Talk:Gun

Sections for Types of Guns

I'm going to make sub sections for types of guns (such as rifles, pistols, and submachine guns) Chinese3126 01:03, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

People do not buy magazines full of bullets. People buy boxes full of cartridges. The cartridges contain bullets, and are loaded into magazines.

About guns

Guns are not my subject, and in trying to sort out clips, cartridges, magazines and the rest, I may have introduced an error, or poor expression. I hope someone will check it out.

That said....

This article was not carefully or thoughtfully written. It gave me one short sentence about guns, and then ran off in a different direction to tell me who could or could not own a gun. That's no use to me, until I know what a gun is.

Whatismore, I want the information about what a gun is to be more complete. How big is this thing called a "gun"? What, in fact, does it do?

I discovered here that a gun "can kill". This is what you call a "euphemism". It's putting it "nicely". Let's be honest. Guns are very interesting. But they are not "nice". The problem with guns is not that they "can kill". (Most thing can kill.) This is about "specifically designed to kill with the maximum efficiency". They are machines that are made to do damage.

So lets be honest here. Let's say that because guns are designed to kill (both people and animals), different countries have laws to prevent people from owning them, or licenses to keep a check on who owns them.

Amandajm (talk) 13:49, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Statements like "guns are designed to kill" are political, pejorative and biased. If one thinks of the police officer's use of a gun, one might just as easily state that "guns are designed to protect and save lives". The moral value that some people mistakenly associate with guns is more accurately associated with the people in control of guns.

A modern gun is an assembled set of machined metal parts that can be used to (a) align a cartridge with a barrel, (b) safely fire the cartridge, and (c) remove the remainder of the cartridge from the firing position. A well designed gun will perform these and other ancillary functions accurately and safely. Like a well designed door lock, there is no moral value, good or bad, associated with this mechanical contraption.

The "designed to kill" label might be applied to some bullets that are designed for hunting, but not to most other bullets. In the case of cartridges designed for military or police use, the primary design criteria is to stop and/or disable a hostile person, vehicle or other target. Death may, of course, often be the result when such a cartridge is used but an opponent who is still alive could be captured and become available for questioning or might distract other hostile personnel who go to the aid of their wounded colleague. In either case, the wounding of the target without death can be the preferred outcome.

Dchiv (talk) 22:01, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

That is true. But it remains the fact that guns are designed to do damage sufficient to disable a person, almost certain to be permanent. There is no innate moral value to this fact, but it remains a fact that guns, just like bows, swords, and poisons are designed with the purpose of rapidly causing damage, likely to be permanent (and possibly lethal).

Any attempt to deny that this is their design purpose is dishonest. It may not be what a police officer USES it for, but the fact that it CAN do that is what allows police officers to use it to intimidate. -Kingreaper (talk) 00:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)