Quote:
Originally Posted by Stuck1nhead
I got into guns when I was sixteen and I moved to Virginia USA. Before then I never touched a gun since I lived abroad. But I had a very natural gift when it came to handling and shooting a firearm. I was a great shot and could easily out shoot those with much more experience than I. So I began competing and that led to carrying. Then not carrying, to buying and selling, etc...
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I live in Europe where most guns are illegal, or very tightly circumscribed. I'm glad not to live in a US state where most people carry.
I have a question StuckInHead. Seems like you've stepped on from being skilled at something and winning competitions to dealing in guns without much thought. Don't you think that dealing in guns carries a responsibility for whether the guns that you sell might be used to kill a person?
It's an honest question, not trying to trap or answer for you but just wondering about the processes involved. I once had to decide between killing someone with a knife or potentially dying myself, and in that moment I knew that killing is too much responsibility for me to carry. Granted that was an individual family member so the responsibility was personal, but the prospect of me dying instead was very real. I have "a thing" about human life. I do fantasise about killing, but I would have to be reduced to a state of desperation over a long period of time to do it.
A second question to US friends here: from when I first lived in some very dangerous localities (1970's) up to the present, I and other people have noticed a difference in public response to violence because weapons have changed. 50 years ago there was a lot of street violence, but onlookers would almost always intervene. Fights (apart from Mafia stuff) were usually using knives, stones, bottles and fists. Now we've had terrorists using automatic weapons. There is a lot less street violence but when it happens people run away. People from a cross section of ethnicities are noticing this.
Nowadays there is an element of fantasy about fighting - gaming and such - because young people have probably never seen someone killed or injured in their daily life. When people are dead from street violence in your neighbourhood, that makes you seriously consider self-defence and the value of human life. That person's death is on your shoulders for ever.
It's odd that having safer, easier living conditions seems to have generated less, not more respect for human life?
Having lived in some violent neighbourhoods I'm prepared to fight, but I take public security very seriously. I appreciate going out of my front gate without fear of gun violence. Killing someone isn't a fantasy game?
Saidso