“A new survey from Chapman University finds that the most common American fear is … walking alone at night, followed by becoming the victim of identity theft, safety on the Internet, being the victim of a mass shooting, and public speaking,” reason.com’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown writes. “I have never been so ashamed to be an American.” Huh? I’m NEVER ashamed to be an American, not even in jest. Anyway, notice that two of the three “worst fears” can be ameliorated by carrying a self-defense firearm (void where prohibited by law). And that’s [one more reason] why gun grabbers will never own the high ground and the NRA will always be able to motivate the base.
Being the victim of a mass shooting? I’m calling bullshit on that one. The others seem somewhat rational, but being the victim in a mass shooting is somewhere around the odds of being bitten by a shark while being hit by lightning while being hit by a meteorite.
Not according to the media and gun grabbers. They claim mass shooting occur every day, everywhere, almost constantly. The mall, the movies, Kroger, your living room, nowhere is safe. If you listened to any of Bloomberg’s groups, mass shootings happen so often, you could already be a victim of one and just realized it yet…
If you listened to the left-wing media, you would believe that mass shootings happen everyday, at a school near you.
Oh, and by the way, my number 1 fear is that I’ll die and my wife will sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them.
Since you’ll be dead already, I would think your number 1 fear would be she’ll find out what you actually paid for them while you were still alive, causing your death (by her)…In a very slow and painful manner
But that’s just me. (cough)
dph.
My wife considers all my stuff, “JUNK” including guns, say’s she will put everything out on the street when I take the “dirt nap”
Gunr, how can she be so sure that you’re going first? If I were you, I’d be concerned about that. 🙂
Ralph;
I got 28 years on her. “Yeah, I’m a cradle robber”
@Gunr
Well done, sir.
People who are ashamed to be American try their damnedest to make us more like other countries, but would never dare to move because they know we’re the only ones who put up with their crap.
“I have never been so ashamed to be an American.” – Elizabeth Nolan Brown
Perhaps what she’s saying is that it’s embarrassing what Americans are afraid of…that Americans have become wimps.
Doh! I suck at context.
Anything that mirrors (even unintentionally) to what the current First Lady said is not my choice of words.
Hmm. Good point.
I’m ashamed of our First Lady, our AG, our President, VP, Bloomberg, the Democrat Party, NYC, San Francisco, Chris Christie, Republicans who “work with” Dems on gun control, 80% of CA politicians, and the entire liberal progressive left from the statist tyrant to the ignorant voter.
I am absolutely proud of the foundational principles of this nation, and those who live and support those values.
I must be old or numb because none of those fears ever cross my mind.
My concerns generally revolve around getting trapped in bureaucracy or being caught up in the legislative process for some paperwork/technicality non-crime.
I fear my honey-do list, it could interfere with hunting. In theory.
I just put a note on top of the honey do list.
Gone hunting. Cell service spotty.
Snake river canyon. Chukar, Pheasant, Grouse, and Bear.
Honey, your to-do list while I’m out hunting is to clear out space in the freezer…
“There is nothing more painful to me … than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”
– Jesse Jackson 3/10/96
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/1996-jesse-jackson-was-afraid-of-black-people/
LMAO what a gem! I think hes probably a little more uncomfortable around us white devils now than in the 90s.
Maybe he could spend more time in sketchy white neighborhoods?
Funny that. Maybe I’m just a product of 80’s and 90’s tv, but when I picture a dangerous criminal it’s always a white guy, bald, with a bandana on his head and one earring. Unless he’s redeemable and a victim of circumstances, then he’s Hispanic and trying to keep his little brother out of his gang.
Sounds like he’s making a judgement based upon the color of someone’s skin. I thought we had a word for that. Hmmm.
At the bottom of the list of articles under her name was this little gem from vice.com. http://www.vice.com/read/meet-the-gay-libertarian-gun-nuts-1022
Nothing most of us hadn’t read before but it’s good to see it repeated.
I can’t understand why everybody is so obsessed with other people’s private sex lives, or why they think I give half a rat’s ass what or whom they’re doing in the privacy of their own home.
“Don’t ask don’t tell” worked just fine for about six thousand years. Why is it suddenly so important to announce your sex life to the world?
I find that my fear of public speaking is usually ameliorated if I am armed.
Fear of public speaking is often counted as Americans’ Number One fear.
