An interesting perspective from the LA Times citing incidents that were stopped by armed citizens:

Guns in America: Arming the right people can save lives

Good guys with guns have managed to keep a list of shooters from carrying out the kinds of attacks that get far more publicity.

" Here are some examples you may not have heard about: Pearl High School in Mississippi; Sullivan Central High School in Tennessee; Appalachian School of Law in Virginia; a middle school dance in Edinboro, Pa.; Players Bar and Grill in Nevada; a Shoney's restaurant in Alabama; Trolley Square Mall in Salt Lake City; New Life Church in Colorado; Clackamas Mall in Oregon (three days before Sandy Hook); Mayan Palace Theater in San Antonio (three days after Sandy Hook).

There's a reason that you never heard much about the places on the second list. The number of innocent people killed was much smaller — sometimes, none. In each of them, the "active shooter" or potential shooter was confronted by an armed defender who happened to be at the scene when the attack commenced; the bad guy wasn't able to just keep going about his deadly business, as at Sandy Hook."

source: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...0,955405.story

BREAKING NEWS: This just in: Apparently guns DO kill people.

So we can end this thread.

I have been researching the place names indicated in the article and I've come to the same conclusion. Everybody that got shot got shot with a gun. Some died, some didn't. It seems the author wants to draw our attention to things that didn't happen. Tha's fine, really. But if we're gonna go there I can assure you that there are *vastly* more examples of bad stuff that didn't happen in the absence of guns than there are examples of bad things that didn't happen because of a gun.

Still unanswered: guns as defense. I think all the folks that caught a bullet in those stories would not feel "defended" as much as "shot by a gun."

I've shot people in defense of myself and others. I've been shot. If you want to go back to the statement about "shot by a gun", it requires human interaction with a gun to shoot someone. Somebody has to load the gun first. I still stand by my point that you can be shot by many different mechanical devices.

I thought this thread had drifted to a gun control thread. Thus, I posted the op/ed. Sorry, my bad

I'm still waiting to hear about the gun that woke up in a bad mood, went to town by itself and killed somebody.

I may have mentioned this before but you guys DID hear about the woman who took her gun, hitched to her belt and in full sight of everyone, to her 5 year old daughters soccer game, right? She took that gun everywhere-even grocery shopping (the frozen peas isle can be rough). Her hubby was some sort of prison guard or parole officer...another fun gun guy.


well; he shot her then killed himself. No one gets this?

NY passes first US gun control law since massacre

NEWS

NY passes first US gun control law since massacre
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs New York's Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act into law during a ceremony in the Red Room at the Capitol on Tuesday, Jan. 15, 2013, in Albany, N.Y. Jumping out ahead of Washington, New York enacted the nation's toughest gun restrictions Tuesday and the first since the Connecticut school shooting, including an expanded assault-weapon ban and mandatory background checks for buying ammunition.

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 17:54:27 -0500
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Jumping out ahead of Washington, New York state enacted the nation's toughest gun restrictions Tuesday and the first since the Connecticut school massacre, including an expanded assault-weapon ban and background checks for buying ammunition.

Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the measure into law less than an hour after it won final passage in the Legislature, with supporters hailing it as a model for the nation and gun-rights activists condemning it as a knee-jerk piece of legislation that won't make anyone safer and is too extreme to win support in the rest of the country.

http://home.peoplepc.com/psp/newssto...9-e2011a318812

Background checks to buy ammo? Oh my god.

Well of course. But who are the "right" people?

Police, licensed security guards, obviously military people (although they aren't deployed within the US, typically) ... heck even in low-gun cultures like Japan those types are armed.

Then there's the grey zone of Concerned Citizens, with or without background checks and thorough training.

Then there's the dark side of criminals and mentally ill.

Where should the line be? No-one, except some of Adak's straw men, suggest complete disarmament. It's just that the US draws the line further down that list than most countries, and firepower trickles even further down.

I was just thinking of that National Lampoon album, Lemmings. Now I just realized it was actually Firesign Theater's Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand MeThe Pliers

The guy in the crowd shouting "Power to the Correct People, man!" Maybe it was Lemmings after all. Whatever. I was actually thinking about it in the context of one of Ibby's I'm being oppressed by the fascist hetero normative cis boom bah doodle doo rants, and I thought, "Power to the correct people." I wonder if she'd get the irony? That and "I can't stand intolerant people." Then I started thinking about another cup of coffee.

Firesign Theater. Did they do mr creosote?

mr creosote is monty python, the meaning of life

gonna be a long wait.

likewise, I'm waiting to hear about the guy that woke up in a bad mood and went to town and shot someone with no gun.

...

Of course you need the peanut butter AND the chocolate. But.. that combo can be unacceptably violent sometimes. We all agree that SOME PEOPLE shouldn't have guns. and we all agree that SOME WEAPONS shouldn't be in the hands of non-professionals. What combinations are the bad ones? Which combos represent a risk that can be avoided, that should be avoided? Which combos represent acceptable risk? The voices that talk in absolutes are only making UNHELPFUL NOISE. Let's try to improve our dialog by reducing the amount of noise.

guns as defense, ok? let's look.

when you were shot, was that a defensive gun? when you shot people, how were they defended by your gun? "shot by a gun" sure, let's talk about that. There's no defense in shooting a gun. It's all offense. The cases cited in the article you linked to Sarge, there wasn't any defensive gun usage--it was all offense. bad guy comes to school, shoots people, is confronted by good guy, shot by good guy... that's not defense. that's one gunman's gun's offense being overcome by another gunman's gun's offense. Please, no talk about the football cliche "the best defense is a good offense". It's not defense, it's just turning the word on its head.

Guns are offensive weapons, period.

Defense? body armor is defensive. a helmet is defensive. shields are defensive. the PATRIOT and the AEGIS missile systems are the closest things to defensive systems that have projectiles. That's defense.

A gun is a defensive tool as well as an offensive weapon depending on the situation