Annotated 29-6
So you can see me working out some of my conflicted feelings about guns in here. If I had to boil it down, I’d say that it’s way too easy for the wrong people to get them and yet it’s important for some to get them. They can reinforce structural inequalities or challenge them, help out the underdog or harm them. But that all sounds kind of dry, and maybe it shouldn’t. We’re talking about human lives. Shanna needs the service this man’s providing, but sexual harassment aside, she’s angry he’s so blasé about it.
The original Shanna took an interesting path to gun ownership and marksmanship. Unlike most of her fellow Fans protagonists, she was pretty useless at hand-to-hand combat and not much for leadership skills, so when the fight scenes started up, she needed something to do. At first, she bluffed a couple of bad guys with a gun that couldn’t really fire, but as the threats kept coming and escalating, she started learning to shoot.
She also had an adversarial relationship with an overweight, unattractive dude who (especially in the comic’s early days) opted to lean into that identity rather than [PICK ONE:] A) try to be something he wasn’t B) listen to the haters and get depressed C) improve his health and take what care of his appearance he could. You see little echoes of that relationship in her interactions with Mr. “One Ton Guns” here.
“They can reinforce structural inequalities or challenge them, help out the underdog or harm them.”
Indeed. I am afraid of guns, but have lived with several responsible gun owners (and some irresponsible ones).
Whatever my personal ideas of utopia, community defense forces are a sad necessity. Well trained and responsible. We can’t stop the federal government, but maybe we can ward off another Tulsa. Today’s racists scare more easily.
I worry that community defense forces would only exacerbate the issues we face. Small groups of people dedicated to protecting exclusively their community have not been know for their kindness to those who do not fit in their community.
” yet it’s important for some to get them. ”
Putting my cards on the table, as an Australian you’re *never* going to convince me of this, but I would be interested in hearing more (without trying to start a fight.)
Who, and why?
Not Australia, but… Would the Christchurch killer have been as successful at his massacre if anybody else at the mosque had had a weapon? What of the woman who has fled an abusive spouse who one night finds her and breaks down her door? Call the police, yes? Sure. How soon will they get there? How long did it take for the cops to show at Christchurch? San Bernardino?
What of this couple?
https://www.9news.com.au/national/two-men-charged-over-violent-deer-park-home-invasion/49679d0e-926d-4513-8110-929e1dd370ff
Or this one?
https://www.9news.com.au/national/tuan-tran-murder-investigation-second-man-charged-over-home-invasion-death/277be281-fe77-48a9-817d-b6d6719c14bf
The problem with those hypothetical examples is, they’re all hypothetical. It’s easy, and even sometimes fun, to imagine that you’d be the cool and collected good guy with a gun who takes out the bad guy. And it’s even easier to assume that your gun makes you invincible, that it levels the playing field or even tilts it the other way in your favor. It’s your ace in the hole, your weighted die, your automatic game winner.
In reality, the stress of being under attack will flood you with panic, confusion, and desperation. Most of the time in that situation, a gun will be a greater danger to you than to the person you’re defending yourself from. “Good guys with guns” often end up shooting innocent bystanders by mistake rather than the actual bad guy. They also often get shot themselves by better prepared bad guys or even by responding police who see the gun out and jump to the obvious conclusion. And your abusive ex who manages to kick your door in? Hope you’re well trained with that gun of yours, or said ex could very well wrestle it away and turn it on you.
That’s the reality of guns. They aren’t the solid protection from bad guys people like to claim they are. The most likely outcome from buying a gun to protect yourself is that you’ll accidentally shoot yourself or an innocent bystander.
It absolutely is not the reality of guns. It’s a common talking point, but it’s not reality. There are dozens upon dozens of stories of people using firearms successfully in self-defense, even people with little to no training. You can find out for yourself by just looking around but here’s something to get you started.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/crime/2020/07/10/wesley-chapel-homeowner-fires-on-three-intruders-killing-two-of-them/
https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/pascocounty/pasco-homeowner-shoots-armed-intruders-home-invasion/67-202ec38a-761e-48e0-be15-5b95978a91ed
https://www.radio.com/krld/articles/news/homeowner-shoots-intruder
https://www.foxnews.com/us/phoenix-boy-14-shoots-armed-intruder-while-watching-three-younger-siblings
These are just a smattering of cases.
