Tools or Weapons

[Glock 31]

Why is it that I keep hearing of these morons who consider guns weapons instead of tools. They accomplish a function which is to put a projectile over long distances in a relatively short amount of time. Just because people choose to use them to injure the human body more often than anything else doesn't mean it's the gun's fault. What makes a weapon a weapon be it a screwdriver, a pair of hands, or a wire, is the person holding it and the things that influence that person's state of mind. It's ludicrous to think people freak out over something that can kill when they drive machines that kill more people a year than guns.

Same with violent video games and the guns there in. It's poor parenting that lead to tragedies such as columbine and martha stewart, not video games. Yes maybe video games had a small level of influence on unstable people. But if they are so unstable as to be incapable of seperating fantasy from reality, then you can be sure there were earlier warning signs that were sorely missed on the part of the important people in those unstable people's lives. Anyone agree, disagree?

 

[Tamara]

A "tool" is a machine, complex or simple, that amplifies human effort, or extends human abilities. "Weapon" is merely a subset of "tool". Your claw hammer is a tool. If you bust somebody over the noggin with it, it becomes a weapon. Some tools are inherently designed to be used as weapons, with most firearms falling in the latter category. An M1 Garand is of the genus "tool" and the species "weapon", and was designed to kill people; to have qualms about that makes one look rather evasive. Just because there are other, more peaceful, pursuits it can be turned to does not alter what it is.

 

[Polydorus]

Nicely put. B.A. in English?

 

[MostToysWins]

You can't use a gun to change a flat, but you can use a lug wrench as a weapon.

Here is my worthless .02 cents...

Gun = tool for target practice, competitive shooting.
Gun = Weapon for killing animals, 2 and 4 legged variety.

 

[Tamara]

Nicely put. B.A. in English?

Naw, just a high school edjumacation. If I had a BA in Comparative Basket Weaving, would I be toiling behind a gun store counter?

 

[Tamara]

As an interesting aside, there are plenty of firearms that were not designed as weapons. A stackbarrel Perazzi or a Walther OSP2000, while capable of being used as weapons, were no more designed for that purpose than was a pipewrench.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I have a total different take on this. I think that folks who insist on saying guns are tools are just coping out. The statement that a gun is used to make a projectile go XYZ is rather childish sophistry.

Guns were developed to kill people and animals. Their sporting use was for practice in the endeavour of killing people and animals. That's why they exist.

The Second Amendment is predicated on their use as weapons to protect against tyranny and for self-defense. It is not about sporting uses or use as a tool.

In the UK and Australia, gunners tried to maintain gun ownership by denying that their guns were weapons, they were for their 'sport'. That really did a lot of good. Even when guns are owned there, there use for selfprotection is seen as aberrant. We see candidates in the US, portraying their gun support as some form of target shooting or birdie blasting.

Thus, my friends - the initial poster is sadly mistaken and pathetically trying to portray guns as not being what they are - weapons of lethal force. We have the right to own specifically because of that. Not because they are 'tools' like my Black and Decker electric screwdriver - which of course I could bop you with.

Every once in awhile, someone posts the 'tool' as some clever rhetoric. Guess what, no antigunner buys it for one second. No one on the fence would buy it. It is some baloney for gun boys to chortle over and it makes no sense at the best. At the worst, it is a capitulation to a position which inevitably leads to control. Damn, a 'tool' that a kid can use to kill 30 people - who has a right for such a tool? We control spray paint and license cars as they are dangerous. They don't have the constitutional protection for their use in protection against tyranny and protecting hearth and home. I'd have strict controls on some product that you could buy at Home Depot and easily terrorize thousands as the DC Sniper did.

Firearms are different as they are weapons that protect our rights. They don't protect our siding and plumbing.

 

[Tamara]

Geez, Glenn, I could swear I just said: "An M1 Garand is of the genus "tool" and the species "weapon", and was designed to kill people; to have qualms about that makes one look rather evasive. Just because there are other, more peaceful, pursuits it can be turned to does not alter what it is."

