You’re car could still kill you. If not properly maintained, it could malfunction sufficient to cause your death. Most people mitigate this risk by performing proper maintenance, a degree of defensive driving, regular inspections, etc. The risk of this happening is lessened, and evaluated as sufficiently low to make the benefits of driving a vehicle exceed the costs and risks associated.
The same is true for firearm ownership.
Meteors - you’re pretty much out of luck.
My community does in fact depend upon my responsible use of a car. Because I have one. They need not worry about my responsible use of a firearm because I don’t. Suits me just fine, as I don’t know anybody who has needed a weapon to defend their family from invading barbarians.
Actually, wait, yes, my home was once invaded by armed men, but they had a piece of paper said they could shoot me if I got too frisky…
Yet, you manage to carry on. Just like the rest of us who manage to get out of bed each morning, even though we don’t own guns.
Well, that’s the liberal media! Some kid blows his little sister to Jesus, they’ll tell you all about that! But the thousands and thousands of people who defend themselves against home invading barbarians every day! - they suppress that on orders from Obama!
Me, i don’t know anybody like that, but being a dirty fucking hippy, I got nothing to steal… So, that’s my fault. I guess.
And of course, I live in Minnesota, where home invaders bring a hot dish…
And I know people who’ve never had a car accident.
But they still have insurance.
I suppose it’s possible that before June 9th, this family didn’t know anyone who needed a weapon to defend their family against invading barbarians, either. But then they met a couple of frisky barbarians.
Perhaps these three college students never knew anyone like that before, either. Then they awoke to find a burglar in their midst who physically attacked them.
Maybe this guy also never knew anyone, until May of this year, when an armed burglar kicked in his door, came inside, saw the resident, and fired. This story could read that the homeowner had been killed in a break-in. But instead the homeowner was armed, returned fire, and lived.
It’s not an unreasonable choice. If you knew, for example, that you could never handle a car responsibly, the decent thing to do is not buy a car. That’s a choice that makes sense for you.
You live in a reasonably safe country. Even in the worst neighborhoods, your chances or survival without owning a gun are excellent.
But mine are better than yours, because I own a gun and know how to leverage that ownership to provide the maximum protection at the minimum risk. The vastly more likely case is that neither of us will ever face a situation in which we need lethal force to protect our lives, our safety, or the lives and safety of your family.
But if we both do, then I will be able to protect myself and my family.
Whereas, I, being a prudent judge of risk and reward, chose to invest in the stock market instead of guns. The equivalent of what you spent on guns has been earning compound interest, thus yielding more tangible benefit for my heirs than owning a gun I will probably never use.
Or, more likely, you’ll have yourself, or someone you love die with a ragged hole in them.
You don’t want to play dueling cites with me, because you will lose and you know it. You’re bluffing.
And weak too, you have to embellish, your second story says nothing at all about the intruder attacking anybody. (I *read *cites, you haven’t figured that out yet?)
Your third cite, the upstanding homeowner who shot the intruder? Mr. Johnathon Haith? This fellow?
http://homeinhenderson.com/2010/03/08/news/drug-charges-dropped-against-jonathan-haith/
Dropped drug charges of intent to manufacture and distribute, etc., you know the drill.
So, somehow this intruder arrived at the opinion that some valuable property was available there. Easily transportable, one assumes, since TVs and stereos, even family silver, hard to offload. “Fence”, i’ve heard they call it. Why, whatever could it have been?
Which leaves us with your first story…
They were using the girl as a shield and he opens fire anyway!? Shitting me? Man must have a mighty high opinion of his accuracy with a handgun. Which, apparently, he had right close to hand, seeing as how he retrieved it in the time it takes two men in a hurry to get up his driveway! Good thing the wife had one equally handy, but she wasn’t quite as good a shot.
You have some experience with the criminal element, we are given to understand. Anything about this story smell a bit…off!…to you? The thugs just picked a house at random, did they? Hoping to make off with…what?
In a nation of 360 million people, and going back to May, this is what you got? Why, odds like that, could be me next, any minute! Gasp! Hell, bought a lottery ticket, better go get me a gun right quick, in case I won!
I won’t lie to you, tell you I have no experience of fear. But I damned sure ain’t about to invite it into my home. And double sure as hell not going to shoot a burglar. Wouldn’t kill somebody to take what’s theirs, not going to do it to keep what’s mine. There’s lots more stuff, but I only have the one soul.
