Guns don't kill people ....

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by Adak

There's no need to shoot a drunk who is causing no one any serious harm.

He's drunk, and he's trying to get inside a hotel where he'd like a room, or help to find his room - he's not trying to rape or kill or kidnap anyone.

There's no need to fire a gun unless the threat is very immediate, and very serious.

Real People are armed. Sheeple People rely on their invisibility cloaks to avoid being a victim.

The guy wasn't just drunk, he was high on dog knows what. The doors leading into motel rooms were pretty obvious - even to a drunk. He was attempting to break into the laundry room located down a short hallway from the front desk and all that cash. And he was very mean and very big.

Under circumstances like that I figure the guy could be capable of doing anything. He was certainly doing a number on that door, and I might have been next on his list. The threat was very immediate when we stood there face to face and very serious as far as I was concerned. If I'd shot him with a gun instead of pepper spray, I would have been justified, and my local cop friends would have backed me up. Thanks to my handy pepper spray, I was spared all the complications of the aftermath of shooting someone with a gun.

Real people try to find the least violent way of dealing with a situation

[piercehawkeye45]

What is anti-gun control? There is a wide range of views.

I believe mass shootings is more of a cultural issue. They (school shootings) are rare outside the United States. While banning semi-automatic rifles may have some effect (is this what you mean?), I don't know the significance on mass shooting deaths.

"The researchers found that killers do not 'snap'. They plan. They acquire weapons. These children take a long, considered, public path toward violence."[1] Princeton's Katherine Newman has found that, far from being "loners", the perpetrators are "joiners" whose attempts at social integration fail, and that they let their thinking and even their plans be known, sometimes frequently over long periods of time.

This leads me to believe that these shooters will try the black market if they can't get weapons legally. Or, they may just use handguns, which can also be extremely deadly.

[ZenGum]

What? Did those idiots let you play with assault super soakers?

[IamSam]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

What? Did those idiots let you play with assault super soakers?

How else were we going to defend ourselves from our liberal playmates?

[BigV]

Of course I am just one person - - what are you? A robot?

You asked for one piece of evidence, I gave you one, and you blithely disregarded it. How typical of you, how....convenient.

People WITH guns get shot, people WITHOUT guns get shot. But.... No one, not one single person in all of history ever got shot without a gun. Guns are no defense against getting shot. Guns aren't defense AT ALL. Guns are pure offense.

[Pete Zicato]

I didn't realize this discussion had wandered. I gave Adak his response here.

[Big Sarge]

Originally Posted by BigV

Of course I am just one person - - what are you? A robot?

You asked for one piece of evidence, I gave you one, and you blithely disregarded it. How typical of you, how....convenient.

People WITH guns get shot, people WITHOUT guns get shot. But.... No one, not one single person in all of history ever got shot without a gun. Guns are no defense against getting shot. Guns aren't defense AT ALL. Guns are pure offense.

i have seen people shot with bows and arrows. the chinese invented a semi-automatic crossbow. guns are a major defense, it often goes unreported in the media. did you read the op/ed in the la times yesterday??

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

i have seen people shot with bows and arrows. the chinese invented a semi-automatic crossbow. guns are a major defense, it often goes unreported in the media. did you read the op/ed in the la times yesterday??

I they're comparable to automatic weapons, why aren't our military provided with bows and arrows, knives, bats, automobiles, and all the other (not) analogous crap the NRA is throwing out there?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Semi-automatic.

[BigV]

Come on, how is a gun *defense*?

No, I missed the LA Times op/ed.

[Big Sarge]

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

[footfootfoot]

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

So we can end this thread.

[BigV]

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."

[Big Sarge]

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

[BigV]

Originally Posted by BigV

Come on, how is a gun *defense*?

No, I missed the LA Times op/ed.

Originally Posted by Big Sarge

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

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.