Since you own a gun...

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Of course! Maggie has legitimate reasons. Anybody with an opposition to the way Maggie thinks does so for illegitimate reasons - liberalism, weakness, ignorance.

How very lame.

You clearly want to get out onto the slipperly slope and play with hypothetical edge-cases until somebody says something that you can wave around as a bloody shirt to prove how "humane and progessive" you are compared to the "gun nuts". A childishly transparent ploy. Sorry to spoil your game.

The law defines the conditions under which I can use deadly force to defend myself or another person, and I accept those conditions. How hard is that to understand?

[warch]

And your observation that the 3% of us who do carry extend protection to the 97% who don't just by creating that uncertainty is very much on-point.

Gee Maggie, I wonder what stats you can find to support that righteous claim.
Here's mine: I'll continue to extend protection to the 3% of handgun carriers by remaining unarmed in daily life, thus cutting down on accidental discharge and gun theft.

(heh heh she said "discharge" heh heh)

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by warch

Gee Maggie, I wonder what stats you can find to support that righteous claim.

Typically when a state implements "shall-issue" concealed carry, about 3% of the eligible population gets licences. Now a criminal doesn't know if their intended victim is packing or not...so the protection extends to people who don't carry, but *might* be.

Unless they're wearing a Kerry button or something.

If it's stats you seek, there's a boatload of them at gunfacts.info

[warch]

I'm sure there are! Boatloads. Citing Lott, I think I'll try to find something less (pardon the pun) loaded. I will avoid Brady as well, and seek something from the law enforcement /public health community. It may take me a few ticks, as I am actually supposed to be working now.

Once again, thanks for kindly extending such uncertainty to the thoughtful criminals on my behalf. I'm sure, because they know you are out there with your heat, they're rattled and logically more reluctant to be bad now! Whew!

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by warch

I'm sure there are! Boatloads. Citing Lott, I think I'll try to find something less (pardon the pun) loaded. I will avoid Brady as well, and seek something from the law enforcement /public health community. It may take me a few ticks, as I am actually supposed to be working now.

Once again, thanks for kindly extending such uncertainty to the thoughtful criminals on my behalf. I'm sure, because they know you are out there with your heat, they're rattled and logically more reluctant to be bad now! Whew!

Yes, the "public health" crowd is full of useful opinion on the subject. There no shortage of liberal docs wanting to tell you how to live your life.

Do read that Gun Facts booklet, even though it would place you in jeopardy of being exposed to facts that contradict your preconceptions...if you think criminals don't think, perhaps you'd better think again; Gun Facts reports the results of surveys of felony prisoners as to what they do worry about when comitting a crime.

If you don't want to accept the protection afforded by being around armed citizens (and we wouldn't want you to compromise your principles) you can probably cancel the effect by posting a sign like this one outside your home or place of business.

[warch]

There no shortage of liberal docs wanting to tell you how to live your life.

cause ya know...its often their job to save or at least extend lives. (And reality has a well-known liberal bias. )

Guns are banned at my work place and I feel safer for it. I am also searched when entering sporting events, as guns are banned and I feel safer for it.

I can see we're going to disagree. Just dont shoot me for it. gotta run to class. cheers.

[BrianR]

Speaking as the (possibly) only person here who HAS fired a legally owned firearm at an armed attacker, I have to agree 100% with Maggie's assessment.

I identified a dangerous situation (being fired upon)
I assessed the situation (number of attackers, skill with guns, possible non combatants in area, everything)
I chose to return fire (10 rounds out of 15 available to me)
The police were called AFTER the event
They responded to a report of a gun battle in a residential area two HOURS later!
No one was arrested.
The gunshots stopped at that time and were never repeated.

Those are the facts, Ma'am.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by BrianR

Speaking as the (possibly) only person here who HAS fired a legally owned firearm at an armed attacker, I have to agree 100% with Maggie's assessment.

I identified a dangerous situation (being fired upon)
I assessed the situation (number of attackers, skill with guns, possible non combatants in area, everything)
I chose to return fire (10 rounds out of 15 available to me)
The police were called AFTER the event
They responded to a report of a gun battle in a residential area two HOURS later!
No one was arrested.
The gunshots stopped at that time and were never repeated.

