| |
|
The only reason having a gun ready to fire in a drawer would be especially dangerous would be if there was someone who could get at it who did not know gun safety (a child) or a catastrophic failure in the hardware itself. Also a fire that got hot enough could cause the round to fire, something that wouldn't happen to bullets that are not chambered (they just kind of pop).
Well, or there could be somebody in the room who is sufficiently passionate about making a point that the gun becomes a useful accessory. Or somebody very drunk, or under the influence of certain other chemicals, or having just had some very, very bad news. YMMV.
Which is one of the things that I find interesting about the way firerms are licensed. In some places - including the UK - the assumption is, essentially, that there is no good purpose to which some guns can be put in civilian hands - in the UK, cartridge handguns, for example - whereas other guns hve civilian uses but that need needs to be proven before the gun can be legally registered.
In parts of the US, the opposite seems to apply. In a way, it is much friendlier, because it assumes that it would be rude to assume that a gun might ever be wanted for a nefarious purpose. This is the "just a tool" argument, really - you wouldn't stop someone from buying a steak knife in case they used it to kill their husband, would you?
I don't entirely buy the "just a tool" argument, because a tool generally has a purpose. Whereas a gun is a device for projecting metal at speed into things. It has almost no practical application, and a fair few rather dangerous ones. It is not just a tool.
I also don't buy the "bows were invented for dinner, martial arts were invented for phyiscal well-being" argument, because what something was created for seems less important then what it is being used for right then. So, I don't personally believe in a narrative wherein some external force put poppies or psilocybin mushrooms on earth to help humanity to heal itself - if humanity has managed to work it into a therapeutic narrative then good for humanity - but I don't think that has a huge impact either way on druug lords in Colombia, poppy fields in Afghanistan or indeed a chap selling shrooms or hash at competitve prices at the Student Union - these are the appications that matter, rather tha n what the universe had in mind at the origin of any of those devices. Likewise, an arrow in the gut or being punched repeatedly in the face is largely unaffected by the archetype of the creative impulse that led to its creation in the first place.
However. The different between archery, martial art and guns in this case, for me at least, is that guns tend to be much more efficient and much more mechanical means of inflicting trauma on people, and also to be a method more suited to the circumstances - limited formal training, close range, a need for concealment. This is, after all, why longbows are little favoured by criminal gangs. They take a long time to master, a long time to use and are all-round less well-suited to the requirement to kill people efficiently. By the same token, people tend not to fall for the idea of "home defence" when purchasing or mastering longbows, because they are aware that they are unlikely to be able to defend their home with a longbow. Guns are a far easier sell, because the conditions - little formal training, close range, limited reaction time - are well-suited to the ideal condition for using a gun, although the circumstantial difference is likely to be quite telling. |
|
|
