Leupold BX-4 Rangefinding Binoculars

A "common sense" proposal that will piss off both sides

Technical note: I was trying to "like" all civil responses regardless of my personal opinion - that worked for the first 125 or so - since then the flood of posts is too much so I will no longer be doing that.
Aw, c'mon man! 😪

Wait ... I now see you have censured me. Sorry, I guess I got a little too intense. Bottom line 2nd Amendment being used to defend potential armed insurrection is non-applicable in the 21st century and extremely dangerous ... especially for the future of gun ownership.
 
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I'm not sure, anecdotally probably impossible to answer. I've only been here a short time, and the law has been around since 1998 I believe?

But, if I try to look at it objectively.... me personally safer? Well I've lived in three states MA, CO, and MT in the last decade.

MT has a pop of 1MM, up from 800M
CO has a pop of 5.8MM up from 4.2MM
MA has a pop of 6.8M up from 6.3M
So MA has had the least growth over time.

MA has always had the strict gun laws, it's also as much high median income, best healthcare system, best metal healthcare, and top education systems (top =top 5, let's not argue about rank) Point being any of those things could also lead to it being safer regardless of gun laws.

Firearm deaths, MA has about the same number as MT despite being much much larger and having a major us metro area.

Compared to Colorado MA has a fraction of the total deaths. CO is in a lot of ways a comparable state in terms of hospitals/education/ etc..

In the last 10 years the firearm mortality rate in CO and MT have increased a lot while MA has stayed pretty flat.

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Are gun laws working, maybe. My argument is that if so it's because in MA there is a high barrier for entry and that fact keep people from owning them.

That being said the closest gun store to my house is in NH and it's kinda a free for all in NH comparatively.


So long answer, MA is certainly safer than CO, hard to say what MA's gun death rate would like had those laws not been passed, maybe they would be trending up like CO and MT.
I will blindly suggest if suicide is removed from the above data the results are quite different. if your point is safety, suicide by firearm should not make a difference in personal safety of the non suicidal.
 
I do too. And Im married to an example of a success story of women into the workplace via STEM. Doctorate degree, high salary, respected type of career, etc. After all of that, she often remarks how it’s overrated and she would like to just stay home. In a couple years when the large student loans are paid off that might be what happens.

I have no doubt that if we had kids, they’d be better off with her at home, atleast until school starts, than they would be with her trying to juggle that along with a career.

How that would work for people even 5 years younger than me, just getting started in life, getting married and trying to buy a starter home for what they cost now, and then having and raising children on one salary….. seems impossible for most.
It's not easy and we're probably pretty close in age, if I had to guess. Actually I'm probably a little older but we didn't have kids for someone else to raise so it is what it is.
 
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Firearm deaths in MT. Suicide is a horrible yet separate crisis. In the current discussion I suggest we focus on homicide for apples-to-apples comparisons. Approximately four times more gun homicides in MA for 2019.
 
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Some more food for thought. The US isn't the only country with mental health problems, family disfunction, lack of religion (in fact, we are still quite a bit more religious than the Europe), violent video games, shock and awe media, social media, etc. So whatever comprehensive explanation you're coming up with better account for why those things are the "real cause" of these mass shooting events that no other developed country regularly has to deal with, even though those elements are part of their culture too.
 
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Firearm deaths in MT. Suicide is a horrible yet separate crisis. In the current discussion I suggest we focus on homicide for apples-to-apples comparisons
Right. Suicides can involve other means besides firearms. I've never heard of statistics being recorded solely for firearms suicides but maybe those numbers are out there. Attempted suicide was from time to time illegal in some jurisdictions but seems the world is past that. So I don't think self-inflicted gunshot death is now classified as criminal gun violence. Could be wrong though.
 
I will blindly suggest if suicide is removed from the above data the results are quite different. if your point is safety, suicide by firearm should not make a difference in personal safety of the non suicidal.

MA has safe storage laws, transportation, trigger locks... bla bla bla lol everything you can image.

Presumably keeping guns out of peoples hands has the same effect both ways, killing each other and themselves.

Again not an endorsement of a law, just trying to answer the question objectively.

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Right. Suicides can involve other means besides firearms. I've never heard of statistics being recorded solely for firearms suicides but maybe those numbers are out there. Attempted suicide was from time to time illegal in some jurisdictions but seems the world is past that. So I don't think self-inflicted gunshot death is now classified as criminal gun violence. Could be wrong though.

You can filter by age/race/gender/state/year/pace of death cause etc for all kinds of mortality.
 