Yeh, I have always heard public speaking as #1 along with cancer
I am afraid of xenomorphs. Not much else.
Not predators?
Not really, no.
You must keep a bunch of mud handy.
I just figure Arnold will be around in the nick of time… that and if I hear weird noises or see light distortions I will drop my weapons with a quickness.
Xenomorphs don’t care. They just wanna use your stomach to incubate babies after you get your face raped by a crab thing.
I concur. Those are some creepy SOBs.
Even if I never have to use it (hopefully!), my CCW gives me the peace of mind each and every day that I’m not a walking victim.
This is the message we all need to spread. It’s not about that gun-totin’, pot-bellied, chew-spittin’ racist redneck thing the left so loves to push on us via political cartoons — It’s about responsible adults taking responsibility for their own safety.
Or we could do the politically correct thing- for the children- and throw our guns into the river. Then hire an armed security team. Since we shouldn’t trust ourselves.
But we can always trust strangers.
In Illinois, the land of “prohibited areas,” I’m more afraid of being caught in the wrong place while carrying (a Class B Misdemeanor) than of any situation that would require a DGU.
And the sad thing is, that’s just what they want us to fear.
People seem to be most afraid of the things least likely to affect them. What are the odds you’ll get mugged? Even in the worst parts of this country, your odds are pretty low. You stand a better chance of being in a car accident than of being mugged, and few people are afraid to drive. You’re over a HUNDRED times more likely to wind up with heart disease and McDonald’s is the most popular restaurant in the country
I’m not saying you shouldn’t take steps to mitigate these things. You should. Eat healthy. Wear your seatbelt. And, where permitted, carry a weapon. And stop worrying so damn much.
” What are the odds you’ll get mugged? Even in the worst parts of this country, your odds are pretty low.”
Holy crap. The worst part of Chicago? The worst part of Baltimore? At late night?
You, sir, are shockingly naive.
They left off one if the greatest fears of a gun- grabber. That they will turn into a homicidal maniac if they have a gun in hand.
It’s about empowerment. I live in an affluent inner-city neighborhood. It’s a great place to go for long walks. One night a car load of vatos/gang-bangers who followed me at a not-very discrete distance decided I wasn’t worth the effort and finally drove off. It was one of those encounters that cause you to make major decisions about your life.
In order to make those kinds of decisions, things we talk about at length here, you have to be empowered enough to think seriously about self-defense. Gun-grabbers can’t do this and I think I know why. The answer comes from co-dependent theory which seeks to explain, among other things why people, men and women, remain in abusive relationships. Gun-grabbers are like enablers in co-dependent relationships. They feel helpless because they can’t feel empowered enough to leave the abuse and so they convince themselves that they have to live with the fear and loathing—typically even developing elaborate rationalizations to justify what they’re dong. Seeing their sacrifice as noble, enablers often try to justify their co-dependency by criticizing and discrediting those around them who are empowered. It’s a weird dynamic to see, but gun-grabbers are a lot like that. Feeling forever trapped in their helplessness, they resent and hate us because we aren’t.
Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!
Never thought of it that way.
They don’t want people standing up for themselves since it highlights their lack of responsibility.
Explains the feminist bull about wanting to empower women, but then if you suggest they arm themselves…they freak out.
The people who run around repeating, for the umpteenth time, the barely funny back when fresh jokes about evacuating and quarantining everyone for Ebola, with only infinitesimal likelihood of contracting the virus, are nevertheless vocal with Ebola-like virulence about restricting firearms due to the supposed epidemic of spree shootings.
How many here were surveyed?
Your website is Brower hijacking yet again and forwarding me to install apps and taking me to ad pages.
Yeh, I’m having problems too. There was a string of comments above highlighting it but it mysteriously disappeared
Of all the fears listed being a victim of a mass shooting is the most irrational. The other fears are reasonable. Reason magazine is as much unicorn and rainbow based as your typical Obama voter.
Reason magazine is as much unicorn and rainbow based as your typical Obama voter.
Explain.
Why is speaking in public a reasonable fear?
Because everyone has there eyes on you, just waiting for you to make a mistake!
And the worst thing that will happen is…?
Judgement and the regret you may have as a result of it. Most people just don’t like to be publically ridiculed or called out on if they make a mistake. That’s the whole idea of using shame as a form of punishment. Seinfeld did a skit on that one time, how people at a funeral would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy.
