Forget criminals. If I see someone “Constitutionally carrying,” I know they are an irresponsible nimrod who is a bigger danger to himself and the community than any criminal.
Background checks don’t depend on the honesty of buyers.
http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html
This is a link to the Australian Institute of Criminology.
Here is their text description of trends:
The data is completely opposite what you said it was. Please explain.
A fire may or may not be more likely than a bad guy wishing to do harm, but the reason we don’t carry fire extinguishers is because it is far more effective to walk or run away from a fire than to stand and fight it. If circumstances allow, a reasonable person will walk or run away from a criminal, too, but that is not likely if he is holding you up or carjacking you. The reason we have a fire extinguisher at home is to protect our lives and property, the same reason many choose to have a gun handy at home or away from home.
What an absurd, nonsensical comment. Delusional, in fact.
What would a reasonable person do, if they get carjacked by an armed criminal? I know that I would let the criminal have the car and report things to my insurance company (but maybe I am not considered reasonable in your book). Do you suggest the reasonable course of action would be to pull a gun on the carjacker?
This is wishful thinking. This is America, if you forgot. If anything, the gun-control side is losing, has been losing my whole life. It’s a political dead end for the near future. Maybe in 30 years when the more liberal generation grows up and assumes power.
Seeing civilains walking around with rifles is bizarre. That’s something that happens in war zones, Middle Eastern countries, or Africa. There’s also the part where a gun can kill you in a second, regardless of the attacker or defender’s athletic ability, whereas if someone wants to stab you to death there’s gonna be a fight. Unless the guy throws a knife like a ninja or something.
Sometimes, yes. And it happens.
Unlike those on the anti-gun side, I’m not going to denigrate and ridicule anyone who chooses not to arm himself and simply gives in to violent thugs. Sometimes, that’s the wisest move. But sometimes it’s not, and you’ll end up dead. But removing the means for people to protect themselves would almost certainly embolden violent criminals.
Two kinds of people left in what was once the USA, those who will stand up to defend themselves and their loved ones, and the bovine herd animals getting led off to the slaughter house, and this place is knee deep in the latter, and there’s no use trying to reason with them. I’ll talk to them after they get raped and beaten half to death (if they’re lucky) by their friendly poor oppressed thugs who they think will be happy if they just give them the keys to their car and their valuables and tell them how much they love them.
werewolf, please explain why everything you said about Australian crime trends was wrong.
So then am I understanding the rules of this establishment correctly? I’m not allowed to use pejoratives and impolite language when dealing with individuals such as this? Sorry, can’t do it.
How about something even simpler: Can you just answer the question?
I don’t really care what types of language you use - I never said otherwise. Profanity, pejoratives, whatever you like. It’s pretty irrelevant to the fact that crime trends in Australia are opposite what you said.
The UK trends are too, but let’s take your stunning errors one at a time.
Activate the flamethrower, duh.
As for why don’t people carry fire extinguishers around…well, lots of people do (in their car) and they don’t need to do so elsewhere, because they’re helpfully mounted on the walls pretty much everywhere. Somehow, I doubt you think that’s the solution for guns.
I am not sure why you think that people on the anti-gun side would “denigrate and ridicule anyone who chooses not to arm himself”.
I am not surprised that you can come up with examples where armed civilians actually have stopped a crime. Given the number of armed civilians and the number of crimes you have it is bound to happen. I’ll have to say though that in none of your examples the victim of the attempted crime seemed to be in immediate danger to “end up dead”. They were in danger of ending up without a car. Bad enough, but is that worth risking your life over? As it seems the heroic citizens were quite lucky that the situation turned out well for them, because almost all of the felons were unarmed (and the armed one did not use his gun). Otherwise what started as a carjacking would have escalated into a gunfight, and I cannot see how that would have been an improvement. If you wanted to back up an “guns save lives” argument, these examples would not cut it.
That doesn’t excuse him from the rules the moderators have set forth concerning this forum, however.
Hentor the “barbarian” Ha ha ha! Maybe she saw a “barbarian” in a computer game.
We’ve got this forum called The BBQ Pit for posts like this.
Actually, it’s for posts much, much better than this…but please do start a thread there.
People on the anti-gun side are very quick to call those who choose to arm themselves as: paranoid, cowboys, afraid, fearful, etc. Just read further up.
I found those examples in about 30 seconds of internet searching. Sorry they didn’t come up to your expectations. Given the time and inclination, I would search for more examples, but I have neither the time nor inclination. There are lots and lots of cases where armed citizens thwart crime and save their own lives. The vast majority of times no shots are fired - the gun is used as a deterrent.
I don’t find your assertion that some of the carjackers were not armed to be relevant. If someone is willing to steal someone’s car by force or threat of force, that is a serious crime that is a large escalation from simple burglary or theft where a victim is not physically present.
The NRA is made up of koolaid drinkers, not cynical merchants of death.
Well - I guess there are occasionally comments that are less than enlightened coming from the anti-gun side. Not that the pro-gun side were any better. I believe you do not have to read that far up to find examples for less than enlightened comments from that side, don’t you agree?
I seem to have given you a wrong idea of what my expectations are - although I am not quite sure how I did that. I only have observed that you are obviously trying to make the point that guns save lives but have provided five examples where that has not happened. I do not say that it has not happened elsewhere. I do, however, have some doubts as to whether these cases are as frequent as you claim.
As for the deterrent effect - by its very nature that is a lot harder to prove or disprove. How do you prove that a crime which otherwise would have happened did not happen due to the current legislation? Not easy. You might seek a comparison with the crime rates of countries with different legislation, but gun rights supporters usually dislike that approach.
However, I want to point out that your five examples describe cases where the alleged deterrent effect has not materialized - the crimes were actively pursued and the possibility that an armed citizen might interfere has not deterred the offenders.
I agree that it is a serious crime. The fact that the carjackers were not armed is relevant for two reasons:
[ul]
[li]It illustrates that the victims of the carjacking were unlikely to be killed by the offenders.[/li][li]It explains why the armed citizens could relatively easily win the upper hand in the situations.[/li][/ul]
A carjacking is indeed, as you put it, an escalation from a burglary or theft. But firing a gun at a person is also an escalation from a carjacking. I believe that it is usually for the benefit of everyone, if such escalations are avoided.