CRACKED and Loaded

June 22, 2008 3:39 PM

I apologize in advance for linking to Cracked.com, internet leader in lame lists, but this 3-minute video sketch works for me: The Real Reason Guns Are Dangerous.

Two "doods" take opposite stands about a found gun, while the sketch's writer makes them both look foolish. Hang in through the multiple-twist ending that makes it a web video bit that I didn't regret watching (so rare for me, I had to MetaFilter it). More a WC (wry chuckle) than a LOL.

posted by wendell (62 comments total)

That certainly didn't endwell, did it?
posted by HuronBob at 3:47 PM on June 22, 2008

tl; dw
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:47 PM on June 22, 2008

I don't care what you say, Cracked.com is funny as hell very often. A lot funnier than the magazine, which is never funny , I think.
posted by Liquidwolf at 3:53 PM on June 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

You should have also apologized for apologizing in your FPP.
posted by KokuRyu at 3:59 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

Sorry Wendell.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 4:05 PM on June 22, 2008

I apologize to myself for wasting my time watching that video.
posted by HotPatatta at 4:06 PM on June 22, 2008

I apologize for all the cancer.
posted by Astro Zombie at 4:10 PM on June 22, 2008 [7 favorites]

oh, shit - i meant to throw the .45 in the pond
posted by pyramid termite at 4:19 PM on June 22, 2008

The guy attempted to murder his friend and his friend didnt even care?
posted by norabarnacl3 at 4:20 PM on June 22, 2008

I apologize for preserving a dead rat in alcohol and leaving the jar hidden in the attic when I moved away.
posted by ryanrs at 4:20 PM on June 22, 2008

Heh.
posted by nola at 4:22 PM on June 22, 2008

I enabled JavaScript from everywhere and still couldn't get that video to load.
posted by Kadin2048 at 4:32 PM on June 22, 2008

I watched it waiting for the worth-posting-to-metafilter moment; but it never came.
posted by mrnutty at 4:51 PM on June 22, 2008

I watched it then rushed back here for the heated illogical emotion driven online argument about guns that never came.

Good.
posted by Science! at 5:01 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

guns children guns minorities guns drugs guns police
grow, little seeds, grow
posted by gorgor_balabala at 5:13 PM on June 22, 2008

In film school, in the first class, we weren't allowed to use alarm clocks or guns. The real reason guns are dangerous is that they make people do and say hackneyed shit.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 5:21 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

... so what they got bodies on them they still look new ...

~Obie Trice
posted by bwg at 5:26 PM on June 22, 2008

Ambrosia Voyeur: " The real reason guns are dangerous is that they make people do and say hackneyed shit."

If I were a dick I'd say the same thing about film school.
(But I'm not. I've never been to film school. I don't know anyone who went to film school. So I won't. HUGS!
posted by Science! at 5:40 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

That was good.

I grew up with guns. Everyone had a gun, most of us had lots of them, even long prior to being able to drive. Most people were responsible, but some not. In my small town I personally knew one person who shot and killed his best friend with a .22 and another person who shot his brother in the head with an arrow (OK, not a gun) and left him severely mentally challenged. Another close friend almost had his head blown off by a stoner friend of ours who refused to keep a black powder pistol uncocked and when he tripped over a root sent a lead ball inches from the first guy's head and left powder burns on his neck. With proper training and respect guns are safe, but with tyros or a lack of respect, they are a tragedy waiting to happen. I was recently shooting pistols with someone who pointed the guns at me, himself and the house, all while explaining how careful he was about gun safety. They supposedly were unloaded, and it turns out they actually were unloaded, but that violates the very first rule of gun safety - never point the gun at anything you don't want to shoot. It reminded me of this so called gun expert.
posted by caddis at 6:00 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

Dear everyone:

MeFi is neither Digg, nor Reddit, nor Del.icio.us. Those Are wonderful websites, but MeFi is not one of them.

Thanks.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 6:16 PM on June 22, 2008

caddis, it seems like you're saying gun safety is a numbers game: assuming there's some constant proportion of morons in the general population, the more people have guns, the more morons will have guns... seems to me there's only one way to win that particular game.
posted by klanawa at 6:29 PM on June 22, 2008

When I was cleaning out my dad's house, I came across his Baretta. And ummm, I'm not a gun person so I called my friend Alex to come over. He shows up, and while I was showing him the various stuff I found in my dad's place I suddenly said, "Hey, so you don't know anything about THESE, do you?!?" and pulled the gun out of its box & made a Charlie's Angel's kinda pose. Completely not expecting to ever in his life see me brandishing a firearm, he nearly crapped his pants. It was actually kind of funny. Needless to say, I quickly found out my friend Alex knows nothing about guns.

