Comment on how do school shooters know how to use guns?
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 day agoTaught my kids the basics at 9 and 11. They need to understand the lethality of guns, what is safe and not safe, and maybe most importantly, how to recognize someone who is not being safe and get the hell away from them.
Plus, took the mystery out of the whole thing. Now they just don’t care much.
xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 1 day ago
Frankly, had I been a parent and living in the US, I would have done the same. One can debate whether the circumstances that necessitate it are ideal, but as the matter stands it’s only sensible.
Denmark is, as you might expect, very different. Here, people can - and in the vast majority of cases, will - live their entire lives without ever encountering a real weapon. Certainly, it’s possible to own a gun, but obtaining a license / required insurance and meeting mandatory storage requirements is non-trivial, so only hunters, collectors and sports shooters ever bother. Collectors aside, the type of weapons favored here are also distinctly different. Shotguns used for hunting or skeet shooting are typically break-action side-by-side or over/under respectively, and hunting rifles are, well, hunting rifles - scoped bolt action. People don’t hunt with AR-15’s around here. As for sports shooters owning their own pistols, most use high quality .22LR Walther GSP’s and similar. I’ve seen a few people shoot the occasional 9mm/.45 ACP something or other and an infrequent revolver, but that’s very rare.
Practical personal defense weapons are pretty much non-existent.
shalafi@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Thank you for your take! American gun nuts tend to think Europeans can’t own a weapon, at all. Funny enough, what you’ve described is most of my gun collection. A dozen shotguns, mostly single shots and vintage/antiques. Loads of .22s, but my wife’s Walther .22 is a total POS! How funny is that? And yes, American hunting rifles are typically bolt-action. I think there are a couple of states where it’s illegal to hunt with an AR platform? The rounds are too wimpy for clean kills. (That’s a joke meme.)
xxce2AAb@feddit.dk 6 hours ago
I can’t say I have any experience with Walther’s PDWs, but their sporting pistols are - while expensive - beautifully machined and crafted devices. Completely impractical for anything else obviously, but then, .22LR wouldn’t exactly be the caliber of choice for self-defense anyway - nor would pistols with very inconvenient shapes, no safety, deliberately added weight for recoil compensation and very, very sensitive triggers, e.g. 1000g or 1360g. I certainly wouldn’t want to walk around with one strapped to me in a holster.
Most people here tend to shoot only unjacketed .22 for sports in any case - much less barrel wear, less cost and it’s not like anything more is needed to penetrate a paper target anyway.
There’s a number of stringent requirements for secure storage that makes most people just lease room for storing privately owned weapons at the range, and would, even if they did bother obtaining a certified gun safe, make it completely impractical to actually use the weapon for self-defense. I believe privately held weapons are supposed to be stored with the firing pin removed and stored separately, if possible. The same goes for transport.
Frankly, even if a person owns a gun, they’re much better off just getting a metal baseball bat if they’re concerned about home invaders.