I’m not **Skald the Rhymer **- I can’t write a story as good as he does, so I will just cut straight to the scenario instead:
As I understand it, most gun-control advocates are of the opinion that a victim, when under threat, should do one or all of the following:
Flee;
Call 911;
Use non-firearm self-defense.
Give in to the attacker (give the mugger the wallet, etc.)
But it is not hard at all to envision a scenario where none of the above options are viable. Let’s assume that this is a serial killer scenario and we’re not talking about just a robbery.
Flee - if a victim is cornered, they cannot flee. And what if the assailant is faster?
**Call 911 **- what if the victim doesn’t have a phone handy? And even if they can call 911, the cops can take a long time to arrive.
**Non-firearm self-defense **- what if pepper spray, kicking the assailant, etc. is insufficient? Give in to the assailant - that’s all fine and well if a mugger just wants your wallet, but what if it’s a rapist or serial killer?
I’m not asking this as a rhetorical question; I’m genuinely inquiring for answers. What do the gun-control folks advise a victim to do in this situation? Talk the assailant out of it? Probably wouldn’t work if the assailant is a serial killer.
I think most people will acknowledge that if you find yourself in this situation, and you have a gun, you might as well use it.
The debate about gun control is not about whether you should be allowed to shoot a serial killer (or carry a gun for fear of this eventuality), it’s about whether we should be doing more to make sure the serial killer doesn’t have a gun himself.
As a gun owner, I’d say that you should follow the course of action least likely to end with your being harmed.
Fleeing is preferable to drawing your weapon not because shooting a mugger or rapist is wrong, but becauseusing the gun requires a dangerous face to face confrontation.
Calling 911 is preferable (if possible) because it is essentially calling for reinforcements, and tactically you always want t to outnumber your opponent (not to mention have someone else do the actual confrontation).
Preferring hand-to-hand combat to threatening your opponet is silly; the point of the gun is to equalize matters, to allow the smaller and weaker to stand up to the stronger and larger.
Giving the assailant what he desires does not work under all cirumstances. It can’t save you if what the assailant wants is your death or mutilation.
There are times when using a gun in self-defense is the best option. There are times when it is not.
ETA: Also, stop using my name in vain or I will shoot this coyote.
I am becoming more middle of the road on this. I do wish that gun control activists would at the very least educate themselves. Just a bit would help.
I own 10 guns. I did not buy one of them.
I live in the mountains. Many would call it remote. It would take me about 15 minutes to get to another house on foot, the few that are that near are unoccupied 90 percent of the time. That would be a walk/hike in the summer. So to save myself, I would have to break in. But it’s very likely they won’t have phone service. In winter, all bets are off.
I don’t CCW. No plans on it and frankly sounds like a pain in the ass.
So -
Flee;
At home I have no where to flee to. In winter, without gearing up first would be a death sentence for me or anyone else. If I was in the city, and the person was armed I would hand it over. It’s somewhat unlikely that I would be mugged.
Call 911;
Ha,ha, ha. When seconds count, help is at least a half hour away. IF I had a chance to call 911 I would, but frankly, that’s the last useful option.
Use non-firearm self-defense.
I’d hand it over. But if at home I would hopefully be able to arm myself. If I am armed, nope, I would not hand anything over. Anyone would be insane to invade an occupied house where I live. I would have to take into account just how crazy they may be. In the ‘city’ I’d give it over. If I am not outnumbered and unarmed and some random person walked into my home and demanded things of me, I will have to weigh my options. I do believe in the castle doctrine.
Give in to the attacker (give the mugger the wallet, etc.)
See above. I’ve given beggars money, and sometimes not. If I am in a city and I take food with me from a meal, I will give it to someone that is in need if they ask. Or sometimes if they don’t and it really looks like someone could use half a sandwich.
Understand that I have helped lots of people in the 25 years I have lived in the mountains. Knock on my door, and I will pull you out of the snow. Break in, and all bets are off.
Yes, but that’s not what this thread is about; this thread concerns an assailant with intent to murder. It’s one thing to give a mugger money, it’s another thing to fend off someone who has murderous intent.
