Nothing

If I was hiking alone through the Torngat Mountains or living off-grid in the Yukon. Maybe guns have played a part in early settlements.
I would not choose either of these scenarios, but if I did, I would have a gun. (not without learning how to use it, store it & get all the proper certifications).

I know someone who was able to get away from a bear attack after someone shot it.

Besides the already mentioned wild animals, guns also make hunting much easier. Many small abattoirs also use a gun to dispatch livestock for slaughter. I use a small rifle to keep rodent populations down (such as gophers that aren't really gophers but that's a whole 'nother ball o' wax). Coyotes that hassle and hunt small livestock (calves, sheep, goats, chickens, cats).
There's also the sporting side: trap and skeet shooting, target shooting, biathlon.

In short, you may have to realize that not everyone lives the same as you.

When I was farming out in the semi-wilderness I had a Mauser hunting rifle and a 22, not so much for hunting but to defend my family and livestock against marauding animals and to shoot the odd sick calf.

Now, that I live in retirement in town, I gave my guns away. I see no point in city dwellers owning guns.

A lot has happened since this Arabic invention was made

one of the positives is we are here right now in this particular culture as opposed to living in an Islamist culture or a Nazi culture, ferinstance...

guns, germs & steel docu

the day the universe changed series (available to watch online for free)

also do check out his Connections, Connections2 & Connections3 series for more fun :3

could it be said that rockets are a result of guns?  and rockets have led to so many other things (space program, MRI, CDs, LASERs, etc etc etc)

have fun  with your mind :3

No. There is nothing positive about guns. Even hunting guns, imo. There is a guy named Shane Claiborne, an American who doesn't call himself a preacher but a Jesus follower- he's an author and also contributes to a site called Red Letter Christians, and is part of a community movement called The Simple Way. I really respect him. He started a campaign to turn guns into garden tools. You can follow it on twitter.

Useful for hunting and keeping the "varmint" population down (crows, magpies, gophers, coyotes, etc) when one lives in the country. 

There are positives about guns. We tend not to notice the positives because of all the negatives of them.

We liked sticks and stones, swords, boiling oil and fire before guns.

Guns have helped people not starve to death, defend themselves from attacks, have the ability to do things like ranching.... they are an aspect of law enforcement.

Locally, I know many people who without the ability to hunt would do without food.

As others have said, it certainly makes subsistence hunting easier. There are other applications that I think are justifiable (protecting livestock and the like).

The problem, of course, is that's not what they were created for. The first guns were most certainly military weapons. For hunting and self-defense, they were too unwieldy compared to a bow or crossbow and had a much lower rate of fire. So, while firearms have uses that are positive, their invention most certainly was not a positive event.

Mendalla

Maybe we don't need to eat meat. I'm not a vegetarian, but thinking about it. I don't eat much meat. Sometimes When I think about what I'm eating it grosses me out. Could eat more fish and eggs. The eggs we eat were't fertilized into chickens anyway so why waste? Although, when I was a kid I cried for the fish when I found out the tuna I was eating used to swim in the sea :)

David Suzuki suggests that, ecologically, we should be eating as low down on the food chain as possible. Break out the grubs! Yum. Something we could use those gun-turned-garden- tools for. Maybe they're good with garlic, like escargot. ;)

For me, it is like saying "There is nothing positive about the creation of gunpowder."
But, without sulfur what about matches, rubber, epsom salts of sulfa drugs....?

Without gunpowder, they couldn;t have made guns.

No gunpowder! Oh, but we couldn't  blast rock....roads, railroads, mining....

Nuclear weapons... blech! Oh, but nuclear medicine....

It is all connected.

Kimmio,

My mom talks about times when a squirrel or opossum was what they had for dinner.There was no corner store to run to and  what you "out up" might not last all winter. My next door neighbour will talk of winters when even the turnips ran out and whiskey jacks and doves made dinner.

Yeah, problem is the tribally competitive streak, instead of communally cooperative streak, in humans can get nasty and then we find negative uses for things instead of sticking to postive inventions.

