RE: Craigslist Fair or Fiend? MAD MOWER (Part 1)

I have never heard anyone refer to someone as a spoon bender. Except Uri Geller. Not entirely sure what you mean by that. You mean you used to make a rake of money through pretending to be a psychic?? ;)

Maybe just to point out that my stand-point is not at all radical for a European, and I totally acknowledge and recognise that your stand-point is totally typical for an American, it's a historical/cultural thing, I get that. But if those are the heights of your arguments for I will tell you that I find them flimsy.

The problem I see with the whole gun carrying thing is that everyone thinks that they are the sane competent ones :) Yeah you can do a bunch of classes and exams and stuff, but seriously, humans are humans, they often make mistakes and they are often idiots (although an idiot would never self-identify as such), it doesn't give me confidence that the majority will keep their cool in a hot moment or indeed even intend to act responsibly. People take obligatory classes and exams for learning to drive and my default mode on the road is to presume that everyone is an idiot, and it serves me well (that way you can only ever be pleasantly surprised). And learning about something in a class can be so different to the reality. For example I've done a bunch of first aid classes in my time, and I had my first major incident to deal with last week. Crazy ex-girlfriend of the neighbour came round drunk creating a stir late at night, drunkenly bashing his car with a chair etc. Upon leaving by car, she made a rapid and sudden reverse movement backwards to where he was standing, probably a misguided notion to give him a fright, but his shin got pretty badly crushed between the car and the kerb. So I go down and it's complete mayhem, the wife is wailing and lamenting, the injured guy is lamenting that he's going to die and that we have to let his son know that he loves him, etc etc, it's dark, he's fainting every turn around from the shock and pain, it was an ugly scene. I'll have to admit I was pretty impressed at how I kept my cool and remembered my training, so maybe it's not a good example! But it's so different to a training situation, I could easily understand someone getting it all backwards in the heat of the moment.

And on the topic of hot moments, I can't draw the exact stats to my finger tips, but, about half of the killings of American women are by romantic partners. Do you think a domestic abuser who has decided he has murderous intentions to someone will be safe because he did a few classes on gun management?? Do you think he won't use the fact that he has possession of a gun as a form of psychological threat and abuse?? I don't think a lot of people realise how widespread abuse is, if you start to interpret the psychological forms of abuse then it is really rampant especially. I have had women who are close to me feel that they have had to go through the house hiding all the sharp knives before going to bed some nights, how safe do you think they would feel knowing there was a gun in the house? Maybe a bit off-topic but that just occurred to me and I think it's an interesting point to consider.

Americans are 10 times more likely to be killed by guns than people in other developed countries.

You have a very sad and tragic spate of murderous two year olds who have to grow up knowing they killed their momma cos their dad (who presumably had done a course on the topic) had left the gun in an accessible spot.

If you look at the below graph you'll see that globally as regards gun deaths the US comes in just behind the DRC.... I mean, hello, the DRC??? They're not long out of a truly brutal and grim civil war. I was planning a fieldwork trip there and my hair went almost white doing the risk assessment and following a bunch of other complications I decided against going.

The thing is I'm not fundamentally anti-gun ownership. It could be a really good thing if there was the right culture to go along with it. Yeah, yeah, there's obligatory classes on responsible gun ownership, but is there a culture of responsible gun ownership????? I have never been to the States so I may be wrong, and perhaps there are geographical areas where this is (cos it's a big place!), but my impression is that quite frankly in many parts there is not. It's all a bit gun-touting gun ho. Now look at some Scandinavian countries, they have such a deeply embedded practical relationship with knives and guns and so on, gun ownership there actually works. Actually Switzerland is a good example and here's an article.

http://world.time.com/2012/12/20/the-swiss-difference-a-gun-culture-that-works/

I get it that your fiat money is probably going to be worth about as much as loo roll soon and so that it's not madly out there to imagine that the US will face some mad crazy apocalyptic times within your life-time due to crazy inflation. And in that instance you're going to want to protect yourself, and because so many people have guns then that would be very dangerous times o be without one. Personally I'm going to train with a sling shot, that's my prepping strategy, I think that might work okay for Ireland. :)

So, hands up, a fairly uninformed perspective, but my perspective nonetheless. I'm sure you would have a totally responsible attitude, although even you might have your George Clooney/Brad pitt moment. Like that drunken eejit who started the saw close to your leg, maybe if you had pulled a gun at that moment he might have "reacted" and the situation escalated ending in someone injured or dead, a distinct possibility.

My two-cents! No harm to ye like.