Ah, but you forgot to mention that the assailant is four years old with his father’s unsecured and loaded gun, and has no idea that pulling that trigger will have consequences.
I have no problem at all with the mostly fantasy scenario of good guy John Wayne with a gun taking out bad guy with a gun. I only have a problem with the fact that letting your supposed good guys get guns with zero inconvenience lets lots of bad guys get guns too.
Not to mention that the alternate, the victim having a gun in this situation, would probably be victim reaching for said gun and having his head blown off - as sometimes happens when bad guys reach for guns with a cop around.
Oh. OK. 911 would be a joke, and rather pointless.
I’m 55 years old and not as fleet of feet as I was 30 years ago. I’m 6’3" 210# and still quite strong. If someone was trying to murder me I would do my best to return the favor. I would defend myself in anyway possible. Who wouldn’t?
Isn’t gun control the idea that it is better for a woman to be raped and strangled with her own pantyhose rather than her have to explain to the police why her attacker has more than the usual number of holes?
Effective gun control means hitting your intended target.
I live in a state with a very reasonable “Stand Your Ground” law, and a strong “Castle Doctrine”. I live in a rural area, and at night there are only two deputy sheriffs on duty after about 10-11 PM. If they’re on the far side of the county, they may as well be in Mongolia. 911 isn’t a viable option.
I won’t flee in my own house.
“Giving in” to an attacker ain’t happening.
Trying to fight without a gun risks me losing and leaving my wife at the tender loving mercy of whoever just killed me.
So yeah. Molon Labe, Motherfucker. It’s him or me, and to paraphrase the Cowboy James Storm, a great American, I’m sorry about his damn luck.
You have no idea what the intent of any intruder is, and you do not need to. If someone is committing burglary but oops, it turns into robbery (the difference being one is a violent crime (somebody’s home), the other isn’t) then they have reneged on the social contract. Which means you can assume they will go as far as killing you to achieve their goal of robbery even if they wouldn’t have. Which means deadly force is not only appropriate, but to be expected! Someone is breaking into your house, they see you, you tell them, “Get out! Stop!” etc., they ignore you, therefore you have every right (near obligation) to shoot them. Case closed.
I don’t care if you’ve committed a hundred burglaries before with no violent intent, if the owner happens to be home on this one they have every right to kill you. Chance you take for choosing a career in breaking & entering…
(5) What if all of the bad guys have taken over the world and the only chance we have is to nuke them, but Obama won’t let us have our own nuclear bombs?
(6) What if we are attacked by 75 terrorists all at once, and Obama won’t let us have fully automatic weapons?
I will not flee in my own home or on my property. I will loudly demand that the assailant leave, if I am reasonably safe to do so. If he does not I will shoot. If he has surprised me and is already too close I will shoot without the warning.
I live in a rural area. 911 is for letting the police know that there will be paperwork to fill out later. There is no way they will get here fast enough to change the outcome, good or bad.
I do not have to know what the intentions of the intruder are. He has already shown his instability by breaking in. I am not spending any time trying to determine why he is here.
Gun control advocates keep trying to sell that there is some magic way to make sure bad guys don’t have guns that won’t disarm good guys first, which strikes gun owners as either uninformed or a deliberate lie. I’m against gun control because all the proposals I’ve seen fit into one of three slots: useless, worse than useless, or impossible.
In any event, many gun control advocates would regard the scenario of the OP as irrelevant. Their complaint is that the tiny (so they claim) number of legitimate self-defense situations that occur are swamped by a huge number of crimes, suicides and accidents committed with guns. That overall, fewer people would be hurt or killed if guns could (somehow) be eliminated. Which I suppose means that put baldly, they would say “Unfortunately yes, you should suffer being assaulted and/or raped and/or murdered for the wider good of society. The attacker would have just gotten the drop on you or taken your gun away anyway.”
I find it odd that you address the question only at “gun-control folks.” First of all, many gun-control folks don’t advocate denial of all guns. They just want to make it harder for Crazy Uncle Joe and his drug-crazed criminal nephew Billie Bob to get assault rifles.