Yes it is reality. You bring up the Christchurch massacre, as if throwing more guns into a panicked mass of people would have helped. Because obviously, the one thing that would have saved those people is *crossfire*. You probably also think more guns in that Century 16 theater in Colorado would have stopped James Holmes rather than resulting in even more deaths. Because armed people blinded by gas and flashbangs in a darkened theater would definitely have known where to shoot.
Meanwhile, even a quick Google search finds about 50 times as many stories of people who accidentally shoot themselves or others in their households than who shoot an intruder. And by far the most common use of guns? Suicide.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/guns/
Your perspective is a fantasy born on confirmation bias. The few articles you find convince you of what you already believe, even though you’re simply wrong.
[Citation needed]
I mean I see where you can come up with that nonsense but it really is just nonsense. There have been multiple instances where a good guy with a gun stops a crime that could have turned very serious. It’s not a cheat code but a coward who is going to use a gun to try to slaughter the defenseless is going to be a lot less willing to try if they know that those who they are after are also armed.
Meanwhile, I see where you come up with your nonsense: you have no idea how people actually behave during a crisis. You really think a panicked mass of people who have no idea what’s going on and where the danger is coming from will be able to shoot back at someone who got the drop on them. People don’t react that way, and people who shoot into crowds count on that.
Of course, facts aren’t going to change your mind; you’re going to believe what you’re going to believe regardless. But the numbers are clear: suicides alone are the vast majority of gun deaths. Combine them with murders and you’ve accounted for well over 90% of gun deaths. So yes, you’re far more likely to shoot yourself, whether accidentally or on purpose, than you are to shoot an intruder in your home.
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/guns/
The other side of the argument is that the laws of Physics, science, and how easy it is to build a functioning firearm in your own home make it simple fact that anyone with a modest knowledge of working with their hands could build a gun in their own home no matter what the law says. And this being the case, and I not being Superman and bulletproof, my best defense against someone else with a gun who decides to kill me, is being able to shoot back. The right to self defence being considered a basic human right…
First of all, feel free to have your own opinion. But in the interest of a free transfer of ideas: consider that if someone with a gun decides to kill you, you will likely be shot in the back at night. Given that you’re not Superman and can’t see the future, I don’t believe being armed helps in such situations— what protects you are preventative and retributive measures. The BeardedHeathen said that more armed people can make a murder more dangerous, which is a retributive measure. Restricting gun access or having alarm systems are preventative measures. In my opinion, the US maxed out our retributive measures by importing 160 million guns in the last 20 years and putting twice as many people in jail as any other country, but it hasn’t worked out as well as countries that practiced preventative measures by focusing on cameras and alarms and restricting gun access.
Fun gun facts: Latin-American crime task forces in countries that ban guns have noted that most gun crime is committed with handguns smuggled from the US. Meanwhile, guns made at home are an interesting theoretical point but of no practical import.
Just look at murder statistics for few countries with meaningful restrictions on private gun ownership and see if you can spot a trend…
Shanna *expects* an armed killer coming for her, so in her case it’s a different thing but in general, distributing guns to a bunch of people will result in some of those guns being used for very bad things, and some more of them being involved in very bad accidents. That’s pretty logical.
In terms of protecting yourself, a friend of mine once made a very correct statement: If you get waylaid by a bunch of rowdies looking for a fight, athletics will be way more efficient than martial arts. And he’s right. A group of people who spend significant time getting into actual fights will always beat a single person practicing karate (against other individuals who practice karate…). So learning to outrun them is the safer option.
If all the people at that mosque had possessed a weapon and all opened fire, there would have been a hell of a lot more dead. The last thing anyone needs at a mass shooting is more untrained people throwing bullets everywhere.
