6/6/2002: PETA advertisement

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by sycamore on 06/07/02
I was watching some show on TLC earlier this week.

Hey! This was just on again!

A few additions to my original post:

The guy on the bike I mentioned ran into a truck mirror after being hit with a bat. He had already slowed down before being hit.

However, the kids DID hit another guy on a bike, with a paintball gun (that looked incredibly real). He wound up falling off his bike into a signpole (one of those poles that holds a large grocery store sign).

The show is called City Surveillance, and this particular episode will be on again Sunday afternoon at 5pm ET on the Learning Channel. The incident I mention is in the last 10 minutes of the show.

[Nic Name]

An honest law-abiding citizen is very rarely going to act a fool with their gun. Sure, you have the rare instances. But for every Columbine, there are millions of people who store, carry, and use their gun properly. Why would an honest citizen WANT to ruin their chances of owning a gun by being stoopid?

Jayson Williams is the poster boy. Prosecutors say Williams, a former star with the New Jersey Nets, was recklessly handling his 12-gauge shotgun when it went off and that he, Gordnick and another friend, Kent Culuko, tried to make the shooting look like a suicide.

[jaguar]

Jag, if criminals want a gun, they will get a gun. Period. You could pass 50-11 laws to restrict their ownership and use. And would they work? I doubt it. If they banned handguns in the city of Philadelphia, I could probably still go over to W. Erie Ave. and buy one for $50-500.

And if they banned in australia, you're going to import from indonesia? Yes, true, but its not a matter of making it impossible, just more difficult. Nothing is impossible, only harder. When there is a handgun-related crime here it goes to federal cops instantly and its a bit liek kicking a wasps nest, they go apeshit, as a result, they are very uncommon.

Jag - I think we all agree that it's more difficult to get a gun if they're banned. The problem is that the select few criminals who do get them will use them for intimidation and crime - not necessarily killing, but to, say, force a woman to submit to a rape, or to hand over the keys to the car, etc.

Let's just all agree that, because Maggie carries, she's not getting raped and her vehicle isn't getting carjacked.

Guns are pretty fucking terrible - no doubt about it. Any instrument whose purpose is to take life is not a good thing. The problem is that by denying firearms for protection purposes, one collectively lowers the safety level of a society.

You can probably walk around and not worry about getting shot, and that's certainly a valuable freedom to have. But... suppose you and your girly are walking around and some fuckholes come up and take her and your wallet and just like that, she's a rape victim and you're a few hundred dollars poorer. Maybe that kind of stuff doesn't happen in Australia, and if that's the case, that's great. But it does happen here - Baltimore, Washington, Dallas... Christ, that's why Texas has so many goddamn executions.

Taking away the guns is attacking the <b>symptom</b>, not the problem. Truth be told, we need to spend more money on education and getting people out of the slums - not giving them a hand out, but a hand up. An educated young man with a lot to lose is less likely to murder someone on the streets than a 17 year old crack addict who can't read.

All these politicians talk a real good talk - "let's ban guns" and "guns kill people" and "there's no reason to own a gun" - yet their bodyguards carry. Rosie O'Donnel, organizer of the million mom march, outspoken on gun control... and her body guard is registered to carry a firearm. Why? Why is she more important than me? Bill Clinton and his cronies argue for gun control... what, are the Secret Service carrying butter knives to protect POTUS?

Imagine how different the world might be if the passengers on 175, 77, 11 and 93 had guns. Hijackers wouldn't have stood a chance.

Imagine how less likely someone would be to break into a house or mug a person on the street if the population was 99% armed and <b>they knew that</b>.

We can't un-do the gun, and it's a damn shame. So we have to live with it. Unfortunately, the only way one can protect oneself against a gun is by having a gun. I wish there were some other way, but there just isn't.

[jaguar]

Well that is my point dham - if you need to be packing a 9mm to feel safe something else is seriously fucking screwed. To be honest if i know i'm going somehwere dodgy late at night i've been known to carry a 6 inch flick blade but its rare and i've never been in a situation where i've been forced to use it. ANY crime here involving guns detonates the apeshit alert, whether someone is shot or not, if there is one thing the cops don't like is crims with guns, its sht shooting of thsoe who carry them is not uncommon. I can see what you're saying, i'm just switching words around.

[Joe]

The point I'm trying to make here is that there is more to gun ownership than being able to hit a target. What is needed is *discipline*, and a whole lot of it. As a gun owner you will be held to a higher standard than someone else, because you will be responsible for making snap life-or-death decisions during times of stress.

One of those decisions may be to determine if you have been assaulted with a weapon or a toy. If you cannot tell a paintball gun from a real gun, may I suggest some additional firearms safety classes and maybe some time on a paintball range getting shot with paintballs. That way when some complete idiot shoots you with a toy gun in a spasm of stupidity, your first instinct isn't a panicked "Oh my god, I've been shot!" but rather a much calmer "That was a paintball", and let your actions follow from there. It is perhaps unrealistic to suggest to an American to make this distinction, since it takes a whole lot less mental effort to simply say "I thought it was a real gun, so I killed the him to be on the safe side".

Life, or death.

