lethal response to home breakin

Great Debates
81

*Originally posted by Myrr21 *
**

Yes, but unfortunately proper use of the English language does not make a statement correct.**

All humans make mistakes. Ever heard the phrase “to err is human…”? Responsible humans minimize risks. Responsible firearms owners eliminate them
When the risks are as dire as with a firearm, responsible humans make sure to minimize those risks until they are practically zero. Practically zero != Absolutely zero.

Freak things occur that people have no control over. There is some finite probability that all your molecules will cease to exist on earth, and reassemble themselves on the moon.???pull the tinfoil down a bit past your ears, I’m sure that will help.
There is some finite probability (much greater, I would imagine), that a nerve in your trigger finger will spontaneously fire, twitching your finger even when you didn’t mean to.no responsible owner ever places his/her finger on the trigger except with the express intention of pulling it. There’s some finite probability that that bullet (which you had responsibly aimed in a safe direction), will ricochet into someone you did not mean to hit. ***maybe in your world, not in mine. ***

So what did this “moron” do wrong? Fail to develop spontaneous control over probability? **
Er, yes. It’s probable that if you flip a coin, it will come up heads or tails. Unless it is a double headed coin. Responsible owners always make sure they know what is on both sides of the coin before flipping.

Perhaps you live in a world where “good enough” is ok. Maybe if only three of the four brakes on your car function, that’s “good enough” for you. Maybe if your TV only gets The Women’s Channel, that’s “Good Enough” for you too. Firearms safety is binary. It is either a 1, completely safe, or a 0, not completely safe. Let’s look at a specific scenario:

Dick is a responsible firearms owner. He keeps his guns locked, he takes all the necesary precautions. One day while hunting, he hits a nice fat pheasant, and in locating it, comes into some heavy brush. He looks around, there is nobody even on the property he’s on, so he puts down his gun with the safety on DINGDINGDING!!! and goes to retrieve his bird. He returns, picks up his firearm and continues to hunt. Did you notice the DINGDINGDING!!!? This is the point where Dick stopped being a responsible firearms owner and started being a moron. Only a moron puts down a loaded weapon and walks away from it. Dick broke the rules of responsible firearms ownership, as well as the laws of common sense. Dick is lucky to have survived, even though there was no time at which he may have felt in danger.

Mgibson, you know you were a moron, and you did a moronic thing. Hopefully, you have learned that there is no room for that in firearms ownership, and I’m glad you’re still here to tell us about it. BTW, just because you were a moron once, does not mean you can’t learn responsibility.I suspect you’re a LOT more responsible now-hehe!

gato, I love a smartass! Besides which, I clarified and apologised for my erroneous statement. I stand corrected.

b.

[sub]puts spoofe on the short list of people allowed around anything I care for[/sub]

82

Gee, maybe I WANT family members to know where to access firearms in case they need to defend themselves? In any event, an intruder would damned sure NOT know where to look, I’ll guarantee that with my life
Czar, if you’re not willing to open your mind, why the hell are you arguing with me? I have absolutely NO INTEREST in arguing with you. Do you think you’re going to prove your case? With impossibly farfetched scenarios about how I’m going to shoot my wife, and citeless claims about anecdotal conjecture? Rhetoric never has impressed me. Like I said, post some nice acerbic reply and get Myrr to post one too. Then close the bloody thread so you can feel good about having had the last word. Hey, maybe you can even edit one of my posts so that you can claim I called you a “fanatic”!!!
b.

83

Such anger!

You asked how many combinations would make me happy-I answered. You didn’t accept the number? Your problem.
Do you really want cites, or would giving cites make you even angrier? I have been calm(and rather civil) in stating my objections, but you seem to think you’ve got me pegged, and your pre-conceptions on what I want seem to be clouding your responses.
Here’s a question for you. Out of the many millions that own handguns, what percentage do you guess would rise to what you claim is your level of safety?

Here’s another question for you. Are you as careful with the other potentially deadly weapon that even more households own? I am refering to the automobile, of course. Ever had a accident? Ever run a red light? Speed? Ever forgotten to fuel up, and run out of gas?

IMHO, cars are even deadlier than guns, yet I would balk at calling anyone who has screwed up while driving a “moron”.

