Er... personally I am always amazed that conservatives heads don't explode from the massive cognitive dissonance.
A kid raped by her father who gets an abortion is a despicable murderer. But... we should arm more people with guns whose only real purpose is to kill another human being.
Life is sacred 'till you're born. Then you're fair game?
But... we should arm more people with guns whose only real purpose is to kill another human being.
This Pandora's box has been open for a very long time. I'm afraid that even hope will escape it should we try to close it.
The mere existence of these weapons in the population makes them a deterrent for some crimes against the elderly and disabled. Even if it isn't a deterrent for some criminals, I would rather see the scumbag criminal breaking into an old person's home die than the old person getting killed, robbed, or otherwise abused. Dead criminals don't commit additional crimes.
If guns were banned today, and all citizens were required to turn in their weapons, do you think that the criminals with guns would trot off to the police station to hand in those weapons? Sorry dude, they aren't going to turn in those weapons.
Speaking from experience living in a country where people don't go armed, it works in a little different way. Naturally, the evil criminals don't turn in their weapons.
Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed.
The second part is that burglars and petty thievery becomes much more serious, when they're caught with a weapon, as it then becomes armed delicts, which increases the jail time a lot. So many criminals decide not to risk that, plus the hassles of being caught with a weapon.
In addition to all of that, if weapons are banned, organising one becomes more difficult. So no more just whipping out the gun from grannies drawer when you want to teach someone a lesson, you need first to find a dealer you can trust, the stuff is more expensive, you risk legal trouble while buying the weapon and so on. Until one's done with all that, a lot of momentum is gone and most but the very dedicated won't bother with it.
But all of this is moot anyway, because handguns are a sacred cow in the USA and no amount of reasoning and real life experience in other parts of the world will change the mind of the public.
"Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed."
I agree with you, except the part noted above. Are you saying they shouldn't be able to exercise their right to own a gun because they might use it illegally at some point? So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.? Should I not be allowed to own those because I might use them illegally at some point too? Should the government ban owning a penis to stop rapes?:-) England has banned private ownership of guns, and the response has been a large surge in knife attacks. Criminals will use whatever they can, and realistically I agree with you that criminals aren't going to be the ones turning in their firearms if they were banned.
A gun is specifically designed, tooled and sold to kill life-forms.
A brick or a screw-driver are a building block for walls and a tool for mounting screws respectively.
A knife is a utensil for cutting food, rope, etc etc.
By the way, in The Netherlands, where you can legally smoke a doobie or two and then mosey on to your favorite hooker, if you are caught carrying a knife in public, the blade of which is longer than your hand is wide, you are looking at up to 10.000 Euros in fines and 6 mont
The increase in knife crime has nothing to do with the ban on handguns. The handgun ban was just a government PR exercise post Dunblane; the number of privately owned, legal, handguns was in the low thousands and most of those were.22's. The rules pre ban were incredibly restrictive anyway.
We have a totally different situatation in the UK than you do in the US. Firearms (handguns especially) have been heavily restricted for over 80 years here. There has never been a large quantity of guns in circulation
"Are you saying they shouldn't be able to exercise their right to own a gun because they might use it illegally at some point? So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.?"
Screwdrivers, bricks, and hammers are not designed to kill people. The only thing handguns are really good at is hurting/killing people.
Every law enforcement officer I've talked to has been in favor of more strict handgun laws; because handguns can so easily be concealed they make officers' jobs much more dangerous. Shotguns and rifles you can see coming, and are used for other purposes than shooting people or people shaped targets. Indeed, a shotgun is the best home protection you can own because it requ
This is an old, flawed argument. A gun is a tool specifically designed to kill efficiently. A hammer is not. You could use a gun to hammer in a nail, but if you had a hammer, why would you? Technically a person can be killed by pretty much any object lying around if the wielder is creative enough. The difference is in the original intended use of the tool.
Hum, crazed mad man attacks school with gun, kills 17 innocent victims and himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
Crazed mad man attacks school with machete, no fatalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Potts
I have a chance against someone with a knife, with a gun I have almost none unless I also have a gun. Pretty much sums it up. The problem with the gun lobby is like SUV drivers, they feel safer despite every statistic available showing they are in fact less safe.
I'm not a big "gun nut", but even I can see the fallacy in that statement. If I was being mugged and was confronted with one man with a gun, there's not much I could do in self defense were I unarmed. Give me a gun (and the proper training to use it) and we're on even ground.
Or, suppose you are a small woman (like another poster said his wife is) and you're confronted with two big men with knives who want to rape and kill you. Chances are, without a gun, you're dead meat.
There's not much you can do in self-defense if you're armed - you're only guaranteeing that somebody is going to get shot. You point out, correctly, that if you have a gun and they have a knife, then you might come out on top, so why carry a knife? Allowing guns to everybody, even with courses in gun use and safety, just means that criminals will have a gun because it's pointless to carry anything smaller.
The whole shebang then pushes itself further and further until everyone has Fatboys and mini-nukes and
You have obviously never been threatened by anything bigger and badder than you in your whole life. As for us humans, we find it difficult to defend ourselves without some kind of equivalent or proportional force. Someone comes after me with a bat, I better be significantly stronger/faster than him if I'm unarmed. If the assailant has a knife, I better be Chuck Norris or Batman (or maybe just a military hand-to-hand combat specialist) if I want to defend myself without reasonable expectation of getting slas
Right. You go ahead and defend yourself without a gun. You're going to fucking die, though. I'm not just talking about "ohh the criminal will have a gun", either. Give him a knife. You'll get stabbed. Go ahead and get a knife of your own, then you'll simply have to rely on the fact that you are stronger and faster than any aggressor who comes your way -- oh, and that they make sure to come one-by-one.
You don't need a gun to defend yourself, but when you eliminate it from the equation (and especially whe
Throwing that nonsense aside, that wasn't even your original statement. You stated that there were no LEGAL uses. Regardless of whether you think you "need" to or not, defending yourself with a gun is legal in the vast majority of the United States. It's the entire point of encacting concealed carry laws. The citizen who has that gun out in public was given that legal right specifically for the purpose of defense.
I don't live in the States, I live in the UK, which I think you'll find is part of the conversation that was being had.
So, when you're in a society where it's incredibly hard to find a gun, legally or otherwise, you don't need a gun to defend yourself.
The point I am trying to make is that guns perpetuate themselves. When everyone else has a gun, you need one, and then the bad guys need something bigger in order to stay ahead. Handing them out like Tylenol to everyone and sundry isn't going to solve the prob
It's done pretty well to solve the problem where I'm at. I'm in the US, but I'm not in an urban center. A huge portion of gun crime in the US is perpetrated in cities (often gang or drug related violence). Quite often the worst cities are the ones with the strictest gun laws.
Outside of the cities, and in most areas with more lax concealed carry laws, crime drops off rapidly. I live out in the boonies. Virtually every single household has guns. Most have quite a bit (I'll admit that I'm an enthusiast/c
Trouble is, anecdotal evidence of one community does not a helpful statistic make - overall, the homicide rate in the States is about 5 times higher than it is here. Firearm homicide rate is somewhere in the region of 25 times higher.
Unfortunately I couldn't find any gun crime statistics to compare to knife crime here, but I would make a sizable bet that they're pretty favourable too. I know where I'd rather take my chances.
I'm a 115 pound woman. How should I defend myself? A chef's knife? A pair of scissors? My fingernails? All those things require me to be within less than an arm's reach of whomever I'm trying to defend myself against. If I'm that close, I've already "lost".