Those are the facts, Ma'am.

Was anyone hit? Did they die?

[BrianR]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Was anyone hit? Did they die?

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

[mrnoodle]

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.

[Spexxvet]

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.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

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.

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.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

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.

Because it's not true.

And even if it were, not all deaths are bad. If I blow away someone who's trying to rape me (you really should read that law, you know), I'd consider that a good thing.

Maybe you wouldn't. Maybe you think the rapist is a victim of society, and should be given a chance to reform...or try again.

Please note that the second paragraph of this post is a hypothentical...I don't even agree that more guns implies more deaths. Millions of guns in this country--the vast majority of them--never killed anyone and never will.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

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.

There is of course more here to think on.

It's not about bloodthirstiness and it's not about playing at cops-and-robbers. It is about resisting evil; somebody robbing and murdering you is breaking a couple of Commandments, no question. There is also the fundamental concept that humans may resist evil -- without even being duly constituted or paid by other humans to do so. Evil and resistance to evil is a thing of every human heart and every human mind. When the practitioners of evil, as they do, kill either righteous or unrighteous people in pursuit -- sometimes how trivial that pursuit! -- of their aims, there is absolutely no wrongness in resisting their endeavors and no genuine reason -- though some specious ones have been offered -- to stop short of lethal force if that's all that's going to succeed.

No pro-gunner with a lick of sense -- in my experience, about 99% of them -- fails to recognize that this comes at a considerable personal, and emotional cost; uneasy lies the head that shot the guy. This is inescapable to anyone mentally normal. Even the immediate prospect is jarring, as I know from personal experience: I had a roommate who was going quietly crazy, and once I thought I would have to pull a gun on him -- in my own bedroom. It felt terrible. It requires mental conditioning to function under such a stress: it starts with deciding beforehand if you're going to take on the responsibility for ending a man's life, or if you're going to submit to him wrongfully killing you.

Far too many antigunners demand -- though they will deny it, and demonstrate a passive murderousness in the denial -- that one do precisely that. Thus is these people's sense of the allegedly rightful satisfied. None of these bozos will consider that it could as easily happen to them, rather than to the gun people. This is the huge moral chasm between the righteous progunner and the murder-loving anti.

In reading John Lott (see p.5 this thread), you will discover a pretty well-founded estimate that the lawful and righteous use of such killing tools about two and a half million times annually prevents a loss to the American economy of upwards of three billion dollars each year, totting up property loss, worktime loss, medical costs, lawyer fees, and so forth. Even in a trillion-dollar economy, that's still a good shot in the arm preserving wealth.

Spexx, you are a man who is visibly reluctant to go around killing. That in itself is a recommendation that you should own three or four guns yourself, as you would not use them wrongly and take measures to guarantee no one else would use your arms wrongly either. You've also had the grace not to accuse progunners of lacking that reluctance, which is commendable. You've not yet taken an effectual antigenocide stance, which in my view (and that of most humans) is not commendable, but you show no signs of having educated yourself on that matter yet.

Approximately every second household in the United States has at least one firearm in it. Yet crime and bloodshed do not come to every second household. There are things guns do and things guns do not do -- the man educated on the subject knows well which these are.

What do we see in men who murder schoolgirls or shoot up the neighborhood in a suicide-by-cop? A great degree of aberrancy, a viciousness that lacks sanity. The anti-self-defense lobby prevents immediate and effectual response to these monsters through its hysterical fear of killing tools, and does all humanity a terrible injustice: it is so terrible that these people ought to be locked up for lengthy prison terms for mass and chronic incitement to murder.

Do not, Spexxvet, ask moral persons to stop resisting evil, even unto death.

The plural of "anecdote" may not be "statistics" but I've long held that an analysis of all those The Armed Citizen columns that have figured in NRA magazines for decades ought to help the statistical study somehow. At the least, it is a very considerable weight of testimony in support of the moral use of arms.

[mrnoodle]

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.