84

sigh
It’s an irrelevant point, really, and since probability doesn’t seem to be your strong suit, I won’t get into it…

Hence the “spontaneous nerve firing”…

Ahh, I see. You don’t live in the real world. That explains the difference of opinion. In your world, only the ideal ever happens. Carry on…

According to you, Miss Cleo (with her supernatural ability to predict the future) is the only non potential-moron on the planet.

No. I live in a world that is not perfect. The real world.

As for your little example, you’re right–in that instance the owner is being a moron. But we’re not talking about that.

85

And the conclusion I came to was that I don’t feel comfortable using a gun for self defense in my home. So now I take kendo classes and keep a (more than real enough to kill) katana in my room. This is likely to be far more than adequate, since I live in a good neighborhood AND have bars on the basement and ground floor windows.

I don’t have a gun any more, but when I did, I kept it locked up at all times in its case, and the ammo seperate in another lockbox. I don’t have kids, and I’m not worried about my roommate, but I feel like you never can be too careful. I prefer the sword anyway - I think a house-robbing junkie is more likely to be scared of it.
Supposing that I were to be thrust into the situation where I woke up in my own bed, gun in hand, sword nowhere in sight, and heard someone breaking into my house, I’d probably do the following…
A) Pick up my cell phone from the nightstand and call 911, report the burglary, ask them to send an officer by my house. Note: I’m doing this before I even get out of bed.

B) Get out of bed, start turning on lights, making noise,
talking loudly to myself, etc… to scare the burglar off. Maybe turn on my stereo and start playing some music loud.

C) Finally, if it seems like they weren’t going away, go confront them. Walk into the room where they are, gun at the ready, and shout, “I have a gun. I have called the police and they are on their way. Get the fuck out of my house RIGHT NOW or I’ll shoot.”

At this point I see three possibilities:

  • If they run like hell, I let them go. I have homeowner’s insurance to pay for whatever they may have taken. I’m not so attached to my stuff that I’m willing to take life for it. I think even a thief’s life is worth more than a stereo.

  • If they head for me, or make a threatening move like drawing something from their clothing (be it knife or gun), I empty the gun into them. They can take my stuff, no problem. But if they try and hurt me… bye-bye fucker. You won’t ever have a chance to hurt anyone ever again. If and when I have a family, I’d probably also shoot to kill if they tried to head for the kid’s room or the bedroom. I am more than willing to kill in order to prevent the murder or injury of my loved ones. Take my stuff; I don’t give a shit. Stuff can be replaced. People can never be replaced. Menace myself or my kids or my wife and you’re deader than dogshit.

  • If they just stand there looking dumb, I wait. The longer they sit there, the better the chances get that the cops arrive and catch them. I want to give them a chance to turn and run. If they need a minute to think about it, fine. And if they decide to charge me or make another threatening move, I can still empty the magazine into them. We have all the time in the world, and I’d be so pumped up on adrenaline at this point that there’s NO chance of me dozing off or looking away.

If they’re still there after a minute or two, and they don’t seem to be drunk off their ass or harmless crazy, tell them they have until the count of five to get the fuck out. If they fails, shoot them once in the shoulder. Yes, I know - must shoot to kill, not to wound, or risk going to jail, possibly for a long time. That’s fine, I’ll take that risk.
Where I live, in Colorado, there is a “make my day” law. Intruders into your home can be dealt with by lethal force, legally.
-Ben

86

**

I wasn’t a moron when I made the mistake and I’m not a moron now. It is possible for responsible people to make an error every once in a while. Firearm safety procedures aren’t designed for people who are perfect all the time. They are designed to be redundant. Why do you check to see if a firearm is loaded even if you just witnessed another person find that it was unloaded? Because you want to make sure you keep yourself in the habit of good firearms safety.

There are multiple steps to firearm safety which include but is not limited to keeping your finger off the trigger, pointing the firearm in a safe direction, and being aware of your environment. If you’re pretty good about following these rules then if you do make one mistake there’s a good chance that it won’t be fatal.

I’ve also run red lights, cut myself with a knife, and hit someone over the head with a rock on accident. I think you’ll find that in life people make little errors all the time and it doesn’t make someone a moron.