Anyhow, I was terrified of it so I immediately brought it to a gun shop for a once-over. The guy inspected it and told me it wasn't put together right, was cocked, and needed to be cleaned. When he put a pencil in the barrel and pulled the trigger I flinched. He totally chastised me, "It's JUST METAL. WHY ARE YOU FLINCHING? That's just stupid." He was so patronizing with his "you silly woman" attitude I wanted to slap him.

Guns happen to be the kind of metal that scare the freaking hell out of me, as they are often used to kill people. I tend to think I'm not alone when it comes to being freaked out by them.
posted by miss lynnster at 6:53 PM on June 22, 2008

the more people have guns, the more morons will have guns... seems to me there's only one way to win that particular game.

Yeah. Disarm the morons. And the poor. (I'll keep mine, thank you very much.)
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:58 PM on June 22, 2008

Yeah. Disarm the morons.

you know how they say 99% of drivers insist they're better than average? yeah.
posted by klanawa at 7:00 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

Dear everyone:

MeFi is neither Digg, nor Reddit, nor Del.icio.us. Those Are wonderful websites, but MeFi is not one of them.

Thanks.

I picture you saying this with a smug, satisfied sneer as you sip your hibiscus tea with a copy of The New Yorker pressed under your arm. But you're also naked.
posted by Christ, what an asshole at 7:04 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

Now if we could only convince the criminals, cops, and armies to get rid of theirs.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:04 PM on June 22, 2008

i didnt really like it but "looks like your hands' been dealt" is a good line...
posted by femmme at 7:08 PM on June 22, 2008

When he put a pencil in the barrel and pulled the trigger I flinched. He totally chastised me, "It's JUST METAL. WHY ARE YOU FLINCHING? That's just stupid." He was so patronizing with his "you silly woman" attitude I wanted to slap him.

I could understand your offense if he merely assumed you were going to flinch when there was no real danger, but you actually did. It's like laughing at someone who flinches when a rattlesnake behind glass at a zoo makes a move.

The person is being totally irrational, responding to flight instincts, and that's kinda funny.
posted by Mr. President Dr. Steve Elvis America at 7:33 PM on June 22, 2008

A couple of years ago I had a dinner party, and my chef buddy had been studying the region and puts together a spread of amazing middle eastern dishes, all authentic and made from scratch and whatnot. To add a little whimsy to the gala, we made a centerpiece for the table of fresh cut flowers intertwined around an ak-47. It turned out quite beautiful.

After dinner one of the dinner guests picks up the centerpiece, and pretty much does exactly what the guy in the video does, pointing it at people and making scarface jokes. Half the guests are laughing, and the other half had dove for cover under the dining room table. And one of us yells at him, "Stop that! put the gun down." and he responds, "I'm just messing around,It's not like it's real..."

And then his eyes got really really big.

Of course the next question was Where the hell did you get a real AK-47?*

I personally found it pretty interesting to note the divide between people who recognized it as a real gun, and those who would never assume in a million years that we had a real AK-47 on the dinner table. I realize in hindsight how irresponsible that whole thing was and of course would never do such a thing again.


*Answer: I had a friend who worked at Whole Foods. Depending on how much time you've spent around people who work in professional kitchens, either makes perfect sense, or no sense at all.
posted by billyfleetwood at 7:35 PM on June 22, 2008 [4 favorites]

caddis, it seems like you're saying gun safety is a numbers game: assuming there's some constant proportion of morons in the general population, the more people have guns, the more morons will have guns... seems to me there's only one way to win that particular game.

How is this different from any other kind of safety? Yet we don't decide that "there's only one way to win that particular game" with regards to cars, or cigarettes, or alcohol... and I think we've already seen how poorly demonizing and illegalizing the latter worked in terms of safety.

Unless, of course, the answer you were fishing for is "more gun safety education", in which case you win a hug!

