This study has been poorly received at best and nearly all criticism describes the study and data as totally implausible. It comes from telephone survey where respondants reported their own behavior. That same survey reported that 200,000 ppl claim to have shot someone in self defense, yet hospitals treat only 100,000 gsws per year.

Suppostions based on burglary attempts and actual police records in Atlanta, when extrapolated reveal a number close to 20,000.

There are only 6m burglaries / year and only 1.3 million are home at the time. Of those only 41% own weapons. The 2.5m figure is impossible.

I can go on and on. The 2.5m number is a joke.

Here is that irrational fear thing, a gun can be both.

unless a gun has a bottle opener or homer simpson is using it, its a weapon. Read the definitions. Weapon is far more accurate. If you hear a po, victim, or criminal calling it a tool rather than a weapon with any frequency I'd be surprised.

and I have no fear of them...I own 5.

Is the .22 used by the Olympic competitor a weapon? The 1000 yard benchrest rifle? IMO, "guns=weapons" is about the same as "knives=weapons", or for that matter "shoes=weapons". They're inanimate objects which can be put to a variety of uses.

<pointless off-topic rant/>

Ridiculous.
They were designed to kill. Ppl found other uses for them after the fact.
Their primary purpose is as a weapon.

...and I've never heard anyone at the range calling it a "tool."


By your logic you could call an anti-personnel mine a tool because it could also be used to create a big hole in something. I think you'd have a hard time finding ppl to say it's more of a tool than a weapon.

The Olympian's rifle was designed to win competitions. I suppose you could claim that the very first gun was designed as a weapon -- although that's debateable -- but then you are stuck not only defending the attribution of intent to inanimate objects, but also the idea that anything initially designed for one purpose may never be considered for another purpose.

Then they are being misused quite a bit. Would you care to discuss how many rounds are sent downrange for recreation vs. how many are used offensively?

How many Olympic competitors or benchrest shooters have you heard refering to their high-dollar competition guns as "weapons"?

By your logic an anti-personnel mine cannot be considered a weapon because high explosives were originally intended for industrial use.

There's at least one other right on this thread.

So has anyone ever called you a tool? Weapon implies an advesary. Tool, the way I meant to use it, means an inatimate object used to accomplish something.

You have to consider the device in it's opriginal construction intent.
A gun was designed to kill amd guns for that purpose far outnumber ones designed for olympic shooters. If you're an olympic shooter and want to call it a tool, that's fine by me. If you have it for home defense or hunting, it's a weapon.
A landmine was designed to kill.

Guns were around long before shooting became an olympic sport.

and fwiw, all my shooting is target shooting.

rifles at the range or gun for skeet, I dont know that weapon is often used on the range.

I don't see why, but even if we accept the premise at face value, you still end up having to answer sticky questions about guns that were designed from the ground up to win competitons.

You keep saying it, but that doesn't make it true. A benchrest rifle, for instance, is designed, built, intended, whatever, SOLELY to be laid on a bench and fired at tiny paper targets. There is absolutely nothing martial about it.

Guns were apparently around before anyone thought to point them at people. The Chinese developed the principle of ramming a charge of gunpowder (which they invented) into a tube and placing a projectile on top of it, to be fired into the air as a firework. If I wanted to be completely silly, I'd argue that that means it's wrong to call a gun a "weapon".

So you're misusing your "weapon"?

Yawn. Your stretches are beyond common logic.

Consider a firearm. Why was it built? By construction intent, I meant the gun, not an olympian's riflle, and when guns were first invented. When a rifle or handgun was first designed what was the purpose? We need not go back to things that might be construed as similar to guns. To fire a projectile that would kill, injure or maim. Shooting for target reasons and more specialized firearms may not be designed primarilly as weapons, but they are guns and what was the original purpose of a gun? And again, they are what 2% of manufactured guns? If you want to call those guns tools, I won't disagree, but the other 98% are clearly more weapon than tool. If you can't acknowledge that you ought to go back and retake stats and logic.

Again, I'm a gun owner, but this whole notion of guns being tools not weapons defies logic. It's the NRA's attempt to rebrand a gun's image in the populous and lawmaker. They take the term in use by the minority and try to apply it to the majority.

is tool? thought not.

I've heard "weapon" used most commonly when at the handgun range. Sporting clays, trap skeet, neither tool nor weapon.