Marc

87

You have no idea how hard I’m laughing right now…

First of all, I had a strong feeling that you would give me the “spouse forgot the keys” scenario, so strong that I wanted to type “Please don’t give me the ‘spouse forgot the keys’ scenario”, but I didn’t because I was hoping that you might consider me, my friends and family to be a little smarter than that.

So you’re telling me that my spouse or child who is
a) aware that there are loaded weapons in the house
b) arriving home in the middle of the night
is going to start climbing in through windows rather than ring the doorbell?

No, I don’t think so.

Why? Let’s look at point number 1.
IF there are loaded weapons in the house, then the only reason for that is because I live in a neighbourhood where I feel I need it for my and my family’s protection.
MEANING that it is an area prone to burglaries/home invasions.

So you’re suggesting to me that my SO or family would actually invite a potentially dangerous (if not fatal) situation over the slightest inconsideration of ringing the doorbell?

That would be a candidate for a Darwin award, not someone I would marry or raise.

My child will be brought up like I was, with the knowledge that rules can be broken and harm will come to noone who forgets their keys and needs to be let in. I won’t even argue with them about the late hour of their arrival but talk about it the next morning. I can always go back to bed. It’s like the agreement you have with your children who went out and drank when they shouldn’t have, but called you to drive them home rather than drive temselves.

Seriously, the idea of anything otherwise is ludicrous given the setting. I’ve never crawled in a window (I’ve crawled in a balcony…different story, I’ll get into it elsewhere), regardless of the time, and my parents never owned (or needed) a weapon. I knocked on the door until one of them woke up. I’d apologize and say “fergot my keys…”.

My “ever vigilant neighbour” probably has my spare set just for such an occassion, so I’d have to probably ring his doorbell in the middle of the night to get in. (It’s happened to me once.)
The conversation, I imagine, would go something like this:
“Evening, Ed. Sorry to wake you but I lost my keys…”
“Right, Darq (yawn) Here ya go. Take care now…”
“Yeah. Sorry again. I owe you one.”

Or I have a spare set hidden away somewhere. But that’s just me, a person experienced with being locked out of my own place. (With the spare set IN the apartment :rolleyes:)

As for the spouse leaning out the window, well considering what I wear to bed and what my livein wears to bed, you’re thinking I can’t recognize them for that ring of half-naked shoeless burglars that everybody’s talking about? :slight_smile:

No, I don’t buy it.

You say you could go on, please do. I could use another snicker before i go to bed. :slight_smile:

88

If what I said before had you snickering and rolling your eyes, these stats are gonna have you rolling on the floor.

In home with guns, the homocide of a family member is almost three times more likely than in homes without guns.(New England Journal of Medicine, 1993: 329:1084-1091)

The risk of suicide of a family member is increased by nearly five times in homes with guns.(New England Journal of Medicine, 1992: 267:3043-3047)

And this little stat, which bears directly to the issue at hand: Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill someone known to you versus a stranger in self-defense.(Journal of Trauma, 1998: pp.263-267)

Want more? These were rather easy to find, and there are hundreds more where they came from.

89

Darqangelle: In regard to your questions about Canadian law: Is there a “citizens arrest” in Canada?

90

**Ah, your first real answer to any of my questions. So, in other words, since you can find absolutely no evidence to corroborate the conjecture that one, or ten, combinations of magnetic locks is sufficient, you pick a next nice, round, unavailable number, just so you won’t have to eat crow anytime soon, and simply make it “my” problem. How convenient for you. Saves you all that annoying research. Though you wouldn’t find anything anyway.

**LOL! Calm and civil. I’d like to get a ruling on that from the german judges, if you don’t mind. Yes, I’d like cites. If you can back up the statements which you made with some indication that they are anything but rhetoric, bring it on.

**
Not knowing those people personally, I’d hate to venture a guess, which is all it could be. Statistically, however, based on the number of firearms vs. firearms accidents, I’d say quite a few.