He totally chastised me, "It's JUST METAL. WHY ARE YOU FLINCHING? That's just stupid." He was so patronizing with his "you silly woman" attitude I wanted to slap him.
Guns happen to be the kind of metal that scare the freaking hell out of me, as they are often used to kill people. I tend to think I'm not alone when it comes to being freaked out by them.

Yeah, the guys at some gun stores can be total dicks to women. Comes from not seeing many as customers, I guess (and that's more than a bit of a vicious cycle, as you discovered... I know I always see a lot more other women at the friendlier places!)

Then again, it would also help if people knew more about firearms. It's more than fine to be scared of guns, because they are sort of scary (they go boom! they throw bits of metal at high velocity, sometimes towards people!), but having a basic knowledge of how they work goes a longer way toward keeping you safe around them than fear does. If you'd understood the steps the guy at the store took to ensure that it was unloaded before pulling the trigger, you'd have had no reason to flinch, because you'd have known it couldn't go off. The bullet is the scary part, not the trigger. :)
posted by vorfeed at 7:51 PM on June 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

That was good, ta
posted by mattoxic at 7:55 PM on June 22, 2008

I picture you saying this with a smug, satisfied sneer as you sip your hibiscus tea with a copy of The New Yorker pressed under your arm. But you're also naked.

Whatever the look on my face and the state of my dress was at the time, this is a single-link, Cracked.com video post. There is so much data and discussion on gun policy or other gun-comedy videos that could have been posted. This is really thin. Fortunately, the discussion here is great, though I'm not improving it by replying to the detailed portrait you've painted of me based on my two-sentence admonishment.

Since you seem interested: The look on my face was an annoyed frown, the tea was green, the reading material was a textbook I'd just put down, and I was almost naked.
posted by Grimp0teuthis at 8:04 PM on June 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

The person is being totally irrational, responding to flight instincts, and that's kinda funny.

You are being a cockscab, but as it happens, I have a theory that my terrible startle response (shrieking happens) is because I'm a girl and when something goes BANG my hindbrain goes WHURZTHEYOUNGINS, and that's one of the reasons I'm itching to take up rifle shooting.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 8:18 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

What the bloody hell are you people talking about?
posted by Burhanistan at 8:38 PM on June 22, 2008

I picture you saying this with a smug, satisfied sneer as you sip your hibiscus tea with a copy of The New Yorker pressed under your arm. But you're also naked.

I don't drink hibiscus tea or regularly read The New Yorker but thanks to the internet I can readily be properly elitist while wearing naught but my boxer shorts. There is one thing that keeps Metafilter from being Digg or worse and Ask Metafilter from being Yahoo Answers and that is our mostly unexamined elitism.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:42 PM on June 22, 2008

MetaFilter: unexamined elitism ... in boxer shorts
posted by netbros at 9:01 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

I learned firearm safety at a young age, have shot guns of many types, and have enjoyed doing so. Guns still make me very, very uncomfortable, though, because they're almost always in the hands of other people, and I usually don't know what, if any, firearm safety experience they themselves have.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:04 PM on June 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

caddis, it seems like you're saying gun safety is a numbers game: assuming there's some constant proportion of morons in the general population, the more people have guns, the more morons will have guns... seems to me there's only one way to win that particular game.

Won't work. I grew up in a town where most people didn't have guns and so instead my teenage male friends shot each other with nail guns. Various other things too, but that was the most popular.

Unless your proposed solution was to get rid of teenage boys. That'd probably work.
posted by fshgrl at 9:23 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

seems to me there's only one way to win that particular game.

Pre-emptively shoot morons?
posted by BrotherCaine at 12:59 AM on June 23, 2008

*examines his elitism*

Wait, it shouldn't be that color, should it? And what's that lump on the side?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:19 AM on June 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

How is this different from any other kind of safety?

Well, one way is that tobacco and alcohol rarely kill or maim anyone instantly, and they usually kill the user, not some innocent party across the way.

But the issue isn't a safety issue, IMO. It's a public health issue. And if the US wants to get serious about the ludicrous quantity of unneccessary deaths due to firearms, then it should do exactly what it does with alcohol and tobacco and impose a sin tax.

As the arms lobby continously remind people -- guns don't kill people. Fine. Don't tax the guns. Tax the bullet instead. And if the tax is proportionate to the risk, then put the tax on each bullet at around $50 a pop.