Call the cops? The police response time for highest-priority calls in my city is 11 minutes. Police don't get there in time to stop a crime, they get there in time to take a report of what happened.
If you allow all law-abiding citizens to carry a gun, you're only guaranteeing that your hypothetical criminal will have one too - why carry anyone else?
And if you don't allow law-abiding citizens to carry guns, then the criminals are guarenteed that their target is unarmed. Good news for the criminals, it lowers their risk of harm considerably.
Not having a gun does not mean that you're unarmed, and strictly controlled gun ownership also reduces the chances of the criminal being able to get a gun in the first place.
How, pray tell, do you suggest I arm myself then? That doesn't require me being within arm's reach of whomever I'm trying to defend myself against?
Taser? Those are one-use, so you better not miss!
You're locked into the thinking that you have to be armed with a weapon. Try thinking outside that limited viewpoint and you'll find plenty of ways that you can deter criminals without having to shoot them.
You won't stop every criminal but then you wouldn't have stopped them anyway - even having a gun does nothing past a certain level of determination.
Gun owners/carriers don't want to have to shoot someone. Drawing your weapon is the last resort. If everything else has failed to get you out of the sitation, then and only then do you draw your weapon. And if you draw it, you better be ready to use it.
Bottom line, if someone is dead or wounded on the floor, they can't commit the crime. I wouldn't ever want to be in the situation where I actually had to shoot someone to defend myself, but if it comes down to it, I would do what needs to be do to protect
There is NO valid reason of carrying a gun on the streets. Really, there isn't.
My wife is physically small. Any man of average size and strength could kill her with his hands. To deny her the right to go armed is to deny her the right to self defence. To deny her right to self defence is in effect to deny her right to life. I assert my wife's right to life, with force if necessary, but I can't be there all the time.
I don't understand and will never agree with people like yourself who deny my wife's right to self defence. I think it is a form of mental illness you're suffering.
Sorry to not realise you live in a society where there are so many arms around that everybody is afraid of everybody else. I live in Hong Kong, no-one carries arms here, and homicides and other violent crime levels are one of the lowest worldwide. Even just across the border, in Shenzhen, which belongs to the world's most criminal cities, no-one carries a gun.
Besides, there are more ways of self-defence than guns or other weapons. Think e.g. martial arts. Yes that needs training but for a gun to be effecti
I must be completely out of my head then, because I'm a self-described "liberal" who strongly supports the 2nd Amendment. I own a gun, precisely because Illinois (and Chicago in particular) have much stricter gun laws than the rest of the country. Coincidentally, we have higher murder rates and crimes in which a gun is used than the rest of the country too. The city with the highest murder rate (typically by firearms) is Washington D.C., which has a total ban on any firearms ownership. Seeing a trend?
The USA has overall very relaxed gun laws (and "smuggling" from one state to another with stricter laws is trivial of course), and a very high number of gun deaths, murder, self-defence, accident, or otherwise.
Europe has overall very strict gun laws and much lower gun death rates.
Most countries in the world with a properly functioning government have stricter gun ownership laws, and lower gun related death rates than the USA.
I must be completely out of my head then, because I'm a self-described "liberal" who strongly supports the 2nd Amendment. I own a gun, precisely because Illinois (and Chicago in particular) have much stricter gun laws than the rest of the country. Coincidentally, we have higher murder rates and crimes in which a gun is used than the rest of the country too. The city with the highest murder rate (typically by firearms) is Washington D.C., which has a total ban on any firearms ownership. Seeing a trend?
"Most countries in the world with a properly functioning government"
Until you realize the impossibility and silliness of your comment, no intelligent conversation can be had.
Yes, the trend is that people kill by other means in those countries. What you're missing is that all crime is derived from societal forces, without regard to the tools available to the criminal.
Maybe in your snide haze, you missed the fact that those restrictive laws had virtually no effect on gun violence. Chicago's gun laws have been on the books since the early 80's and we just had one of the deadliest summers in a decade due to gun violence. Just like the War on Drugs, let's keep doing the same thing even though it's proven not to work. I agree with one of the other grandchildren posts in this thread: societal causes lead to violence, not guns. Given that over half of households in the cou
As soon as someone has their hands around your neck, is stronger than you, and has the intent of killing you, it's pretty much too late to start digging for your gun. If someone is really intent on killing you, and has planned it, then not much defence will save you.
Carrying a gun MAY help you against a sudden attack, but then if e.g. a robber is standing in front of you with his gun drawn, the last thing you should do is to start digging up your own gun. Provided you'd like to live to tell the tale.
I'm an amateur cage fighter with (after calculating) over 800 hours spent training, primarily in Jiu-jitsu. I'm not a big guy, though. I fight at 155 and walk around about 165. If an athletic 200+ pound man were to attack me, I wouldn't feel confident that I could win. Sure I could armbar him, maybe throw on a triangle choke or take his back, but do you really want to pull guard in a street fight? If that man were of equal size to me and armed with a knife, I wouldn't even want to try to fight him.
When I was in high school a friend of mine convinced me to join the wrestling team. I sucked pretty badly at it. I only had fighting with my siblings as experience where as my team mates had been doing it for four years or more. At my first tournament a friend of mine from another school's team wanted to informally wrestle with me to warm up and have some fun. He had been wrestling for years. He had won more than half of his last 40 matches by pin. I out weighed him by about 25 pounds.
You will note that itr ties with financial health, not gub ownership.
Also, Hong Kong is tine compared to the use. 426 sq mi and about 7 million people. I can find many similiar area and populations in sections of the US with a homocide rate far less then Hong Kongs.
Hong Kong expects a strong [police force and the polices ability to do whatever they want to make up for the lack of self defenc
You just don't get it though. It's not about weapons, it's about inequality. No amount of martial arts training is going to allow a crippled elderly individual to fight off a 20-year-old criminal bent on robbery and murder. Nor will the best martial arts fighter in the world stand a chance against a gang of half a dozen attackers.
Not everyone lives in Hong Kong or Shangri-La. The rest of us have to consider the very real fact that there are plenty of people out there who want to do others harm.
You are the worst thing in the world. Fear begets fear. But why do i even bother, you're not reading this, already your mind is looking to see where you can attack my simple insult, perhaps with a firearm.
My wife is physically small. Any man of average size and strength could kill her with his hands. To deny her the right to go armed is to deny her the right to self defence. To deny her right to self defence is in effect to deny her right to life. I assert my wife's right to life, with force if necessary, but I can't be there all the time.
Flawed argument. Denying someone the right to carry a weapon is not denying them the right to self defense. She can carry a taser, learn martial arts to just name two ways.
Anyone can carry a taser and learn martial arts, that's all great. Now just imagine that you have a taser and know martial arts and 2 people attack you and they have guns. I think you'd die.
I was not going to jump into this, but for the love of God people, please learn something about the law. Self defense is NOT a "right," it is a privilege. A right is something the holder bears at all times, to which someone else owes a duty to recognize. A privilege, however, is only invoked if certain preconditions are met, such as the requirement that one must hold a driver's license to be able to use the public roads.
To be able to argue the affirmative defense of self defense, you must meet a certai
Nice try. The Castle doctrine is only applicable to unlawful intruders into one's house, not to someone walking down the street, as in the scenario we were discussing. Even so, it requires a particular set of circumstances before it can be invoked, thus making it a privilege.