JG
I guess the worst thing that could happen is that you make a really bad screw up of your presentation, and one of the the crowd turns out to be your interviewer when you apply for a job.
We the People have a right-to-life . . .
which implies – in some sense – a right to BE-safe;
or, at least, a right to exercise an effective means to be safer
(as compared to one’s vulnerability without such means.)
And, now, there is an asserted right to “feel” safe.
The Chapman University study seems to shed some light upon facts affecting gun-carry policy choices.
They find that people believe that rates of violent crime are increasing notwithstanding FBI data that rates of actual violent crime have been decreasing since 1993. No matter; that we ARE actually safer, people FEEL less-safe from violent crime.
Perhaps guns have some impact, whether net positive or negative, on people’s actual safety or feelings about safety.
Actual safety from violent crime is a declining problem. Intuitively, violent crime caused by CWP-holders is but a small – perhaps infinitesimal – fraction of overall violent crime. While our concern for actual violent crime should be falling, it is probably already negligible with respect to CWP-holders. Society would not suffer a significant increase in actual crime from CWP-holders if the remaining Won’t-Issue States became Shall-Issue. Nor would society suffer from a reduction in the number of gun-free zones. It’s rather more likely that ACTUAL safety would cause a net increase in ACTUAL safety with a relaxation of concealed-carry restrictions. So much for the concern for ACTUAL safety; now, let’s turn to feelings-of-safety.
Here, we must make a distinction between open vs. concealed carry. Let’s concede, for the sake of discussion, that open-carry might make children, women and weak-kneed men feel less safe. However, such is not the case with concealed-carry. Our protected class (children, women and weak-kneed men) can’t tell whether others in their presence are concealed-carrying or not. They can identify carry by neither violent-criminals nor peaceful-citizens. They are entitled to feel however unsafe/safe as they might feel from the possibility of carrying violent-criminals and peaceful-citizens. There isn’t anything we can do to affect their feelings; except, of course, by prohibiting peaceful-citizens from carrying. Perhaps such a prohibition would make the protected class feel safer; albeit, this policy decision seems to be irrational in respect of the actual impact on actual violent crime. Does it make any sense to make society LESS-safe in actuality in order to favor the feelings of a protected class from concealed-carry by peaceful-citizens?
Now, how about the feelings of those individuals outside the protected class; i.e., CWP-holders (and would-be holders but for the policies of Won’t-Issue States). Prohibiting CWP-holders from carrying makes them feel less-safe; and, perhaps, it makes them actually less safe.
Ignoring concealed-carry on actual crime, we are left with the impact of concealed-carry policies on the feelings of two constituencies:
– children, women and week-kneed men who are afraid of peaceful citizens carrying guns; vs.
– CWP-holders (and would-be holders) who are afraid of (a declining number of) violent criminals.
If there really is a right-to-FEEL-safe, which feelings – or constituency’s – rights ought to prevail?
Arguably, there may be no legal or moral basis to believe that there is a right-to-FEEL-safe. If we could so conclude, then we could resolve the political issue of carry policy by considering data on ACTUAL safety alone. If we do acknowledge a right-to-FEEL-safe, how should we resolve the conflict between the “protected class” vs. CWP-holders? Shouldn’t we tip the decision between these 2 “feeling” constituencies by reference to data on ACTUAL safety?
The findings of the Chapman University study enable me to reason my way to focusing on ACTUAL safety. If the feelings-of-safety on the part of a protected-class are offset by the feelings-of-safety on the part of CWP-holders, then we can’t resolve the political question by weighing the feelings of some protected class at the expense of the feelings of the disparaged class.
Electric cars make me feel unsafe since I can’t hear them coming.
Cars with tinted glass make me feel unsafe since I can’t see the driver.
Big-honkin SUVs make me feel unsafe since they might squish my car, plus I can’t see ahead of them on the highway.
Motorcycles make me feel unsafe since they appear out of nowhere (cause they’re not as visible as cars).
If I had an electric car, I would have the fear of running out of battery juice, 20 miles from home in the boondocks.
You miss the point of my inquiry into the “right-to-feel-[something]”.
So, you mock those who “feel” unsafe in electric cars by claiming that you “feel” unsafe that you might be run-over by a car you can’t hear.
