Does the thought of various dangers keep you from shooting in the city?

[ex machina]

Why would it be that you guys in the US seem scared and the rest not really ?

Good question. Some blame political and media sensationalism -- does the media in your country sensationalize criminal behavior?

 

[barry]

Why would it be that you guys in the US seem scared and the rest not really ?

I’ve been to Europe a couple times (over a month total) and other than two attempts to swipe my cell phone by friendly-seeming thieves, never felt threatened. Months spent in China, no problems.

But the homeless population in at least west coast US cities is dramatically expanding, and many are schizophrenic. In some cities at night, more than half of the people on the street are homeless.

 

[Joris]

does the media in your country sensationalize criminal behavior?

Yeah, I suppose. So that doesn't seem to be the reason.

friendly-seeming thieves

Cheers for by friendly-seeming thieves !

 

[barry]

Cheers for by friendly-seeming thieves !

They’re so nice you don’t think of punching them.

 

[ex machina]

Yeah, I suppose. So that doesn't seem to be the reason.

Welp, it does seem the crime statistics are higher in the US:
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/France/United-States/Crime

Still, I think the perception of danger is amped up over here by both sensationallistic news media that have 24 hours a day to fill with something, and then politicians who leverage fear and distrust for their own reasons.

 

[agentlossing]

Why would it be that you guys in the US seem scared and the rest not really ?

Um, no. For my part, the west coast US has really bad homeless problems. But we aren't scared.

 

[ralf-11]

It might have to do with healthcare. Other countries, at least in the developed world, have comprehensive healthcare - the US doesn't. I know there are lots of homeless in Paris however.

Anyway, the US has lots of mentally ill roaming the streets without healthcare or treatment. Some fraction of them are dangerous. Knifings are not uncommon among the mentally ill homeless - at least on the West coast. On top of that is a serious problem with meth, gang violence, and trafficking of young girls.

I live in a small university city of 160,000 and the sorority girls here are now afraid to go out on the streets much - all in the last year. There are attacks on innocent citizens here every month.

 

[stratokaster]

I'm originally from an industrial town in Russia. I spent 10 years in Ukraine living on the outskirts of Kyiv in an area which was considered "not nice". I also lived in the US for 14 months.

Baltimore is by far the scariest place I've been to. When we were visiting it for the first time, we were actually stopped by an old lady who told us in a hushed voice: "Don't go there, you're walking into the hood!"

 

[dirtdevil]

Why would it be that you guys in the US seem scared and the rest not really ?

You feel totally safe in the suburbs of Paris, Malmö, Moleenbeek and Birmingham? In North America, you have that type of troublemakers downtown, not in the periphery of the city like in European cities which is easier to avoid. Add to that the daily culture of "low level instincts" of the american media (glorification of a violent lifestyle, etc and it has nothing to do with politics)...

 

[Joris]

lots of homeless in Paris

Yes and they are not considered a risk. By the way refugees from all over Africa and Asia roam the countryside around Calais, hoping to hitch a ride or a boat, or even to swim to enter Britain for obscure reasons. They also in no way are considered presenting a risk to the locals.

 

[Brownie]

get something bigger than a pop gun

I own a small arsenal. My carry gun is the Ruger LCR because it's small, light, stupid simple and has the best DAO trigger pull I have ever used. Those large magazine pop guns others like to carry are for people who don't know how to shoot. If I need more than 5 shots I am in a situation that I should never have let myself get into.

Now that I am in Alaska I am on the lookout for another 357 with a longer barrel for wilderness carry. The range on that Ruger is not that great and if I am going to have to shoot a bear I would rather it a bit farther away than the Ruger can accurately shoot. For backcountry carry I prefer revolvers because they are so simple and little can go wrong with them.

Look for an older Ruger Security Six. They were SS with adjustable sights, pretty sure available with 4" and 6" bbls. Mine is a 6". I've had mine for a very long time.

However, I would never carry a .357 on the street. Remember, you're responsible for every shot that leaves the barrel. I am happy with my .380 LCP. 6 rounds of critical defense ammo will do it. Sometimes I wonder if people imagine themselves getting into a gunfight and needing so many rounds. Honestly, a self defense situation is going to happen almost within arm's length the vast majority of the times. If you're 25' away you should be running, not shooting.

 

[Joris]

You feel totally safe in the suburbs of Paris, Malmö, Moleenbeek and Birmingham? In North America, you have that type of troublemakers downtown, not in the periphery of the city like in European cities which is easier to avoid. Add to that the daily culture of "low level instincts" of the american media (glorification of a violent lifestyle, etc and it has nothing to do with politics)...