You do not understand the basic legal concept of a right versus a privilege. I suggest you start by reading up on Hohlfeldian correlatives http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Newcomb_Hohfeld#Hohfeldian_analysis [wikipedia.org]
Good luck to you.
My wife is physically small. Any man of average size and strength could kill her with his hands. To deny her the right to go armed is to deny her the right to self defence. To deny her right to self defence is in effect to deny her right to life. I assert my wife's right to life, with force if necessary, but I can't be there all the time.
Where do you live? If it really is that dangerous to be on the streets, don't you think it would be better to move somewhere safer? Even with a gun, her self-defence might fail, so moving would seem to ensure your wife's right to life in a better way.
I agree. Everyone should have multiple guns. We need to keep everyone in the USA safe! When finally everyone can kill anyone else as easily as changing a channel with a remote control, finally we will all be free.
My 2-year old child is physically small. Any man of average size and strength could kill him with his hands. To deny him the right to go armed is to deny him the right to self defence. To deny his right to self defence is in effect to deny his right to life. I assert my child's right to life,
I assume that one day when your wife gets spooked at night in an alley somewhere by some street-bad looking kid, pulls her gun and shoots him dead, only to find that he was trying to ask her directions to the closest 7-11, that you will happily surrender her to the justice system on a murder charge?
Or perhaps it is a mugger, and your wife shoots him dead (after all he pulled a gun..), then she turns around just as someone else walks in the the alley, they see her with a gun having just shot someone, turning towards them still holding her gun, so they grab theirs and open fire.. Will you uphold the third persons right to self defense?
"Yes, horrible scenarios I know, but they happen.."
Really? Do they? When? How often? More often than an armed citizen successfully prevents a violent crime? (from 1 to 2 million times per year depending on how you count)
As it turns out, armed citizens shoot the right person more often than the police do and most of the time, they do not have to shoot at all (the mere presence or presentation of the gun deters a criminal). Since eliminating armed citizens would require increasing armed police to replace them, the rate of accidents will go up not down.
What's the difference between your wife using a taser or a hand gun to defend herself? Far as I can tell, both are defensive - one is merely less lethal than the other
When facing a single attacker, sure -- a taser makes a good deterrent. When Facing a group of attackers, "who wants to be the first to get tasered" is a much weaker deterrent than "who wants to be shot first?". One has a potential permanent result, and one does not.
This statement is incorrect. There are two purposes to firearms. The first is to deter. The second is to kill. The first is used far more often by private citizens than the latter.
There is NO valid reason of carrying a gun on the streets. Really, there isn't.
You are incorrect. The valid reason to carry a gun is self-defense. I have a concealed weapon permit. When I'm not going to work or school, I carry a gun.
You WILL have a very bad day if you try to hurt me or my family.
Quick, better ban all the crowbars and jackhammers then! Of course, one might argue that the hundreds of millions of dollars that hunting brings into the Colorado economy is a productive use of guns. Then there's the fact that > 80% of the money for ALL game conservation programs in the US are funded by hunting licenses. And the fact that armed citizens are responsible for stopping millions of crimes every year in the US. And the fact that recreational target shooting is sill one of sports most common
a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc... all serve useful purposes. A gun only serves one purpose: to kill or otherwise injure another human being
Wrong. Guns are mostly used for hunting, target shooting, and stopping violent attacks upon the innocent. These three outnumber criminal uses by far. There are millions of rounds of ammo made in the US each year, and the number used by criminals to harm people is a tiny tiny fraction of that.
The fewer guns (or speeding cars) the fewer deaths. Simple as that.
Part 1 is ridiculous: You will only disarm the law-abiding. No serious career criminal will give a shit about any weapons ban. Also, in what scenario do you envision a person walking down the street, possibly about to commit a crime, when all of the sudden the police arrest them? Contrived.
As for part 2: If you commit a felony while packing heat, you get extra felonies, even in the good ol' US of A. Non issue.
Part 3: so you're saying it's ok if the "very dedicated" are armed? You've solved nothing, removed a useful tool from the hands of those who would exercise their right to self-defense, and made sure criminals know their victims are unarmed, all in one fell swoop. Bravo.
I think your sticking point is that you believe criminals actually care about this "trouble" that they "risk" in obtaining and carrying weapons. You're a (presumably) law abiding person, so you think "oh dear I certainly wouldn't want EXTRA trouble!" Well, I hate to break it to you but that is an obvious misattribution on your part. On top of that, what about "real life experience" in the USA? There are plenty of people walking around (legally) armed as can be and amazingly people don't die during traffic accidents or parking disputes or whatever other garbage contrived examples you can come up with. 48 out of 50 states in this country allow provisions for private citizens to conceal, carry and use a firearm in well-defined circumstances and crime committed with a firearm is not really a problem except in places that outright ban firearms (see: Chicago).
This point of view of "oh just disarm everyone!" really pisses me off. Regular people defend their lives successfully and legally in this country often and you have the audacity to tell them that they are wrong for owning and/or carrying a firearm. Some people refuse to be victimized and they should be afforded the right to defend themselves in rare, legally-defined circumstances.
You will only disarm the law-abiding. No serious career criminal will give a shit about any weapons ban.
The "law abiding"/"career criminal" dichotomy is a false one. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in between. If you've ever gotten a speeding ticket, or a parking ticket, you're somewhere between. There are millions of one-time offenders who commit "crimes of opportunity", and never offend again. Many, if not most, Americans fail to be perfect, law-abiding citizens all of the time. We don't inten
1 - Yeah, ok. What you listed are civil infractions. What you're looking for are criminal ones. If you want to get technical, then let's say felons vs non-felons and call it at that. Regardless, they will not care and neither will a lot of currently law-abiding individuals.
2 - There is no straw man. There's no other way to take it. How do you purport these guns would be "taken from people days, weeks, or years" before? You're going to root out these guns with what? A registration? Shit's illegal.
Your gun loving country also has the highest homicide rates by a massive margin. Thats because everyone is walking around with a gun thinking they are a cowboy.
Over here only the criminals have guns. They tend to use them on other criminals. They don't need to use them on the law abiding citizens because they never have to worry about some gun nut with a concealed carry license when they rob a bank.
Actually its stupid to argue. Your country is the one with huge amounts of guns and bullet filled corpses per
You're an idiot. Sorry, but you sound like a goddamn hen.
Literally every single sentence you wrote here is wrong. I don't even know where to start. Where ever you got your education from, demand your money back.
Perhaps you would like some fucking citations [wikipedia.org] retard?
That list shows your country far topping the list of firearm related homicides per capita of the industrialised nations. In fact you are so good at killing each other, your stats would look more at home in the second list of shitholes with bugger all income. You are closer to Zimbabwe than you are to Australia.
So I reiterate: Violent bloody rednecks, the lot of ya. Call yourselves a civilisation? Fuck...
Haha my citations were fine. Your citation is based on a laughable premise that the factual number of gun deaths is somehow irrelevant because of "variables" such as the highway system. Guess what champ? All those "variables" cited are part of your country, and one of those "variables" is that every crazy redneck seems to think they need automatic weapons to protect themselves. Possibly they do in your country, sounds like a self-perpetuating violent problem with guns only escalating it.
Ok, you're a stupid dick. Yet again, everything you said is filled with hyperbole and misconstrued data. Did you know that it's rare than anyone but criminals and the police carry guns here? No? You didn't? Not surprising considering that you know fuck all about anything else. Far less than 1% of the population have CCW licenses.
