Civilians don’t need explosives because they are not useful in self defense against criminals.
Civilians don’t need explosives to blow open locked doors.
Maybe I am not being clear enough. I am not saying that civilians should have everything police have. They shouldn’t be able to run license plates or have police powers or any of that. But in the context of firearms, why do the police need more than civilians.
Lets agree on a few things.
Police carry their weapons for self defense while carrying out their duties. They might brandish a gun during an arrest but the primary purpose of the weapon they carry is to protect themselves.
Police face the same criminals that civilians do. Police might face them more frequently but there are no classes of criminals that ONLY policemen face.
Police are frequently not present when a criminal commits a violent crime. They are only able to prevent most of these crimes if they coincidentally happen to be in the area or if the crime takes so long that police have a chance to show up.
Police often have back-up, whereas civilians frequently do not.
What is it about the situations that policemen face that justifies giving them MORE? Don’t civilians face similarly dangerous situations?
Grenades would be very handy if I am on the 3rd floor, and there is a criminal on the 2nd. Just toss a grenade down to get him. If I am attacked by a gang of people, I can throw a grenade into the gang in order to get away. I can use grenades in case I am attacked on a stairwell.
I have a solid steel door that I lost the key too. It is built in a fashion that it can only be opened by blowing the hardened hinges off. I use this door as the entrance to my bomb shelter. I need to get the door off in order to access my bomb shelter. I need to use explosives to blow off the hinges.
Hey, that was kind of fun! Got any more?
There are law enforcement personnel that have access to and use automatic weapons and sniper rifles. Do you think civilians need access to those as well?
No, civilians DON’T face similarly dangerous situations. When was the last time you breached a bank in order to stop a robbery? When was the last time you raided a drug den? When was the last time you took part in a hostage rescue situation? When was the last time you pulled over a car in the middle of the night and wrote them a speeding ticket?
Do we give cops grenades? No then your response is silly.
Why do you need to get into your bomb shelter in such a hurry? Why can’t you call a locksmith?
Yeah if you want to be silly. Sure.
I don’t think an civilian NEEDS access to machine guns. I think they should have access to them.
Civilians already have access to sniper rifles. You might know them as hunting rifles.
So why do you need more firepower to do any of those things than a civilian needs to fight off a band of rioters/looters? Do you need more bullets in your magazine to kill the bank robbers? Do you need more ergonomic shoulder stocks to raid a drug den? How exactly does better firepower help you when you are pulling over a car in the middle of the night?
Strange, because I don’t remember you saying anything about cops or what we give them in your statement about explosives. I wish there was some way to show what your ACTUAL statement was. Oh wait, there is!
Funny, I don’t see anything in that statement that mentions cops or what we give them. Do you type it in a small font or something? My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be. You quite clearly and concisely avowed that civilians don’t need explosives because they are not useful in self defense against criminals. Well they ARE useful in self-defense, for the reasons I gave. I’m sure I could come up with a few more defensive scenarios where I would like to have grenades available to me.
The locksmith told me the only way was to blow the hinges on the door.
I see. So, just so I’m clear, you think civilians should be able to purchase fully automatic weapons? A simple yes or no will suffice. Any other answer will be determined by me to mean you don’t actually know what you think.
Yes. Citizens ARE able to purchase fully automatic weapons. Due to the restrictions only rich civilians are able to afford them. Shouldn’t the middle class have the same access as the rich?
What are you talking about? An AR15/10 is ergonomic and allows for better accuracy with a semi-auto magazine allowing for followup shots if the animal does not go down.
But you want a ban on the non-range use of an AR-15. Okay, what is the punishment? A low level felony?
Remember, the punishment cannot be unusual that is no death penalty or life imprisonment.
So now you have a person intent on harm what will get what 20 years + 6 months in jail?