Europe is big, I live in the countryside. My ex was a musician taking her $150K violin with her daily in the subway through the Parisian suburbs. Once she tripped in her concert costume. Two friendly men helped her up and handed her the case with the violin.
Not that there is no crime, but there seems not to be much paranoia.

It would seem Americans carry guns, scared of other people carrying guns.

 

[Brownie]

Why would it be that you guys in the US seem scared and the rest not really ?

Not scared, prepared. I've seen your hometown and where you take most of your photographs. Welcome to Detroit.

A couple of things:
I would HIGHLY recommend that anyone here take a CPL class, or CCW, or whatever it's called in your area, even if you never intend on owning a gun. The class is heavily geared toward avoiding conflict and situational awareness. Those in this thread that have cited SA are 100% correct, but there's way more to it than looking around. The course in Michigan includes a demonstration of how quickly things can happen. In one case, a person can start running at you from 25' away, and you do not have enough time to even draw the weapon, much less fire. If he had a knife or a bat you'd be done for. Lesson? 25' is as close as you want to let a sketchy looking person get. Make eye contact, always. Criminals do not want you to be able to identify them. So, make sure the person knows you saw them. This also leads to how many attacks happen from behind so you have no chance of an ID. Keep your head on a swivel and out of your phone. Bent heads are a target for this very reason. There are tons of ways to be prepared without needing a weapon. Personally, I rarely carry in everyday life. If I am going somewhere that could be risky, or if I don't know the area, it goes with me.

 

[Joris]

Not scared, prepared. I've seen your hometown and where you take most of your photographs. Welcome to Detroit.

A couple of things:
I would HIGHLY recommend that anyone here take a CPL class, or CCW, or whatever it's called in your area, even if you never intend on owning a gun. The class is heavily geared toward avoiding conflict and situational awareness. Those in this thread that have cited SA are 100% correct, but there's way more to it than looking around. The course in Michigan includes a demonstration of how quickly things can happen. In one case, a person can start running at you from 25' away, and you do not have enough time to even draw the weapon, much less fire. If he had a knife or a bat you'd be done for. Lesson? 25' is as close as you want to let a sketchy looking person get. Make eye contact, always. Criminals do not want you to be able to identify them. So, make sure the person knows you saw them. This also leads to how many attacks happen from behind so you have no chance of an ID. Keep your head on a swivel and out of your phone. Bent heads are a target for this very reason. There are tons of ways to be prepared without needing a weapon. Personally, I rarely carry in everyday life. If I am going somewhere that could be risky, or if I don't know the area, it goes with me.

Here one does not feel any need at all to be prepared. And I am not a naive person

 

[Phocal]

Look for an older Ruger Security Six. They were SS with adjustable sights, pretty sure available with 4" and 6" bbls. Mine is a 6". I've had mine for a very long time.

However, I would never carry a .357 on the street. Remember, you're responsible for every shot that leaves the barrel. I am happy with my .380 LCP. 6 rounds of critical defense ammo will do it. Sometimes I wonder if people imagine themselves getting into a gunfight and needing so many rounds. Honestly, a self defense situation is going to happen almost within arm's length the vast majority of the times. If you're 25' away you should be running, not shooting.

A time so long ago it feels like a different life I was an EMT working one of the worse areas of Houston. Having seen way to many guys walking who shouldn't because some drug or another I know my 357 will at least knock them down so I can get away.

You are right about everything else. It's why I am comfortable with my 5 shot short barrel gun. If I am out of comfortable range to hit center mass then I am heading the other way.

 

[agentlossing]

It might have to do with healthcare. Other countries, at least in the developed world, have comprehensive healthcare - the US doesn't. I know there are lots of homeless in Paris however.

Anyway, the US has lots of mentally ill roaming the streets without healthcare or treatment. Some fraction of them are dangerous. Knifings are not uncommon among the mentally ill homeless - at least on the West coast. On top of that is a serious problem with meth, gang violence, and trafficking of young girls.

I live in a small university city of 160,000 and the sorority girls here are now afraid to go out on the streets much - all in the last year. There are attacks on innocent citizens here every month.

I don't know what the answer is regarding homeless, mentally ill people. It's very sad, and very prevalent along the west coast. My intuition is that the vast majority of these have been wrecked by drugs - which isn't an accusation necessarily, because many people are born into the drug situation and had it forced on them long before they were mature enough to make a decision one way or another. Oregon has a particularly strange viewpoint since the possession of hard drugs like heroin and meth has been reduced to a misdemeanor, and, in the case of the county where I live, jails are perennially undersized, meaning that "catch and release" is the default. You don't "use" these kinds of drugs "in moderation" rather they use you, and all of the issues that come along with them do lead many people to lose jobs, homes and the understanding of family, leading to homelessness and a constantly decreasing mental state. In other cases, I am sure the problem is developmentally related and has been with the person from early in their lives, and whoever was a part of their lives has either been pushed out or grown tired and left.

