[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
After all, what’s the use of the private arsenal, the target practice, the tough talk, the sleepless nights lovingly polishing one’s barrel, if you never get your own “home defense” anecdote with which to bludgeon the feeble arguments of the confiscation crowd, when you’re not recounting it to impress the other barflies every $4 Pabst Pitcher Night?
[/QUOTE]
Good troll. You sucked me right in. I should know better than to take the bait from people who say stuff like this.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Assuming demons were real ? Then, obviously, you go to an exorcist. The same as going to a doctor when a child is infected with a disease, instead of trying to beat the disease out of them.
[/QUOTE]
THANK YOU!
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
Good troll. You sucked me right in. I should know better than to take the bait from people who say stuff like this.
[/QUOTE]
Well… in your defense, I hadn’t said it yet.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
Option one: you attack the guy (with a gun, with your fists, whatever) and risk hurting the child.
Option two: you do nothing, while the guy kills the child.
How can there be any question over this?
[/QUOTE]
Option 3 : You miss and end up killing the kid yourself. Sadly, nothing is as cut and dried as we’d like it to be.
All I’m saying is that if you give this right to your trained gun owner, you also give it to Joe Six Pack. And there are a lot of Joe Six Packs out there. But that’s what we have to live with. Doesn’t that scare you a bit?
Ironically, getting back to the original story and your complaint about some gun owners are good and some cops are bad; there were no good gun owners there. Luckily it was a good cop who took the guy out.
It does sound simple. And sometimes, when you have to, it is. I believe that nine out of ten people would be Medal of Honor winners, if they were put in a situation where they saw what they could do would help, when it needed to be done.
Sometimes, you just don’t recognize it fast enough.
As far as shooting people? When I think about shooting someone, I feel sick. I don’t know if I could do it on purpose. I know I might do it by accident. So I’m real darn careful.
I almost shot a bird Sunday. It flew over the clay pigeon. I ruined my shot to avoid it.
[QUOTE=Eutychus]
Option 3 : You miss and end up killing the kid yourself. Sadly, nothing is as cut and dried as we’d like it to be.
[/quote]
Did I miss something, or did the kid in this case die? I’m not exactly sure that “I stood by helpless while the kid got beaten to death” and “I tried to save the kid but accidentally killed him” are really statements with much difference between them, from the standpoint of, say, the kid.
Maybe not, but one of those options has a chance of the kid being saved, and the other one doesn’t.
[QUOTE=Eutychus]
All I’m saying is that if you give this right to your trained gun owner, you also give it to Joe Six Pack. And there are a lot of Joe Six Packs out there. But that’s what we have to live with. Doesn’t that scare you a bit?
[/QUOTE]
No, it doesn’t scare me at all. Why on earth should it scare me?
Joe Sixpack has the right to drive. Joe Sixpack isn’t always a great driver. Sometimes Joe Sixpack crashes his car and kills people. But this is just a fact of life, like you say. It doesn’t scare me, it just means that I have to always do my best to be aware, to be safe, and to keep my wits sharp.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
Maybe not, but one of those options has a chance of the kid being saved, and the other one doesn’t.
[/QUOTE]
Yes. I think I wrote my message badly; I agree with you. Saying “well, if you had a gun you stood a chance of shooting the kid” isn’t much of an argument when the kid, in the absence of a gun, wound up dead anyway.
[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Assuming demons were real ? Then, obviously, you go to an exorcist. The same as going to a doctor when a child is infected with a disease, instead of trying to beat the disease out of them.
[/QUOTE]
Anyone have Bobby Jindal’s direct line?
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
I would respectfully submit that even if the gun owner is every bit as bad as gun owners are often made out to be, the child was killed. It would be hard to do worse.
[/QUOTE]
Even given that you somehow have the knowledge that withou a doubt the unmoving shape on the ground is indeed a baby, and given that your precognitive ability tells you that your only chance to save this baby is to shoot now, the possibilities that are left are:
I’m sure there are other scenarios that don’t involve an action movie type of ending, but I’m sure you get the point.
[QUOTE=fessie]
If he had no criminal history, where’d they get that mug shot?
[/QUOTE]
Doesn’t look like a mug shot- it’s probably from his work ID badge or a passport or driver’s license.
[QUOTE=Bryan Ekers]
I’m only mostly serious. Though I don’t own any firearms, nor am I seeking to get any (I had a Firearms Acquisition Certificate as it was then known for a time in the nineties, but never exercised it), I don’t recognize featherlou’s stance as a typical “Canadian” one, nor do I understand fully what the heck he’s talking about. I fully intend to use deadly force to defend myself or others from potentially lethal threat should the (admittedly highly unlikely) situation arise. If somebody breaks into my house and doesn’t skedaddle promptly when I tell him to, I’ll gladly use one of the large knives in my kitchen to carve him up.