To continue your post though, I believe that M1 Garands are protected by the Second Amendment, but I could entertain an argument that a Citori clays gun is not. What do you think of that?

 

[JR47]

I'd think that we were playing into the hands of the anti-gunners. The fact that some of our guns have evolved into highly sophisticated game pieces shouldn't be allowed to diminish what they were designed for. Guns were, and are, implements of destruction. That's neither good nor bad. After all, a pick is also an implement of destruction, as well.

If we allow ourselves to "catagorize" various guns into "sporting use", not covered by the 2nd Amendment, and "defensive use", covered under the 2nd Amendment, we sow the seeds of our own downfall. Firearms are a protected class under the Second Amendment. Admitting that "some" aren't covered as such, is the current ruling allowing the "sporting uses" restrictions the anti-gunners are so proud of. We can see how the definition is perverted by the anti-gunners, and how they ignore the literal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, preferring to "divide" it into protected and legislatable sections.

Firearms meet the definition of tool. Firearms are tools. As long as that is used not as an excuse, but as a fact, we're all good.

Be careful of what you ask for, you might just get it. Just imagine your 1911 having to be judged on how many "improvements" over the base design it possesses before it changes from a "defensive" handgun to a "sporting" handgun, subject to BATFE reguulations.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Hi Tamara: I wasn't talking to you. I was talking to the initial post. Sorry I wasn't clear.

Why is it that I keep hearing of these morons who consider guns weapons instead of tools. They accomplish a function which is to put a projectile over long distances in a relatively short amount of time.

That galled me. A clays gun - since they are useful in protecting us from bird attack - such as in the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie - they are under the Second Amend.

 

[Mike Irwin]

"As an interesting aside, there are plenty of firearms that were not designed as weapons. A stackbarrel Perazzi or a Walther OSP2000, while capable of being used as weapons, were no more designed for that purpose than was a pipewrench."

Hence the absolutely disgusting and reprehensible tendency of so many high-end shotgun sport shooters to be pro gun control. In several cases, I know shotgun shooters who are VIRULENTLY anti-gun and horrifically liberal.

Hypocritical, you say?

Not according to them. You see, their shotguns aren't guns. They're fine sporting implements, whose differences are apparently to any logical thinking man, say like John Kerry or Teddy Kennedy. They just want to make America better by removing all of the guns from the hands of reprobates such as you and I, but they won't touch sporting implements.

Did I ever mention that I truly HATE the high end shotgunning crowd?

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

Mike: I hear you on the shotgun crowd. I've seen that. However, I took a skeet course and the teacher was definitely a progunner. We talked handguns and how my handgunning was messing up my skeeting.

The point is well made, though - that the sporting argument leads to confiscation of guns, except for the shotgun crowd.

 

[sm]

Tamara-
Your first reply ...as always I am awed. With permission I'd like to quote that if I may for supportive agruments.

Now about that Citori "not being covered" I beg your pardon ma'am, but I have used my Citori 3 bbl set to stop an immediate threat. Granted it was a rabid dog , and granted not many skeet folks keep slugs handy on a skeet field...then again who ever said I followed the norm anyway.

I used to find myself with the uppity shotgun crowd when I competed in some clay games. The gun control topic came up often, and certain folks would "qualify" why their guns were so special and never be taken.

At that time I had a Sterling Tiffany lighter, I used it to light the trash while making a point - Ban matches - or anything to enable an Arsonist to set a fire - and that would include kitchen matches to Dunhill's and Tiffany's.

Paint with a broad brush to enact certain laws and don't be surprised if the paint gets out of the lines and covers your uppity guns too.

Intent of the user not the tool itself.

Steve

 

[progunner1957]

The Second Amendment is predicated on their use as weapons to protect against tyranny and for self-defense. It is not about sporting uses or use as a tool.

In the UK and Australia, gunners tried to maintain gun ownership by denying that their guns were weapons, they were for their 'sport'. That really did a lot of good. Even when guns are owned there, there use for selfprotection is seen as aberrant. We see candidates in the US, portraying their gun support as some form of target shooting or birdie blasting.