What's that you say? You wanna hunt? Buy a camera. You wanna do target practice? Buy a BB people. You wanna kill shit? Then you'd better be prepared to pay $50 a bullet. You'd spend the money on a no-blame compensation fund for victims of firearms incidents and their survivors.

If your firearm really *is* to defend your home and family, then you really aren't gonna mind so much. I mean, how often is it that you actually have to shoot at home invaders? I'm suspecting it isn't actually going to happen very much.

Similarly, if you see somebody actually brandishing a loaded weapon in your direction, and you know that bastard has paid over $50 a pop for the lead, then he's pretty damn serious about the project he's got going on here. You'd better get your ass out the way, or reach for your own $50 bullets because this asshole means business.

Seems to me that this is the perfect solution for the USA. It avoids the evils of prohibition. People still have the right to bear arms, or arm bears, or bear arse, or however the fuck that particular fetish goes. They just have to pay highly to exercise that right -- the same as a smoker like myself does.

Now, as a smoker, I don't much like that tax. I bitch and moan about how its unfair, a regressive tax that punishes the poor at the expense of the non-smoking bourgeoisie. But if I'm honest, I recognize that as a public policy, it's a pretty damn good one. Every time we increase the tax on cigarettes, consumption falls. As consumption falls, so the deaths from smoking related illness decreases,

Now, given that I'd much rather inhale second hand smoke than inhale somebody's second hand bullet, remind me why bullets shouldn't be subjected to such a tax?
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:09 AM on June 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

We seem to have gotten off the main issue here, which is that the sketch was really, really bad.
posted by ORthey at 3:37 AM on June 23, 2008

There is one thing that keeps Metafilter from being Digg or worse and Ask Metafilter from being Yahoo Answers and that is our mostly unexamined elitism.

And the ability for some to complete an online monetary transaction in the value of $5.
posted by chillmost at 4:33 AM on June 23, 2008

Guns are maybe the issue where I'm most conservative, but I don't understand why we don't require people who take a class and pass a safety test before they can buy a gun. You have to demonstrate that you're a safe driver before you're given a license to operate a car; why not hold a gun to the same standard?
posted by EarBucket at 5:19 AM on June 23, 2008

And if the tax is proportionate to the risk, then put the tax on each bullet at around $50 a pop.

This idea is ironclad, since there exist no privately-held mechanisms for forming lead into pointed shapes, and there are no enthusiasts that would turn what would otherwise be their weekend pastime into a (highly lucrative even at 1% of that price) black market literally overnight. Similarly, the $50 price-point is clearly well-researched, and is representative of the cost to society that is actually imparted when the kind of person who would spend $50 for a round of ammunition, purchases said round of ammunition.
posted by Mayor West at 6:10 AM on June 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

Actually, their lists are often very funny. That video was a total waste.
posted by zardoz at 7:09 AM on June 23, 2008

I live in a place where I see guns all the time, carried in public. Big guns. I hear all the natives have them at home. I see them with their guns on the trains and buses even. But I never hear of anyone getting shot (excepting a recent high-profile big-time art heist).

I used to live in a place where I rarely saw guns, excepting in the hands of police, and occasionally hunters. But people were getting shot all the time. One time a friend of a friend brought a gun to the office where I worked. He talked some crazy shit, having got the idea I was in some kind of danger (not from his gun). Then the cops came (it was the middle of the night). The gun was quickly stashed in a drawer. I had to act like everything was normal (it was, except the FOAF and his gun, in the drawer next to me). The cops just wanted to make sure that nothing was wrong, with someone at work in an office, in the middle of the night (with a very wacked-looking FOAF standing there, who had hidden a gun in my drawer). I'm a good actor, the cops were convinced, and went away. Then, thank God, so did the FOAF, and his gun. So I could remove from my pants the 25-pound cinderblock I'd given birth to, out my ass.

I am not afraid of guns especially. I've handled them, and I can shoot amazingly well. But when nut cases wave them around, they scare the shit out of me.
posted by Goofyy at 7:20 AM on June 23, 2008

But the issue isn't a safety issue, IMO. It's a public health issue. And if the US wants to get serious about the ludicrous quantity of unneccessary deaths due to firearms, then it should do exactly what it does with alcohol and tobacco and impose a sin tax.

As the arms lobby continously remind people -- guns don't kill people. Fine. Don't tax the guns. Tax the bullet instead. And if the tax is proportionate to the risk, then put the tax on each bullet at around $50 a pop.

