Musings on gun control; or, why I prefer bows to guns

[memnus]

I've always been in favor of gun control, and fairly strict gun control at that. I grew up in an area where hunters would drive by on the way to national forest land and shoot at our "No Tresspassing" signs for practice; deer were ambivalent neighbors that were to be acknowledged and driven past, not shot. I feel a small-caliber handgun is the most firepower necessary for self-defense; even that is powerful enough to give an attacker a brain injury or sucking chest wound, with less chance of collateral damage or losing control from the kick. The idea of citizens having military-grade weapons for a "well-prepared militia" strikes me as nothing more than archaic with modern warfare. So I'd support any law that would usefully¹ reduce the number of firearms in circulation.

Yet I've taken up a sport that involves shooting things with a deadly weapon. How do I reconcile this?

First. The hunting matter. Hunting with a gun is hardly fair. Neither is bow hunting, but at least all the kinetic energy in an arrow came from the shooter - through rather a lot of mechanical advantage, on a compound bow, but from the shooter nevertheless. (Someone who hunted strictly with spears would be a hunter I'd truly respect.) Also, arrows need as much or more care and attention as a bow, and last for hundreds of uses; bullets come in a box and are gone after the shot.

Second. Street violence. This seems to be the primary focus of gun control, or at least its publicity campaigns. Heh - good luck concealing a bow and quiver, no matter how baggy your pants are. Enforcing a drug deal with a bow would be, while amusing, useless.

Third. Child safety. This is the other big attack angle for gun control activists, with horror stories of children finding loaded guns. I think gun safes and/or locks are an acceptable resolution to this, but my weapon of choice has no such danger. It takes a considerable amount of strength and leverage to string my bow, and an unstrung bow is no more dangerous than a table leg. (Broadheads are another matter, and should be treated with at least as much child security as kitchen knives.) It's not difficult to injure oneself with a bow, either stringing or strung, but it is difficult to make that injury life-threatening. Loose strings pose a choking hazard, I suppose, but really, what doesn't?

So. Those are my current justifications for the slightly-conflicting viewpoints I find myself in. They've been bouncing around a bit, and I think writing them out has settled them for the most part.

click

¹ I'm vaguely aware with the idea that making guns illegal or licensed on paper does very little to get them off the streets. But I'm not aware of any attempt to control guns at the point of production.

Comments

[derakon.livejournal.com]

Your stance seems kind of like mine with regard to swords - if you're going to kill someone, actually directly wield the implement of their death, don't just point and click (to grossly oversimplify the use of guns). Unfortunately, like that stance, the problem is that there's no incentive to making killing people [i]harder[/i] from the perspective of the individual killer, so why should they use a bow/sword/whatever when a gun is available? And I can't help but think that guns will always be available in some form, no matter how strict the regulations you put in place.

Of course, if you manage to make guns very hard to acquire (and here I'm talking [i]much[/i] harder than, say, drugs), then you should eliminate a lot of accidental gun-related deaths.

[hmdavid83.livejournal.com]

I was watching something a while back with a comedian (Chris Rock maybe?) talking about how the best form of gun control would be to make bullets expensive. If you want a gun fine, but if you're paying $500 for each bullet you'll think twice before shooting someone. Although I know it wasn't a serious suggestion, it might have some merit.

[willworker.livejournal.com]

There's also the concealability factor. If someone's walking around with a bow in hand, they're clearly carrying a weapon, and so draw attention if they shouldn't have one. Pistols, OTOH, can be easily and completely concealed, making them much more useful for comitting crimes. I'd almost prefer pistol control to assault weapon control. While assault weapons can hurt/kill a lot of people very quickly (another issue with guns relative to bows), my impression is that they're much less common than pistol violence.

Steve

[artemis-lizzie.livejournal.com]

Enforcing a drug deal with a bow would be, while amusing, useless.

Unless you're Legolas.

*runs away*

[solkanar512.livejournal.com]

I should preface this by saying that I'm not trying to pick nits, but rather I have a thesis deadline coming up, and am thus procrastinating.

Though I feel having a huge brain precludes any sense of fairness in hunting activities, isn't it easier to deliver swift, killing blows with a gun than a bow? I know it's possible to do that with both, but if one is trying to be somewhat humane about teh situation, isn't it better to just do a quick, killing blow? Or am I mistaken about the difficulty in bow hunting?

You may want to be careful with your third point. Stephen Levy's "Freakonomics" cites a paper where it was found that a child is more likely to die in a house with a pool than a house with a hand gun, around 100 times more likely. Additionally, having the parents instruct the children in proper gun safety would go a long way in curbing those deaths we do hear about. Then again, having parents that took to time to care about such things in general would eliminate manyof these sorts of events...

Besides, you'll shoot your eye out!

Also from that same book is a chapter dealing with how gangs are run in urban areas. The majority of street violence came from gangs fighting each other over drugs and control of territories in which to sell them in. If you wanted to control guns to prevent this sort of violence, they would simply move to other weapons, such as knives, moving cars, etc. And that is assuming you could actually keep these weapons out of thier hands in the first place, like you mention at the end.

You may find this amusing, but where I live, it's illegal to fire a bow, in addition to firearms.

[memnus.livejournal.com]

I'm also in favor of pool control.

[partly-cloudy.livejournal.com]

Yep, it was Chris Rock.