Some more food for thought. The US isn't the only country with mental health problems, family disfunction, lack of religion (in fact, we are still quite a bit more religious than the Europe), violent video games, shock and awe media, social media, etc. So whatever comprehensive explanation you're coming up with better account for why those things are the "real cause" of these mass shooting events that no other developed country regularly has to deal with, even though those elements are part of their culture too.
Regardless of the circumstances of access to guns the "real cause" of mass shootings is that an individual chose to commit those acts. The solution should address that decision process not the means with which it was executed.
 
Right. Suicides can involve other means besides firearms. I've never heard of statistics being recorded solely for firearms suicides but maybe those numbers are out there. Attempt time to time illegal in some jurisdictions but seems the world is past that. So I don't think self-inflicted gunshot death is now classified as criminal gun violence. Could be wrong though.

MA has safe storage laws, transportation, trigger locks... bla bla bla lol everything you can image.

Presumably keeping guns out of peoples hands has the same effect both ways, killing each other and themselves.

Again not an endorsement of a law, just trying to answer the question objectively.

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"Firearm deaths, MA has about the same number as MT despite being much much larger and having a major us metro area."

I think the current discussion is not about suicide. So in that case your above conclusion is off by about 4X in the discussion of safety.
 
Regardless of the circumstances of access to guns the "real cause" of mass shootings is that an individual chose to commit those acts. The solution should address that decision process not the means with which it was executed.
What if access to those means is the key factor in the decision process?
 
Wake up. This is the 21st century. The homestead militia as a national defense entity stopped being anything approaching practical or useful by 1860. And if you think a band of misfits could overthrow a "tyrannical" government with hunting rifles or even ARs, you are clearly delusional. To make that concept work everyone should have access to Blackhawk helicopters and SAM missiles. It's the only way a homemade militia could win. Read the history of Bloody Kansas or the REAL history of the Western Vigilantes. Probably more innocent people were strung up by vigilantes than real bad guys. One of Montana's early governors (Toole) narrowly escaped being accidentally executed in the middle of the night at a roadhouse on Evaro Hill. Fortunately, someone with enough credibility who could identify him happened to show up in the nick of time. My great uncle wasn't so lucky. Just a young kid, he was strung up in Lusk, WY on suspicion of horse theft. According to my great grandmother his real crime was being mentally retarded. And how about the group of seven Chinamen traveling through Montana to the Cariboo Gold Rush. A band of cattlemen vigilantes killed them all, apparently just for the sport of it. That militia mentality only served America up a lot of grief during its early growth. And it continues to do so. People who continue to think they need guns to overthrow the govt are so out of touch with reality they easily fit being classified deranged. Nuts with guns protected by the law = time to change the law so those nuts can't have guns. The louder you scream govt overthrow as essential to gun ownership, the more determined sensible 21st century Americans will be to take them away from you. Do the future of gun ownership a favor and drop the militia angle. Realistically it's nonsense and only hurts the cause.

You seem to have militias and mobs confused.

What is nonsense is the presumption that in a worse case scenario it is going to be the whole of the military against the people. Both sides will have modern weapons of war along with those trained to use them. The militia isn’t an angle. It is reality whether some want to acknowledge it or not.

I am stepping away from this conversation before I get my self in too deep and get pissed. Posts like the one ai quoted could get me there real quick…
 
"Firearm deaths, MA has about the same number as MT despite being much much larger and having a major us metro area."

I think the current discussion is not about suicide. So in that case your above conclusion is off by about 4X in the discussion of safety.
You have to look at crude rate, when you're comparing states with huge population differences.
 
Right. Suicides can involve other means besides firearms. I've never heard of statistics being recorded solely for firearms suicides but maybe those numbers are out there. Attempted suicide was from time to time illegal in some jurisdictions but seems the world is past that. So I don't think self-inflicted gunshot death is now classified as criminal gun violence. Could be wrong though.
Most often suicide is included in gun death data. It's factual but I believe disingenuous for most discussions.
When viewed as pure data 209 "gun deaths" in a year may look like a murderous crime spree when in fact only 24 (still too many) were murders. 82% v 11% of all gun deaths.
 
Context. Yes I see the population is more. But you cite the same number of gun deaths even though murders are 4X more,that's all. Carry on keep graphing.

"Firearm deaths, MA has about the same number as MT despite being much much larger and having a major us metro area." Wllm1313
ah gotcha, yeah for homicides it's definitely way more by actual number.
 

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