The problem with this is that there actually isn't a "ludicrous quantity of unnecessary deaths" due to firearms. About 30,000 Americans die due to firearms every year. Over half of those are suicides. And we have over 223 million guns, including about 65 million handguns. Dividing 223 million into 30K gets you .0134529% -- putting the percentage of guns in this country which kill people per year at barely over one hundredth of one percent. Given this, the percentage of bullets which kill people per year must be vanishingly small, so much so that the "proportionate risk" involved is certainly not worth a five cent tax, much less $50!

In comparison, cigarettes are the number one cause of death in America, killing about 435,000 per year, more than thirty times the number of non-suicide firearm-related deaths. Sorry, but there's simply no comparison here.

Statistically, an American is significantly more likely to die of falling than of gunshot. Shall we tax ladders at $50 a pop?
posted by vorfeed at 8:31 AM on June 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

I apologize for all the cancer.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:10 PM on June 22

KITH?
posted by regicide is good for you at 9:39 AM on June 23, 2008

In comparison, cigarettes are the number one cause of death in America, killing about 435,000 per year, more than thirty times the number of non-suicide firearm-related deaths. Sorry, but there's simply no comparison here.

Statistically, an American is significantly more likely to die of falling than of gunshot. Shall we tax ladders at $50 a pop?

The big difference, and I shouldn't have to point this out, is that SOME WHO IS SMOKING A CIGARETTE IS ONLY KILLING THEMSELVES AND NOT THROWING HOT METAL THROUGH WALLS AND WINDOWS AND SLEEPING HEADS. Same goes for ladders. Ladders aren't the chosen weapon in gang warfare, at least not here in the USA. Your analogy is stupid and you are right, there is no comparison there. Furthermore, the deaths aren't randomly distributed, gun violence happens in particular communities and is a serious problem in those places.

In case you are curious, my position is that if the government is in the business of guaranteeing 'rights', and gun ownership is a right then the government should issue guns to all citizens of the United States as soon as they can vote. Why should rights be restricted to those that can afford them? I never hear this argument from pro-gun people.
posted by fuq at 9:43 AM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

SOME WHO IS SMOKING A CIGARETTE IS ONLY KILLING THEMSELVES

Um... depends on where they are.

Just sayin
posted by regicide is good for you at 9:51 AM on June 23, 2008

the sketch was really, really bad.

Clearly you aren't gung-ho enough about gun rape.
posted by quin at 10:29 AM on June 23, 2008

The big difference, and I shouldn't have to point this out, is that SOME WHO IS SMOKING A CIGARETTE IS ONLY KILLING THEMSELVES AND NOT THROWING HOT METAL THROUGH WALLS AND WINDOWS AND SLEEPING HEADS.

Three words: second. hand. smoke. And a fourth: fires.

Also, the argument at hand is about taxing bullets, not about preventing shootings or punishing them after-the-fact. It's obvious that something should be done about people who kill others with guns. However, given the sheer number of guns in the country, and the fact that a relatively tiny percentage of them ever hurt people, I don't think the rational solution is banning or taxing the guns themselves. Doing so is massively inefficient, disenfranchises millions to save a few thousand, and misses the core of the problem. We need to address the existing issues of violence and criminality, rather than making guns themselves into a nonexistent issue.

The way things are now, people would still be dying due to gang violence even if we could magically make all of the guns disappear... which we can't, because the other implication of the number of guns we have is that the cat isn't going to fit back in the bag!

Furthermore, the deaths aren't randomly distributed, gun violence happens in particular communities and is a serious problem in those places.

Yes, of course. Thus, the solution should obviously be local, not some bizarre across-the-board bullet tax!

Why should rights be restricted to those that can afford them? I never hear this argument from pro-gun people.

Then you've probably not spent much time talking to pro-gun people. Many of us quite admire the Swiss system, which does indeed issue a fully automatic rifle to nearly all adult males. Also, I can't be bothered to hunt through my old posts about it, especially not for someone with your offensive tone, but I have argued here against the high cost of guns -- IMHO, it's the poor who most need to be armed, especially considering the gang problems you mentioned. It's worth pointing out that the primary effect of a "bullet tax" would be to make gun ownership an even more unequal right!
posted by vorfeed at 10:32 AM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Personally, I'm all for a lot more training before people are allowed to do certain things, specifically those things that can kill other people. Guns? Yep. Driving? Oh yeah. Being allowed to mix/prep meds at a Pharmacy? You bet. You can exercise the right to do dangerous-to-others things, but only after you've received an extensive amount of traning, and actively shown responsible usage during that training period.