You might also ask yourself how you're going to feel afterwards if you a)killed the paintball idiot to be on the safe side or b)managed to keep your gun in your pocket through the whole incident without anyone even knowing you had one.

I know my argument isn't going to work, that if someone shoots you with a paintball gun from a moving car, making it look every bit like a drive-by shooting, that you will probably kill the shooter. I'm just making a case to avoid tragedy, since kids do some really dumb things in their adolescent years. It is perhaps unrealistic to hope that someone more mature might be able, in a split second, to do enough thinking for two people at once, and save the day.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by Joe
As a gun owner you will be held to a higher standard than someone else, because you will be responsible for making snap life-or-death decisions during times of stress.

Of course.

But there are limits. Look, everybody who gets behind the wheel of a car is required to "make snap life-or-death decisions in times of stress". I do the same when I climb in the cockpit of an airplane.

But *here* we have people who piled into a car, who weren't under stress at all, and had all *kinds* of time to decide *not* to do something stupid and dangerous to other people.

Of course, if they figure out it might be dangerous to *them*, they're a bit more disinclined to do it. That's why this crap happens in states like California and New Jersey, where the citizens have been disarmed.

The pinhead in Utah (where the right of self-defense is still preserved somewhat) thought he was safe; he said he shot at a victim who looked too young to be armed. As it turned out, he was wrong, and somehow he's having trouble interesting the police in finding his victims.

Isn't *that* a shame? Not.

In the video mentioned earlier (have you seen it?) , the vicitims (especially the ones riding bicycles) could very well have been killed in the resulting accidents. And shooting someone wearing no vision protection with a paintball can blind them; that's why paintballers wear vision protection.

The legal standard here for justified use of deadly force in self-defence is "the actor believes that such force is necessary to protect himself against death, serious bodily injury, kidnapping or sexual intercourse compelled by force or threat" I'd consider being blinded a "serious bodily injury". I bet dham agrees. He lost vision in one eye when someone shot him with a "toy gun".

If you cannot tell a paintball gun from a real gun, may I suggest some additional firearms safety classes and maybe some time on a paintball range getting shot with paintballs.

Nonsense. It's not my job in life to anticipate *every* idiot thing someone might do, and train to protect them from the consequences of their actions.

If there's any lack of training or responsibility here, it's on the part of the shooter. Maybe paintball guns should have a warning label: "Caution: people you shoot at may shoot back". I doubt it would have helped though.

Someone who assaults me, or anybody else, is by their actions just plain assuming the risk that their victim is not armed, or that they might not figure out that the paintgun is (probably) nonlethal, or that the victim might reasonable belive that they were in danger of serious bodily injury. There's just no fricken excuse for shooting at some random person in the street. Not even adolescence.

That way when some complete idiot shoots you with a toy gun in a spasm of stupidity...

A paintball gun is not a toy.

It is perhaps unrealistic to hope that someone more mature might be able, in a split second, to do enough thinking for two people at once, and save the day.

*Hoping* for such a thing is not unreasonable. Hope doesn't have anything to do with "being realistic"; you can hope for all sorts of improbable things.

But *expecting* it, and basing your behavior on those expectations, is not. We're all responsible for doing *our own* thinking. Somebody who's going to go through life relying on other people to do his thinking for him is both deluded and dangerous.

"Spasms of stupidity" frequently *are* lethal in the real world. What *I* hope for is that most "spasms of stupidity" are lethal mainly to the person *being* stupid, rather than to the innocent people around them.

That happens too often.

[Nic Name]

Another thread hijacking by People Explaining Toy Arms

[henry fitch]

Just for the record, America isn't quite the gun-happy country that everyone seems to think it is. In my admittedly short 17 years on this earth, spent almost entirely in the Washington DC area, I have seen exactly one person openly carrying. Of course, it's possible that every other stranger I cross on the street has a piece in each pocket, but that is illegal. 'Course, maybe it's different in Texas.

[juju]

Isn't Washington D.C. the murder capital of the world?

[henry fitch]

Could be; I'm not certain. It's worth mentioning that when I say "washington DC area" I mostly mean "washington DC suburbs," but I do go into the city fairly often. All I mean to say is that, contrary to how it's often portrayed, this country isn't some kind of modern Everquest zone where everyone walks around with a weapon drawn in case somebody looks at them funny.

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by juju
Isn't Washington D.C. the murder capital of the world?

It's the handgun control capital too....only cops can own handguns in D.C.. if you carry open, you won't do it for long.

[elSicomoro]

Originally posted by henry fitch
All I mean to say is that, contrary to how it's often portrayed, this country isn't some kind of modern Everquest zone where everyone walks around with a weapon drawn in case somebody looks at them funny.

Good point.

MD and VA both have CCW laws. I don't believe DC does...of course, DC banned handguns in 1977.

[Nic Name]

FBI statistics on murder rates. Washington D.C. ranks 41 in 2000.

Contrary to what the gun lobby would have you believe, there is abundant evidence that enforcing gun control laws reduces the gun homicide rate.

[jaguar]

Isn't washington the murder capital or the world?

It's the handgun control capital too....

Why did the words 'nuff said immidietly pop into my head then???? Ill stick by waht i said and leave it at that - if you need a firearms to feel safe in your own town something is seriously fucked up.