I've grown up spoiled, I admit. Beef, chicken, pork and salmon and tuna were about all we ate for meat. Tried game meat hunted by a relative, a few times, and couldn't eat it. Although, now when we're broke we find creative used for pasta, rice, , beans,potatoes and eggs. It's not fancy.

So those garden tools have nothing positive about them, right?  After all, they came from guns ;)

Okay. You got me;) but if the materials used to make them were made into harmless utility tools in the first place? Maybe there wouldn't be so many or such a demand for guns. That's what I meant.

Almost every technology we've created has been a double-edged sword.

Nuclear power can light our homes or blow them up. It can cure diseases or cause them depending on how deployed.

Cars can get us important places (the hospital, say) quickly but cause global warming.

The Internet can keep us in touch with those far away or enable us steal their identities and information.

Guns can help us feed and protect ourselves or help us kill each other (incidentally, this applies equally to bows, crossbows, and spears).

And so on.

WIsdom is not found in abandoning or condemning technologies themselves. It is found in learning how to use them wisely and safely to make our lives and world better.

Mendalla

I agree. The problem is it doesn't happen. I think the guns-into- garden tools is an excellent example of a creative artistic statement that's both thought provoking and useful.

Pardon?

Earlier, I just left a personal case above.

I don't know if the question should be is there anything positive about guns.  If someone becomes a little happier or feels a sense of accomplishment after going out hunting or having a great day at the shooting range, isn't that positive?  Even if you don't agree with the hunting and shooting aspect.

Positive things come out of the negative.  Can you really not come up with anything positive that has come from war or disease?  If so, then why not guns?

I do think it's helpful to have a way to defend one's self from a distance, or a powerful deterrant when needed.  I also prefer to leave that job up to the police, but if I was taken hostage by someone with a knife I would be happy for the police to show up with guns.

There are various types of guns.  There are water guns, heat guns, spray guns, air guns instead of needles, etc.

I think the question should be whether the positives outweigh the negatives.

I need to leave hunting rifles out of the equation for now and think more about it. Apart from that one relative I really have never lived around a hunting culture.

I do think guns contribute more to a culture of violence then they do to discourage it. The only reason cops need guns is because in a culture of fear and violence that breeds more fear and violence- people become afraid of and feel the need to protect themselves from other people- some people have violent natures and you wonder, at least I do, what went wrong to cause that? I think the conversation needs to be about transforming the culture more than about the need to protect ourselves- not the only concersation, but the priority. In the meantime, police still need a way to protect citizens- hopefully with the minimum use of force necessary. What a day though, if 50 years from now, the police were there to serve and mediate, with no need for guns, instead of serve and protect.

What do you mean? Pardon to your pardon. I guess I should have said "it doesn't happen enough", but some people are making it happen. That was in reply to Mendalla. ;) What I was discussing upthread was an inner city project I read about. An American activist and writer and 'new monastic' Christian, named Shane Claiborne is part of a community of people pooling their money and buying drug houses and converting them into livable coop housing, community gardens- and they have started a project to turn guns into garden tools. I think it's pretty cool. Turning something ugly and damaging into something useful and a tool to tend a garden- beautiful and useful and life sustaining.

I meant also-that too often people find negative uses fir technologies instead of sticking to thinking of how they can be useful.

I really like the sound of this project. Literally beating swords into ploughshares, esp. in that kind of setting, sounds like a great idea.

Mendalla

You mean like how you've done on this thread?

btw, i, too, like that idear of the inner city folks -- thanks for sharing :3

Sorry, didn't mean to be negative. I just really don't equate 'guns' with 'positive' - the inner city idea was the only one I can honestly say I feel positive about. Rifles for hunting I feel indifferent about.

What's the video got to do with the price of eggs?

We grew up poor in the country.  My father kept a rifle and a shotgun in his bedroom closet - both unloaded, and double checked.  Amunition was kept in a draw in the wood shed. 

