this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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Fuck me, hold tight. There's a gun in your trousers. What's a gun doing in your trousers? What's to stop it from blowing your bits off every time you sit down?
Passive and active safeties, a trigger guard, a stiff trigger, and, for some, not having a round in the chamber.
That makes it even weirder. Why would you carry a gun at this level of quick access, if the gun itself is not quick access?
I'm not confident your interest is genuine, as your incredulity seems intent on maligning gun owners, but giving you the benefit of the doubt and for the edification of lemmy readers:
while carrying a gun at the front of your torso does generally provide slightly quicker drawing speed on trained individuals and all things being equal, the "level of quick access" is not usually the reason to prefer this style of carry. Rather, many that choose "appendix" carry tend to do so for ergonomics and comfort.
Also, "the gun itself is not quick access" is a misapprehension on your part; every feature I listed that you replied to, other than leaving the chamber empty, does not add any time to the deployment of the gun.
And if you are genuinely curious, you may be interested to know that because modern firearms are so incredibly safe (like modern cars - its the people using them that make them unsafe, unlike the guns and cars of the past which were much more inherently unsafe in design), leaving the chamber empty is usually not necessary or practiced.
They say that 50 years or so ago a method of drawing a pistol with an empty chamber and chambering a round in the same motion was made procedure by the IDF, as their weapons were coming from many disparate sources and shouldn't be trusted to have functional firing pin safeties, etc., so they were trained to carry them with an empty chamber. Nowadays, carrying, drawing, and charging a pistol on an empty chamber is known as "Israeli carry" or "Israeli draw."
I'm sorry; I was being sarcastic. Thank you for the reply though.
I would like to add that since everybody makes mistakes, no one can (statistically) handle a gun 100% safely 100% of the time. E.g. a carried gun is never completely safe from theft. So no carrier is "safe", therefore no gun is "safe". Personally I would not use that word when referring to objects designed to do harm. I don't think a modern car is a good analogy. A better one would be "modern guillotines are incredibly safe".
I appreciate that you qualified your stated opinion with "personally," because I agree that this is a matter of perspective.
In my opinion, the word "safe" when applied to cars assumes we understand that traveling at 60+ MPH is itself more dangerous than standing still. Then, to call a certain car "safe" is to be using obvious relative terms; safer than this other car, rated highly by impartial safety experts, etc.
To wit: No one in a conversation about a car's safety would genuinely say "sure, if I buy your new vehicle I'll be better protected on the road than any other driver of a current production mid-size sedan, thanks to all these state-of-the-art safety features, but - pray tell - how 'safe' can you really call this car if could be stolen from me and used to run me down?" Or "this car doesn't seem safe, I could walk to the store and not need rollover protection."
I think guillotines would also work fine to illustrate the point. Guillotines are, of course, built to kill. Handled properly, I can easily imagine them being safe. If we put a rich man's neck in it and he loses his head, that is the correct function of the tool.
Safety is widely understood as protection from inadvertent danger. The rich man's death was not inadvertent. The car being stolen and used against you was not inadvertent. A trained person carrying a gun is safer than not. These tools are safe.
Well. Since the tools are lethal, and countries implementing the death penalty always end up killing innocent people, and more guns = more gun violence and accidents, it's obvious to me that these tools are not safe. To me, gun safety is as applicable to the real world as the perfectly straight line in mathematics, or the perfectly rational thinker in logics...
I'm fascinated by the emphasis on protection in your (and Americans' in general) definition of safety. In Europe, "safe" simply means "not dangerous". From your "~~wildly~~ widely (edit: typo) understood" definition, I get the feeling that you view danger as unavoidable. Would you mind sharing your thoughts on what safety would mean to you and your community, if there was no danger to protect from? Would you still carry a gun for protection if all strangers were harmless? Have you ever visited a country where no one, not even law enforcement, carries lethal weapons? Etc.
I said widely.
I don't expect to dissolve the biases between us, but if you are trying to understand my comment, pay attention to the focus on "relatively" and "perspective:"
Guns, and knives, and people, are inherently dangerous. That is a given, a truism. They are to be respected - humans for their innate value, and each for their capability to harm.
The risk of handling knives can be mitigated with respect, forethought, training, proper application, tool maintenance, etc. The fact that they are capable of hurting us should not be forgotten, but our relationship with them need not be dominated by it. In fact, with proper safety on the part of the handler, knives can be considered "relatively safe," especially from a statistical standpoint.
The same can be said for guns. And people.
Yes but the reason I don't agree with you is that knives, and cars for that matter, serve different purposes:
Do you not see the difference here?
This difference was the subject of my original comment. I see nothing being stated here beyond truisms.
The "safety" of those targeted for killing by killing tools or any tools used on purpose for defense or offense is a strange focus. The target of a tool used for killing being killed is not very safe, good observation?
Sure, it's truism. I just felt like I had to make myself super clear since you kept using car and knife safety as examples.
Your original comment spoke about safety mechanisms in gun construction, not about how carrying, in itself, makes others more unsafe, which is my point here. Along the way you've written things I thoroughly don't agree with, like
Take this video of unarmed policemen trained in de-escalation, for instance. Would this situation have been handled more safely if it was handled by gun-trained, armed policemen?
I appreciate your point being made clear. Now, please apply the concept of "carrying (a gun) makes others more unsafe" to cars and knives, examples of obviously inherently dangerous tools.
The real issue for me is capitalism. Are you a liberal? Because your "point" is liberal propaganda. Guns are not correlated to violence, inequality is.
I like my bottom surgery to come as a surprise
A proper holster.
Things like this https://guerrilla-tactical.com/ and proper training. I used to daily carry as a queer person in a very conservative part of the US. But I no longer do as I no longer have the time to train like I used to and handgun skills are perishable.
Wow, what a fascist fucking group you subscribe to (Guerrilla Tactical)
Not only is their entire branding "guns for civilian warfare", but they sell Confederate Black Flag patches which originally meant "I don't take prisoners" ("I kill everyone, even if they surrender.").
Their slogan is "Stay Dangerous".
I don't know if you can signal "kill civilians, start a civil war" any harder...
Gun advocates stop advocating for White Supremacy challenge (impossible).
I mean come the fuck on they sell a patch with a KKK member in crosshairs and text saying not in our neighborhood. Also shirts saying keep racism out of gun culture, could you be anymore of a knee jerk asshole.
Bro their anarchist, that's a leftist group. Anarchist wave a black flag.
Oh, they're anarchists...
That explains why they are indistinguishable from fascists.
Yeesh go touch some grass.