Disarming victims is the same thing as saying they can’t defend themselves. A 6’ man is going to find very few women who can defend themselves against his attack, especially considering that he gets to choose his victim.
I think the idea is that shooting to kill would be a last resort, after all other plausible resolutions were unavailable or exhausted. It is incumbent on the armed victim to make this judgment call in conformity with the “last resort” doctrine.
Whenever you shoot, you’re taking the risk of killing.That’s partly because shooting is much harder than the Lone Ranger would have you believe; when firing with a handgun on a living target, on, one must aim for center mass to have any reasonable assurance of hitting at all. (Shooting a gun or knife out of someone’s hand without injuring them is an fantasy, particularly if that person is facing you.) But on top of that, a bullet in the shoulder or leg is quite likely to be fatal, and a shot to the gut is even worse.
I didn’t say that. I said defense without a firearm. Presumably, that means:
- Flee,
- Call 911,
- Use non-firearm self-defense (i.e., punches, kicks, pepper spray, etc.)
- Comply with the attacker’s demands in hopes that this will prevent escalation of harm.
Maybe another option is (5), call to bystanders for help.
But as I pointed out, there are some (admittedly rare) scenarios where none of these options will work and the victim is, essentially, at the mercy of his/her attacker.
So, without a gun, should the victim just…die?
An honest and intellectually consistent position in favor of more gun control would admit that there are situations in which a person would be victimized if they don’t have a gun but might avoid it they did. However, they would maintain that these situations are outnumbered by cases where it’s the other way around, not the exact same scenario as OP necessarily, but eg. where people have an argument and shoot rather than punch one another, people get depressed and commit suicide more easily with a gun, go crazy and shoot lots of people, etc.
I actually don’t know where idea comes from that gun control advocates are not also in favor of being more passive in the face of criminal activity though. They are, and it makes sense within their worldview. It’s common AFAIK for anti-gun people to question the morality of shooting somebody attempting to rob you even if they accept you could successfully do that and not get shot instead yourself (though they’d also claim that). I don’t think gun controllers absolutely reject self defense, but they definitely tend to question its validity morally as well as practically.
Besides the majority of people on both sides who reach their conclusions emotionally and just repeat what they’ve heard from others as ‘arguments’ in favor of their position, people who actually think rationally about gun control either more highly value what they believe would be the aggregate improvement in violence rates by more tightly controlling guns (gun controllers) or more highly value a person’s own right to control their own fate (gun rights people). Of course that doesn’t mean they agree either on what that aggregate impact would be. Just saying you can imagine in the (rare) case where each side is not choosing that side emotionally, both agree on what the impact on murder rate would be for a given measure, the more fundamental disagreement would remain whether one should care the impact on the murder rate by taking away guns (hypothetically) if it reduces one’s own security. Collectivism v individualism.
I’m generally considered by hard core gun rights advocates to be a fellow traveler of gun grabber fanatics. Likewise I’m considered a gun nut by hard core gun haters. I live in a safe urban area, but in the hypothetical case (nothing like it ever happened anywhere near my house in 30 yrs) there were intruders, my first choice would be out the fire escape and call 911 (couple of minute police response, literally). On the street if mugged I’d hand it over (but also hasn’t happened in 30 yrs, and nowadays I’m usually with the dog if out a night; she’s totally hardwired to be friendly to humans, but could easily kill somebody if she wanted to and looks it: I wouldn’t mess with someone walking her if there was any other target). Cornered in my home, I’d shoot the person with no moral problem, they can usually save gunshot victims now if they get to them as quick as they would where I live anyway. But it’s a far fetched scenario for me.
Reasonable background checks won’t disarm anyone except perhaps people who should be disarmed. Ditto for the ten round limit just passed in California.
Indeed, some number of people who defended themselves might get hurt if there are stricter rules (decreased somewhat if it is harder for the bad guy to get a gun.) But a reasonably large number of innocents and kids will survive - you seem to agree that more will than will lose. How many dead kids per dead home invader are too much for you?
Under the circumstances outlined in the OP I would either
Release the tiger or
Drop the 16 ton weight on the serial killer.
What should a man with a gun do if faced by ten men with guns? Or an infantry platoon when faced with ten helicopters? Or a helicopter unit when faced with twenty fighter jets?
And so on. The answer in all cases is to do what you can to survive. In most cases, they will die. Sometimes there are no options.
But since such scenarios can occur with our without guns, I don’t see why the question would or even could be answered differently by gun control advocates than by gun fans. Further, most gun control advocates have no problem at all with someone having a gun for defense.