You absolutely do not have the right to use lethal force in defence of yourself. Maybe on paper you do, but I want to watch you defend your life against an armed aggressor while
Haha, listening to your impotent redneck ravings makes myself and my collegues laugh a lot. Please keep it up. I've been offered a lot of beer if I can get you on YouTube crying "Leave mah guns alone".
We love how you continue to defend, while sidestepping around the fact that more people are dying from gunshots in your country than any other developed nation by a wide wide margin. Yet you think you can give the rest of the world advice on your obviously model laws.
And the hits keep coming. It's almost comical really, listening to you go on and on getting more and more wrong.
Here's a secret: the vast majority of unjustifiable homicides that occur in the United States are between gang members. Isn't that something? So no, I'm not going to get shot and it's not people paranoid about MAH GUNS doing the shooting, despite your disinformation. It's almost entirely an inner-city (where, ironically, guns are outright banned) cultural issue and will exist whether we ban gun
Haha are you retarded? Your firearm homicide rate is nearly ten times that of my country.
You are going to blame gang members now? Ten fucking times. Do you have that many violent criminals to skew the statistics that hard? Or perhaps, and this is my personal theory: "You are wrong, again. You are pulling numbers our your arse, again." What is it? The gangsters are killing each other at a rate comparable to genocide, or half your bloody population are inner city gangsters?
Whatever. You're a child and I'm done with this conversation. Believe what you will, it's immaterial to me. You're worthless and can't do shit anyhow. But I do gotta say that if you act like this in front of real, live people then I pity you.
The Gun is Civilization, by Maj. L. Caudill, USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and
force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either
convincing me via argument, or make me do your bidding under threat of
force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories,
without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact
through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social
interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the
personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use
reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat
or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal
footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing
with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a
carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity
in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and
a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force
equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized
if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier
for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the
mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by
legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential
marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by
the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a
civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful
living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal
that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious
in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the
physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute
lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of
it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force
easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger
attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an
octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't
work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily
employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but
because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I
cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid,
but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions
of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of
those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and
that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed
and can only be persuaded, never forced.
Just for the fun of it I'll pick some random pieces and demonstrate the flawed logic in them:
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come ou
How about emotional pressure (appealing to one's feelings), social pressure (you will be shunned/respected by your peers), flight (as in - run away)?
1. Reason (This isn't Star Trek's Vulcan; emotions and reason are intertwined)
2. Reason (why the social pressure works)
3. Force (physical removal of problem).
I suppose if you (re)define Reason to mean any level of human interaction that does not involve physical contact and (re)define Force to me
I think part of your problem in understanding the original poster is that you misunderstand how guns should properly be used.
When I was a kid the first thing I learned was do not ever for any reason point a gun, or any weapon, at something or someone whom you do not intend to use it on. If I draw my gun on someone it is because I am about to shoot them with it. It is not something with which to threaten or persuade. If my weapon is coming out it's because we are already past the point of resolving the issue
My overall point being that widespread gun availability means that both the good guys and the bad guys find it easier to get their hands on guns.
From here come a couple of effects: - While in an environment where guns are tightly controlled, a thief might or not have a gun, in and environment where guns are easy to come by, a thief almost always has a gun. This is because they can get hold of one easily, because they can't be imprisoned by just carrying a gun (when guns are outlawed, only bad guys - or cops
But guns don't empower the bad guys MORE than they empower the good guys.
Whereas being the biggest muscleman on the street definitely empowers you more than the average person, who may not be physically able to match you no matter how much he works at it. The disparity between a 100 lb. girl and a 250 lb. weightlifter CANNOT be leveled by their physical attributes alone.
Having personally used a gun to defend both my "9 stone weakling" self and others from a 300 pound muscleman, I speak with the voice of exp
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
Seriously? That statement is most asinine.
Starting an encounter by saying "I have a gun and you can't use force on me" immediately puts the other party in the position of having to use force. The other party will have to use force to get your attention, stop you from doing something with the gun, or stop you from doing something that h
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
Wow this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I could easily deal with an armed person by force in many situations:
A. If I have the element of surprise. B. I have friends with weapons guns as well. C. The victim sucks at using their gun.
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
No. The greatest civilization is one where all citizens have absolutely no reason to be armed or to use force.
I'm not that much of an anti-gun person but to say that guns will create a perfect civilization is absurd.
In the first two examples you posit it wouldn't matter in that case if the victim was armed or not so they lose nothing by having the gun.
For the third, if you can't use your gun or aren't willing to use your gun when appropriate you shouldn't be carrying one.
The point is that by being armed with a gun the victim is on a much more level footing against their assailant. Criminals don't pick targets that stand anywhere near a 50/50 shot of resisting them. The idea isn't to carry a weapon openly but to carry i
It's an interesting perspective, here's a counterargument (I don't have the exact text in front of me, so I'll have to paraphrase) by Geoffrey Canada, head of the Harlem Children's Zone:
Geoff described his experience of carrying a gun after he'd managed to work his way out of the ghetto and into college. What he realized after a while was that situations that he would have avoided based on his upbringing on the streets (like walking right through the middle of a group of rival gang members) he no longer avo
This sounds to me like he had a problem with trying to prove to himself that he was no longer afraid, so he sought out confrontation. But one man's personal problems should not be used to dictate to everyone else, most of whom have outgrown such behaviour.
Is he claiming that not one single soldier (all of whom are armed to the teeth) has ever been "forced" to do something? Wow, I didn't realise the military was run by consensus at every level.
The people who modded this "insightful" need a strong dose of realism. Let me preface this by saying that I'm certainly not of the, "take all guns away and make them illegal" mindset. I believe the whole gun issue is being distorted by extremists on both sides: those who want firearms to be illegal to own, shoot, and look at and those who think every 5-year-old should be armed.
But this Major Caudill seems to be stumbling through his own logic. Seriously, this reads more like a religious justification to bel
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger with a gun, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger with a gun, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with guns.
Fixed that asshattery.
The gun is the only personal weapon that escalates a simple mugging / rape / beating into a killing.
So we should all have are own individual nuclear weapons? Also, the whole premise is flawed. We are a lot more complex than reason or force. My girl friend doesn't have to reason with me to have sex with her. I do so because I want to. Humans have instinct which act beyond reason or force.
In any case, stuff written by gun nuts only appeal to other gun nuts. If you want to convince other people that guns are good...then maybe work on making all the gun owners out there responsible so that a loved one
Funny, I always thought the real world experience of every oppresive government disarmed its citizens to increase control was a good example of why not to disarm. In fact, that is the only reason the 2nd Amendement even exists! Both sides of this stupid argument frame this as protecting ourselves against our fellow citizens when the only reason it was written was for the citizens to protect themselves from the government.
Also, the average legally armed American has 2-3x more experience with their firear
Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed.
You just described the way america is trying to deal with drugs. If you are caught in possession, you go to jail. Despite that, drugs are very common and little progress has been made in
When I want to tweak someone who's against gun ownership, I agree with them. I specify that I live in a community that hires off duty armed police officers that make sure that no suspicious people enter the community. I mention that to protect myself I stay away from bad neighborhoods. I would like to have an armed body guard to be with me, also. There have been a few break-ins in my neighborhood. The cops come by long after the crroks are gone and fill out their reports. Sometimes, they actually beat the
I'm not for it, but if it were to happen, I would rather they banned ammunition. There would quickly become less and less ability to use a gun for everyone.