During the hunting season he took one or both those guns into the woods with him when he went out to cut our winter's supply of wood.  How delighted we were whenever he came home with a couple of partridge!  And how relieved Mom was if he got a deer - we would have meat, mincemeat, headcheese, to help us through the winter.

The gun was also used when a porcupine insisted on taking up residence under our shed, worrying the dog and cats.   And it was, very reluctantly, used to dispatch unwanted cats.   And once when my dog was struck by a train and broke its back.

Just a quick reply- little off topic, but I think we get used to whatever we're given to eat and what our parents cooked. Wild game is an acquired taste to urban/ suburban folks like me- that I never really acquired but would I'm sure if there was nothing else. Even lamb which is 'normal' in many households was off the menu in my mom's house because she didn't like it so I grew up with an aversion to it too- and now still do actually because it's a young animal but even then I eat it if I have to.

As for hunting rifles- i wouldn't have the heart to go hunting or witness it personally- but I know it's a normal part of life for many and not up to me to say it's not okay for them. For me- I buy meat from the store where I don't have to think about where it comes from. And so, when it has crossed my mind I've considered lacto- ovo vegetarianism. Eggs and milk no animal had to die for. But I'm still not a vegetarian except on some days when for whatever reason we don't have meat. It's often not intentional vegetarianism. I dis try it for awile to help with digestion, and it helped but I got bored of tofu. ;)

craftscritter's living in jeopardy  (such TLC these folk put into their work)

paintball pop art

anvil grenade 1812 chorri

where would he be now if it hadn't had been for that bamboo shotgun he MacGyverred?

gorgeous tools

The idea of using a gun- to 'take aim' at a living being to injure or kill it bothers me. I don't know. It just does. And yet I know in aboriginal cultures there is great respect for the animal and nothing is wasted, but all is used to sustain life.

As for guns like pistols. Their only purpose seems to hurt people. Even paintball guns are modelled after the predatory example of real ones.

I used to play 'cowboys and indians' with a neighbour kid. I know that's not a pc term but that's what we called it. My cousins played GI Joe. I would discourage kids from that kind of play now. It encourages violence instead of cooperation.

Ear piercing guns- maybe okay for ear piercing. Earlobes heal fast and the pain is minimal. ;) i have pierced ears but I also think clip on or magnetic earrings work just fine.

different cultures, too -- Canada is not the Ewe Ess Eh and, thus, they should never imho have the same constitution as each other...

We have the right to bear arms, and we bear them, both of them, wide open.

a-human! :3

Let's not forget the good points about naziism. It built great highways, brought back full employment, gave new hope to Germans for a better world.....

I don't know. There's often a fair bit of cooperation there even if it's just in setting ground rules or being on teams. We often played "GI Joe" using the dolls working together rather than fighting each other.

C&I definitely isn't  good but for other reasons. It tends to promote the idea that colonization was good and that it was us versus the evil savages, an attitude that should have died out well before my childhood (but was certainly still around then).

I had toy soldiers and toy guns as a kid and I'm a pacifist (as are most of the friends who played with me) so I tend to question this kind of thing. I worry more about how the news and other media sources glorify soldiers and other warrior types. I worry more about first person shooters where you often are killing relatively anonymous foes without the cooperation and interaction of the old "Cowboy & Indians" or "Toy soldiers" I used to play.

Mendalla

also, cathode ray guns enable me to see the handsome mugs of ted nugent & alex jones

near seattle  still no signs of rampant cynicism, violence or shootings

Eek. Wouldn't Alex Jones interacting with Ted Nugent cause some kind of uber-right-wing-whacko critical mass that would trigger the heat death of the universe of something?

Mendalla

*end sarcasm

*giggle*  Liberals are sooooo funny :3

(i wonder when categorizing people that trust people to live their own lives as extreme right wing started and who to blame?)

(though i have a limit to the time i can watch Jones, similar to the reason why i can't listen to too much NPR at once...)