One of the favorite singsongs of gun haters is that AR15s, M1As, 15 round autopistols, etc. is that they "have no legitimate sporting use." If gun owners let gun haters get away with the "legitimate sporting use" load of feces, they will use it to relentlessly carve away at our rights until all we have left are single shot .22LR target guns like those used by Olympic target shooters. They may even take those because even an impotent little .22LR single shot can be used as a weapon.

The leftist/libral/Demosocialist "enlightened" bird shooters who vote for scum like Kerry and Frau Clinton while they polish their Browning Citoris and Weatherby Athenas are nothing more than useful idiots for the gun haters. They fancy themselves as a cut above we Neanderthals who own Glocks, 1911s and - GOD FORBID - AR15's.

The NRA is fond of saying "The Second Amendment Isn't About Duck Hunting." Guess what: THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT. The Founders of this nation did not go to war against the British empire over duck hunting. They did so because the Brits tried to disarm them and leave them powerless against the tyranny of British rule.

 

[model 25]

I guess I am just an old simple person. It isn't what you got in your hand that makes you dangerous it is the character of the mind that is guiding it.

25

 

[dave_in_delaware]

I like posts like these. The definition of each word (thanks to Merriam-Webster) is:

Main Entry: tool
Function: noun
1 a : a handheld device that aids in accomplishing a task
b (1) : the cutting or shaping part in a machine or machine tool
b (2) : a machine for shaping metal : MACHINE TOOL
2 a : something (as an instrument or apparatus) used in performing an operation or necessary in the practice of a vocation or profession <a scholar's books are his tools>
2 b : a means to an end <a book's cover can be a marketing tool>

Main Entry: weap·on
Function: noun
1 : something (as a club, knife, or gun) used to injure, defeat, or destroy
2 : a means of contending against another

So, a gun is both. It's a tool (especially to an LEO, who uses it as a necessary instrument in his profession). It's also a weapon (used to injure or destroy), especially in times of war. Seems to me that a weapon is a subset of tools (like Tamara said). By definition, a hammer, screwdriver, and even a paperclip fit BOTH definitions, depending how they're used (to accomplish a task or to injure/defeat/destroy).

Either word seems fine to use when describing a gun.

 

[Glenn E. Meyer]

How about when we call someone a 'tool'? Is that related to the poem:

This is my rifle, this is my gun?

That can be a handheld device!

 

[blackmind]

Mike: I hear you on the shotgun crowd. I've seen that. However, I took a skeet course and the teacher was definitely a progunner. We talked handguns and how my handgunning was messing up my skeeting.

Put him to the test: CARRY your handgun -- openly -- while you are skeeting.

See what he says then.


-blackmind

 

[USP45usp]

Actually, my guns are tools, not weapons.

I use the shotgun to hunt and gather birds for eating, my rifles for the same. My handguns are tools of defense and are also used to hunt.

Have you ever been in a meat house? They have a tool there called a bolt slammer. Basically, the cow, pig, is pushed up against this tool and the tool pushes out a steel bolt that goes into the animals brain, and kills it.

It is used to kill yes, but that is what you buy in the super market when you get meat.

It's a simple tool, which does take life, but we don't seem to have a problem buying that taken life when we hit the meat section of the supermarkets.. do we?

All tools are made for a reason. To gather food more effectily, to saw down a tree, to change a flat, yet any and all tools can be abused and used for wrong.

A gun is just a simple tool. It's not a weapon. Anything can be a weapon, it all depends on how it is used.

Wayne

 

[blackmind]

I don't carry a GLOCK for it to be anything but a lifesaving weapon for me and those I care about. It is a tool for defending against attackers. The way in which it would be used would be to do physical harm (violence) against those attackers. That makes it clearly a weapon.

I don't carry it daily so that I can knock over pins, or compete by shooting targets. And I see no need to hide what it is behind twisted words and manipulated definitions.


-blackmind