Amendment: due to a misreading, I assumed that the young woman in the first story was daughter to the man who opened fire on the men using her as a shield. And was appropriately aghast. Or maybe only as aghast as I can be, might deserve a whole bunch more aghastitude. Hard to build up a reserve supply, these days.
But the story only says that she “lived at the home” and does not specify any relationship. Which is better. Sorta, kinda.
Happy to respond. Indeed the pediatrican apparently did give adequate notice, and while I have in my over a dozen years on QA and over 25 years in practice never heard of anyone being dismissed for failing to answer a question, any question, telling a patient they will be dismissed in 30 days actually does not meet the standard of patient abandonment.
Now will you actually respond to my points that you have ignored? The standard for physicians includes providing care for a reasonable period of time. Dismissals are allowed only if ongoing patient care is realistically going to occur. The law does not address patient dismissals which can occur, with enough notice, for lots of reasons; it merely prohibits one particular subject of speech. If the law was to be “prophylactic” then all speech would have to be censored because any interaction could lead to a dismissal.
A pharmacist leaving a patient without an option for care is not analogous with a doctor discussing a particuar subject. The pharmacist is leaving the patient with no care and no reasonable choice. The physician is discussing something and the patient has a choice to walk or not. If the doctor chooses to terminate the relationship (which is alleged to have happened once) as the consequence of the response or the non-response then the law is written that care must be continued for a reasonable period of time. The doctor circumstance never leaves a patient without care; the pharmacist one does.
You are wrong.
Look Rick, I am on your side in this case. I am a firm (liberal) supporter of gun rights. If the time comes, I will be there by your side on the picket line and in the voting booth protecting your right to have a gun (personally, I don’t have one). We could get into the reasons why I 100% support these rights, but it is not important. What is important is that gun rights are pretty firmly legally established in the country and there is no sign they are under threat. DC vs. Heller and McDonald vs. Chicago have pretty much guaranteed that gun possession will remain a right in the foreseeable future. State legislatures across the land are expanding the rights of gun owners and dismantling regulations. Some of these are good, some bad, but regardless, gun rights are mostly expanding. Even after Sandy Hook, there was no legislative will to stand up to this tide of pro-gun rights sentiment.
Well and good in my book. Most attempts to restrict gun ownership are misguided at best in my book and I do think it is an important right as I said.
So, anyway, you are still wrong about saying you are safer because you have a gun. Statistically, you are at a higher risk for being injured or killed owning a gun than I am not owning one. So what? I don’t really care, I am still on your side. But why are you, the SDMB member who always is sooooo precise in his definitions in debates, taking this side of the argument? Who the hell cares about anecdotes where owning a gun has been a positive, or a negative? It does not matter, it is a right enshrined in our constitution, upheld by the Supreme Court, protected by our legislatures, and supported by the majority of our citizenry. Why even get involved in throwing around these worthless anecdotes and falsehoods (having a gun makes you safer - statistically not true all other things being equal!)
Also, the whole thing about pharmacists and birth control misses the mark in my book. The physicians are not refusing to provide the service, they are wanting to as personal questions and advice their patients as they treat them. The pharmacists are not counselling and questioning their patients, they are refusing to distribute medication prescribed by their personal physicians. There is a difference.
Other subject … yes “anti-gun” has no meaning … unless one wants to use it to define those who believe that guns should all be illegal and confiscated. To lump everyone who believes that there should be some regulation of guns and those who believe that guns in some circumstances are a risk greater than the benefit and who debate amongst themselves what regulations are reasonable and what would be excessive, what is allowable and what is prohibited consitutionally, and which circumstances are reasonable for guns and which not, together, all as “anti-gun” is anithetical to meaningful discussion. A few on the anti-gun regulation side prefer to avoid meaningful discussion as meaningful discussion to them is a slippery slope. Those people are well represented in this thread. Fortunately my experience on these boards has also included contact with those who believe in more reasonable conversation. The result of *those *conversations has altered my view from what it was when I first entered a gun thread.
This thread OTOH shows the disgusting side of so called gun rights folks. These are people who believe that the only right that matters is theirs and that they have a right to not be offended by simple questions. They believe that they should be able to enforce their view of what pediatric practice should be (the doctor as a body mechanic, dealing withmaking sick kids better, addressing nothing that is not brought up by the parent) upon the profession and upon everyone else.
They believe in free speech which to them means they are free to say what they want and to hear what they want to hear and only what they want to hear and anything that threatens that must be outlawed. A doctor might present a POV they disagree with? Take away his license! (Or hers.)