It is intellectually dishonest to claim in a thread about the best weapons for commuting that a gun is not a weapon but a simple tool.
There are guns that are used for pageantry — in films, in athletic contests, and so on. But these are metaphors for their Ur-purpose. You are lying (possibly to yourself) if you maintain that a gun is simply an "inanimate object used to accomplish something."

And you're trying to personalize this. You're also the one trying to tell me that an Olympic quality .22 single shot rifle is a weapon, so I think you should quit with the "logic" bit.

You still haven't addresed the point that attributing intent to an inanimate object is silly. I mean, the first pointed and sharpened piece of metal may have been intended, by its maker, to kill, but that doesn't automatically mean that all knives are weapons and anyone who says otherwise is being illogical.

Moreover, "an Olympian's rifle" is a "gun", which frankly is all it should take for a reasonable person to realize that "guns are weapons" is an innacurate statement. And again, even if we accept the silly premise that the intent of the original design must remain the sole intent for every other similar object made forever and ever, then I'd suggest you take your firework down to the local firework range and put up a fuss over all the people calling their fireworks by any other name -- not to mention using them for any other purpose.

Eating for hunger reasons and more specialized cutlery may not be designed as weapons, but they are knives and what was the original purpose of a knife?

So all guns are weapons, except for the ones that aren't, and anyway, the ones that aren't are a minority so guns are weapons. Tell me some more about this "logic" that you keep bringing up.

Piss off.

Actually, the "guns = weapons" paradigm is a favorite among the gun-ban set, and is the genesis of the "Well, actually, relatively few of us are using guns as weapons" argument from the pro-gunners. I've had this same discussion nearly verbatim with a number of rabidly anti-gun folks, and they nearly always get angry and personal too. You're not even the first guy to claim that "If you don't get it, you just don't know how to think right!".

Hey, more ad-hom from the "logic" set.

Maybe the other 100k were shot dead?

Just thought that was funny

Not sure what you find ad hominem in my statement, 6 Jours, although yours does seem to qualify. Now, if I were to say something like

Look, you're not mentally nimble enough to pull this off. You've got your NRA talking points — "guns are tools" — but nowhere to go from there.


that would be more of an ad hominem attack.

It was the part that went something like "You are lying".

But I see that you guys are really pulling out all the stops on this one. I can't wait for the rest of the braintrust to show up so I can hear about how my mother wears combat boots.

SixJours, clearly you're not reading. At several points I conceded that if you want to call an olympian's target rifle a tool, that's fine. But again, those types of rifles are the exception. 98% don't buy for target use. They buy a gun for personal protection/home defense/hunting. Those uses are weapons. I am not saying that all guns are weapons, just 98% of them. Claiming that they are all tools, based on the 2% that are, is ridiculous. It's the mark of weak attempt at rebranding something and the hallmark of the NRA lemmings.

Saying that your argument lacks logic is not a personalizing attack or personalizing anything. It's a statement of opinion. Sorry. That you have to use commentary like "p1ss off" is indicative of your inability to lay out a logical argument.

Have you taken logic and/or stats? If not go back and do so.

OK I give, not only weapons not tools, firearms are weapons of mass destrtuction. Not tools, not even inanimate objects. GUNS ARE JUST WEAPONS. Mean weapons. Bad weapons.......lighten up you guys, it is almsot time to go home.

Really? Now it all makes sense.

Dont talk about nobodies MaMa!

Well I am stuck at work for a while, so.. I noticed eiarler on the last page someone called brains and strong legs weapons. I dont think they are. I think they are body parts. Not weapons, not tools but body parts.

Tool or weapon? Hmmmm... Remember when Homer thought Bart was gay so he tried forcing him to shoot a deer because he was convinced that would "fix" him? I guess in that case the gun was both tool and weapon!

Assuming that the percentages are important, I suppose you have a source for your numbers? And what of the fact that 99.99999% of shots fired by civilians in America are not at live targets?

I'd rather be an NRA lemming that an HCI shill.

If you'd just said that my argument lacks logic you'd have a point. "If you can't acknowledge that you ought to go back and retake stats and logic", however, is not an attack on my argument but my ability to think logically. And if "a statement of opinion" is a defense, then "In my opinion (insert name here) is a worthless piece of crap" wouldn't be ad-hom.

Again, this is ad-hominem, just like "Have you taken logic and/or stats? If not go back and do so".

I'd say that this is indicative of your inability to debate without making it about the debaters, but that would be so perfectly circular that we might implode or something.