Well either there is a legitimate “right-to-feel-[something]”; or, there isn’t. Can you – for just a moment – entertain that there might be a legitimate “right-to-feel-[something]”? Push yourself a little; might do you some good.
If we assume – just for a moment for the sake of exploring the argument – that there is a legitimate “right-to-feel-[something]”. If there is, then your right to feel safe by banning/restricting/regulating electric cars competes with another’s right to feel safe by using an electric car. Whose right to feeling trumps the others? How do we resolve the competing claims to a right to feel?
The Chapman U survey says that the primary fear is suffering violence while walking alone after dark. Apparently, if there is any right to feel safe, it is a right valued by lots of people who walk alone after dark. We PotG have a proposal: Lot’s of you folks who are afraid when you walk alone after dark could concealed carry. You folks might feel safer.
If some of you do feel safer while concealed carrying, you might be concerned for the feelings of others. You might encounter hopolaphobes who feel unsafe in the presence of guns. Yet, so long as you keep your gun concealed you won’t hurt any hopolaphobes’ feelings. They won’t know that you are carrying if you keep your gun concealed.
Admittedly, some hopolaphobes will be afraid that some people around them might be nonviolent citizens that are concealed carrying. Only a law banning non-violent people from concealed carrying will improve these hopolaphobes’ feelings of being un-safe. But, there is nothing we can to to reassure these hopolaphobes that violent criminals in their vicinity are concealed carrying.
Logically, it seems that the rights of non-violent people willing to concealed-carry ought to trump the righs-to-feel-safe of hopolaphobes who tolerate only the feelings of being unsafe in the presence of violent criminals.
The Chapmen survey serves to support an argument for the competing rights to feel-safe of non-violent citizen carriers vs. hoplophobes. The hoplophobes are left to argue how their rights-to-feel trump the rights-to-feel of non-violent citizens.
Feelings are not facts.
Feelings are an emotional state.
Feelings are not an indicator of rational thought.
Feelings that people have are their responsibility, not the responsibility of other people around them.
People need to own their own feelings.
—————–
There is no “right to feel” anything, unless of course you mean that an individual has the right to choose how they feel at any given moment.
Our government was established on the basis of natural, individual rights, not collective rights (i.e. that individuals somehow owe each other something, like “feelings”).
The Bill of Rights lists negative rights (i.e. they require the government to refrain from interfering with those natural, individual rights that are self evident).
—————–
I do not conceal carry because “it makes me feel safe.”
I conceal carry because I rationally know it provides me the best possible tool for dealing with a potentially violent encounter.
Nobody else has a right, based on their ephemeral feelings, to deprive me of my ability to defend myself.
—————–
I also choose to wear a seatbelt because I know it provides me the best possible tool for dealing with a potentially violent crash.
Yet there are people who refuse to wear a seatbelt because they are afraid (a feeling) of being trapped in a crash.
Their irrational notion of “feeling safer” without a seatbelt has zero legitimacy when set against hard science and the laws of physics.
Likewise, a hoplophobe’s irrational notion of “feeling safer” in a gun-free zone has zero legitimacy when set against the hard realities of the world.
—————–
When it comes to the 2nd Amendment, there is no need for a balancing test of feelings in making the case for the right of individuals to bear arms.
Every individual born has the right to their own life, and, by extension, the right to defend it.
There are no “competing rights to feel-safe” because it’s not about feelings. It’s about the inherent right you have to you own life.
For the State or anyone to deprive you of your ability to defend yourself is theft…they would be stealing your life.
I guess that old guys think just a bit more realistically. The only thing I’m afraid of is my prostate acting up.
At our age (assuming you are retired) what difference does it make, except more trips to the can?
The treatment can cause impotence.
You still enjoy erections? (Yours, I mean)
Yup, Gunr, I’m retired, and my PSA has been rising faster than the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
http://johnrlott.blogspot.com/2013/08/americans-feel-much-safer-walking-on.html
“While the percent of people across all countries who feel threatened by burglary is 29 percent, in the US it is 16 percent, with only Denmark having a lower percent. For people being threatened on the street, Americans apparently feel much less endangered walking around their neighborhoods than people in other countries by a 19 to 27 percent rate.”
Couldn’t log in earlier. Extremely buggy on mobile. It’s tragic that now the mass shooting has come up in Washington. Can’t use the internet is THAT high? What a f###ed up self centered world. Prayers fro the kids…
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