Anyway. This ruling will be appealed next to the full nine member appellate court and meanwhile is not in effect. More to come.
Having a senior moment. OK. month. But I lost track of something, I thought this law was about the doctor being somehow able to enforce a lecture on gun safety, but is it really saying what some crazy people are telling me, that a doctor cannot even talk about it!
Naw, that can’t possibly be it, all the tighty righties on the Boards would be screaming about prior restraint of the Big Number One Amendment. No fucking way! That just can’t be it.
Somebody clue me in here, if I’m losing my shit or having a flashback, I still want to know. Because that just cannot possibly be right!
Specifically* asking about gun ownership*. Actually lecturing about gun safety or against ownership is not prohibited so long as it is given without regard to having found out if the family has guns in the house. From what I can find the law does not say that a doctor cannot preach “Guns are teh evil and must be confiscated from all!” to all patients and dismiss anyone who objects to the statement (with adequate notice of course). The specific prohibition is against asking if they are owned be it verbally or by questionaire … unsure if asking if bullets are owned is covered. The court’s opinion was that the Act merely codified what was “good medical care” (something apparently that state legislators are better able to decide than are professionals in the field and their expert bodies) and that “any burden the act places on physician speech is…entirely incidental.”
There you go again. You’ve done it twice now.
If you ask me a question. I answer it. That doesn’t mean I’m making some sort of blanket statement about everyone in the world.
You: Have you ever seen an albino squirrel, Debaser.
Me: No, I actually haven’t.
You: So, you’re saying that in the whole world, an albino squirrel doesn’t exist anywhere!!!
Me: Huh?
Cut it out. It’s bad form, and you should know better.
I’ve successfully goaded you into participating in the thread, rather than just posting your usual line or two of snark per page. That’s good progress. You even posted a cite in your sloppy attempt at a response to Bricker.
Good for you.
But this blatant misrepresentation of my simple statements in response to you is really newbie poster stuff. After all your time here reading posts you should know better. You’d be better if you actually contributed in any meaningful way instead of just sticking to the usual one liners.
As I said on the last page, this law is an overreach and I’m opposed to it.
It’s possible to have this position and at the same time also realize that the AAP is anti-gun. In their zeal to oppose firearm ownership clouds their judgement and negatively impacts their ability to recommend gun safety guidelines to their doctors.
This is a statement that deserves a second look.
After years of hearing precisely this sentiment – that gun rights were safe and no one was going to make any effort to dramatically change that status quo, Sandy Hook brought about a brief but very serious attempt to do just that. True, it failed. But you cannot deny that for a fair fraction of the Democratic leadership, the will was there, and they made a serious effort to impose major gun restrictions.
I don’t agree. Any statistics you show me will me lumping my specific circumstances in with lots of people who don’t approach the issue of gun ownership with nearly the same kind of attention and analysis as I do.
It’s like telling me that, statistically, I have a 0.3% chance of contracting an STD in my lifetime, because that’s the average rate for men in the country. But I have a completely monogamous sexual relationship with my wife, who in turn is completely monogamous with me. That doesn’t mean my chance is literally zero, of course – I could be captured and ravished by rapacious, but unfortunately diseased, Amazons. But the numbers for me are not meaningfully calculated by reference to the entire adult population.
I bet the “statistics” you want to show me include injuries to family members in homes where guns are not stored in gun safes, with gun locks. Don’t they? If so, why would you use those numbers to infer anything about me?
I agree it’s a right, but I also contend that my particular circumstances make my particular statement true.
Yes, it’s a difference. And “pharmacist” is also spelled differently – that’s another difference.
But I don’t agree it’s a meaningful difference. In both cases, the question is what power does the legislature have to control the conduct of professionals.
And of course, I don’t favor the Florida law – in my view, doctors are not our slaves: they should be perfectly free to ask what they wish, and treat who they wish.
I’m in the category of people who won’t have a gun accident. Gun accidents only happen to the people in the category of people who are going to have a gun accident.
Also, there are four simple rules. Because of these rules, gun accidents never happen.
Plus there’s the fact that gun owners as a whole might just be a riskier group than the general population because they self selected to be gun owners. Or some other reason.
If you live in a bad neighborhood you might be at a higher risk for gun violence. You might also be more inclined to buy a gun for protection. Correlation doesn’t equal causation.
Or, like I like to call it, a typical Saturday.
Stop it! You’re proving elucidator wrong. He hates that.