100,000 defensive gun uses my hairy balls. You may as well double down and claim 100,000 eight-year-olds saved their grandfathers by driving them to the hospital too.
Only in your wet dreams are the number of people saved by guns more than the number of people killed by guns.
You got a cite for your claim or are you going by your gut instinct?
Here’s my cite.
Thats a quote of Hemenway (one of the lead gun grabbers in the country).
Now show me yours or are you just assuming statistics based on what your gut is telling you?
However many “defensive gun uses” (a self-reported stat that can mean anything from, “I shot the axe-murder who broke into my house,” to, “I was scared so I pulled my gun,”) don’t in any way, shape or form equate to saving 100,000 lives.
On the other hand, a dead body with a bullet in it is a pretty good indication that a gun served its ultimate purpose.
Let’s see. A 12 year old girl going up against an adult female. I’d say that 911, locked doors, baseball bats, cell phones and Mom on her way home could very well have settled this matter. Yet the NRA treatment implies that it must be the bangstick that saved that little girl. And NRA supporters absorb such information uncritically. Check out Bone’s post.
Decorative crapola saved my life
A former neighbor of mine once woke up bleary eyed to noise downstairs. A guy was breaking in. When she stumbled in front of the window, she saw him removing decorative crapola from the window sill. She looked at him. He looked back, smiled, waved, and ran off. If she had a gun, the NRA would have portrayed her as an armed hero and their membership would have swallowed the story whole, uncritically. But really, a gun wouldn’t have improved her safety at all, given what happened.
Remember she had no weapon and made no threats: the guy ran off anyway.
FTR, I agree that firearms have their uses, but I conceive them as tools, not fetish objects.
Is there anything in particular in my post you disagree with? I can’t tell based on your post. If so, please let me know which statement.
Read the article, he was in the house and was turning the doorknob of the closet the girl was hiding in. Time had run out at that point.
The Right to bear arms doesn’t hinge on the likelihood of one being a hero. It’s in the Constitution, and although it is currently being infringed in a number of ways, that Right endures.
When the daughter telephoned her Mom, the offender was at the front door. When the daughter pulled the trigger, he had broken in and was on the other side of the closet door.
If the daughter didn’t have a gun, she would still have access to baseball bats. Only gunnuts believe themselves to be helpless without their gun. Assuming that she would have been helpless if the house contained a smart gun is simply… learned helplessness.
The right to bear arms does not imply the right to bear any arm.
ETA: I did mess up one thing. Stacey Jones is the accused. I thought the captured was female based upon the name: wrong.
I think we can agree that there are probably flaws with smart guns (a good idea in theory, but they don’t sound all that practical), without mentioning unusual circumstances. (I mean c’mon, how often does a 12-year-old have to hold off a kidnapper? Let’s come up with something a more, oh, commonplace?)
So you don’t have a cite?
I say there are 100,000 dgu’s and you say “nuh-uh”
I provide a cite from the Dept. of justice and instead of saying “huh, I did not know that, well ignorance fought” You say “nuh uh!!! defensive gun could mean anything”
I never said 100,000 dgu meant 100,000 lives saved. But if you want to move the goalposts, you are basically saying that 100,000 defensive gun uses could not equal more than 700 lives saved (or 700 plus whatever murders are committed by legal gun owners).
This study wasn’t conducted by Kleck or one of the other pro-gun folks. It was conducted by the Department of Justice and you still think it means nothing. At that point aren’t you simply saying that no evidence is ever going to be good enough to make you think that legal guns could possibly serve a beneficial purpose in society?
What percentage of robberies do you think result in murder or rape?
I don’t think anecdotal evidence makes for anything other than colorful conversation (and to disprove categorical statements) but do you think a 12 year old girl could have defended herself against an intruder by swinging a baseball bat?
You mean like the 700 times a year when someone accidentally kills someone else with a gun? Sure, justifiable homicides are rare at 250/year (about as common as winning more than $1,000,000 in the lottery).
But we are talking about very small numbers in either case.
The majority of gun murders are criminals killing criminals and the majority of what’s left is criminals killing innocent citizens and a small percentage of gun murders are legal gun owners killing a law abiding citizen.
For the record, I would have no problems with a smart gun if smart gun laws were ruled unconstitutional and if the technology was a bit more reliable.
In an earlier gun thread, I got some numbers from the Brady Commission website.
28% of residential break-ins happen with the homeowner/family present. One of four of those result in violence.
Average of 430 annual homicides.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15957373&postcount=65
I’m still not seeing any of my statements you disagree with. Can you quote which one if any? Are you not doing so on purpose?
Judging from his past crimes, the intruder’s goal was to take her from point A to point B. I think that sort of attack in a residential neighborhood could have been successfully resisted by a 12 year old, especially with firm coaching by telephone. i.e. “Hang up, call 911, barricade yourself upstairs.” That said, I think it’s a good idea for all girls and women to receive some martial arts training and parental discussion. If the goal was sexual assault… well even in that case I understand that any resistance improves the odds.
I’m not saying guns are useless; I’m saying that gun nuts appear to engage in learned helplessness without them.
I generally don’t believe in tit for tat, but since Bone asked…
Agree.
Disagree, for reasons stated. If she didn’t rely on her gun, she had other options. For example: “the cops are on their way”. I wouldn’t bet on this position though, mainly because our information base is so poor. It’s not like I’ve reviewed a detailed investigation of the October 2012 incident.
Agree, but needs qualification by provided earlier by Jack Batty.
"Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."
As you can see, it’s implicit in the wording of the Amendment that the arms described therein are those suitable for the maintenance of a well regulated militia. That would appear to be: rifles, pistols, and handheld melee weapons like swords, tomahawks, and bayonets. What arms did you think I was implying?
Thanks for quoting that, just to remind me that these shining lights of thought and reason couldn’t punctuate to save their lives nor draft a sentence that made it clear whether or not the right had anything to do with actually keeping a militia going or weapons ownership being conditional on membership of one.
Since the wording doesn’t make any mention of membership, but describes the use the “arms” in question would be put to (to use a grammatically questionable prepositional phrase) … it seems pretty clear to me. I believe it’s generally accepted, except by anti-gun activists, that the “militia” mentioned in the 2nd Amendment is composed of all adult able-bodied men. Again, there is nothing in the Amendment that limits arms to militia members.
"Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
This seems to be an Amendment that no one has a problem with. Still, all religious practices aren’t allowable … no animal torture, no Aztec human sacrifice. And the people can assemble, but not if it blocks traffic or causes unsafe conditions. Reasonable people realize that it’s not necessary for the Rights in the “Bill of Rights” to be worded like a contract, carefully spelling out every exception or contingency.
I don’t think folks have an issue with the 2nd Amendment because of grammar or because of the word “militia” … I think it’s the word “arms” that is causing the problems. If the authoritarians can whip up enough frenzy from enough alarmists that our lives will be that much safer if we could just not have private ownership of guns, then they can effectively disarm the citizens. That is their goal.
Yeah, I tried that. See below your post to see where that got me.
[QUOTE=SirGalahad]
(snip)…
I don’t think folks have an issue with the 2nd Amendment because of grammar or because of the word “militia” … I think it’s the word “arms” that is causing the problems.
[/QUOTE]
Nope. Speaking for myself and most pro-gun-control folks I know, the word “militia” is the main issue, although you sort of have a point in that we consider how this word “militia” modifies the word “arms” (both who should have 'em, and what kind should they have).
That’s when we’re in a practical “assuming we can’t get the Second Amendment amended” mood, of course.