Frankly, I’m offended by the notion that Canadians are passive. Sure, we don’t live in fear, but most of us are not idiots.
[/QUOTE]
Not wanting to kill someone, even a criminal, isn’t exactly passive, but I’ll gladly acknowledge that my viewpoint is not shared by all Canadians.
yoyodyne, it actually does surprise me a little, considering all the posturing I’ve seen through the years from the people on this board who seem quite eager to blow an intruder back out the door. They make it sound like “he needed killing” is the only defense they need.
Argent Towers, I apologize for calling you surly and mean. You have a right to have an opinion of my opinions.
[QUOTE=featherlou]
yoyodyne, it actually does surprise me a little, considering all the posturing I’ve seen through the years from the people on this board who seem quite eager to blow an intruder back out the door.
[/QUOTE]
HA! I knew I wasn’t imagining it!
Try to make Vinyl doubt his own vague, scattershot, unreliable, prejudicial, frequently drunken recollections…
[QUOTE=Vinyl Turnip]
HA! I knew I wasn’t imagining it!
Try to make Vinyl doubt his own vague, scattershot, unreliable, prejudicial, frequently drunken recollections…
[/QUOTE]
Surely the two of you can demonstrate where those bloodthirsty gun owners sit there stroking their weapons in anticipation of killing somebody, anybody, under any circumstances.
As you do so, note that resolve to protect your family or yourself does not equate to eagerness to kill somebody. Silly me, of course you understand that. How could I possibly doubt your rationality in this matter? You’ve been so level-headed to this point.
[QUOTE=Zsofia]
I imagine people were afraid of hurting the child themselves, as well. I mean, if I try to grab the child you’re slamming into a car and we get into a tug of war with a toddler…
[/QUOTE]
Agreed.
I mean, yeah, after everything is all said and done with, and we really have very little detail regarding how things happened, it’s easy to say that someone should have tackled the guy, shot him, put him in some kind of judo choke-hold, or whatever.
But someone coming across the situation and totally unprepared for it isn’t going have any idea of who this guy is or exactly what he’s doing, and isn’t really even going to be thinking clearly.
There are about a million ways this could have gone when you don’t really know what’s going on. For all you know, your interference might prompt the guy to kill the kid (and I’m pretty sure it would be pretty easy for a crazed, full-grown man to kill a baby before you can incapacitate him with a choke-hold or whatever), which he wasn’t planning on doing before. Or what if your tackling the guy causes him to drop the kid on its head, which kills it? What if he gets scared and flings it at you? What if he pulls out a gun and shoots it in the head? Or shoots you in the head?
It seems to me as though there are at least as many ways for a passer-by’s interference to go wrong as there are for it to go right.
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
Surely the two of you can demonstrate where those bloodthirsty gun owners sit there stroking their weapons in anticipation of killing somebody, anybody, under any circumstances.
As you do so, note that resolve to protect your family or yourself does not equate to eagerness to kill somebody. Silly me, of course you understand that. How could I possibly doubt your rationality in this matter? You’ve been so level-headed to this point.
[/QUOTE]
How did you manage to type this while stroking your weapon in anticipation of killing somebody, anybody, under any circumstances?
D & R
[QUOTE=Airman Doors, USAF]
Surely the two of you can demonstrate where those bloodthirsty gun owners sit there stroking their weapons in anticipation of killing somebody, anybody, under any circumstances.
[/QUOTE]
Ah, but this is just it: not anybody, under any circumstances. But one could certainly pine for just the right person under the perfect circumstances, couldn’t one?
Come on, let’s be honest. It’s just us guys talking now. You may not share the fantasy, but you can’t tell me there aren’t those who do. I bet you know at least one or two personally.
So the fuck what, if there are guys who do? There are guys who do all sorts of things. There are guys who fantasize about raping goats, and then one day decide to act upon that. There are all kinds of people out there. The fact that there may be some people out there who fantasize about killing people isn’t exactly news - there are always going to be psychos around.
But this whole argument about “gun fantasies,” as far as I can tell, is an unbelievably weaselly, underhanded, bullshit dig at gun owners - sidetracking a reasonable discussion, forcing the gun people to go on the defensive, and using weasel words to cast gun owners as somehow perverted, unnatural or “fetishizing” their weapons just like that asshole did in the thread about the hunting accident. This is really, really stupid, and I’m going to have to call you on it.