Also, if you fuck it up -- leaving the scene of an accident, recklessly discharging a gun, actually delivering someone the wrong meds -- you lose the right. Activities that can easily cause the death of others isn't something to mess around with.
posted by davejay at 10:56 AM on June 23, 2008

How is this different from any other kind of safety?

it isn't. that's just the point. guns are subject to the same probabilities as everything else.

i didn't actually say what i was getting at, but you filled in the blanks exactly the way you wanted them filled in.

i think gun safety education is great for people who want to own and operate guns in a safe manner, but if you live in a place where, for example, open carry is permitted, how do you know whether any of the other people carrying isn't having a psychotic episode? how do you know the guy in line behind you at the grocery isn't having a nervous breakdown, or that the guy dropping his kids off at school isn't going though a messy divorce and planning to show his spouse a thing or two? it's not like a gun is going to help you anticipate any of that. maybe you can keep the death toll down to ten instead of fifteen. great.

gun people seem to have an awful lot of faith in other gun people.

much is made of the fact that one is more likely to die in a swimming pool than a shooting. this isn't only an argument for gun ownership, it's also an argument against the actual risk of becoming a victim of gun crime. if you want to own a statistically safe non-deterrent against a statistically unlikely assault, well... whatever.
posted by klanawa at 11:39 AM on June 23, 2008

i didn't actually say what i was getting at, but you filled in the blanks exactly the way you wanted them filled in.

Well, how the hell else do you expect people to respond when you don't actually say what you're getting at? If you don't like it when people draw their own conclusions, save us both some trouble and fill in the blanks yourself!

how do you know whether any of the other people carrying isn't having a psychotic episode? blah blah etc

You don't. That's kind of the point -- whether or not guns are allowed, you can't really tell who is and is not a threat until the threat actually appears, so prediction and prevention only go so far. The question which remains is how to respond if and when something happens. As the old saw goes, guns are a lot like insurance: you should sincerely hope that you'll never need it, but you'll be equally glad you had it if you ever do. Life doesn't come with do-overs, so I'd rather be as prepared as I can be.

maybe you can keep the death toll down to ten instead of fifteen. great.

If I'm among the five left standing, I'd say that's more than worth a lifetime of occasional firearms practice.

gun people seem to have an awful lot of faith in other gun people.

To me, it's not faith as much as it is pragmatism: we are not going to be able to disarm everyone, period. If someone else has arms, then I'd rather take up arms myself than waste my time in Sisyphusian efforts to level the playing field in the other direction. We live in a physical world, and physical force is an intrinsic part of it, no matter how often we try to legislate it away. IMHO, it's the anti-gun people who are acting on a misplaced faith that they will be protected by others, the police in particular.

this isn't only an argument for gun ownership, it's also an argument against the actual risk of becoming a victim of gun crime.

No, it's an argument against the actual risk of dying due to gun crime. I agree that this is unlikely, but unfortunately, that still leaves an entire spectrum of unpleasantness against which one might want to defend oneself.

The defensive use of guns is not uncommon in this country; even the most conservative estimates suggest that people protect themselves with guns at least as often as people are wounded or killed with guns; the true figure is probably on the order of at least two to three times as often, possibly as much as a factor of ten. And that's just the victims who had a gun and used it! The odds of being a victim of violent crime during adulthood are estimated to be more than 2 to 1, with around 35% of adults falling victim to violent crime. Those odds far outweigh the risk of being shot.

Also, it's important to remember that there are many non-defense reasons to own firearms, as well.

if you want to own a statistically safe non-deterrent against a statistically unlikely assault, well... whatever.

Whatever, indeed. The same could be said for door locks, home alarm systems, pepper spray, and even insurance. When you're talking about the only life you've got, I think it's worth preparing for severe but statistically unlikely eventualities... and as I pointed about above, violence is not all that unlikely.
posted by vorfeed at 1:31 PM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

About 30,000 Americans die due to firearms every year. Over half of those are suicides. And we have over 223 million guns . . .

Well, you laid out the numbers, so somebody was going to do the math . . .

