[COMMUTER]

It will be wrong to link the rate of violence in US to Gun ownership alone. The prevalence of drugs which stems from the breakdown of family which could be contributed to the incentivising the women to divorce should all be taken into consideration when figuring out the complex mess. The higher rate at which the crimes get reported too matters a lot with the portrayal of their true state.

When guns get outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. This is sorely apparent in our country.

[kadanaJ]

Originally Posted by asitmonty

Having said that, in India, I do think one needs a gun at his home/car (or even a conceal carry). And the only reason is if you ever get attacked by someone with intention of causing you injury

Please no! One of the safest things about India is that if I am to get mugged/assaulted, at least the perpetrators will likely be armed with lathis or at most knives. Almost nobody has guns.

We don't need to turn into USA, making it easy for criminals to get one-button kill machines.

Read the entire thread, about how statistically gun ownership makes life MORE dangerous as a whole for American civilians.

I hope civilian access to guns is always restricted in India. Those who feel strongly about owning a gun, please move to USA, where everyone around has guns, including the criminals and the mentally ill.

If any doubts still persist, please tally the number of school shootings we've had here in India vs number of school shootings they have in the USA.

On this one aspect, I hope India never falls to the USA's barbaric levels of stupidity when it comes to gun ownership.

[asitmonty]

Originally Posted by kadanaJ

Please no! One of the safest things about India is that if I am to get mugged/assaulted, at least the perpetrators will likely be armed with lathis or at most knives. Almost nobody has guns.

Murder rate per 100,000 in India is 3. For US it is 5.

Originally Posted by kadanaJ

Almost nobody has guns.

thats not correct. There are tons of licensed guns in India. 10M licensed and 6x that number unlicensed. Northern states have probably 80% of these.

Originally Posted by kadanaJ

Read the entire thread, about how statistically gun ownership makes life MORE dangerous as a whole for American civilians.

statistically Germany has a huge amount of guns. Yet, their homicide rate is less than India. Guns are not the factor. Mental health and general society is.

Originally Posted by kadanaJ

I hope civilian access to guns is always restricted in India. Those who feel strongly about owning a gun, please move to USA, where everyone around has guns, including the criminals and the mentally ill.

By that logic, we could say that those who feel strongly against guns can move to Singapore or Europe, where nobody has guns.

Originally Posted by kadanaJ

If any doubts still persist, please tally the number of school shootings we've had here in India vs number of school shootings they have in the USA.

Why USA only? How about Norway, Switzerland and Sweden? How many school shootings were there?

Originally Posted by kadanaJ

On this one aspect, I hope India never falls to the USA's barbaric levels of stupidity when it comes to gun ownership.

This is 100% right.

Ideally, I am against guns. But that ideal state needs a lot of changes - especially education, politics and corruption in India. Till the time we get there, we do need guns. Which all guns have you fired so far? and how many rounds?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by COMMUTER

The prevalence of drugs which stems from the breakdown of family which could be contributed to the incentivising the women to divorce

WOW! Where did you get such, frightening, insight into the female phsyche? Care to elobarate how you see women being incentivised to get a divorce?

Originally Posted by asitmonty

Why USA only? How about Norway, Switzerland and Sweden? How many school shootings were there?

Yes, school shootings are not unique to the USA only, BUT the USA has many more shootings than most other nations combined:

The US has had 57 times as many school shootings as the other major industrialized nations combined

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/05/21/u...rnd/index.html

There is a lot of data available about the number of school shootings. No matter how you look at it, European countries have very few. And actually in the last decade in particular. There have been a few horrendous incidents.

School shootings in the United States

In the two decades following the Columbine shooting, the U.S. has experienced 11 mass school shootings and hundreds of smaller-scale attacks that have touched every state in the union, with more than 278,000 students experiencing some form of gun violence. John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security official, stated that Columbine “absolutely” influenced subsequent shootings. Mass shootings since Columbine include:

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut — In 2012, a shooter killed 20 first-grade students, six adults, and finally himself.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida — In 2018, a shooter killed 17 students and wounded 17 more.
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia — In 2007, a shooter killed 27 students and five faculty members, as well as himself. As of 2021, the Virginia Tech attack is the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
School shootings are considered by many to be an epidemic in the United States, as is gun violence in general. According to data from Everytown Research, the United States averaged just over 87 school shootings each year from 2013 to 2021, resulting in an annual average of 28.4 dead and 59.6 wounded. A 2018 CNN feature used slightly tighter criteria and tallied a comparatively lower 288 school shootings in the United States between 2009 and 2018—however, the country with the second-most school shootings during that period, Mexico, experienced only eight shootings during that same time period.