…and that’s not even considering the idea of showing up for religious service with loaded weapons … or just the effect of being used to having loaded weapons everywhere, all the time … I can only imagine what it must to do a person.
The thing I would like to reply with is that it is more important to know how to shoot, and handle, a gun – not so much to own one.
There are a limited number of things you can do with a gun, and as with any weapon, holding on to them is one of the things you have to do when you are using one. Therefore, in such an attack, the thing you want to do (if you’re of the inclination) is disarm the shooter – it gets you their weapon, and leaves them without it.
That weapon is mostly useless to you, however, if you do not also know how to shoot. It’s not as simple as “point gun, aim, pull trigger”. And a well-trained marksman makes a much more effective shooter than someone who’s never handled a weapon. (See also: folks who break their wrists holding the weapon sideways when they are clueless about recoil.)
I believe, if I’m remembering correctly, it was Archie Bunker of All In The Family who argued that if you give everyone a gun, no one will have the balls to use them to commit violent crimes – and I’m imagining in response a five-year-old with an SMG being far less effective than a well-trained but unarmed air marshall or an experienced hunter, as an opponent for a mass murderer.
If you’re holding a gun, you also do not have a free hand to take away theirs. So there’s that.
Ideally, to de-escalate armed conflict, you want to reduce the number of people who are armed, and bringing more guns into the picture achieves the opposite. To reduce the risk of misfire, you similarly want to decrease the number of untrained people who are armed.
Fewer guns, more training: that’s the bottom line.
I mean, mate. We had the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 (35 deaths), after which we banned semi-automatic rifles, and the Monash University shooting in 2002 (2 deaths, but everyone knew we got lucky), after which we banned handguns. Since then , there has not been a single public mass-casualty shooting incident in Australia (there have been several family murders, unfortunately).
In the US, on the other hand, you have a mass shooting in a Navy SEAL compound in the second most well-armed state in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Navy_Yard_shooting). The 2017 Las Vegas shooting occurred in the 8th most heavily armed state in the US.
If we’re talking public policy, Australia’s history shows that banning semi-automatics in New Zealand would have been a much safer choice than allowing firearms for self-defence.
Ugh. I really didn’t come here to argue, but look at me now.
The UK has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, and we haven’t had a mass shooting since Dunblane in 1996 (the ban on handguns was a reaction to that). The bottom line is that taking away the opportunity to commit mass murder is a much more effective way of preventing mass murders than enabling vigilante justice as a reaction to mass murders. Banning or at least heavily restricting private ownership of weapons that can be used to commit mass murder is a moderate position elsewhere in the world.
American gun ownership culture is broken
How can an Australian be against guns? You guys have to face drop bears, sharknados and car-impaling mosquitoes on a daily basis!!
You do know they lost a war to Emus, right?
Yeah. Because we *ran out of ammunition*. If we’d just used big knives, no problem.
See, I knew they had to be related to the anti-gun culture down there, and now you’ve spelled out the greatest likelihood as to why.
This is why I provide random facts with no context, for sure.
Considering the specific example, the answer that comes to mind is “fantasy protagonists who need to kill massive knife-wielding hit men.”
As someone who used to be a liberal and has been moving further left lately, I was initially shocked when I found out how much communists and socialists talk about “getting armed”.
Well, you’ll definitely hear more talk than buying and owning, but I do argue for training over ownership, myself – you need to know what you’re doing, or “responsible” ownership isn’t even possible.
For some reason they don’t actually trust the police or state to keep them safe.
This is so unrealistic.
No self-respecting store owner would ever claim the PF-9 is pretty.
Yo you take that back, PF-9 is someone’s waifu!
That’s our hint that this guy is a bit off.
Shanna in this style always creeped me out, and her expression in the last panel isn’t helping!
Also Will is not unattractive, take that back
I think he was talking about Tim?
Oh, yeah. Definitely Tim
I read all 8 comments on this page. There’s definitely no more than 8 comments. Absolutely.