Yes some people would make there own, but that would be a really small percentage of current owners, and an even smaller portion of criminals.
Yes, people could smuggle them, but the cost would be pretty high, probably too high for small time criminals.
Finally, and here is the best part, if it turned out to be a huge mistake, removing the law would get fir
This ignores that in America, the vast majority of people with guns are not evil deed doers, and never will be.
Even my wife carries a gun, legally, with a permit.
To think that all people with guns are up to no good simply misses the point here in the USA anyway. I haven't touched my gun in two years, but we used to also target shoot with shotguns and pistols. Until you have had the joy of blowing shit up with a shotgun (in an approved area and in a safe manner) you just don't get it, I guess.
"Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed."
Even in the US, this is simply not true. Even here where most people can obtain a firearm of some kind legally, almost every gun crime is committed with an illegal weapon or by someone (e.g. a felon) who is not allowed to carry them. They could be arrested for this at any time already. What this means is that a weapon ban would make just about zero positive effectâ" police would have no more tools for preventing crime than they do now. Simply enforcing the law against felons with weapons would do much
Clearly, you're not familiar with current gun laws in the United States.
Except for a few states with high violent crime rates, you CAN just go around carrying a gun--out in the open, even! Most people don't even notice or care about it, because they're too busy being distracted by mobile phones and other things.
When you carry concealed, in most places you need the permit, as you say. Of course, you're right--even in places where people carry a sidearm openly, it's not the wild west. Then again, the wild we
Pohl's law:
Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere, will not hate it.
God, please let this be true. (Score:5, Funny)
I want to see liberals' heads explode when they realize that Socialized medicine is being used to buy people guns.
LK
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A kid raped by her father who gets an abortion is a despicable murderer. But... we should arm more people with guns whose only real purpose is to kill another human being.
Life is sacred 'till you're born. Then you're fair game?
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But... we should arm more people with guns whose only real purpose is to kill another human being.
This Pandora's box has been open for a very long time. I'm afraid that even hope will escape it should we try to close it.
The mere existence of these weapons in the population makes them a deterrent for some crimes against the elderly and disabled. Even if it isn't a deterrent for some criminals, I would rather see the scumbag criminal breaking into an old person's home die than the old person getting killed, robbed, or otherwise abused. Dead criminals don't commit additional crimes.
If guns were banned t
Re:God, please let this be true. (Score:5, Insightful)
If guns were banned today, and all citizens were required to turn in their weapons, do you think that the criminals with guns would trot off to the police station to hand in those weapons? Sorry dude, they aren't going to turn in those weapons.
Speaking from experience living in a country where people don't go armed, it works in a little different way. Naturally, the evil criminals don't turn in their weapons.
Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed.
The second part is that burglars and petty thievery becomes much more serious, when they're caught with a weapon, as it then becomes armed delicts, which increases the jail time a lot. So many criminals decide not to risk that, plus the hassles of being caught with a weapon.
In addition to all of that, if weapons are banned, organising one becomes more difficult. So no more just whipping out the gun from grannies drawer when you want to teach someone a lesson, you need first to find a dealer you can trust, the stuff is more expensive, you risk legal trouble while buying the weapon and so on. Until one's done with all that, a lot of momentum is gone and most but the very dedicated won't bother with it.
But all of this is moot anyway, because handguns are a sacred cow in the USA and no amount of reasoning and real life experience in other parts of the world will change the mind of the public.
Re:God, please let this be true. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed."
I agree with you, except the part noted above. Are you saying they shouldn't be able to exercise their right to own a gun because they might use it illegally at some point? So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.? Should I not be allowed to own those because I might use them illegally at some point too? Should the government ban owning a penis to stop rapes? :-) England has banned private ownership of guns, and the response has been a large surge in knife attacks. Criminals will use whatever they can, and realistically I agree with you that criminals aren't going to be the ones turning in their firearms if they were banned.
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Logical fallacy.
A gun is specifically designed, tooled and sold to kill life-forms.
A brick or a screw-driver are a building block for walls and a tool for mounting screws respectively.
A knife is a utensil for cutting food, rope, etc etc.
By the way, in The Netherlands, where you can legally smoke a doobie or two and then mosey on to your favorite hooker, if you are caught carrying a knife in public, the blade of which is longer than your hand is wide, you are looking at up to 10.000 Euros in fines and 6 mont
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We have a totally different situatation in the UK than you do in the US. Firearms (handguns especially) have been heavily restricted for over 80 years here. There has never been a large quantity of guns in circulation
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"Are you saying they shouldn't be able to exercise their right to own a gun because they might use it illegally at some point? So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.?"
Screwdrivers, bricks, and hammers are not designed to kill people. The only thing handguns are really good at is hurting/killing people.
Every law enforcement officer I've talked to has been in favor of more strict handgun laws; because handguns can so easily be concealed they make officers' jobs much more dangerous. Shotguns and rifles you can see coming, and are used for other purposes than shooting people or people shaped targets. Indeed, a shotgun is the best home protection you can own because it requ
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This is an old, flawed argument. A gun is a tool specifically designed to kill efficiently. A hammer is not. You could use a gun to hammer in a nail, but if you had a hammer, why would you? Technically a person can be killed by pretty much any object lying around if the wielder is creative enough. The difference is in the original intended use of the tool.
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You could use a gun to hammer in a nail, but if you had a hammer, why would you?
Because it sounds like so much more fun.
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Hum, crazed mad man attacks school with gun, kills 17 innocent victims and himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunblane_massacre
Crazed mad man attacks school with machete, no fatalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Potts
I have a chance against someone with a knife, with a gun I have almost none unless I also have a gun. Pretty much sums it up. The problem with the gun lobby is like SUV drivers, they feel safer despite every statistic available showing they are in fact less safe.
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So how is a gun any different than a screwdriver, brick, hammer, etc.?
Scale. There is much more potential for a gun to kill someone either accidentally or deliberately.
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You don't need a gun to defend yourself.
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I'm not a big "gun nut", but even I can see the fallacy in that statement. If I was being mugged and was confronted with one man with a gun, there's not much I could do in self defense were I unarmed. Give me a gun (and the proper training to use it) and we're on even ground.
Or, suppose you are a small woman (like another poster said his wife is) and you're confronted with two big men with knives who want to rape and kill you. Chances are, without a gun, you're dead meat.
Sure, you might be trained in mar
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There's not much you can do in self-defense if you're armed - you're only guaranteeing that somebody is going to get shot. You point out, correctly, that if you have a gun and they have a knife, then you might come out on top, so why carry a knife? Allowing guns to everybody, even with courses in gun use and safety, just means that criminals will have a gun because it's pointless to carry anything smaller.
The whole shebang then pushes itself further and further until everyone has Fatboys and mini-nukes and
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Right. You go ahead and defend yourself without a gun. You're going to fucking die, though.
I'm not just talking about "ohh the criminal will have a gun", either. Give him a knife. You'll get stabbed. Go ahead and get a knife of your own, then you'll simply have to rely on the fact that you are stronger and faster than any aggressor who comes your way -- oh, and that they make sure to come one-by-one.