Murder rates going down as the result of the gun ban are mixed, at best:
Link:
The Study:
Do Gun Buybacks Save Lives? Evidence from Panel Data
So you have a questionable decrease in homicides and a 8% decrease in suicide. Yet, this leaves the average citizen with a less than optimal defense weapon in a violent situation.
In the US, the government documented about 50K firearm defenses per year.
Just make semi-auto weapons illegal for the public to purchase (the military will have them of course…perhaps the police).
That will cause the cost of such weapons to rise dramatically.
Want to know what will stop most criminals? When a semi-auto gun costs $15,000 or more (which is where the cost sits in Australia since their gun ban). The cost of an AR-15 I have heard can be $30,000 (no cite for that…just a memory so take with a grain of salt).
I agree. Which is why I consider banning people on the no-fly list from purchasing guns to be a win-win.
It is mystifying that a citizen can be put on the list with no recourse whatsoever. If we made the very reasonable move to disallow people from buying guns who the government deems too dangerous to be allowed to fly we would force such a ban into the courts where the ban could be reviewed.
Hemenway notes, and numerous others agree, that the most accurate survey of self-defense gun use is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) conducted
by the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
** During this same five-year period, only 235,700 of the self-protective behaviors involved a firearm. **
235,700 / 5 years = Close to 48,000 defensive gun uses per year.
By they way, now these citizens have one less and very effective tool for defense. Yet, your crime rates have not gone done significantly due to gun bans.
Useless for most crimes and murders. Most of these incidents just use 3-5 shots which is the capacity for most revolvers. On a mass murder front it may work but a law to ban all semi-auto firearms will never make it past congress.
Think it’s difficult getting an AWB? What you want is near impossible.
I have not read this before. I would have thought it would have taken a lot more than a couple of decades to reduce the stock of guns in criminal hands. Is there more detailed information on this phenomenon? I find it hard to believe that a handgun will sell for $30K when a pump action shotgun only costs a few hundred dollars. Saw off the stock and the barrel and you’ve got a fairly easily concealable weapon.
I don’t know why we don’t give them to cops. Maybe because if we did, certain people would clamor for THEIR right to grenades simply because the cops have them.
If grenades can be useful in self defense, then why are you not a strong proponent of allowing grenades for sale to the public for self defense? Or nuclear weapons for that matter? Why do you limit your choices of self-defense weaponry to only guns?
A small kitten got into the room and accidently set off the “close because bad shit is going on” device, and the door closed. The locksmith consulted with premier locksmiths in the county, state, and the nation and determined the only way to open it from the outside was to blow the hinges. And the kitten didn’t turn on the air filtration/circulation system, so no new air is getting in. Why do you hate kittens!??!
I realize that this is just a silly attempt at humor but I didn’t say at any time that ANYTHING useful for self defense should be available to civilians. I said that anything available to police for self defense should be available to civilians for self defense. But for the record, I will concede that you can defend yourself with explosives and nuclear weapons. With a lot of potential collateral damage but bullets can have collateral damage too so…
If we are comfortable restricting their use from cops, I am comfortable restricting their use from civilians. I will just have to scrape by without nuclear weapons. You want there to be MORE restrictions on civilians than the police. You pointed out that the police use explosives from time to time to blow open doors so why don’t we let civilians use explosives like grenades. But if police can’t use grenades (or nuclear weapons) for self defense then I am comfortable withholding their use from civilians.
There is plenty of air in there. Probably enough to last the kitten several days. That will give it time to think about what it has done and to really drive the lesson home, we suffocate her. Many centuries from now, aliens come upon our dead civilization and find the solid steel door that can only be opened with explosives and they will detonate it open and find that dead cat inside. That combined with the only preserved video evidence of our civilization to survive the ravages of time (in the youtube data center) and the aliens will come to the conclusion that we worshipped kitten and buried their remains behind unopenable steel doors.
No problem. I think this is the one area of gun control where I am more gun nuttish than many of the other posters who are much more gun nutty than me in most other respects. I wouldn’t object to a higher licensing standard for them but I support private ownership of select fire weapons.