Teaching a child to shoot is teaching a child to kill. It’s what guns are used for.
John Cook
Gun Control Australia
Attributed here. GCA defends the statement here.
[Apparently I didn’t teach my children very well then. I pretty sure they haven’t killed anything with a gun even though they first started shooting in the early 90s.–Joe]
That is strange. I guess either the shooting lessons given to me by my dad or my guns must be defective because I haven’t killed anyone.
When I hear this arguement I pass along an anecdote from my childhood that I think illustrates why it is every kind in my sphere of influence has a basic knowledge of firearms.
When I was about 11 or 12 a man showed up at my home where I was alone. He said he was trying to sell encyclopedias or something. Said a friend of mine (Fuck you Ricky) had given him my address and said I would want to talk to him. I refused to open the door because at 11 I was not a match for a full grown man. he grew more and more insistent and even angry that I would not open the door. He opened out screen door and started beating and kicking the front door. I called 911 on the cordless and ran to the back room. 911 said they were 10 minutes from getting a cop out to my rural address, but I had the problem solved in about 30 seconds once the man heard the distinctive sound of a 12 gauge slide. When the cops showed up they said there wasn’t much they could do at that point with my youthful description of the car and lack of plate, but it wasn’t likely he was going to come back knowing there was a pre-teen with a shotgun residing there.
I turned a bad situation where the cops would have served as someone to call a crime scene investigator into someone to shrug and drive off. One situation I end up in a bad place or dead, and the other I get to keep on living my normal fucked up kid life.
I am intrigued by his specificity of a “child” – does teaching an adult to use a firearm impart some different amount/type of knowledge?
I dunno, Joe, I only know one of your daughters in passing on the internet, and I hope to hell you taught them how to kill, because sometimes that is both a useful and a life-saving skill.
And there is NOTHING wrong with killing in the appropriate, as Banjamin shows with his personal story.
IMHO we need to take this silly talking point away from those on the other side, because their statement is correct, when you boil it down, guns are tools that are used to dispense deadly force, or kill game, or a combination of those. Sure there are Olympic target pistols and bench-rest rifles and such, but even my S&W617 that I use as a “Trainer” wouldn’t be a bad gun for a deer hunter to keep in his belt if he happened to see a cotton-tail that he’d want to bag, or a defensive gun for somebody recoil adverse…or a murder weapon for somebody with the inclination to commit that crime.
Trying to push the “Sporting” use of guns (and that iffy argument of what is sport and what isn’t) is a pure looser. Personal defense and justifiable homicide and lives saved is a 100% winner for our side.
Hunting involves the intent to kill but the purpose of self-defense is not to kill. It is to stop the attack. I think we need to be careful about attempting to make killing acceptable. It is an unfortunate side effect that the best way to stop an attack happens to involve deadly force.
That said, if one were able to “set your Phaser to stun” the dynamics of a lot of things would change and not necessarily for the better. Criminal as well as the law-abiding would be more inclined to pull the trigger.
Benjamin, Benjamin… Have you not read this? The first thing you should have done was let the man into your home so he could rape you! Shame on you!
I agree with the Australian. Learning to kill is a requisite priority to maintain life. How many of you have ever eaten a live deer, squirrel, grouse, pheasant, goat, pig, lamb. Learning to kill keeps the human alive. Fortunately, we kill mostly for food or we hire it done by large processors, but killing is an important part of it.
Also equally fortunately we seldom are called upon to kill other humans, and then it is for survival, and only in the most backward societies does the human become food. As humans we have an ingrained anathema to killing our own kind. Fortunately, there’s that word again, we know how to kill when a human steps outside the bounds of peaceful society and would cause terminal harm to us or other innocents.
Now I am sure our light-shorted Australian didn’t mean what he said in the context of the above, but were he smarter he should have. Learning to kill is a survival tool. Learning to revel in it is disgusting, but that does not negate the value of the necessary learning.
Joe, you and I are splitting hairs. Given that both of us are gunnies and have done a bunch of reading on ballistic theory et al (Dunno if you’re as big into biology as I am, blah blah)
But I’m speaking more on the lines of talking to somebody who says the above quote. Most likely this will be a person who has never HELD a gun, let alone shot one, and knows very little on the “Theory” of enacting lethal force or stopping power.
My above statement is designed to be blunt, and to completely turn to argument to my side of the table. From here I can talk (if questioned) about stopping power, and the illegality of things like coup-de-grace (ie if you shoot somebody attacking you, and they go down, and are not able to continue attacking you, but are still alive, wounding them was 100% legal, if they die in the ambulance or hospital, no charges will be filed….but if you shoot them again to kill them, that’s murder).
But the point I’m getting at is a COM “Stopping Shot” most likely will traverse several vital organs and vasculature. So while “Killing” is not my end goal, it is a very likely result, and splitting hairs on such minutia with an anti is a waste of time when even their argument is in your favor.
The difference is that “I shoot to stop” sounds a lot better at your trial and in the court of public opinion than “I shoot to kill”.
Linoge; You know the old tactic. They use children as a means to tug at people’s heartstrings. A “child” with a gun and the skills to use it is much scarier to the hoplophobe.
If reason can’t get you what you want, using emotion (and/or brute force) is your only option. I say let them use emotion all they want. When we stick to arguing principles, we win.
When some new law infringes on the right to be left alone by the government, I often hear the argument that it is only to make it easier to enforce the law, that if you are innocent it should not matter to you. It seems to me that teaching my daughter to shoot is teaching her to shoot only bad guys, if you are a good guy, it should not matter to you.
Unfortunately, I don’t think this argument would hold much comfort for certain antis, as I think in their heart of hearts, they know they don’t really qualify as good guys.
Again Joe, I agree but split the hair yet again. (Hand me that micrometer) My argument is all about context.
You’ll never hear an attorney talk about a gun “Only being used to kill”, or other such drivel. And you’ll never hear me make such a blunt statement about an event that has already happened. High-sight has a much higher resolution than foresight.
So the context of Mr. Cook, I can only assume he has little interest in guns because he made such a statement, so a discussion of classes of guns and shooting sports would be fruitless. Also I would imagine discussion of COM, minuet of angle, vital zones, stopping power, hydrostatic shock, and angular momentum would also bore him to tears.
I also see that he has overlooked the concept of justifiable homicide to make such a foolish statement, and overall I’ve found the best results is to both concede that argument and drop justifiable homicide right in his lap.
Of course I won’t make the same arguments with a long-time hunter who thinks we should ban those “Scary black rifles” while keeping his Mauser actions and pump-guns safe.
Nor would I make the same argument if I was discussing to a Soldier back from Afghanistan who is a bit wary of hollow point bullets because he was fed some malarkey by the authority who only issued fully jacket ammo.
Ect ect.
Oh, I know, Lyle, it just constantly amuses me how people intentionally leave themselves open for other people to point out their relatively glaring logical inconsistencies. Worse yet, those logically incosistent folks seem to do so while pinning some form of a badge of honor on their own chests… Oh well. Just makes our job easier.