**

Uh, No. And if you’d like to take that a bit further, I’ve driven 110 miles a day, round trip, for the past ten years. Before that, it was 150 miles a day, and none of these figures count my road time- I used to do a lot of field service and I travelled extensively, often in my own car, sometimes in rental cars. So, at just shy of 30,000 miles/year, ten years that’s 300,000 miles. No accidents. No tickets. No incidents. During all that time I have always known exactly where my car keys were, and it was always either in the ignition or in the pocket of my pants. I have never locked myself out of my car or my house.
If there has been a single time when I didn’t use my turn signal to indicate motion I am unaware. My vehicles have always had all their proper lights functioning, as I check them all every single day. I have never had a flat tire or a blowout because I check the condition of my tires every single day. I have never had engine trouble because I carefully maintain my vehicles, myself, and it is very unusual for me to drive a car less than 200,000 miles. My Explorer has 74,000 miles and is basically showroom new.My last car, a Chrysler minivan(company car) went to trade with 198,000 miles. Running and looking nicely in every way. The previous vehicle, a 1990 Ford Probe, has 278,000 miles, and the current owner (a good friend and co-worker)says it STILL starts and runs like new.

Everyone I personally deal with day-to day can say these types of things honestly. As well as they can say that they are responsible firearms owners, which they are. Who do you hang with?

Cars are in fact much deadlier than firearms. And on a daily basis I see people drive who can only be accurately categorized as morons. I’d be more than pleased to have someone pull MY driving record and compare it to anyone else’s anyday. My firearms record, since I have never even allowed a situation to take place which would cause an accident, stands on it’s own.

Homicide in families who own firearms is a tragedy. It’s a tragedy when anyone takes a human life. Especially a moron. Who else but a moron would allow a situation to escalate to the point where one party or another would, in the heat of the moment, consider deadly force a solution? This is an issue of mental health and not firearms

Poor Mental health, not guns, causes people to want to commit suicide. How can anyone tell that people are five times as likely to commit suicide if guns are in the house? What on earth was the control group? People who want to commit suicide find ways. Again, an issue of mental health.

how does this support your argument that 100 magnetic ring combinations will be sufficent? or that one or four are insufficient? What data do you have about households using these types of devices? Here’s a little cite for you. Of course, this cite starts by listing the people who participated, and many actually think education about firearms is the best weapon against them, so you may not be able to read it since it won’t jive with your ideas. But if you can stick it out, maybe you’ll understand that whatever your upbringing, whatever your world is like, there are people with integrity, people who have rules, and do not ever compromise them. My, very, very real world expects nothing less.

If I were angry, which I am not, I am anoyed, I would ask to bring this to the pit. Since I am merely annoyed, and believe me, you will never have it in you to anger me, I have to once again ask: Close this thread. I’m very tired of dealing with it, and as long as it is open I will continue to defend myself. I really don’t care, and I cannot for a moment see that you have made any point salient or useful to the OP.My primary focus has been to (in re the O.P.) instruct, and issue warnings regarding dangers, and offer hopes of never having to need any type of home protection. It seems your primary focus has been to show just how wrong and misguided I am. Great! Hey, Czar, I’m wrong and misguided. You’ve convinced me! I’ll probably vote for Hillary Clinton next election!Now leave me the hell alone.

b.

91

Billy, you asked me how many combinations of the mag-lock gun ring would I consider sufficient, and I said 100. I thought that this number might be possible for the manufacturers to achieve while keeping the product cost effective. I don’t recall you asking for a study on the subject, just my opinion, but if you did I apologize.

You asked for cites concerning my position, which I provided. I skipped all the anti-handgun cites because I thought you would dismiss them out of hand. Instead, I refered to studies out of the New England Journal Of Medicine.
Which you dismissed, rather snidely, out of hand. Big surprise.

No, I will not close this thread, which you did not start, just because someone has come up with a view that is different from yours. You can argue the points presented.
You can bring up new points that are relevant to the thread.
You can start a pit thread about either this subject, or if you prefer, me.

92

While the subject may be worthy of more of my time, you are not.

b.

93

Good. Back to the subject at hand, then.

I must state for the record that I have no objections to the ownership of handguns, under the proper conditions, and for the right reasons. Except for certain individual cases, such as Anthracite, most statistics bear our the fact that you increase the danger of someone gettting hurt, or even killed, when a handgun is brought into the home for self-protection. You can greatly decrease, but not eliminate, the danger by locking the weapon and the ammo separately in secure and non-portable areas. Unfortunately, many people feel the need to have a weapon within arms’ reach to protect themselves from the statistically unlikely event of someone breaking into their house while they sleep. I liken it to the people that insist on not putting on their seatbelts, citing very isolated and suspect stories about people that were trapped in their cars and killed because their seatbelts trapped them.

