Depressingly, Cracked.com has the best piece on guns I've read in a while

[Recursion]

http://www.cracked.com/article_20396_5-mind-blowing-facts-nobody-told-you-about-guns.html

(Each of the five is fleshed out in the NSFW way you would expect from Cracked.)

#5. Gun Owners Are Mostly Responsible, But Gun Companies' Ad Campaigns Are Fucking Insane

#4. The Standard Explanations for Mass Shootings Are All Wrong

#3. Two-Thirds of Gun Victims Live in the Same Body as the Murderer

#2. America Is Obsessed With the Idea of Guns, But Not the Reality

#1. Add All of This Up, and Gun Crime Is ... Down

Give it a chance. This is one of the more even-handed things I've read.

[sadbear]

1. #5. Gun owners are mostly responsible.

Mostly.

[Recursion]

2. "Overwhelmingly" would be more accurate

280 million civilian guns and 32,000 gun deaths, 2/3rds of which were suicides, so 10,000 or so accidents and homicides, about 600 of those are by law enforcement, so 9,400, means a given gun has a 0.0003% chance of killing someone else in a given year, which is slightly safer than a given car is (though cars are operated much more frequently).

Even that is overestimating the danger, since there is a subgroup of guns (cheap handguns) that are orders of magnitude more likely to be used to kill someone else than all the other kinds.

[Scuba]

3. The marketing section alone is worth the read ...

"What's wrong with somebody wanting to protect his family?" Nothing. And people do use guns to fight off bad guys (although nobody has any idea how often that happens, because the subject is so politicized, it's impossible to find statistics that agree). But how many of those same people who are willing to shell out used-car money on "home defense" firearms don't, for instance, bother spending 20 bucks to keep a working fire extinguisher or carbon monoxide detector in the house? That Bushmaster AR-15 that mass shooters keep using? It costs a thousand bucks, and bullets are a dollar each (and you need to fire a few thousand of those to get proficient with the weapon). So why not spend those thousands on an alarm system and better locks so the bad guy never gets into the house in the first place?

In other words, are they obsessed with security, or are they obsessed with the idea of getting to shoot some motherfuckers? Are gun manufacturers selling guns they think people will actually use, or are they selling a fantasy? Are they, in fact, filling an emotional need?

[Recursion]

4. We can regulate alcohol and tobacco ads

I see no reason we can't do the same with firearms.

[Paladin]

6. They're selling a fantasy, pure and simple. (nt)

[The Magistrate]

5. Not A Bad Piece, Sir

They do some nice stuff there, actually.

Particularly cogent, and useful, is the emphasis the author places on the fantasy life, embodied in the marketing campaigns, and the fact that it is what the gun is taken to symbolize, rather than any actual use, which is the key to the virulence of the debate.

"Fetishists' fantasies are a poor basis for law and public policy concerning matters of lethal force."

[spin]

7. Thanks. It was an excellent read and informative. (n/t)

[NickB79]

8. The conclusion is fucking brilliant

So the rural gun owner in Wyoming buys the biggest, sexiest assault rifle he can find and tricks it out with all the accessories from the catalog, but he never actually uses it because nobody is going to break into his house because he lives in fucking Wyoming. If he wants to murder his wife, he'll get the revolver from the nightstand -- he's not going to go dig out and assemble his huge assault rifle. So why did he buy it? For the same reason his daughter will buy a dinette set for her Barbie Dream House even though she will never get to eat actual food at that table: for the fantasy.

Maybe this explains how hospitalization for gun injuries can be up even though the three types of gun-related crimes that cause such injuries (murder, robbery, assault) are all way down. Those ads that treat guns like toys for grown-ups worked, and people are treating guns like toys, instead of deadly weapons.

[Recursion]

9. I also love his point that roughly half of the country has never even seen a gun ad

and so is shocked and appalled that they exist. But there isn't enough exposure to the sort of people who would push to ban or regulate gun ads for them to push for it.

[Paladin]

11. Guns as toys. That's the whole problem, in three words. (nt)

[frylock]

10. knr for later..

cracked is blocked here at work ffs!