When I did my altMBA, one task proved to be significantly useful to me. If you try to understand someone’s worldview you will also, eventually, understand their point of view, even if you strongly disagree or know for sure it is factually wrong. That understanding can be useful when deciding on which approach would be the most useful to understand irrationality – whether it is your own or someone else’s.
Guns are only for hunting or sports. So, this is undoubtedly influencing my opinion about guns and gun control, and it also implies that when discussing this with family, friends, colleagues etc. all opinions are very much in line with each other, reflecting a strong skepticism against carrying guns and less strict gun control.
So, is this just blue-eyed naivety? Evidently, I should be careful having an opinion about this. Anyway, here is me trying to, in brief , pick the brain of Nick Smith that is pro carrying a gun:
Have you ever been threatened? I reckon you have. At the very least, heard about or known someone that has been subject for a threat? Have you ever experienced that feeling? Especially for my family and I, living far away from the city, and the closest police station being 30 min away. Where you stand is based on where you sit and we all have different backgrounds and different reasons for why we could be in need to carry and own a gun.
By the way, have you ever been to a gun shop? There is no need for invading the privacy through health checks or any other structured background tests. The person behind the desk will take care of you, very professionally – ask about your experience, give you the best advice. They will even take you to the shooting range in the shop itself, ensuring that you as well as them are wearing protection, from top to toe. They will educate you on gun safety and how to properly handle it. Please, just imagine the very event where you have intruders in your home, waiting for the police to assist you – they are 30 min away. You would certainly be happy that you went to that gun shop. That the veteran behind the desk told you that it would probably be enough to scream that you have a gun. You can protect your family, delay any intruders giving the police time to arrive. And do you think these intruders and criminals in general will care if there is a stricter gun control? They will obtain them anyway. Where does that leave us? No guns for us – law-abiding citizens of the state – we will not be able to protect ourselves. That is not fair.
There is also research on this topic. Do you know that some research has even shown that restrictive concealed weapon laws may actually cause an increase in gun-related murders, at state level? Stricter gun control will not help – take Mexico for instance. How many gun murders do you think they have annually? Look at the school shootings in Europe. At times I feel that the gun-owning community, the very people that wants to prevent murders, are often being mentioned in the same sentences as extremists. That is not fair. *
We as a community are only interested in increasing the education on guns, lowering the chance for accidental gun deaths, protecting our families. After all, gun control efforts have proved to be ineffective, so education is the way to go.
So yes, I, Nick Smith, carry a gun. My wife also – that way we are keeping ourselves and more importantly our families safe.