It must be remembered that the victim is also faced with quite a few other disadvantages, which possession of a gun won’t necessarily neutralize. The assailant may be executing a well-planned attack, profiting by elements like surprise, logistics, choice of arena, etc. And even if you have a gun, it is not much value if it is out of reach and the ammo is on the top shelf in the closet or locked in the glove compartment. If the gun and ammo together are in easy reach, your risk of accidental death may well be on par with your risk of facing an attack in the first place.
You’re making an argument for responsible gun handling, not going unarmed.
Any Marine knows the answer to that: kill them.
You missed out:
- Live in a country with gun control
I believe his point is that if you store your gun and ammo responsibly enough so as to more-or-less eliminate the risk of accidental death, you also greatly limit the scenarios it will realistically bail you out of, and thus the gun becomes pointless in the first place.
I am not an American, and as such I am only familiar with my local (and extremely strict) gun laws, which require the gun to be stored disassembled in a locked safe. This means that accidental gun deaths are more-or-less unheard of, but also that the utility of the gun as a means of self-defense is for all intents and purposes nonexistent.
Responsible gun handling was only a minor aside to my main point, which I continue to stand by.
No, gun control is about recognizing that the fact that ordinary, untrained citizens are unable to defend themselves with guns. The idea that a gun will save you is a complete fantasy, not supported by the facts.
If you look at the actual stats, if you have a gun in your home, the odds of your using it successfully in self-defense are around about zero. The more likely scenario is that the enraged boyfriend will pick it up and shoot the woman. This happens a lot-no woman in her right mind would allow a gun into her house if she had bothered to glance at the actual statistics. The other likely scenario is a child in the home gets hold of the gun and shoots someone. Or the bad guy gets hold of the gun and shoots the homeowner. I think there were fewer than 300 documented incidents of anyone successfully using a gun in self-defense last year versus the horrendous number of homicides, suicides, and accidental gun deaths.
If someone is trying to steal property, you give it to them. I personally think it’s unethical to attempt to kill someone just for stealing property, and if you shoot a mugger you should go to prison for a long time.
If someone is actually attacking you, you fight like hell and run if given the chance. Pepper spray or other is a far better option than a gun. Easier to use, no need to try to aim very well, and if you panic over nothing and pepper-spray someone just trying to ask you for directions, no one ends up dead.
I presume that by “reasonable background checks” you mean universal background checks (illegal to transfer a firearm without a background check). I file this one under “useless”. It will do little or nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining guns illegally the way they already do- buy stolen black market guns, or “borrow” a gun from a friend or family member; you know, illegally. It will give the government a nice handy list of where the (legal) guns are, which would be fine if the government could be unconditionally trusted with such a list.
Ten-round limit? Borderline between “useless” and “worse than useless”. If ten round magazines are so great, why will cops be given an exception? Maybe we should make them carry low-capacity magazines, it might make them less trigger-happy. In any event, someone who is planning an illegal shooting (as opposed to reacting to an unexpected attack) could easily carry spare magazines, or just buy or make illegally high-capacity ones- a removable magazine is more or less a sheet metal box with a few fittings and a spring on the inside.
As for hoping that restrictions will lower gun crime, remember that by definition criminals break the law. In any debate about gun control, law-abiding gun owners are always going to be the low-hanging fruit: gun control starts by disarming the people who least ought to be disarmed. That alone earns a “worse than useless” rating. That gun control could actually make guns simply unavailable for criminals, I rate “impossible”.
Many serial killers didn’t use guns.
Bullshit.
Do you mean the odds you’ll ever need to try (low), or the success rate if you are attacked?
I’m not a member of an- ahem- “honor culture”, when any perceived disrespect is to be met with lethal force. Gun violence is not randomly distributed throughout the population.
Bullshit squared. I’m sure there were more actual self-defense shootings than that, and literally innumerable instances when possessing a gun deterred an attack or robbery.
And hope they aren’t high on meth and won’t shoot you for shits and giggles? Or to leave no witness?
Board rules prohibit the profanity I would like to respond to this with. Suffice to say, I do not share your pacifism.
Much easier with a gun.
From my own home? <profanity deleted>
Do you actually have any professional self-defense training? I doubt it.
Ah yes, the old “The public are drooling imbeciles” argument. If you are so stupid you shoot people in a panic without cause, you belong locked up.
“About zero” vs. “fewer than 300” - which is it?
Given that about 100-million Americans own guns, “about zero” and 1/300,000 are pretty comparable values. Rounded off to five significant digits, it is zero.