I know him very well, and he assured me that that is not what he said.
I’d think that Congresspeople like celebrities, regardless of political stripe, might be more prone to carry a gun than the general population. Seems like both professions would tend to attract nutjobs. 
I’m hearing on the radio things like ‘A democrat, caught carrying, who opposed Bush? Sounds like Senator Webb just got himself a second term.’
That said… to build a gun? Meh. Couple hours work, honestly. What was that WWII resistance gun they kept airdropping plans for? I’m blanking on the name.
Well, you should talk to him about his communication skills, because regardless of what he meant, that’s sure as fuck what this paragraph says:
Bolding mine.
You bolded a conditional implication that was itself tied to another conditional implication. I already admitted that my writing skills are poor. It is time for you to examine your reading skills.
Well, Hell. I was up late, and merely wanted to point out that the facts of the incident to which I linked seemed, to me, to indicate that the people involved were acting stupidly. I really didn’t want another 5th amendment debate.
I started it in the Pit because I thought the responses would belong in the Pit.
If anyone can give me any factual information on how many Senators and Representatives have a license to carry, then I will be enlightened. And grateful. I would assume that this information is public knowledge? And, if it is more than 10%, I’ll be surprised. Surprise me.
I assume that Webb has no life experience, such as Lib, to cause him to need to carry a gun routinely?
No, the Sten. I thought it was the Liberator, but I was thinking of the Sten.
Five man-hours work.
Here’s a guy building 'em as a hobby.
http://stenguns.tripod.com/bsa3.html
If you look carefully, you can find enough plans to build one.
2nd Amendment, but I know what you meant and you know what you meant, so that’s OK.
You may assume incorrectly. It’s not a matter of public record in most states, nor should it be, right to privacy and all that.
Again, you may assume incorrectly. For my part, if I was one of 535 people tasked to make laws for the country I would be concerned about my safety. Not paranoid concerned, but I would certainly keep it in mind.
As for his need to carry a gun routinely, I addressed that earlier. To be a bit more tactful about it, let me put it this way: if we have to justify ourselves in order to avail ourselves of a right we’re in deep trouble. Imagine having to justify your right to free speech, or why you should have the right to an attorney. Imagine those rights being denied you because your justification is judged by someone else to be poor. That would be an unconscionable abridgment of your rights, yet you demand an explanation as to why someone else chooses to exercise their rights without even a second thought. That is what I find to be unconscionable.
Hey, here’s a wild and wacky idea. When someone misunderstands something you’ve written (which seems to happen about twice daily with you) why don’t you try explaining what you actually meant, instead of all these useless gnomic fucking statements about how that’s not what you really meant, with absolutely no elaboration to clear up your evident inability to communicate your goddamned point?
Alternatively, you could just open some MPSIMS threads, quote liberally from Jabberwocky, and make a game out of “Guess what Liberal’s really trying to say.” Which would do an admirable job of recreating what it’s like to try to have an actual discussion with you, without the frustration of expecting to arrive at any sort of a coherent conclusion.
By that logic, it is equally useless for cops to be armed as it is private citizens.
How long do you think that would take? And what happens to peaceable law-abiding citizens in the meantime who have been deprived of the right to defend themselves through the same means by which they might find themselves threatened? There is simply no ethical or moral justification for depriving humankind of such a basic right of existence.
I’ve explained myself to you repeatedly now. Since you first hooked onto this, others have intervened to try to explain to you also. I don’t know what more to say, and I don’t know why you even care. You apparently equate me with the gum stuck on your shoe, so whatever it was that I meant shouldn’t make any difference.
I think there’s a pretty significant difference between the two situations. Cops have guns because they knowingly enter into hostile situations against armed opponents. If you know there’s a guy with a gun in that crackhouse, then you walk in with your gun unholstered, loaded, and the safety off. The cops, to use David Simmons’s term, “has the drop” on the criminal. People who are not cops seldom find themselves in that situation. A citizen defending themselves from a criminal is almost certainly going to be doing so because the criminal came after them, not the other way around.
My WAG would be about ten years to see a significant reduction in the number of guns on the street.
Probably about the same thing that happens to them now.
The right to self defence, like all our other rights, is not boundless. We make a tradeoff between what individuals are allowed to do versus the danger that action presents to the community at large. We do not, for an extreme example, allow people to put land mines in their front yard to protect themselves from burglars. One can easily argue that the easy availability of firearms presents a great enough danger to the public at large that it warrants severe restrictions on the availability of legal firearms.
Again, I don’t necessarily agree with that argument: I think the current firearm regulations are more than sufficient to our needs. I just don’t find the “I need a gun to protect me from all the sickos out there!” line of reasoning to be particularly persuasive.
Sure. Whatever you say, Wrigley.
It might be worth mentioning that the police don’t do all that well when they are caught by surprise. Many police are killed in “routine traffic stops.” It seems to have taken them 50 shots to dispose of one unarmed guy; all of the time there are news reports of police who fired 10 shots but the suspect escaped. As opposed to the average citizen, police receive training in reacting to emergencies and have to qualify with guns on a regular schedule.
I think that those who believe that a gun offers protection are rather naive about what their reaction would be.
Okay. So cops then, should only arm themselves immediately prior to entering a situation where they have a reasonable expectation of needing a gun.
