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Challenge: Guns4us: lifesavers, peacemakers or murderers? Do you have images on this?

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Eric Hiss

Member
Hi Eric:

Handling any weapon in such a casual manner as you both show here, would never be tolerrated by any experienced marksman or firearms group.


Best,

Point taken. I leave the gun in the studio 20 miles from where my kids are. I've shot plenty of guns since about 8 years old, and actually am pretty familiar with guns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. But yeah to your point, I think just this summer two kids in the SF bay area shot themselves while playing with their parents guns, and I think a rookie cop also shot himself while showing 'gun safety' to some other party goers. My father used to keep a loaded gun in the house for safety, but as a small child I easily found it everyplace he hid it. You can bet I shot it as well (but lived to tell this tale). So I am real aware of the potential for trouble.

So yeah I guess I am agreeing with you but also saying that even trained people are shooting themselves like that cop. Definitely if there were no guns it wouldn't happen.

But guns are a reality here in America...Guns and cars. My studio is in the unincorporated area of Richmond near the 'Iron Triangle' where the rent is cheap and I tend to hear a lot of gun fire near my studio at night and there have been some break ins in my studio complex lately. I had thought of selling the pistol, but decided to keep it just in case for my safety at the studio. I keep the pistol in its case with the clip out but loaded. I think the safety is on most of the time actually but I may have taken it off for that shot (and I may have been too quick to write that it was loaded because I may have actually put in the 2nd clip which is empty). I can't recall.

I used to go shoot at the Sunnyvale Rod and Gun club with my father which is in your area, no? Is it still there? Maybe one day we can meet up and do some target practice?
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Kris underlined:
So, guns for the purpose of protecting us from madmen constitutes a whopping 0.6 percent! Nice!
Eric wrote
But guns are a reality here in America...Guns and cars
yes, a reallity, not to protect but to kill!

Time to become adults! (though quite difficult if children are taught at 5 how to use a gun!)
 
Well, on a more global perspective....

World military expenditure in 2006 is estimated to have reached $1204 billion in current dollars. This represents a 3.5 per cent increase in real terms since 2005 and a 37 per cent increase over the 10-year period since 1997. Average spending per capita increased from $173 in 2005to $184.

World military expenditure is extremely unevenly distributed. In 2006 the 15 countries with the highest spending accounted for 83 per cent of the world total.

The large increase in the USA’s military spending is to a great extent due to the costly military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most of the increase resulted from supplementary allocations in addition to the regular budget. Between September 2001 and June 2006, the US Government provided a total of $432 billion in annual and supplemental appropriations under the heading ‘global war on terrorism’. This increase in US military spending has contributed to the rise in budget deficits, government debt and outlays on servicing these debts since 2001. Taking both immediate and long-term factors into account, the overall past and future costs until year 2016 to the USA for the war in Iraq have been estimated at $2267 billion....

[source - Stockholm International Peace Research Institute - yearbook 2007]

The day when parents on this planet will laugh at the idea to teach their children the use of firearms will be the day when I kiss the Pope's arse, yeah, unlikely.

Until then.... fire away Folks....

3d-angel.gif
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
$432 billion to get some more oil to fill the tanks of your cars that goes with your guns…

A crual reallity my friends, can you imagine all what could have been made in the whole world to protect children (and their parents!) instead of teaching them how to use the arms!

An American proverb?
You get what you pay for…
Well, you paid until now for $432 billion of arms. Can you honestly think you'll get peace and protection?

You teach your own children how to use guns. Can you honestly think you'll get peace and protection?
 

Will_Perlis

New member
And Will's post is the same...

Handling any weapon in such a casual manner as you both show here, would never be tolerrated by any experienced marksman or firearms group.


Jack,

You're leaping to conclusions based on evidence that's not there. Think it through again. How might someone with 50 years of experience with firearms and a reasonably high IQ take that picture without endangering anyone or anything?
 

nicolas claris

OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Now my friends, facing so much stupid world, let's die in music

41GWP4HF84L._AA240_.jpg

Right (g-ec2.images-amazon.com) under fair use for the entire World comunauty to survive…
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
Point taken. I leave the gun in the studio 20 miles from where my kids are. I've shot plenty of guns since about 8 years old, and actually am pretty familiar with guns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. But yeah to your point, I think just this summer two kids in the SF bay area shot themselves while playing with their parents guns, and I think a rookie cop also shot himself while showing 'gun safety' to some other party goers. My father used to keep a loaded gun in the house for safety, but as a small child I easily found it everyplace he hid it. You can bet I shot it as well (but lived to tell this tale). So I am real aware of the potential for trouble.

So yeah I guess I am agreeing with you but also saying that even trained people are shooting themselves like that cop. Definitely if there were no guns it wouldn't happen.

But guns are a reality here in America...Guns and cars. My studio is in the unincorporated area of Richmond near the 'Iron Triangle' where the rent is cheap and I tend to hear a lot of gun fire near my studio at night and there have been some break ins in my studio complex lately. I had thought of selling the pistol, but decided to keep it just in case for my safety at the studio. I keep the pistol in its case with the clip out but loaded. I think the safety is on most of the time actually but I may have taken it off for that shot (and I may have been too quick to write that it was loaded because I may have actually put in the 2nd clip which is empty). I can't recall.

