Gun Etiquette

I just want to start off with a basic gun etiquette question, like, when you go over to a friend's house, or when you go over to someone's house, anyone's house, and they are playing the role of the host, or whatever, because it's their house, is it bad etiquette for them to have guns sitting out, if they have guns

yes, unless you are planning on using the guns during your visit, in which case no

it's ok if they aren't loaded.

We don't have enough information here. What kind of guns are they?

http://www.potato-cannons.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/john_bazooka.jpg

http://www.disclose.tv/files/photos/07211688a0869d9L.jpg

http://www.aolcdn.com/aolr/guys-beach-body-biceps-400a050307.jpg

http://www.everythingisterrible.com/2011/07/gunfun.html

what if the guy is building guns when you knock on his door.

Like this.

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/the_american_movie_image_george_clooney_01.jpg

This is generally true at my parents house, so I guess I've never really thought about it? Even though I have no problem w/guns, I think I would be a little weirded out if I visited someone and they were just like laying out on the coffee table or something. Unless it was my dad, because thats just how he rolls.

Although in his case they don't really tend to have peeps over socially other than my wife and I.

these ppl don't have anyone over socially I think, there was a handgun, a rifle and a shotgun laying around, pretty much in front of me, and I would have never noticed them had the dude not gone "oh sorry the guns are out hope that's ok"

he then asked me if I had a problem with guns, and that if I did he would put them away but I told him to wait while I thought about how I felt about guns, then never brought the guns up again because I feared that if I did he may pick one up and want to show it to me or something

I have basically zero experience w/ guns, which is probably not the case w/ most americans, and also depends on how much open land is around I guess, so I just wanted to see what gun etiquette was about this

I dunno maybe this is a 'nobody I know voted for nixon' thing, but most people I know have no experience with guns

i don't know anyone who owns a Gun

I don't think it'd be out of the realm of good manners to say "Hey, what's up with the guns?"

"... what are you some sort of weirdo gun nut or something?

it sounds like he was pretty polite about it - he apologized for their presence, and offered to remove them. the only other thing he could have done would have been to put them away before the guest came over, but on the other hand, it is his house.

I personally think that having guns out is akin to walking around your house in your underwear. Love them or loathe them, guns are fascinating and compelling objects and unless you've stopped in on someone cleaning them or preparing to go shooting, they really shouldn't be laying around when you have company.

Like the op, I wouldn't really make a big deal out of it if I were a guest, though.

I would prob come up w/ a reason to leave asap

let's shoot each other with guns

it sounds like he was pretty polite about it - he apologized for their presence, and offered to remove them. the only other thing he could have done would have been to put them away before the guest came over, but on the other hand, it is his house.

― n/a, Thursday, December 1, 2011 4:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

yeah dude was v nice, was just wondering if having your guns out was a normal american thing, in this case I think it was more about not expecting people over rather than about dude wanting to keep guns out.

next gun etiquette question, and I guess both q's can still be answered by any knowledgeable person, is it impolite to stare at someone's gun, in fear or awe or whatever, if they are legally open carrying it in a public place

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkVn8kSmqaw

I came in to this thread only because I expected to find guns on the table where are the guns on the table does anybody know what happened to the guns on the table

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCjJAX3O9Ws

I personally think that having guns out is akin to walking around your house in your underwear. Love them or loathe them, guns are fascinating and compelling objects and unless you've stopped in on someone cleaning them or preparing to go shooting, they really shouldn't be laying around when you have company.

this is OTM. I've been around guns and people that own guns and in general they always kept 'em locked up/out of reach. keeping 'em lying around is a little odd.

I would have never noticed them had the dude not gone "oh sorry the guns are out hope that's ok"

this would've been a good opportunity to pick up one of the guns and just wave it around carelessly, maybe fire into the air. "It's TOTALLY ok!"

guns should always remain concealed, like under a couch cushion or taped to the top of a ceiling fan blade.

I probably would have asked to look at one of them, the rifle most likely. Ppl that far along the gun nut spectrum always like it when you admire their firearms.

it's pretty antisocial to carry a gun around as it is so i'd say staring at it would be the lesser of evils in that case xxp

it's pretty antisocial to carry a gun around as it is

I'm pretty sure some ppl in Arizona might disagree

it's pretty antisocial to live in arizona

yeah m white otm the guy who shot that congresswoman was definitely a crazy person

p much if you are a concealedcarrier = you are a crazy person

I didn't ask this fella if I could look at his gun up close.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_kqxtkm0X7R1qzmz3po1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1322847371&Signature=%2Bma8sRYg1cn5aADE5tI6yaLDyZ8%3D

I probably would have asked to look at one of them, the rifle most likely. Ppl that far along the gun nut spectrum always like it when you admire their firearms.

uh. this situation doesnt sound like its really anywhere on the gun nut spectrum to me, dude happened to have guns out when someone stopped by unexpectedly, its not like he was brandishing them at the mailman or something.