You don't need a gun to defend yourself, but when you eliminate it from the equation (and especially whe
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Throwing that nonsense aside, that wasn't even your original statement. You stated that there were no LEGAL uses. Regardless of whether you think you "need" to or not, defending yourself with a gun is legal in the vast majority of the United States. It's the entire point of encacting concealed carry laws. The citizen who has that gun out in public was given that legal right specifically for the purpose of defense.
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I don't live in the States, I live in the UK, which I think you'll find is part of the conversation that was being had.
So, when you're in a society where it's incredibly hard to find a gun, legally or otherwise, you don't need a gun to defend yourself.
The point I am trying to make is that guns perpetuate themselves. When everyone else has a gun, you need one, and then the bad guys need something bigger in order to stay ahead. Handing them out like Tylenol to everyone and sundry isn't going to solve the prob
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It's done pretty well to solve the problem where I'm at. I'm in the US, but I'm not in an urban center. A huge portion of gun crime in the US is perpetrated in cities (often gang or drug related violence). Quite often the worst cities are the ones with the strictest gun laws.
Outside of the cities, and in most areas with more lax concealed carry laws, crime drops off rapidly. I live out in the boonies. Virtually every single household has guns. Most have quite a bit (I'll admit that I'm an enthusiast/c
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Trouble is, anecdotal evidence of one community does not a helpful statistic make - overall, the homicide rate in the States is about 5 times higher than it is here. Firearm homicide rate is somewhere in the region of 25 times higher.
Unfortunately I couldn't find any gun crime statistics to compare to knife crime here, but I would make a sizable bet that they're pretty favourable too. I know where I'd rather take my chances.
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Aw, sounds like someone needs a hug.
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If you allow all law-abiding citizens to carry a gun, you're only guaranteeing that your hypothetical criminal will have one too - why carry anyone else?
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http://www.a-human-right.com/ [a-human-right.com]
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Not having a gun does not mean that you're unarmed, and strictly controlled gun ownership also reduces the chances of the criminal being able to get a gun in the first place.
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You're locked into the thinking that you have to be armed with a weapon. Try thinking outside that limited viewpoint and you'll find plenty of ways that you can deter criminals without having to shoot them.
You won't stop every criminal but then you wouldn't have stopped them anyway - even having a gun does nothing past a certain level of determination.
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Bottom line, if someone is dead or wounded on the floor, they can't commit the crime. I wouldn't ever want to be in the situation where I actually had to shoot someone to defend myself, but if it comes down to it, I would do what needs to be do to protect
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That level of determination is hard to come by.
Especially if the gun is of a decent caliber.
Determination levels have been shown to drop substantially when the head is blown clean off.
Re:God, please let this be true. (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife is physically small. Any man of average size and strength could kill her with his hands. To deny her the right to go armed is to deny her the right to self defence. To deny her right to self defence is in effect to deny her right to life. I assert my wife's right to life, with force if necessary, but I can't be there all the time.
I don't understand and will never agree with people like yourself who deny my wife's right to self defence. I think it is a form of mental illness you're suffering.
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Sorry to not realise you live in a society where there are so many arms around that everybody is afraid of everybody else. I live in Hong Kong, no-one carries arms here, and homicides and other violent crime levels are one of the lowest worldwide. Even just across the border, in Shenzhen, which belongs to the world's most criminal cities, no-one carries a gun.
Besides, there are more ways of self-defence than guns or other weapons. Think e.g. martial arts. Yes that needs training but for a gun to be effecti
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I must be completely out of my head then, because I'm a self-described "liberal" who strongly supports the 2nd Amendment. I own a gun, precisely because Illinois (and Chicago in particular) have much stricter gun laws than the rest of the country. Coincidentally, we have higher murder rates and crimes in which a gun is used than the rest of the country too. The city with the highest murder rate (typically by firearms) is Washington D.C., which has a total ban on any firearms ownership. Seeing a trend?
An
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The USA has overall very relaxed gun laws (and "smuggling" from one state to another with stricter laws is trivial of course), and a very high number of gun deaths, murder, self-defence, accident, or otherwise.
Europe has overall very strict gun laws and much lower gun death rates.
Most countries in the world with a properly functioning government have stricter gun ownership laws, and lower gun related death rates than the USA.
Seeing a trend here?
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I must be completely out of my head then, because I'm a self-described "liberal" who strongly supports the 2nd Amendment. I own a gun, precisely because Illinois (and Chicago in particular) have much stricter gun laws than the rest of the country. Coincidentally, we have higher murder rates and crimes in which a gun is used than the rest of the country too. The city with the highest murder rate (typically by firearms) is Washington D.C., which has a total ban on any firearms ownership. Seeing a trend?
By you
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I love how you think a properly functioning government should disarm its citizens.
A collection of armed people are citizens. A disarmed populace are subjects.
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Yes, the trend is that people kill by other means in those countries. What you're missing is that all crime is derived from societal forces, without regard to the tools available to the criminal.
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Maybe in your snide haze, you missed the fact that those restrictive laws had virtually no effect on gun violence. Chicago's gun laws have been on the books since the early 80's and we just had one of the deadliest summers in a decade due to gun violence. Just like the War on Drugs, let's keep doing the same thing even though it's proven not to work. I agree with one of the other grandchildren posts in this thread: societal causes lead to violence, not guns. Given that over half of households in the cou
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Sorry to not realise you live in a society where there are so many arms around that everybody is afraid of everybody else
You conveniently missed the part where he said the attacker didn't need a weapon. That's what "with his hands" means.
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As soon as someone has their hands around your neck, is stronger than you, and has the intent of killing you, it's pretty much too late to start digging for your gun. If someone is really intent on killing you, and has planned it, then not much defence will save you.
Carrying a gun MAY help you against a sudden attack, but then if e.g. a robber is standing in front of you with his gun drawn, the last thing you should do is to start digging up your own gun. Provided you'd like to live to tell the tale.
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I'm an amateur cage fighter with (after calculating) over 800 hours spent training, primarily in Jiu-jitsu. I'm not a big guy, though. I fight at 155 and walk around about 165. If an athletic 200+ pound man were to attack me, I wouldn't feel confident that I could win. Sure I could armbar him, maybe throw on a triangle choke or take his back, but do you really want to pull guard in a street fight? If that man were of equal size to me and armed with a knife, I wouldn't even want to try to fight him.
Mar
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As anecdotal evidence.
When I was in high school a friend of mine convinced me to join the wrestling team. I sucked pretty badly at it. I only had fighting with my siblings as experience where as my team mates had been doing it for four years or more. At my first tournament a friend of mine from another school's team wanted to informally wrestle with me to warm up and have some fun. He had been wrestling for years. He had won more than half of his last 40 matches by pin. I out weighed him by about 25 pounds.
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Haha, you need to pay attention.
If you look at this list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_homicide_rate [wikipedia.org]
You will note that itr ties with financial health, not gub ownership.
Also, Hong Kong is tine compared to the use.
426 sq mi and about 7 million people.
I can find many similiar area and populations in sections of the US with a homocide rate far less then Hong Kongs.
Hong Kong expects a strong [police force and the polices ability to do whatever they want to make up for the lack of self defenc
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Not everyone lives in Hong Kong or Shangri-La. The rest of us have to consider the very real fact that there are plenty of people out there who want to do others harm.
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If you live in a society where it is too dangerous for smaller weaker people to walk down the street, you need to emigrate.
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My wife is physically small. Any man of average size and strength could kill her with his hands. To deny her the right to go armed is to deny her the right to self defence. To deny her right to self defence is in effect to deny her right to life. I assert my wife's right to life, with force if necessary, but I can't be there all the time.