I don't think about other people in a fearful way; I don't curtail my life based on fear of being harmed. But I acknowledge that I can't foresee the one time that someone troubled will snap, or I might unwittingly do something that causes a disproportionate response. Generally I just accept the small amount of risk, in fact I rarely think about it. Occasionally I act like Sherlock Holmes and stick the revolver in my coat pocket (by the right so issued by the authorities in the form of a carry permit) but I really do not look at a weapon as some kind of good luck charm, talisman of empowerment or anything else. I do think that there are a lot of people who feel an aura of bloodshed or violence or the mark of the grim reaper around the presence of or look of or conversation about guns, they are generally people who do not support the private ownership and/or carry of them. But the reality is, they are just tools, ones with such limited application that I rarely consider the added weight of a five-iron loaded with .38 hollow-point to be worth carrying the thing around. It does not empower me or give me an air of invincibility or really make me feel anything at all except an added sense of care to make sure I keep it safely when out and about. What would help the conversation about this kind of thing is to remember that they are not that different from cameras, just with infinitely fewer applications. The fact that some people are fearful or have an inferiority complex that is bolstered by their view of the tool being some kind of talisman of strength is frankly just as naïve as those who are scared of the idea of private ownership. We unfortunately can't fix the deficiencies of people's intellect or morality any more than we can fix the tragically mentally ill who are on the streets - in both cases, the person must themselves want to be helped.

Let's not even get into the booming human trafficking trade on the west coast, of which the interstate through Oregon is a main artery. It takes nothing further than digging into local news sites throughout CA, OR and WA to see that it is a massive, and truly scary, problem. Again, life is always a calculated risk.

 

[PeeBee]

On occasion, I've exposed myself to unnecessary risks. High speed motorcycling, walking along a crumbling cliff face, leaning over a high balcony or roof edge, hot air balloon flights, climbing insecure structures, shooting big cats through an open car window, telling the wife her bum looks big in that outfit etc, etc. All of these have the potential to cause harm or death.

I have a fear of heights yet I'll climb as high as possible. I love driving in bad weather and I find myself strangely drawn to the coast during storms. When the weather guy says stay away and only travel if necessary, I hear "get your ass down here now". 2 weeks ago I was standing at the water's edge during storm Ciara, struggling to stay on my feet. There is a significantly higher chance of me being involved in an accident than being a victim of violent crime, yet I continue to pursue higher risk activities whist avoiding areas I consider unsafe. I guess it all comes down to the illusion of being in control.

 

[exakta]

I don't know what the answer is regarding homeless, mentally ill people.

A lot of the mentally ill homeless problem comes from the federal government reducing or eliminating funding under President Reagan. Here in Massachusetts a number of "state hospitals" were closed back then. One near my house has recently been razed and condos are going up in it's place.

 

[ex machina]

A lot of the mentally ill homeless problem comes from the federal government reducing or eliminating funding under President Reagan. Here in Massachusetts a number of "state hospitals" were closed back then. One near my house has recently been razed and condos are going up in it's place.

Every state has those. It's not as simple as the Reagan admin defunding the sites, though, while each started out with good intentions, over time they were almost all overloaded and understaffed until the entire industry was judged to be unsavable and closed down. Psychiatric tactics changed from warehousing to embedding in the community, but many of those sadly turned out to be problematic as well as the rush to close down the sites overcame limited resources.

 

[agentlossing]

I'm not old enough to know how life felt differently before the defunding, but I imagine the inside of those places was also pretty sad. Is that a "needs of many vs needs of few" type of situation, where keeping them off the street, yet submitting them to the possibility of a hellish living situation inside a facility, is a net benefit to a greater number of people? I don't know. I wish people's lives and mental states did not deteriorate. I think our society should try to be as mindful of keeping that from happening as we can be, and we have a long way to go. We've been conditioned towards individualism and consumerism for so long that it's not a part of our thinking to care enough, especially in situations where it's family. Note that I don't mean any of this in a legislative sense, rather the way we each treat the others in our lives. If we looked out for our friends and relatives, things would be a lot better, but the ideals of personal freedom lead to extremes when, personally, people don't embrace restraint. You can't mandate any of that. Heart change is the hardest.