Are you afraid of inanimate objects?

Anyone without a healthy fear of firearms is fool. It isn’t that it is animate or inanimate, it is that the purpose and design is to kill things.

What a disingenuous question @SQUEEKY2. Again and again you carry on about this subject, as if we, here, were all mentally deficient children. “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” is a slick, one-dimensional PR slogan to try and make it sound like gun ownership is an innocent thing, and anyone who wants to restrict the ownership of any kind of firearm is being silly.

So the fuck what if you are a responsible gun owner. I don’t care. You don’t live here. Are you afraid that US Marshals will march across the border and confiscate your firearms? They’re not doing it here, they probably won’t be doing it there.
You have no need to own a firearm. You just like to.

I have many objects I don’t need, but not a single one was invented solely for the purpose of killing or maiming other beings.

I am mindfully concerned about a lot of inanimate objects, and the specific things you speak of in this Q especially, as they arouse unreasonable amounts of reaction in people.
Like you. With your unending concern about responsible gun owners getting a bad rap.

Get over it. Geez.

I assume your reaction to coming upon a nuclear bomb with a timer counting down is “nah, this is fine. Nukes do not kill people, people kill people”

“People say the are afraid of guns, but can a gun do anything without a person controlling it?”
– Yes, if it’s loaded, or falls on them.
– Loaded guns are not “in a safe condition”.
– Sometimes even experienced people who are trying to be careful, are mistaken about whether a gun is loaded or not.
– Someone in my family was invited on a hunting trip. They got out of the car, and one guest’s rifle somehow went off and shot another guest in the leg.

You know how they evacuate entire city blocks, whenever they find an unexploded WW2 bomb?

Always had a fear of those giant slides you see at amusement parks.

Inanimate objects can be a lot of things. Anything with potential energy has the ability to scare me a little, sometimes a lot. I cannot forget studying failure modes and seeing all kinds of “what if’s” just driving down the highway. People deal with and are surrounded by things far more dangerous than guns every single day. This is generally an “ignorance is bliss” situation but with guns, people understand they are a thing to be afraid of and usually are. This is particularly true if they don’t understand them or have not been around them much.

@Acrylic As you should be, I almost died at a water park TWICE!

@SQUEEKY2 It’s a bit of a sore subject here right now, but I agree with you. Some people have never been around them, while in more rural areas we are raised with them.

If only good, responsible, trained people had them, it would be a non-issue (maybe?) but with the saturation and lack of oversight, it really is more like a free for all here.
So I understand the legitimate concerns.

A friend gave me a pistol and I was floored to discover there was no requirement to register it in my state. Zero. While I did pass the Sherriff’s background check for a new purchase, anyone can just hand you a gun and no one in authority seems to care. Even to me, that’s negligent.

I’m afraid of that huge blow up balloon of donald trump.

A lot of people are killed with motor vehicles. Every day nearly 4K people are killed by car’s globally. And no one seems to care.

Because you do not have to get a license to drive a car. Neither do you have to get insurance. And it is totally fine for you to drive drunk, or tweaked out of your mind on drugs. And there are no cops stalking you on the road, just waiting for you to violate the non-existant traffic rules, eventually revoking your totally non-mandatory and non-existant license if you fuck up too many times.

@KNOWITALL I have been around guns, I have fired guns, and the level of fanaticism displayed by the people who argue incessantly about the inherent safety of the guns that they feel that they handle perfectly safely concerns me. All you “rural” folk are not inherently more responsible.

@gondwanalon The automobile was not invented as a killing machine.

@canidmajor I agree. Every year someone dies from falling from a treestand, or an accidental discharge. Familiarity breeds contempt so some people forget to respect the inherent danger after a lifetime.

I don’t see any problem personally with Anericans wanting their Constitutional rights protected.
If you fanatically advocated for Freedom of Speech or Religion, I wouldn’t think you were crazy for doing so.
At least 83 governments worldwide used Covid to justify violating the exercise of free speech, as an example. hrw.org

I am afraid of things that are made for killing whether someone is controlling it or not! I believe that is a rational reaction to those kinds of things. Just as a skull and cross bones on a sign would tell you it is dangerous or a red circle with a line through it tells you it’s bad. Certain things are inherently cause you to be cautious of them.

@Blackwater_Park that’s a great way to explain it! If I suddenly had a random gun in my house, never mind how I got there, and even though I live alone except for my two cats, I would be nervous around it. I would try and get rid of it or lock it up somewhere where it can’t somehow fall and go off or one of my cats accidentally do something. So I definitely get the potential energy thing. And then there’s coming across a random pile of radioactive waste. I would definitely be afraid of that! So potential energy seems like a good way to describe it.

Transphobic Kid Rock fears transgender beer cans. ;-o

@ragingloli Just shows that rules, regulations, licenses, insurance, laws and cops and stop people from driving like maniacs.

@canidmajor That doesn’t stop the slaughter on the roads.

To turn the question round; how can people feel such love for an inanimate object whose sole purpose is to kill other people?

There’s probably millions of inanimate objects that can kill, but those designed for that specific purpose are of course to be subject to fearful scrutiny. You would be careless and certainly irresponsible to say the least, to not be highly sensitive to the deadly ability of the weapon you are handling.

I avoid objects like honeycombs, seed pods and things that have repetitive patterns or clusters of small holes. Google image search Trypophobia.

@cheebdragon I don’t actually have that condition, but some of those pictures that I’ve looked at before freak me out!

Some people have a fear of balloons. It is called globe phobia (sp).

I would be less afraid of a loaded pistol under my pillow than a life-size realistic looking doll replica of demon possessed Regan from the film The Exorcist. Get her out of my room…and county!

I’m not afraid of inanimate objects.