Fair enough, but I wouldn't have asked, I would have put my guns away. Guns go in safes or lockers or drawers or racks at the very least. Leaving guns strewn about is nagl imho and indicates a certain amount of gun nuttery.

so he was like, just admiring them for his own pleasure? Xp

I think it's pretty cool to leave guns out in the open, it should be done in more places, like on people's lawns, at the starbucks, at the post office, in the courthouse... a person should never go wanting for a gun when he needs one

this is the shotgun room, i mean the living room

personally I always make sure there is a gun out on every table or bed in my house, just in case somebody drops by unexpectedly and wants to admire one of my guns

if any of you guys want to admire my guns right now please come on by, you'll find some guns in the mailbox, in the flower pot, the oven

"I just like the feel of my guns when I pull them out of the freezer."

All end tables should have one of these:

http://www.carryconcealed.net/Websites/carryconcealed/Images/Reviews/fastholsterc.jpg

I've been known to have a gun or two out on my desk on occasion - if I've been to the range and haven't been back to my parents' house to put them in the safe or w/e.

I sent a friend a picture of my desk once - Tom Waits CDs, some depressing book and a .44 Magnum revolver. His response was "suicide starter kit?"

Do you clean every time you shoot?

You know, the more that I think about this the more I realize that my gun nut friends in high school all had various guns around and they assumed that they were all cool with it so everybody else should be too. I never really said anything about it but it was foreign to my family. All my grandparents had guns but they were never, ever on display. I guess it's a regional/generational thing.

Pretty much never. Cleaning guns is generally unnecessary, especially if it's a Glock/M&P/etc.

back when i shot competetively i cleaned the guns after every match/practice session, but that was long distance rifle so accuracy is kinda super key.

k3vin this thread is about gun etiquette not gun control.

imo apologizing is good enough, dude wasn't expecting you as you said.

I keep seeing this as the proper thing to do after you've shot someone for dropping in.

But it's pretty hilarious to be opposed to hunting since that's a far more natural life for most of the animals involved than even sustainable grassfed beef or w/e.

My moralism wrt hunting tends to have more to do with the state of mind of the hunter than with the fact that he's hunting

I don't hunt, and I know too many people who just set up near a feeder - but otoh all of them eat the venison. Most even eat wild boar when they hunt that.

I love wild boar, too. I love game, basically.

so guys did you solve guns yet

Etiquette requires that you shake hands with a shotgun, bow for a pistol, kneel to a rifle, curtsy to a cannon, kowtow to a blunderbuss and bow and scrape to a machine gun.

The guns are at the left of the plate. People get confused about which to use first, but just work from outside in (left to right). There may be an oyster gun on the right but it's much smaller than the others and easy to tell apart.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/08/shots-reported-on-virginia-tech-campus/]

~guns~

sorry, didn't see this revive when I started new thread

it's okay I was being trolly when I bumped this one

do i curtsy before or after pulling the trigger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoU39Rpp4FI

it has been seven years RIP Dimebag

http://i.imgur.com/Fmkrk.jpg

i keep on thinking of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGyJOX5wFFg

and with that, i will say that i have used some guns in my life, and am shooting with the Pink Pistols San Jose chapter this sunday. with my boyfriend.

Awesome!

Okay, so actual question. My 7-year-old went over to a friends house this weekend and the father let them watch as he picked off some targets in the backyard with a BB gun. Should the father have contacted my wife or myself to let us know? Or was it really no big deal?

If the father didn't let the kids handle the gun, and observed good gun safety rules while handling it himself -- setting a good example -- then I'd say no big deal.

idk man it depends on the targets, if there was substantial, actionable evidence suggesting they were terrorists then i guess it's fine?, but if it's just hearsay or some kind of ethnic profiling i think it could be setting a bad example

I think that is 100% regional context dependent. In Chicago "gun culture" is totally different than gun culture in, to use examples from places I've lived, NC or southern Delaware, where a bb gun is No Big Deal. Here, though, I could definitely see a lot parents having a fit about ANY exposure to guns. People just don't own guns in Chicago the same way they do in other places.

I told him to wait while I thought about how I felt about guns

― good webinar (ha ha I'm having a fantasy), Thursday, December 1, 2011 11:17 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Permalink

lol

a bb gun? i'd say nbd. if said father was safe about it, sure. since it sounds like neither kid shot or even touched the gun, yeah ok.

the only quibble i guess is what kind of bb gun? there are spring-loaded ones that are very close to being toys (but not), and others that are pump or even CO2 charged shooting shaped pellets that can be a lot more dangerous. not to introduce more worry to your mynd.