The statement that school shootings are a “uniquely American crisis” is difficult to dispute given their alarming frequency in the U.S. compared to the rest of the industrialized world. That said, school shootings have also occurred in many other countries. While attacks in most countries are usually the work of one or two troubled individuals, some shootings (particularly in the Middle East and Africa) have been coordinated terror attacks. Below are the recorded school shootings in different countries around the world.




Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/co...ngs-by-country

One very sad and disturbing note to all of the above. Gun related violence, including mass school shooting are so common in a few South American countries, they rarely make the headlines anymore. They are likely to be underrepresented by a very large margin in just about all statistics.

Jeroen

[lifeinpune]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Weapons give the wielder a High. Anybody who has wielded any weapon (not necessarily firearm) must have felt this emotion. More dangerous the weapon, more High. In fact it gives the urge to use it on something or somebody. It takes extensive weapons training to get over that urge.

People who would otherwise step back might actually step up and pull the trigger. That is the real danger of firearms, it can be deadly in the hands of any untrained person who can't restrain the urge to use it.

You hit the bulls eye with this. Let me share a personal experience in a different context that confirms this. Back in late 2000s, I had recently moved to the US and had a consulting job that required me to travel every week to client location. Every week I used to rent a car from the airport at the client location. Driving was a recently acquired skill in the US and I hadn’t clocked much miles behind the wheels. Once in a while, due to unavailability of compacts, the rental would upgrade to a bigger class of vehicle. Once I got a Chevy Tahoe. While driving it, the commanding view and power made me feel like a king of the road. I literally felt the urge to drive over any slow moving sedans ahead of me in my lane. To quote the feeling in Hindi Ji Karta hein abhi isko raundh dun. That day I realized the feeling of being drunk with power.

[asitmonty]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Weapons give the wielder a High. Anybody who has wielded any weapon (not necessarily firearm) must have felt this emotion. More dangerous the weapon, more High. In fact it gives the urge to use it on something or somebody. It takes extensive weapons training to get over that urge.

You absolutely cannot generalize this. It all depends on the person's mental state. Not to boast, but I am personally trained in fighting with a stick of 3 ft, and a very minor exposure to knife fighting. I have fired more than 200 rounds in different calibers. But even before I did any of this, I had utmost respect for any weapon, because that's what it is. Those are absolutely fun to play with, as long as, you keep in mind that one accident in any of these could be lethal.
And it's not just me. People I trained with do that. A lot of American gun owners, though proud of their possession, don't start brandishing their prize on first chance.
And then there are the stupid and unstable ones. So you cannot generalize the statement.

Originally Posted by Samurai

People who would otherwise step back might actually step up and pull the trigger. That is the real danger of firearms, it can be deadly in the hands of any untrained person who can't restrain the urge to use it.

Absolutely right. Any society that lets citizens use firearms has to make sure they are trained, mentally stable and lose their license at the first sign of violence or temper. And with the amount of corruption we have, India sure is not ready for that.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Weapons give the wielder a High. Anybody who has wielded any weapon (not necessarily firearm) must have felt this emotion. More dangerous the weapon, more High. In fact it gives the urge to use it on something or somebody. It takes extensive weapons training to get over that urge.

People who would otherwise step back might actually step up and pull the trigger. That is the real danger of firearms, it can be deadly in the hands of any untrained person who can't restrain the urge to use it.

Very well stated. My father and his two brothers all served in the Armed Forces. All were trained in the use of arms and all were entitled to keep an arm at home. But none ever did for the very reason Samurai states above. In fact one of my uncles said something similar to me in the 1970s when I kept pestering him as to why he didn't have a pistol at home.

[asitmonty]

Originally Posted by madan80

so my thought was a simple handgun like a pistol should do to protect - why must they get SLRs and sniper guns? its a weird society.