Unless you make the claim that you are perfectly alert when you are woken up in the middle of the night, and that your night vision is exceptional, and that your family members never wonder around at night, and that is 0% chance of your spouse and/or children EVER sneaking in in the middle of the night, I would have second thoughts about your boasting about how fast you would have that gun out and cocked(and according to some posts, fired repeatedly).

In the video game called Life, there are no “saved games”, and if you don’t get it right more than 1 person may lose the game.

94

So you are now suggesting that we deliberately put kids into very dangerous situations. How humanitarian of you.

Oh, good. I can use a good laugh.

Please, explain why this is a bad thing. Were these happy, loving, Brady Bunch families? Or were these families that one would be likely to see on Jerry Springer? Further, what methods were used to find this data?

Again, I would like to see how this data was found out. The suicide rates of the United States are just about even with countries such as Canada and Australia, which have lower levels of gun ownership. This indicates that the presence of a gun is not a factor in “causing” suicides. Frankly, after so many gun control debates, I’m embarrassed for my species that someone would try to make this argument again.

And this is a bad thing… why? For example, describe the phrase “someone known to you”. As our ol’ friend John Lott explains in More Guns, Less Crime…

He then provides a table which lists the rates of murders taken from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (which would be difficult for me to recreate on a message board). He also states that…

He says he used Chicago because they keep “unusually detailed numbers” on gun-related crimes. Basically, his data shows that the instances of close, friendly relationships result in a tiny amount of deaths, compared to people who just “know each other”.

Do you know people that you can say you are not friendly with, Mr. Casm? Are there people who can be described as “acquaintances” that also could not be called “friends”? Unless you live a very lucky life, I would almost assuredly say that there are.

The point, Mr. Casm, is that simply citing 'til the cows come home is worthless unless you explain why your cite is relevant.

95

Bring it on…
**

…okaaaaaaay, this is a nice little dodge here.
So you’re quoting a statistic, that’s fine. Lovely. I can quote statistics, too. Now let’s talk about ANSWERING THE QUESTION!

For those of you just joining us, the question was presented thusly:
So please give me a situation where:
a) Someone is crawling into a bedroom window who
b) Is NOT a robber or someone threatening a family/individual where
c) firearms are kept during
d) the middle of the night

I’d seriously like to know.

**

OKayyyy, so you’re telling me that if I bring a gun into the home, it will cause a suicide? I’ve noted some of your other posts, you’re smarter than that. Dude, I’m figuring that you’re a mod for a reason… please don’t make me lose my faith.

**

Yeah, I know. I’m actually quite knowledgable about these things. I’m aware of the inherent dangers of guns. Cite until the cows come home about how dangerous it is and I’ll still state “Yeah, I know”. But nothing you have stated so far has answered the question.

Yes, I agree that these stats are easy to find. I’m well aware that most accidents (even NOT firearm related) happen in the home. Big deal! This is common knowledge! Let’s move on! I’m asking about a real-life situation that you originally posted regarding people crawling through windows in the middle of the night! YOU brought it up, I just want some clarification!

If YOUR son has the tendency to crawl through windows in the middle of the night while you’re living in your one-level bungalow in New Orleans knowing that you keep a gun in the house, then maybe (just maybe) you might want to consider havign a little chat with him about the “real world”, the “middle of the night”, and “Mistaken identity”.

96

I’m aware of such a thing in the U.S., but I’m not aware of the actual implications of the act. can you tell me what a “citizen’s arrest” entails?

In Canada, IIRC, you can restrain a suspect until the police arrive, yes.

But can you point a gun at him, tell him to roll over and slap a pair of cuffs on him and wait until the police arrive?
Sure, as long as you have a permit for the firearm (hard to get in Canuckland), and the unarmed suspect is aware that your threat to shoot him is an empty threat (because you can’t shoot him just to stop him from running away).

97

Czar?

You might want to talk to him about “Stopping power”. That’s a biggie!

98

I was asked for for my opinion on how many combinations for the “Mag-lock” would be suficient because I found four to be woefully insufficient, and gave the number “100”, with my reasons.
I was attacked because it wasn’t a scientific study.