What do you consider “significant?” Most guns, with even a modicum of proper care will have a lifetime of 75+ years. And in the meantime, as some of the sources of supply for criminals dry up, those criminals intent upon doing violence are likely to steal more guns from legitimate owners. Or otherwise obtain them through increasingly violent methods. Prohibition just doesn’t work when there’s a strong demand for something.
And what, exactly, do you think happens to them now? At least with the current situation, people have a chance to defend themselves. You’d like that chance removed.
What then, is the danger to society of the numerous guns I own? Or any other average individual? Or are you making the argument that the danger collectively outweighs the right to individually exercise self-defense thru means of a firearm? Why is that danger, either collectively or individually, greater than the potential benefits derived (again, either collectively or individually). That’s a value judgment in my opinion. I don’t think that determination can be made for society as whole.
One can “easily” argue just about anything. But it’s a bit harder when one insists on rigorous logic and statistical methods to support that agrument. First, in your scenario, it must be demonstrated that firearms are “easily” available. But that’s a side point I guess since you’ve said you don’t necessarily agree with that line of argument.
I don’t think anyone is making the argument that a gun is necessarily needed. I think the argument being made in here is that the gun should be an option open to those who choose judiciously to exercise that extreme form.
There are a lot of cops out there who only do the bare minimum of practicing, which means just enough to re-qualify when their testing time comes up. There are a lot of gun owners like me out there who have poured more dollars and hours into practice than we can begin to count.
I carry a gun because I choose to, and I view it as a great responsibility. I go to lengths at my own expense to make sure I do so in a manner that is not only safe for you, but provides me the greatest opportunity possible to react to any situation that comes up and get out of it alive. Nobody can be 100% certain of how they will react if the shit hits the fan, but that doesn’t mean it’s foolish to learn self-defense. Training and preparation can get a person into the mindset of not being a victim. I didn’t know for sure what I would do when a crackhead was breaking into my home in the middle of the night until it happened, but I had a pretty good idea, and thanks to all that preparation even though I was scared, my reactions were automatic. I never had to find out what he would’ve done to me.
By the way, no shots fired, nobody injured, nobody died. Thankfully I will never know what would’ve happened if.
Oh, come on. Now you’re just being silly.
What legitimate owners? If all guns are outlawed, there’s no such thing as a legitimate owner. Any gun found by the police would be automatically destroyed, and without a significant firearm manufacturing industry, it would be very hard to replace those guns. Not impossible - like Tris said, a skilled machinist could make himself a gun, and there would be some degree of smuggling from foreign manufacturers, but not nearly enough to make up for demand.
The problem with Prohibition, when it came to alcohol and most drugs, is that drugs and alcohol are relatively easy to produce. It doesn’t require much in the way of technical skills or specific knowledge, and the nature of the substance allows for quite a bit of leeway in quality. Guns are a different matter. It takes a significant investment of time and effort just to pick up the skillset necessary to manufacture a gun - on the order of several years working with industrial machinery. At which point, it would probably be easier and more profitable just to get a job as a legitimate machinist. Someone without the proper training or experience trying to make a gun is likely going to end up with an unusable mess, and probably destroy the tools he used to make it in the first place.
Pretty much the same thing that happens to people who don’t own guns when they’re victimized by criminals. Sure, there’s “a chance” they can defend themselves. Is that chance statistically significant? I don’t think that it is, but I admit, I don’t know that for a fact.
You represent a market that makes the manufacture of fire arms financially viable. If that market did not exist, guns would not be manufactured in their current numbers. The fewer guns be made in total, the fewer numbers that will fall into the wrong hands.
Not necessarily. If there are 10,000 incidents of criminal violence involving guns, and only 10 incidents of criminal violence being averted because of guns, I think that argues pretty effectively that the benefits of gun ownership are being outweighed by the drawbacks.
BTW, I totally invented those numbers to illustrate a point. Just so no one feels they have to debunk them.
True enough, but there really haven’t been a lot of statistics on either side in this thread. Just arguments from principle, more than anything else.
I agree entirely. I’m actually pretty sympathetic to Airman’s post earlier on in the thread, that no one needs a better argument for owning a gun than, “I want one.” I feel the same way about drugs, hookers, and porn, and I don’t see any reason not to apply the same reasoning to guns. However, a couple posters have advanced the idea that gun ownership is useful in protecting oneself from other gun owners, which particular argument I find highly suspect.
Well, if lots of cops do the bare minimum what do you think the average citizen is going to do?
Anecdotes are great, and I’m glad you got away with no further problems, but they don’t prove much.
It’s obvious that you had to invent numbers to illustrate your point, since the actual facts don’t.
The actual facts illustrate quite the opposite point: there are vastly more crimes prevented through the use of firearms than there are crimes that involve the use of firearms.
Even the lowest numbers from Kellerman, no friend to gun owners, bear this out.
These anecdotes happen, even at the lowest count, approximately 200,000 times a year.
If by “these anecdotes” you mean people defending themselves with guns, your statement is false. The DOJ, for example, puts the number at 83,000, including defense from non-violent crime. Cite. I don’t know whether that number is reasonable, but 200,000 is certainly not “the lowest count.”