Me: Hey Maggie, How do you get from here to New York City?
Maggie: I obey the law.

Me: Hey Maggie, How do you get across a busy street?
Maggie: I obey the law.

Me: Hey Maggie, What are you going to have for lunch?
Maggie: I obey the law.

Me: Hey Maggie, What's your favorite song?
Maggie: I obey the law.

You see, saying she has decided to obey the law doesn't answer some questions.

Dunno. I wasn't about to go into that house and find out.

The situation was a classic "Hogan's Alley"...druggies in a drug den got all wired up and decided to plink at the sailors across the street for fun. Said sailors, having had this experience before (no injuries) retreived their legally owned weapons from their respective cars and returned fire. This after the police told us point blank that unless someone was shot, they weren't going to respond to every report of gunfire in THAT neighborhood. Serve and protect, indeed!

The aftermath was pretty tame...we waited for police to show up after the lead stopped flying. We gave up after an hour and went home. It seems that the police (our guard tells us) were not particularly interested in whodunit. They knew it was us but didn't care to do more than write a report on the scene and do nothing other than that. I heard ofr no bodies being carried out and there was no mention of the incident in the paper the next day.

To answer your question: I obey the law! Seriously, I do not think anyone was hit. We were more interested in deterrence than a body count. I aimed mostly at windows and walls. All I ever saw was a hand (with handgun) in an upper level window.

I know Maggie will take me to task for firing without a clear target but sometimes you have to do what is possible. Since there was never a repeat incident, no further shooting was ever necessary, and the innocent people living in that area were likely marginally safer for it. Although there continued to be shots fired by the locals (not us) no one shot at the sailors again.

Perhaps things would have been different for the defenders here had we actually hit anyone. No way to tell. All I know is that was one shooting incident too many for me and I hope that I never have to repeat the experience. But should it become necessary to protect me and mine, I will not hesitate to employ deadly force in accordance with my training (civilian and military) and neutralize the threat.

Gotta roll now, catch you later

I own guns, I would use them. The presence of a weapon has kept me from being robbed/assraped/killed twice, and ensured my safe transport once. I have fired once at a person, but knowing that he was too far away to be killed or seriously injured (shotgun). Don't come messin 'round my nana's house.

Plus, there's this rabbit that's tearing up all the landscaping around the house, and it's got a date with a .22 as soon as I can catch him in front of the barn. That way, any ricochet will hit the wall and not go flying into the sunset. Responsible gun owners think about where bullets go after the initial impact.

At least three threads and hundreds of posts, and not one pro-gunner willing to acknowledge that more people with guns in our country leads to more deaths. Wow.

Oh, I didn't read the original post, just the last page or 2.


Okay, more people with guns in our country leads to more deaths.


So? More people with cars leads to more deaths, too.

Thank you for your candor, mr-mo-fucking-hammed-noodle. :)

anytime :D

But seriously, we have this assumption that ANY unlawful use of firearms ALWAYS trumps the lawful possession and use of them. If 1 million people use guns without incident, but 2 people get killed either criminally or accidentally, we want to eliminate all guns. We don't apply that logic to any other aspect of society. Why? Because it's faulty logic.

OK, I'll acknowledge it. Here are several stories (updated pretty much daily) of people being killed by guns:

http://www.claytoncramer.com/gundefe...g/blogger.html

It's unfortunate, but sometimes shooting beats the alternative outcomes.

Absolutely. So how many times have had to shoot someone rather than suffer the alternative outcomes?

A man that lived near me was told by a potential bugler that he would be killed if he resisted... when the man informed him that he was armed the man then told him that he was armed and was going to kill him (he lied, he was not armed). The neighbors heard the exchange. The home owner shot the criminal, killing him.
He was released the next morning. No charges were ever brought.
Again, proper application of the castle doctrine.

Dr.s prescribing incorrect drugs or making mistakes kill so many more people than guns in the US it is crazy... should we outlaw them?

http://www.carthagepress.com/article...03%20rifle.txt

From MO: 7th grader knows home gun safe combo and gets access to (legal I'm guessing) home weaponry including assault rifle. Takes guns, ammo and bomb stuffs to school, threatens, but thankfully no one is killed.

Adding to the statistic that correlates multiple gun ownership with probability of involvement in gun crime.

Did they happen to mention how many children didn't gain access to gun safes :question:

Escalate it? Don't worry about that part. "Violence -- naked force -- has settled more issues in human history than anything else." "He's dead, I'm alive, and that's how I wanted it." Such a degree of escalation produces inevitable deescalation, and the life-and-death problem is solved. It still leaves the question of whether one acted lawfully. I'll list some reference works about it below.

Never bring yourself to use it? Well, I just couldn't bring myself to submit to being murdered the way you would. Or so you say you would now, anyway. Having a mind, you are at inalienable liberty to change it when a better idea comes along.

Intelligent discussion of the entire matter may be undertaken once these have been read and understood:

That Every Man Be Armed: the Evolution of a Constitutional Right by Stephen P. Halbrook, constitutional lawyer. He argued the Brady Law before the Supreme Court, and the Court ruled to void certain provisions of the Brady Law. Halbrook knows what he's talking about.

Lethal Laws: "Gun Control" Is The Gateway To Genocide by Simkin, Zelman, and Rice; sets forth the compelling moral reason for never refusing to own a weapon yourself, as making a genocide impractical is a highly moral thing to do by any standard. This argument has never been refuted in the dozen years it's been out.

The Truth About Self Defense by Massad Ayoob, self-defense scholar, firearms instructor, former police captain. Examines the combative, technical, and legal picture of armed defense of self or other in modern days.

Optional reading for fleshing out the big picture: More Guns, Less Crime by John Lott, professor of economics. The study this book is based on studied all three thousand-plus counties in the United States, covering a fifteen-year period.

Spexx, I've already told you where the flaw is in that idea. If you abandon that idea, you will then be on the road to wisdom, and good for you. Go, find and reread [edit: p.5 of If You Outlaw Guns Then Only...] what I told you, for it isn't sinking in. What you believe must reflect reality, not exclude it. Some deaths, say Adolf Hitler's, improve things, others, like Anne Frank's, do not. Seems about as obvious as a nearby mountain to me.

What ratio is acceptable?