I guess I was thinking about it from an ideological perspective rather than a safety one (although that would be my first concern). Lots of parents don't want their kids around guns (BB, toy) at all, so I would clear BB gun activity w/ parents because of that. But again - totally regional.

yes i have heard of these parents who do not allow toys with anything weapon-y at all. don't know what to say about that other than i am glad my parents were not like that.

lmao http://goo.gl/C92Fx

Thanks for the input guys. We aren't anti-weapon, but we are pro-safety. I'm not all busted up about it, but I still feel like I would have been totally cool with it if the dad had just called over and been like, "By the way, this is what's up..."

My wife is freaking out a little bit because before the kids interrupted him, the dad was using the bb gun to shoot squirrels for dinner. I think that's great and also somewhat hilarious; Lisa thinks it's terrible. We are two different types of vegetarian, I think.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/12/travel/gun-carryon-atlanta-airport/index.html

um

"I was grazed by a pellet fragment on the left side of my face," Phillips wrote. "However, there were no visible injuries; the pellet safely entered my brain without cosmetic damage."

yes i have heard of these parents who do not allow toys with anything weapon-y at all. don't know what to say about that other than i am glad my parents were not like that.

I was not allowed to have toy guns. But when I was in second or third grade, my dad taught me how to shoot an actual rifle. Also he used to stand on our back porch and shoot squirrels for dinner.

See, I think that's the ideal, correct attitude to teach your kids about guns. By the time I came into my son's life, he had already amassed a little arsenal of toys, so trying to start over again toy gun-less wasn't really in the cards.

how suburban was your home back when your dad used to shoot squirrels from the porch? My personal perceptions of how suburban/rural our neighborhood is factor into why I think it's sort of hilarious. : )

maybe you should start a thread about your perceptions of your neighborhood

ahhhhh, that came out all wrong. my point being that my town feels pretty suburban to me now. And I'm not at all bothered by the hunting of squirrels for meat. I think it's probably at least reasonable meat and I'd love to try it. But we all live on pretty small plots of land in our neighborhood, such that the discharging of a weapon in your backyard seems weird to me, is all.

entirely not meaning to stir up shit in the way that iatee implies, and if so. I'm sorry.

cool thread, toys shaped like weapons are the best but irl guns should be banned forever, even so, if a guy wants to chill with his guns out nbd it's just hat you have a substantially higher chance of dying in that house than in most houses

maybe you should start a thread about your perceptions of your neighborhood

― iatee, Tuesday, 13 December 2011 04:56 (7 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

we should do this!, i have such a ridiculous ad-hom view of my neighbourhood (/town), i feel like the way you feel about a place exemplifies the kind of difficulty of separating your empirical experiences w/the fact that you still can't generalise about a place because you know like 0.001% of it & its inhabitants, and are usually judging it on the basis of very personal experiences

i.... don't think you can really kill a squirrel with a BB gun? sort of have to think he was using a .22

squirrels are fucking hard to shoot, btw, props to gun dad

although negative props for maiming squirrels with an underpowered firearm

how suburban was your home back when your dad used to shoot squirrels from the porch? My personal perceptions of how suburban/rural our neighborhood is factor into why I think it's sort of hilarious. : )

We lived in a housing development with tree-named lanes and a pool and a community center but plopped in the middle of rural swampland in southern Delaware (I had a loooong bus ride to school and it was a 15-20 minute drive to the grocery store). So not suburbs, since there was no urban area, but not really rural, either, since if my father aimed low, he would have taken out a neighbor's back window/cat/child. So yes, it was actually very hilarious (in hindsight. At the time it was awful because I hated squirrel and the whole endeavor drove my mom crazy).

xxp: Naw, you can kill small animals (maybe up to a squirrel?) with a bb gun. I think I would have heard a .22; this was right down the street.

xp: Okay, so that sounds like a similar dynamic as I've got here (just south of Annapolis, MD).

although negative props for maiming squirrels with an underpowered firearm

― his venerable escutcheon, Tuesday, 13 December 2011 13:22 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

great sentence

xp probably very similar, especially given the proximity and shared swampiness!

http://dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=84

^^^^ best concealed weapons

it's p disturbing seeing that because when i saw the one about the cats - http://dontevenreply.com/view.php?post=95 - i was hoping that the pics had just been sourced from some astute google image searches. but like i guess he actually has a bunch of guns around. and cages.

The cage is a humane animal trap - v common.

ah okay. still though. the covering it in red sauce &c, & the having a bunch of guns. idk. maybe i should just be saluting the effort.

you should be saluting the stars and bars itt imo

My elementary school didn't care that I brought my pellet rifle to school for a 4th grade Thanksgiving play, circa 1990, along with one of my grandfather's pipes - kind of mind-boggling now, since either would probably get a kid in serious shit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfWzgzby_hM