What If We Made Gun Culture Uncool Like We Did Cigarettes?
[img]
[/img]
“Sorry, I can’t bring my kids to your place if there are unsecured guns in the house.” “Thanks for coming over. Do you mind leaving your shoes in the hallways and your pistol off my property?” “I can’t stay over if you keep a gun in the bedroom, especially if we’ve been drinking. Guns make things less safe when the lights go out.”
It’s surprisingly easy to imagine a society where gun ownership is looked down upon, if not scorned outright. This already happened with smoking, at least partly as a result of a public education campaign aimed at young people, and it happened when polite society finally came down against people flying the Confederate flag after the Charleston church shootings this year. Sometimes, when legislative action is difficult or downright impossible, a cultural approach works to curtail dangerous behaviors.
In short, we can make gun ownership uncool.
This was once unthinkable when it came to cigarettes. In post-World War II America, you might have kept an ashtray in your house even if you were a non-smoker, just to accommodate guests. It's hard to imagine anyone doing that today, or even to imagine a smoker with the audacity to ask if they can light up inside.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/guns-cigarettes-cultural-shift
= new reply since forum marked as read
You keep trying to ignore that fact.
Using personal smears and attacks as a mere distraction. A smokescreen.
I've said nothing nasty about you, so I really don't understand why you choose to attack me personally here out of the blue.
You can attack people all day, and it won't validate the specific NRA Talking Point that was used here in this thread, and which your smokescreen is intended to deflect from.
Pure comedy gold.
Completely agree.
Nothwithstanding your cherry picking, the report also includes many statements like this:
"Despite gun owners’ increased perception of safety, research by Kellermann et al. (1992, 1993, 1995) describes higher rates of suicide, homicide, and the use of weapons involved in home invasion in the homes of gun owners."
Let's just take your #1 above. First you left out the the key sentences in your quote, not to mention the report was quoting Kleck.
You quoted this:
"Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was “used” by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies
But left out the following: reference to "
Kleck, 1988; Kleck and DeLone, 1993; Southwick, 2000; Tark and Kleck, 2004)."
And beginning the very next sentence:
"Effectiveness of defensive tactics, however, is likely to vary across types of victims, types of offenders, and circumstances of the crime, so further research is needed both to explore these contingencies and to confirm or discount earlier findings.
"Even when defensive use of guns is effective in averting death or injury for the gun user in cases of crime, it is still possible that keeping a gun in the home or carrying a gun in public—concealed or open carry—may have a different net effect on the rate of injury. For example, if gun ownership raises the risk of suicide, homicide, or the use of weapons by those who invade the homes of gun owners, this could cancel or outweigh the beneficial effects of defensive gun use (Kellermann et al., 1992, 1993, 1995). Although some early studies were published that relate to this issue, they were not conclusive, and this is a sufficiently important question that it merits additional, careful exploration."
This is the kind of omission we have come to expect from those who need a gun strapped to their body to walk out the door, or one close by to fall asleep.
