People over estimate how cool and collected they are.
The other day some asshole was letting his dog shit on the sidewalk and not picking it up. I saw. He saw me see. We made eye contact. He called me a coward and walked away.
In that moment I was emotionally ready to murder him. Just put his smug ass on the ground with his dog shit. Luckily, I don’t carry a gun so I just yelled at him. But if I had a gun on me? No way the scene would have gone better.
In that moment I was emotionally ready to murder him.
This says more about you specifically than it does the entire population.
I’ve carried a gun for almost 10 years, and in that time I’ve had all kinds of interactions from people calling me mean names, people cutting me off, actual bad accidents caused by dumbassery on their part, a guy pulling a knife who decided to leave before getting shot, and everything in between, I’ve never wanted to kill anyone. There were a few times I was scared I might have to, like the guy pulling the knife, but I’ve always been relieved it hasn’t had to happen. You should not own a gun if someone calling you a mean name is enough to send you into a murderous rage, but not everyone is like you.
enough people are like me that carrying guns should not be as easy as it is. We can trade counter anecdotes all we want, but I think the frequency of mass shootings and other gun violence in the US supports my position better than yours.
There’s a pretty big gulf between yelling at someone and shooting them… Had you considered non life-threatening physical force? Or do you always go right to murder
The point of the anecdote was that when people get really mad, they don’t think rationally. If I had a gun, it would have been really easy in that moment to pull it out and use it. That’s too easy.
(Though yes, I did briefly consider picking up his dog’s shit with a plastic bag of my own, and hitting him in the face with it, but by then I had cooled down enough to realize I didn’t want to potentially ruin my life by assaulting a guy on the street.)
People over estimate how cool and collected they are.
The other day some asshole was letting his dog shit on the sidewalk and not picking it up. I saw. He saw me see. We made eye contact. He called me a coward and walked away.
In that moment I was emotionally ready to murder him. Just put his smug ass on the ground with his dog shit. Luckily, I don’t carry a gun so I just yelled at him. But if I had a gun on me? No way the scene would have gone better.
This says more about you specifically than it does the entire population.
I’ve carried a gun for almost 10 years, and in that time I’ve had all kinds of interactions from people calling me mean names, people cutting me off, actual bad accidents caused by dumbassery on their part, a guy pulling a knife who decided to leave before getting shot, and everything in between, I’ve never wanted to kill anyone. There were a few times I was scared I might have to, like the guy pulling the knife, but I’ve always been relieved it hasn’t had to happen. You should not own a gun if someone calling you a mean name is enough to send you into a murderous rage, but not everyone is like you.
enough people are like me that carrying guns should not be as easy as it is. We can trade counter anecdotes all we want, but I think the frequency of mass shootings and other gun violence in the US supports my position better than yours.
I think the frequency would be much higher if it did actually, what with the 600,000,000+ guns in 45ish% of the population’s hands.
There’s a pretty big gulf between yelling at someone and shooting them… Had you considered non life-threatening physical force? Or do you always go right to murder
The point of the anecdote was that when people get really mad, they don’t think rationally. If I had a gun, it would have been really easy in that moment to pull it out and use it. That’s too easy.
(Though yes, I did briefly consider picking up his dog’s shit with a plastic bag of my own, and hitting him in the face with it, but by then I had cooled down enough to realize I didn’t want to potentially ruin my life by assaulting a guy on the street.)
Counterpoint:
Maybe it would have.