But more importantly, why ask gun-control advocates — why not just ask gun lovers, who after all claim to be expert on such matters?
Oh sure, many gun lovers would never leave(*) the house without Sally Six-Shot to give them confidence. But surely they can envision and advise the one-in-a-hundred American who might be caught without a gun. (Or would their attitude be “Serves ya right”?)
(* - And don’t forget that even Omar Little found himself outside without a gun one morning when he wanted to buy some Honey Pops and couldn’t figure out how to fit his gun in his pajama trousers.)
Well my house is a two-story and we all sleep up stairs, I have a Wife and three children, the youngest is pretty small. I have to assume by default that someone breaking into my house intends some sort of physical harm to my family because there is no way to get out of the house other than go down the one stairway where the intruder would be, I’m going to most likely pump them full of lead.
On edit: Oh but I’m not a gun-control advocate either except in the case of things like better background checks and also history of mental health included so uh I guess this was a pointless post.
I wanted to ask this in the Good News Guns thread, but it just didn’t fit there. I was inspired by Gray Ghost.
His Post:
I’m not looking to derail this thread (or thread-shit). This actually brings up an interesting question. I’ll spoiler it because this may be the wrong place to ask it.
You are at your business and a licensed/legal gun is available to you for protection. Three men approach, one brandishes a gun and states the intent is to rob you or kill you if you resist.
You pull and fire first and he goes down and won’t threaten anyone further.
Million Dollar Question: How do you know the other two aren’t armed? They could just have their hands free to carry stuff. If they both start reaching fast toward their back belt, you’ll probably get one, but both?
You just shot/killed their friend so if they have guns and if they pull them, they Will kill you.
Assume that… if they make movements and aren’t armed… and you shoot them… the people representing The People of your state will NEVER let you out of jail.
**Extra Credit: ** One says he gives up and falls to the floor but lands on top of the gunman’s gun. He’s on his belly, moving around a little and saying “don’t shoot me”, but you notice his hands are underneath him and you can’t see them.
The one still standing is making a quick reach to his back belt to either a gun or maybe just a camera phone?
Either way, Tenth of a second to think, and it will all be over in 3 seconds… tick-tock
Yes, the law varies from location to location, but its still an interesting question because no matter what you choose, your life will never ever be the same again.
This reminds me of a short story. The main character was given a magic book that, when opened randomly, would list the best course of action for the current situation. The MC (I don’t call him the hero because I can’t remember if he was a criminal or not) used it time after time to get out of seemingly impossible jams. He learned to rely on it and started deliberately putting himself into dangerous situations.
In the last scene he is in another impossible situation. He confidently opens the book. The page has two words on it: you die.
It also reminds me of going through possessions after first my aunt and. later, my mother had died. My aunt had an old, cheap, possibly a child’s 22 rifle and a child-sized baseball bat in her bedroom closet. I’ve always wondered if they were meant to be for self defense. At the end, she was too deaf to hear someone breaking in, but maybe they had a chance they had more than a token purpose years ago.
In my mother’s things I found a concealed carry permit. There was no sign that she’d ever used it. You know the old jokes - if you look like your driver’s license, you’re too sick to drive - if you look like your passport, you’re too sick to travel. Well, the picture on her CCP looked like the mug shot of a dangerous criminal.
A couple of her friends said that we should be careful because she had a gun near her bed, but she didn’t. All of her guns (she had inherited a couple dozen) were in the gun safe in the garage. I think that the story, together with the story of the CC (turned out she drove a carful of her friends from church to Utah, where they all got them) were meant to make folks in the area think twice about targeting her.
As to the OP, all four might be useful, depending on the circumstances. At sixty, with bad knees and more tendency to reverie than alertness, if someone really wants to hurt me, they’re going to. The dog might alert me if I’m at home. Getting a gun would worry my kids and would be a lot like the 22 in my aunt’s closet, useful only in theory.
Totally baffled by the OP. When have any gun control advocates (or anyone, really, aside from radical pacifists) advocated against defending one’s self against an attacker? I’ve literally never heard a gun control supporter say that one should never fight back against a rapist or a killer. Velocity, where did you get this idea?