Jet-lagged in Boston, I nurse a beer in my hotel bar and fall into conversation with a man attending an asphalt convention. After I exhaust all lines of inquiry about asphalt — “it’s like pie-crust, you’ve gotta get the recipe right” — talk turns to guns.
He’s ex-military and tells me he keeps a weapon right by his bed. But what if you forgot your friend was staying and you… “Wouldn’t happen.” He asks what I’d do if an intruder broke in while I slept: “You’re just a little ol’ woman, and your husband can’t protect you.” I have no answer to this. So I try to visualise a loaded gun next to my phone charger and hand cream. Would I feel safer?
Back home in Seattle, this man has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. “Think how useful I’d be in England, when you have all these stabbings.” He has read online that British cities are far more dangerous than any in the US, so I wearily google homicide rates and show him London: 1.1 per 100,000.
OK, I say, let’s do your capital city. “No, no, don’t do DC, it’s crazy!” It sure is: 27.3 per 100,000. Even Seattle is 6. (Paris, Madrid and Rome are all about 1.)
He has never been to Europe, queries the crime figures, can’t compute that the key factor here might be guns. Once I’d have merely been amused by this garden-variety US exceptionalism and world-blindness, but not right now.
— Janice Turner in No, I don’t want to keep a gun by my bed
So you will drive away the home invaders or carjackers with harsh language. Got it.
“So you will drive away the home invaders or carjackers with harsh language. Got it.”
There’s always hellacious bad breath that can be deployed…
my only wizdum toof is a food trap. nuff said.
And body funk.
“He has never been to Europe, queries the crime figures, can’t compute that the key factor here might be guns. ”
That’s a false logic and deceptive argument. Plus, it jumps to conclusions, ignores rate, ignores demographics. ‘key factor’ assumes ‘guns’ causes one to commit crime, fails to take into account lower level crime which often turns violent in some aspect but isn’t reported as such but only as the main lower level crime. She only looked at stats for London and not Europe (or all of the U.K.) as a whole and its already known the U.K. and all of Europe ‘white washes’ its crime stats to not include a lot of crimes and have different reporting standards than the U.S. does – so comparing U.S. crime stats (where everything is reported) to Europe crime stats (which do not include a lot of crime) is a ‘deceptive’ thing because of this.
She changes the discussion to focus on guns as a ‘key factor’ when it isn’t – the real ‘key factor’ is the individual committing the crime and one doesn’t need to go to Europe to realize that.
her opinion is very important to me.
You’re supposed to put /s after even obvious sarcasm
ok, as long as you don’t become amdick (do i need it there, too?).
i felt it unecessary on such a smart weapons site as this.
eh, la.
Best of the day
I can assure Ms Turner that the “key factor” is not guns, as we have hundreds of millions of them in this country but the vast majority of our murders and other major violent crimes are tied to demographics.
Ms Turner, just keep “diversifying” your country so that native British people become a minority, then tell me your murder rate.
Western Europeans have decided to commit suicide. I don’t think Americans should take their advice about anything, much less self-defense.
That’s fine, don’t keep a gun by your bed.
Just don’t tell me that I can’t.
You don’t have to keep a gun by your bed.
But we won’t allow you to prevent us from doing so.
We fought and won a war to make it that way 250 years ago.
Europe used to be a place. It is no longer. It is a nostalgic memory. The best of Europe emigrated a century and three quarters ago and they killed off the cream of the remainder in two major unnecessary wars last century. The ‘leaders’ are importing literally mentally retarded colored people for some reason. If the people of Europe hadn’t surrendered their means of self defense it is likely this current outrage against humanity would not have been allowed to happen.
I am exhausted by the Euro tribal warfare. Every 50 to 150 years they go on a rampage and invade their neighbors. The resulting chaos with modern weapons kills millions of conscripted boys, kills or destroys the lives of millions of civilians, ends up with cities in ruins.
Their elite do not like civilians having guns and an effective ability to stop their latest fantasy of Covid tyranny, Global Warming, or economic/religious fantasies. They are the wannabe “Masters of the World” and demand war before rejecting their insane ideas.