I used to go shoot at the Sunnyvale Rod and Gun club with my father which is in your area, no? Is it still there? Maybe one day we can meet up and do some target practice?

Yep. And that cop was shot with an "empty" pistol by another cop. It's always the one forgotten about and left in the pipe that does it...

Cheers,
 

Jack_Flesher

New member
And Will's post is the same...

Handling any weapon in such a casual manner as you both show here, would never be tolerrated by any experienced marksman or firearms group.


Jack,

You're leaping to conclusions based on evidence that's not there. Think it through again. How might someone with 50 years of experience with firearms and a reasonably high IQ take that picture without endangering anyone or anything?

Just yanking on you Will. I actually suspected it might be a photo-chop. I even considered a 9mm bullet (bullet = projectile only for those of you not well versed in cartridge anatomy) gently pressed part way down a .40 cal barrel, but it looks like the muzzle end of a .380, not a .40... Also, it looked a little too close to the muzzle to me to believe it was live in the pipe ;) But the effect is as though it is, and IMO that is a wee bit irresponsible when accompanied by your admission of depression --- might have been better with a description of illusion instead.


Cheers,
 

Will_Perlis

New member
The 9mm cartridge is real and properly chambered, the barrel is in the slide, and the slide is resting on the first inch or two of the frame rails. There's no recoil spring, the hammer is already down and the inertial firing pin is not protruding. You can just barely see the jaws of the vice holding the gear in place. No PS work beyond the usual curves and levels.

There's no "depth" to the barrel. That has to be a perspective effect from using a 100mm lens from a foot or so away. I was hoping to get some the rifling showing too but gave up after a while. I might be able to do better with the .45. and a serious wide angle lens much closer in.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Photography 85% worthwhile, guns 75%!
From the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control
Firearm-Related Death by Type
1989–1998
Method Used
Frequency (%)
Homicide
31.9
Legal Intervention
0.6
Suicide
45.8
Unintentional
18.4
Undetermined Intent/Other
3.2

So, guns for the purpose of protecting us from madmen constitutes a whopping 0.6 percent! Nice!
Yes, for domestic gun caused deaths, that's true, howsever it ignores the number of lives saved by the fact that the police have guns and thus protect citizens. Not counted is also the number of people alive because of owning a handgun.

In my neighborhood, an 80+ year old man and his wife leaving a New Year's Eve's party, were accosted by hoods with knives and guns.


"What have you got for me?" said one thug, pointing the knife at them.

"This!" said the mild mannered old man, pulling a short pistol and shooting a bullet point-blank through his head.

The police arrived and caught the remaining guy, fleeing!

Subsequently the old gentleman was hauled before the judge!

"Don't do this again!", he warned, "Next time I see you you better have a permit!"


Now that's on the small scale. Now consider the larger picture. In World War II, Nazi aggression caused some 21million deaths in Eastern Europe (give or take some millions).

It was the guns of Britain, the USA New Zealand, Canada and others that defeated the Nazi scourge.

The good guys cannot be denied guns as long as we have no education or cultural framework to control basic human barbaric aggression.

We need to hear arguments against guns, since they are informed by what we must become. In the meanwhile, we cannot allow ourselves to be either eluded by pacifism or enticed by being barbaric ourselves.

That's tough (and so disheartening) but the conundrum we are in for being apes who are to clever for our primitive genetic makeup!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
OPFers,

We have challenged each other and exposed a wide array of fundamentally different feelings, social practice and cultural values, all starting with one rather simple, perhaps naive picture by Nikolai. Following that we've had the photographs of Jack, one a portrait with great technique and then challenging picture by Eric as well as the pictorial social statements of George and of course the horrific gun portrait by Will. Yes, let's not forget the humor in Michael's creation!

Who would have thought we'd dare take this subject to such confrontational limits with these photographs? In that respect, OPF as a forum has succeeded beyond the best hopes of Nicolas and I when we started OPF. Yes, hearing just the idea of children firing guns is painful and represents a right-wing attitude, but without that voice, we are not telling the truth of where we are as a society!

From a medical point of view, children are not sufficiently in control of their impulses and don't have secure separation of real and play to safely handle guns, even in the presence of adults.

(If we were at war, for sure, we might even need them and take that risk. In many cases, children carrying bullets from soldier to soldier have helped people defend themselves. However, we are not in such situations now). So if we are going to have guns, they need to be secured from children and visitors. When is someone safe with a gun? I have no idea! For sure very occaisionally we are safer with a gun. I'd tighten the strings of responsibility on weapons. However, the American society is not at the point where everyone wants guns banned from personal ownership. Gun ownership, for good reason at the time, was guaranteed as a right to U.S. citizens.


Still, gun deaths are a reality and sickening. To the commonsense of Europeans and many Americans, this is all ridiculous and a culture devaluing human life and promoting violent solutions to conflicts.

This is a complex and difficult subject to explore together. No idea has been excluded, to the best of my knowledge. However, we are at the edge of being so confrontational that, on this one occasion, I'm closing this magnificent thread. We've at least asked the right questions!

I look at this set of photographs as being important. Please revisit them again and I hope this will encourage us to examine our ideas and come up with new photographic work of value and worthy of our skills and brain power.

Asher
 
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