Flawed argument. Denying someone the right to carry a weapon is not denying them the right to self defense. She can carry a taser, learn martial arts to just name two ways.
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Anyone can carry a taser and learn martial arts, that's all great. Now just imagine that you have a taser and know martial arts and 2 people attack you and they have guns. I think you'd die.
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Can your wife defend herself with defensive arts like Karate, or with pepper spray or a taser?
Why must she protect herself with lethal means?
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against gun ownership per se, but your argument falls a little short.
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My wife is physically small. Any man of average size and strength could kill her with his hands. To deny her the right to go armed is to deny her the right to self defence. To deny her right to self defence is in effect to deny her right to life. I assert my wife's right to life, with force if necessary, but I can't be there all the time.
Where do you live? If it really is that dangerous to be on the streets, don't you think it would be better to move somewhere safer? Even with a gun, her self-defence might fail, so moving would seem to ensure your wife's right to life in a better way.
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Re:God, please let this be true. (Score:4, Interesting)
I assume that one day when your wife gets spooked at night in an alley somewhere by some street-bad looking kid, pulls her gun and shoots him dead, only to find that he was trying to ask her directions to the closest 7-11, that you will happily surrender her to the justice system on a murder charge?
Or perhaps it is a mugger, and your wife shoots him dead (after all he pulled a gun..), then she turns around just as someone else walks in the the alley, they see her with a gun having just shot someone, turning towards them still holding her gun, so they grab theirs and open fire.. Will you uphold the third persons right to self defense?
Yes, horrible scenarios I know, but they happen..
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"Yes, horrible scenarios I know, but they happen.."
Really? Do they? When? How often? More often than an armed citizen successfully prevents a violent crime? (from 1 to 2 million times per year depending on how you count)
As it turns out, armed citizens shoot the right person more often than the police do and most of the time, they do not have to shoot at all (the mere presence or presentation of the gun deters a criminal). Since eliminating armed citizens would require increasing armed police to replace them, the rate of accidents will go up not down.
As a gu
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When facing a single attacker, sure -- a taser makes a good deterrent. When Facing a group of attackers, "who wants to be the first to get tasered" is a much weaker deterrent than "who wants to be shot first?". One has a potential permanent result, and one does not.
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A gun was designed to kill, but that is not it's sole purpose.
There are many people that only use a fire arm for target shooting.
That said, people get attacked on the street. People get attacked in their car. So yes, there is a reason to carry a gun.
Defending your self, and hobbies are both valid reason to function in modern life.
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The sole purpose of a gun is to kill.
This statement is incorrect. There are two purposes to firearms. The first is to deter. The second is to kill. The first is used far more often by private citizens than the latter.
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There is NO valid reason of carrying a gun on the streets. Really, there isn't.
You are incorrect. The valid reason to carry a gun is self-defense. I have a concealed weapon permit. When I'm not going to work or school, I carry a gun.
You WILL have a very bad day if you try to hurt me or my family.
LK
Re: constructive use (Score:2)
Quick, better ban all the crowbars and jackhammers then! Of course, one might argue that the hundreds of millions of dollars that hunting brings into the Colorado economy is a productive use of guns. Then there's the fact that > 80% of the money for ALL game conservation programs in the US are funded by hunting licenses. And the fact that armed citizens are responsible for stopping millions of crimes every year in the US. And the fact that recreational target shooting is sill one of sports most common
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Wrong. Guns are mostly used for hunting, target shooting, and stopping violent attacks upon the innocent. These three outnumber criminal uses by far. There are millions of rounds of ammo made in the US each year, and the number used by criminals to harm people is a tiny tiny fraction of that.
Unconstitu
Re:God, please let this be true. (Score:5, Insightful)
As for part 2: If you commit a felony while packing heat, you get extra felonies, even in the good ol' US of A. Non issue.
Part 3: so you're saying it's ok if the "very dedicated" are armed? You've solved nothing, removed a useful tool from the hands of those who would exercise their right to self-defense, and made sure criminals know their victims are unarmed, all in one fell swoop. Bravo.
I think your sticking point is that you believe criminals actually care about this "trouble" that they "risk" in obtaining and carrying weapons. You're a (presumably) law abiding person, so you think "oh dear I certainly wouldn't want EXTRA trouble!" Well, I hate to break it to you but that is an obvious misattribution on your part. On top of that, what about "real life experience" in the USA? There are plenty of people walking around (legally) armed as can be and amazingly people don't die during traffic accidents or parking disputes or whatever other garbage contrived examples you can come up with. 48 out of 50 states in this country allow provisions for private citizens to conceal, carry and use a firearm in well-defined circumstances and crime committed with a firearm is not really a problem except in places that outright ban firearms (see: Chicago).
This point of view of "oh just disarm everyone!" really pisses me off. Regular people defend their lives successfully and legally in this country often and you have the audacity to tell them that they are wrong for owning and/or carrying a firearm. Some people refuse to be victimized and they should be afforded the right to defend themselves in rare, legally-defined circumstances.
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The "law abiding"/"career criminal" dichotomy is a false one. The vast majority of us fall somewhere in between. If you've ever gotten a speeding ticket, or a parking ticket, you're somewhere between. There are millions of one-time offenders who commit "crimes of opportunity", and never offend again. Many, if not most, Americans fail to be perfect, law-abiding citizens all of the time. We don't inten
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2 - There is no straw man. There's no other way to take it. How do you purport these guns would be "taken from people days, weeks, or years" before? You're going to root out these guns with what? A registration? Shit's illegal.
Answe
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Your gun loving country also has the highest homicide rates by a massive margin. Thats because everyone is walking around with a gun thinking they are a cowboy.
Over here only the criminals have guns. They tend to use them on other criminals. They don't need to use them on the law abiding citizens because they never have to worry about some gun nut with a concealed carry license when they rob a bank.
Actually its stupid to argue. Your country is the one with huge amounts of guns and bullet filled corpses per
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Literally every single sentence you wrote here is wrong. I don't even know where to start. Where ever you got your education from, demand your money back.
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Perhaps you would like some fucking citations [wikipedia.org] retard?
That list shows your country far topping the list of firearm related homicides per capita of the industrialised nations. In fact you are so good at killing each other, your stats would look more at home in the second list of shitholes with bugger all income. You are closer to Zimbabwe than you are to Australia.
So I reiterate: Violent bloody rednecks, the lot of ya. Call yourselves a civilisation? Fuck...
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Also, your citations are wrong just like everything else you post. They're based off of malformed data meant to prove a point.
Check this out, the FBI themselves warn against doing exactly what you're doing because it's stupid: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/about/variables_affecting_crime.html [fbi.gov]
I have the right to defend myself with lethal force; you do not, so... good for you I guess? I'm glad you cannot
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Haha my citations were fine. Your citation is based on a laughable premise that the factual number of gun deaths is somehow irrelevant because of "variables" such as the highway system. Guess what champ? All those "variables" cited are part of your country, and one of those "variables" is that every crazy redneck seems to think they need automatic weapons to protect themselves. Possibly they do in your country, sounds like a self-perpetuating violent problem with guns only escalating it.
Gun deaths per capit
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You absolutely do not have the right to use lethal force in defence of yourself. Maybe on paper you do, but I want to watch you defend your life against an armed aggressor while
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Haha, listening to your impotent redneck ravings makes myself and my collegues laugh a lot. Please keep it up. I've been offered a lot of beer if I can get you on YouTube crying "Leave mah guns alone".
