante: best TV show idea in ages!! They could do a tie-in show with the new "COPS" parody on Comedy Central (which I am slavering over, by the way.)

So do people with knives, cars, gasoline, hammers, rat poison, etc etc etc.

b-b-but you can't compare the easy-to-use (hence easy-to-kill) destructive power of a gun... it only takes to pull the trigger! with the other things you mention it takes much more effort to kill someone. i mean, you can pull the trigger by mistake, or in a moment of fury, and kill someone (also with a knife, but a gun lets you do it from the distance).

Also, I don't recall ever saying that guns aren't dangerous. In fact, the post you've quoted GOES ON TO SAY that the ease with which you can accidentally hurt someone is a very compelling argument for restricting access to guns.

This is in my town. Uncle Tupelo wrote a great song referencing it.

If I owned a gun, I'd never use it. I probably wouldn't have ammo for it. I don't know why I'd have one in the first place.

It's a gun, not ice cream!

Gunpowder Gum Double Crunch

They actually post notices about this around the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve in New Orleans. There's some like Local Council Against Falling Bullets or some damn thing (I made that name up, but it's honestly close to that).

"Hi, kids, I'm Justine Bateman, TV's Mallory Keaton. Remember: if you're celebrating your holiday by shooting guns, don't aim them in the air -- the bullet might fall down and hurt you real bad!" [Justine demonstrates with chart and formulae re: rate of acceleration, with stick figure laying on ground, sticking its tongue out to indicate being dead] "And that's one to grow on!"

(bee doo beeee)