Assuming each of those guns shoots 100 bullets per year on average (I know many will go through lots more ammo than that, but I'll wager a lot more just sit in somebody's gun closet and aren't fired at all, so 100/yr can't be that far off as an average) . . .

And assuming a person's life is worth $2 million, which is a typical sort of value used in these calculations . . .

And counting all the suicides in the death toll, on the theory that without guns many of them would have used a less effective method and survived the attempt . . .

. . . it comes out to $2.69 per bullet.
posted by flug at 6:55 PM on June 23, 2008

Another way to look at it would be to tax guns as they are sold. According to this source there are about 6.9 million gun transactions per year. Dividing the $60 billion/year cost of gun fatalities by 6.9 million gives a tax of $8696/firearm sold.

Another way to do it would be an annual tax on guns you own--sort of like your annual vehicle registration fee & property tax. Dividing the $60 billion in damages by the 223 million firearms owned in the U.S. gives a rate of $269 per gun owned.
posted by flug at 6:59 PM on June 23, 2008

Dividing the $60 billion in damages by the 223 million firearms owned in the U.S. gives a rate of $269 per gun owned.

I should clarify--that is $269 per gun owned per year.
posted by flug at 7:06 PM on June 23, 2008

it comes out to $2.69 per bullet. [...] Dividing the $60 billion/year cost of gun fatalities by 6.9 million gives a tax of $8696/firearm sold. [...] I should clarify--that is $269 per gun owned per year.

In other words, the tax alone should be almost twice the amount of good bullets, about eight times the current value of most high-end new firearms, and/or the value of a low-end firearm each year? Brilliant, this is clearly a reasonable calculation!

Of course, if taxes actually worked this way -- taking the total number of deadly item X sold per year, multiplying by 2 million, and then dividing that number by the number of fatalities per year -- we'd be sin-taxing cars at a rate of more than $3000 per*, and McDonald's hamburgers would cost a whopping (see what I did there?) $165.40 each** (assuming a .99 cent initial cost), but hey, don't let common sense or mathematics get in the way of your dreams!

* (2,000,000 * 26,347) / 16,866,500 = 3,124.18
** (2,000,000 * 365,000) / (370,000,000 * 12) = 164.41
posted by vorfeed at 8:05 PM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

If you charge $50 per bullet, people will reload them using spent brass and you'll create a black market for bullets.

I had a friend who was give a .410 shotgun by his dad because it was safer than a .22, insofar as the shot wouldn't travel as far as a bullet. I think he was 15.

Years later my friend was apparently suffering from depression (or a stomach ulcer--nobody was ever clear on this). So he had been put on a new medication and had a weird reaction and killed himself with that same gun.

I like to shoot--it's lots of fun--but I don't keep a gun in my house because I can't predict that I'll never turn the corner, neurochemically, and ultimately guns are a really crude tool in a sense--there's no stun setting, it's just shoot or don't shoot.

I can satisfy my target shooting needs with a good air pistol (which could still kill you, but it would be a lot more work).
posted by mecran01 at 10:45 PM on June 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Of course, if taxes actually worked this way -- taking the total number of deadly item X sold per year, multiplying by 2 million, and then dividing that number by the number of fatalities per year -- we'd be sin-taxing cars at a rate of more than $3000 per*, and McDonald's hamburgers would cost a whopping (see what I did there?) $165.40 each**

I'm not the one who proposed the tax, so I'm not going to defend whether that is a reasonable approach.

However it certainly is a way of getting a ballpark figure for how much damage something does to society as a whole vs. how much we generally think it is worth (on the presumption that the purchase price of an item has some correlation with its worth).

However, to your examples--

The amount for automobiles must be very significantly higher. Over 43,000 are killed each year by automobiles and another approximately 2.9 million injured. So you probably need to multiply your figure by 2-3X. Interestingly enough we already do externalize that figure through the mechanize of insurance payments & a figure of $500 per year for insurance, times say 15 year expected life of the car gives $7500 insurance payment over the lifetime of the automobile--not so far off from 2-3X$3000.

As for the hamburger, obesity is a far ranging problem and the particular example of a McDonald's hamburger is problem somewhat less than 1% of it. And yup, $1/burger--an amount approximately equal to it's price--probably isn't so far off either.
posted by flug at 3:46 PM on June 26, 2008