We love how you continue to defend, while sidestepping around the fact that more people are dying from gunshots in your country than any other developed nation by a wide wide margin. Yet you think you can give the rest of the world advice on your obviously model laws.
So apart from your 1964 cop - the only othe
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Here's a secret: the vast majority of unjustifiable homicides that occur in the United States are between gang members. Isn't that something? So no, I'm not going to get shot and it's not people paranoid about MAH GUNS doing the shooting, despite your disinformation. It's almost entirely an inner-city (where, ironically, guns are outright banned) cultural issue and will exist whether we ban gun
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Haha are you retarded? Your firearm homicide rate is nearly ten times that of my country.
You are going to blame gang members now? Ten fucking times. Do you have that many violent criminals to skew the statistics that hard? Or perhaps, and this is my personal theory: "You are wrong, again. You are pulling numbers our your arse, again." What is it? The gangsters are killing each other at a rate comparable to genocide, or half your bloody population are inner city gangsters?
We've had some pretty shitty racist
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Re:God, please let this be true. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Gun is Civilization, by Maj. L. Caudill, USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or make me do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser.
People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation...and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
Wrong Attribution (Score:4, Insightful)
Just wanted to mention that although this version pops up pretty regularly, it appears that it was not written by "Maj. Caudill, USMC" [blogspot.com].
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Just for the fun of it I'll pick some random pieces and demonstrate the flawed logic in them:
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With no guns you're limited mostly to using methods that require more physical strength.
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I suppose if you (re)define Reason to mean any level of human interaction that does not involve physical contact and (re)define Force to me
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I think part of your problem in understanding the original poster is that you misunderstand how guns should properly be used.
When I was a kid the first thing I learned was do not ever for any reason point a gun, or any weapon, at something or someone whom you do not intend to use it on. If I draw my gun on someone it is because I am about to shoot them with it. It is not something with which to threaten or persuade. If my weapon is coming out it's because we are already past the point of resolving the issue
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My overall point being that widespread gun availability means that both the good guys and the bad guys find it easier to get their hands on guns.
From here come a couple of effects:
- While in an environment where guns are tightly controlled, a thief might or not have a gun, in and environment where guns are easy to come by, a thief almost always has a gun. This is because they can get hold of one easily, because they can't be imprisoned by just carrying a gun (when guns are outlawed, only bad guys - or cops
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But guns don't empower the bad guys MORE than they empower the good guys.
Whereas being the biggest muscleman on the street definitely empowers you more than the average person, who may not be physically able to match you no matter how much he works at it. The disparity between a 100 lb. girl and a 250 lb. weightlifter CANNOT be leveled by their physical attributes alone.
Having personally used a gun to defend both my "9 stone weakling" self and others from a 300 pound muscleman, I speak with the voice of exp
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In addition to the misattribution noted above, this version omits the word "gay" between "single" and "guy" in the fourth paragraph.
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Seriously? That statement is most asinine.
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When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
Wow this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I could easily deal with an armed person by force in many situations:
A. If I have the element of surprise.
B. I have friends with weapons guns as well.
C. The victim sucks at using their gun.
So the greatest civilization is one where all citizens are equally armed and can only be persuaded, never forced.
No. The greatest civilization is one where all citizens have absolutely no reason to be armed or to use force.
I'm not that much of an anti-gun person but to say that guns will create a perfect civilization is absurd.
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In the first two examples you posit it wouldn't matter in that case if the victim was armed or not so they lose nothing by having the gun.
For the third, if you can't use your gun or aren't willing to use your gun when appropriate you shouldn't be carrying one.
The point is that by being armed with a gun the victim is on a much more level footing against their assailant. Criminals don't pick targets that stand anywhere near a 50/50 shot of resisting them. The idea isn't to carry a weapon openly but to carry i
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It's an interesting perspective, here's a counterargument (I don't have the exact text in front of me, so I'll have to paraphrase) by Geoffrey Canada, head of the Harlem Children's Zone:
Geoff described his experience of carrying a gun after he'd managed to work his way out of the ghetto and into college. What he realized after a while was that situations that he would have avoided based on his upbringing on the streets (like walking right through the middle of a group of rival gang members) he no longer avo
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This sounds to me like he had a problem with trying to prove to himself that he was no longer afraid, so he sought out confrontation. But one man's personal problems should not be used to dictate to everyone else, most of whom have outgrown such behaviour.
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Is he claiming that not one single soldier (all of whom are armed to the teeth) has ever been "forced" to do something? Wow, I didn't realise the military was run by consensus at every level.
Idiot.
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Or love? Trickery? I don't buy the premise; there are certainly more than 2 ways to deal with someone.
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The people who modded this "insightful" need a strong dose of realism. Let me preface this by saying that I'm certainly not of the, "take all guns away and make them illegal" mindset. I believe the whole gun issue is being distorted by extremists on both sides: those who want firearms to be illegal to own, shoot, and look at and those who think every 5-year-old should be armed.
But this Major Caudill seems to be stumbling through his own logic. Seriously, this reads more like a religious justification to bel
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Fixed that asshattery.
The gun is the only personal weapon that escalates a simple mugging / rape / beating into a killing.
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In any case, stuff written by gun nuts only appeal to other gun nuts. If you want to convince other people that guns are good...then maybe work on making all the gun owners out there responsible so that a loved one
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Also, the average legally armed American has 2-3x more experience with their firear
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You just described the way america is trying to deal with drugs. If you are caught in possession, you go to jail. Despite that, drugs are very common and little progress has been made in
Only rich people can protect themselves (Score:1)
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I'm not for it, but if it were to happen, I would rather they banned ammunition.
There would quickly become less and less ability to use a gun for everyone.
Yes some people would make there own, but that would be a really small percentage of current owners, and an even smaller portion of criminals.
Yes, people could smuggle them, but the cost would be pretty high, probably too high for small time criminals.
Finally, and here is the best part, if it turned out to be a huge mistake, removing the law would get fir
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This ignores that in America, the vast majority of people with guns are not evil deed doers, and never will be.
Even my wife carries a gun, legally, with a permit.
To think that all people with guns are up to no good simply misses the point here in the USA anyway. I haven't touched my gun in two years, but we used to also target shoot with shotguns and pistols. Until you have had the joy of blowing shit up with a shotgun (in an approved area and in a safe manner) you just don't get it, I guess.
And I haven't
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"Today, anyone can just claim he's just exercising his right to be armed right up to the point when he does something criminal with it. With a weapon ban in place, whenever a police officers finds someone with a weapon, they can take him off the streets on that charge. They don't have to wait for him to do his evil deed."
Even in the US, this is simply not true. Even here where most people can obtain a firearm of some kind legally, almost every gun crime is committed with an illegal weapon or by someone (e.g. a felon) who is not allowed to carry them. They could be arrested for this at any time already. What this means is that a weapon ban would make just about zero positive effectâ" police would have no more tools for preventing crime than they do now. Simply enforcing the law against felons with weapons would do much
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Clearly, you're not familiar with current gun laws in the United States.
Except for a few states with high violent crime rates, you CAN just go around carrying a gun--out in the open, even! Most people don't even notice or care about it, because they're too busy being distracted by mobile phones and other things.
When you carry concealed, in most places you need the permit, as you say. Of course, you're right--even in places where people carry a sidearm openly, it's not the wild west. Then again, the wild we