I was asked for examples of when a person who crawlled through a bedroom window might not be a robber, and I gave several, all of which have happened in real life but which I generalized because I wasn’t asked for cites, I was asked for possible examples. My examples were dismissed as incredibly fantastic, and I was criticised for not giving cites.

I gave cites from respected medical journals, not anti-gun webcites, on how the handgun you purchase is most likely going to end up killing a friend or family member rather than the hypothetical “robber”. You came back with claims of multiple cases of mental illness that had nothing to do with handgun ownership(I guess this throws out the theory that most handgun owners are highly skilled people that do not make mistakes, right?), ad claims that the stats could mean that the friends were the ones who were breaking into the house! Might I suggest that, if you feel that your friends are likely to break into your house to rob and/or rape and/or kill you, you skip buying a handgun, and just get some new friends? By the way, the studies said “friends”, not just people you know, so they were NOT refering to the nasty acquaintance down the street that you just don’t trust.

There are some gun-rights proponents that are willing to listen when someone has reservations, and quite a few of them are on this board. Unfortunately, some gun-rights proponents belong to what I call “The Church Of The Holy Bangstick” where the opponents are dismissed out of hand, and any statistic that doesn’t tell them what they want to hear is dismissed as tainted, no matter where it came from.

99

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Czarcasm In home with guns, the homocide of a family member is almost three times more likely than in homes without guns.

I wonder how many of those cases were of battered wives that had no other means of defense? Were I to be such a despicable husband, I’ve no doubt I could wrestle a knife from my wife’s grasp but were she to have a gun and I was to assult her I hope she’d shoot me dead.

[QUOTE]
The risk of suicide of a family member is increased by nearly five times in homes with guns.

A gun is simply an easy, convenient way to accomplish that twisted goal. It’s not like just having a gun in the house made them suicidal.

[QUOTE]
And this little stat, which bears directly to the issue at hand: Guns kept in the home for self-protection are 22 times more likely to kill someone known to you versus a stranger in self-defense.

Last night in Houston a father, mother and child were blown away by suppossed acquaintances in their own home. Are these the “known to you” that you referenced?

I certainly see both sides of this issue and will constantly rethink my position as our personal situation changes. Once my baby daughter begins to explore around the house, additional precautions will be taken to prevent any accidents. But whatever is done, it will be ME controlling the situation as much as possible, not the intruder.

100

You got that right. For someone who claims to live his life under the aegis of reason, you aren’t very, well, good at reading things, let’s say.

For starters, given the cites from the NEJM from 1993, I can only assume that these come from the poorly-conducted and long-ago debunked Kellerman study. But anyway.

Whoo. Start us off the bat with a toughie. But let’s look at what it says, and what it doesn’t say. It says that, among families with guns in the house, there is three times the chance for a family member to be killed. What it doesn’t say is that the killing is performed with the gun that the family owns. If a family owns a gun, it is quite likely that they already live in a high-crime area, which fact in itself increases the chance of a family member being killed. Without controlling for the prevailing crime rate, or controlling for killings performed with the family’s gun or with another gun, this statistic tells us absolutely nothing. Next!

Dr. Gary Cleck, a criminologist at the University of Florida, whose C.V. notes that:

has this to say about gun suicides (emphasis mine):

The site that supplied this information goes on to note:

Well, I think we’ve firmly established that that cite is useless. Next!

I can’t find a link to the article itself online, so I can’t see their data or methodology, but I suspect that it falls victim to some of the failings of Kellerman and his [url=“http://i2i.org/SuptDocs/Crime/43_to_1_fallacy.htm”]43 to 1 fallacy](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,7217,00.html"cite[/url). Also, note again what the cite doesn’t say. It says a gun kep in the home is more likel to kill someone you know than a stranger in self-defense. It doesn’t say whether the person you know is also being killed in self-defense: an abusive husband, a drunken neighbor, etc. You can’t ignore those cases away–you’re killing someone known to you, but in self-defense. In fact, having an abusive spouse is IMO an excellent reason to have a firearm in the house.

Also, Kleck and other studies have revealed that, when other studies make references to “killing someone known to you rather than a stranger,” they’re including things like gang members shooting each other. Hardly a good argument for increased gun control.

Well, for the entertainment value alone it’s worth asking for more.