Well they do have one fair argument. Remember emergency of 1980s by Indira Gandhi. Or frequent Military emergencies in Pakistan/Bangladesh. You cannot do that in USA. The government simply doesnt have the option to do as they wish.

[Samurai]

Wow, you guys quoted a 15 year old post...

Originally Posted by asitmonty

Not to boast, but I am personally trained in fighting with a stick of 3 ft, and a very minor exposure to knife fighting. I have fired more than 200 rounds in different calibers.

I too have similar background, bokken, stick & nunchaku. Funnily enough, I too have fired around 200 rounds of .22 and .303, mostly the latter. In my 30s when I lived in US, I was very very tempted to buy a real Katana. But a guy I knew told me it is a major responsibility and not to be taken up lightly. So I stuck to bokken.

One can't absolutely generalize anything. But a significant portion of the population does get more confident and cocky while wielding a weapon. It is like a borrowed courage.

[Lalvaz]

More vehicles lead to more accidents.
Similarly more guns lead to more shootings.
Its really as simple as that.

I for one would love to have a gun for my safety, but would hate to see another person use a gun on me. So, I'm all in favour of stricter gun control laws in India and the rest of the world.

[One]

Originally Posted by Samurai

One can't absolutely generalize anything.

Not sure if you realised it while writing it, but that's one special sentence

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by asitmonty

I have fired more than 200 rounds in different calibers.

200 rounds in different calibers means effectively you havent even reached Rookie level! You haven’t even got to the basic muscle memory and safety reflexes.

There is no rule of thumb, as it depends heavily on the type of weapon, the shooter, his/her physical strength, natural ability etc.

But google it and you will find that most experts will tell you, most people will need to shoot 1000 - 2500 rounds just to get some basic proficiency. To maintain that proficiency you need to shoot 100-400 rounds a month at least. so 2-4 sessions per month at least.

A typical shooting session, single caliber, usually sees you shooting 25-100 rounds. You can build that up as you gain more confidence and develop muscle memory. Your body needs to be trained to provide a stable platform, correctly hold the pistol/gun and you need to be able only to move your trigger finger when firing.

Mixing caliber is a bad idea if you are still learning the basics. You don’t learn anything from it.

When I was still shooting, we had specific training goals that needed to be met, so many rounds, specific count on hitting targets etc. But then again, we shot for a very specific purpose.

If the moderators allow, a link to my old website. Scroll down and you how we (and my boys) experienced guns in the USA. Remember this was 2010!!

http://jeroendorrestein.com/Frances%...n_America.html

My boys, between them, shot about 200 rounds on a target. A human outline target!

[nitinsharma1000]

Shooting 200 rounds is a light day at the range. Initial run-in on a new gun is normally a few hundred rounds.

[asitmonty]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

200 rounds in different calibers means effectively you havent even reached Rookie level! You haven’t even got to the basic muscle memory and safety reflexes.

of course. you are absolutely right. I don't even clearly understand maintenance of the gun, or the difference between different caliber bullets. I tried different guns more for the experience. The reason behind stating 200 rounds was not my proficiency with the weapon but that I have handled a firearm for more than just a few minutes.

It is exciting, but it still didn't make me feel like a Rambo like one of the post stated (don't remember who posted though). If at all, I could feel the power of that bullet and I sure treated the guns with full caution. Something you don't feel from the action movies.

[asitmonty]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I too have similar background, bokken, stick & nunchaku. Funnily enough, I too have fired around 200 rounds of .22 and .303, mostly the latter. In my 30s when I lived in US, I was very very tempted to buy a real Katana. But a guy I knew told me it is a major responsibility and not to be taken up lightly. So I stuck to bokken.

You sound dangerous.
I tried nunchaku but more often that not it hit in all the wrong places (ouch ). I have seen a Katana, but never really hold one. That thing is a beauty, but I don't think I have the balls to learn a real sword. With the guns, I still really can't identify anything other than 9mm, shotgun slugs and 5.56. Haven't fired enough varieties there. I wish I could once get behind a sniper though.

Originally Posted by Samurai

But a significant portion of the population does get more confident and cocky while wielding a weapon. It is like a borrowed courage.

There is no data to support 'significant' part. That has got to be a personal opinion.