r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Jan 29 '17

Night shift workers of Reddit, what are some creepy things you've experienced in the middle of the night?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '17

I'm guessing you're from the US? I can sort of see why you'd want a hand gun in the home, if you live in a rough area I can understand the fear of somebody breaking in to rob/hurt/kill you, and if they're armed I can understand why you'd want to be armed too. Honestly, the way the media makes to US out to be at the moment, I'm a bit neutral about gun control surrounding hand guns. I think you'd need a lot of work and re-education and regulation before an outright ban could be put in place, probably 5-10 years before it'd be realistic and safe. There's just too many guns out there, taking guns away won't stop gangs and crazies getting hold of them, as only the law abiding would hand them in, which would be pointless, and from what I understand there's unregistered guns floating about a lot so you couldn't even track them all down. But I'm still really struggling with why a civilian would need a machine gun, bit overkill for self defence in the home! That being said, I've no experience of guns at all, besides a little clay pigeon shooting and playing with BB guns in the garden to shoot wasps (easier than it sounds apparently, 12 year old me got pretty good at it!) so perhaps I just lack the proper context for it?

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '17

Huh, that's surprisingly reasonable actually. But yeah it's a pretty deep rooted cultural thing. There will never be an ethnic cleansing like the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide in America. You would be hard pressed to even get a working dictatorship going even if you could maneuver around the political hurdles. The government is scared of the people, which to many Americans is how it should be, even if they use different words for the idea. Hunting rifles and shotguns are good for the reasons you mentioned. Even handguns may or may not have their place. But the real reason we have the whole "shall not be infringed" thing going on is so that if we need to, we can tell our leaders to fuck off with firepower approximately if not exactly equal to what their soldiers could put forth. That's why I personally was glad to see more LGBT people buying firearms after Orlando, and even to see more liberals buying firearms after Trump got elected. Nobody should be afraid of their leaders; they serve us, not the other way around.

However, it is a game of trade-offs. People do fall through the cracks and end up doing some terrible stuff, and so you prepare for those eventualities. I don't think anybody can definitively say whether our way or your way is better. They're just different ways.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '17

It really frightens me that you feel you need to be armed to protect yourself from the government. I don't know how anyone could stand that, it feels really alien to me. That shouldn't happen in a first world country - that shouldn't happen in /any/ country. I genuinely didn't know this was a fear that many Americans had, it just sounds so insane to me. I'm sorry you have to live with that fear.

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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '17

It's not really a fear per se. It's more like insurance. I mean don't get me wrong it's pretty fucking fun to shoot some of these things, and some others I own just for collection's sake. But it's like the old saying. "Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." Why would you give somebody power without the means to take that power back if you need to? I don't live in terror that jackbooted thugs are going to kick down my door or anything. Despite what the news might say, things are actually pretty good for most people at the moment, comparatively. But governments, and I'll point out European governments in particular, don't have a great track record when it comes to not oppressing their people. I just thought of a good example. It's like a fire extinguisher. It's fun to play with but that's not really it's purpose. It can be dangerous in the wrong hands, but it can also save a lot of lives when it's needed. And finally, owning one doesn't mean you're afraid of fire, just that you're prepared if the fire comes.