What do you mean?
If someone uses his handgun to defend himself from a criminal who’s trying to kill him, then that person’s private gun ownership had a huge connection with his personal safety and freedom. Or are you saying that nobody ever uses handguns in this way?
How profound. :rolleyes:
From profundity to stupidity. If the world worked that way, animal-rights activists would harass leather-clad bikers just as often as they harass old ladies in fur coats.
Der Trihs, I certainly won’t disagree that government is a necessary evil. All I’m arguing is that the government doesn’t have the capability or the responsibility to protect individuals, whereas individuals have the right, the responsibility, and the capability to act in their own defense if their safety is threatened. If you think I’m defending anarchy, you’re attacking a strawman.
I don’t particularly care if people don’t do that “normally.” Normally, people are restrained from committing criminal acts of violence by their sense of human decency, not by their fear of being caught and punished. But there are plenty of exceptions, and they can and do attempt to victimize others. I know this from experience, because I have been so targeted before. Are you trying to convince me that I should forgo self-defense because people don’t normally try to victimize other people?
Yes, that was part of my point. Are you even reading my posts? Governments and police forces improve public safety by patrols and enforcement actions, which contribute to general deterrence of crime, and the removal of known criminals from society. However, this does not protect individuals from criminal acts of which they are the immediate target; under such circumstances, it’s up to them to protect themselves. I would have thought this to be self-evident.
Oh? And what was preventing the women from ending up dead anyway, except the mercy of their assailants? For fourteen hours the two men held the three women prisoner. If at any point they wanted the women dead, they could have done it. If, on the other hand, the first thing the intruders found upon breaking into the house was a woman with a gun, I think it very likely that they would have made hasty tracks in the opposite direction.
An irrelevant comparison, since guns aren’t involved on either side, the animal rights activists are petty bullies not serious thugs, and the government is an implicit threat to either side escalating that far. If they were serious thugs, and it did escalate that far, being big leather wearing bikers with guns wouldn’t keep them alive after some gun wielding animal rights terrorists sprayed them in a drive by. Or tucked a small bomb in the gas tank of their motorcycle. Or blew up a car bomb as they drove past. Do you really think that real fanatics, the ones willing to kill over it would find bikers all that scary ?
And gun wielding people get killed all the time, typically by other people with guns. Owning a gun doesn’t make you virtuous, nor are the good guys more likely to win a gunfight than the bad guys; rather the opposite, since the bad guys tend to shoot first.
I’m saying that to the extent that it happens, it’s so rare that it doesn’t matter. Plenty of people die in mistaken shootings, and the prime source of guns for criminals are those stolen from homes. I see no reason to think that the former outweighs the latter, or even close.
And in any case, as I said - we see all over the world that it’s simply not true that owning guns has the effects their enthusiasts claim it does.
Yeah, like in Switzerland, which has the highest gun ownership in the world. I tell ya, that place is a hellhole.
They have the right; they just don’t have the capability. That’s WHY societies without functioning governments are so violent, why the most brutal end up taking whatever they want. That’s why the targets of organized crime either go into something like the Witness Protection Program or die; they CANNOT protect themselves, guns or not
No, it’s mostly by being brought up in a society where such behavior is not rewarded, and where there ARE consequences for that behavior, and where the government provides non-violent alternatives.
Either lack of interest or fear of a murder conviction prevented it.
And been shot in the back ? They would just have shot her, or both. Probably without being shot themselves; a criminal will have fewer inhibitions, and likely shoot first.
And the people of Iraq and Afghanistan ALSO had plenty of guns, and WERE tyrannical hellholes. Whatever reasons Switzerland has for not being a hellhole, it’s not guns.
Sorry to burst your fantasy bubble, but you don’t get to declare that other people’s lives “don’t matter”.
Neither do you, but you do when you simply ignore as you just did all the people who die because of how common guns are in our society.
By your logic, those crimes should have never happened, because crime is illegal. Just like how if guns were illegal, nobody would have them.
Nonsense. If the presence of guns in and of itself caused people to die, nobody who works in an armory would be alive today.
And if guns locked in a vault, unloaded were the same as guns in someone’s house, loaded, you’d have a point. And yes, I’m aware of gun safes; but a gun in a safe isn’t going to protect you from anything, it’s just a fetish or a toy.
Far fewer would, because fewer would be available. America is a major source for illegal guns, because there are so many easy to steal guns.
How many crimes do you see commited with firearms private citizens can’t own ?
Lots. There are hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians machine-gunned to death. In other countries, where private citizens aren’t allowed to own guns.
…And yet you yourself just admitted that it’s not just guns that make a place a utopia or a hellhole. :dubious:
In any case, how about all the people who die because of how common cars are in our society? Or alcohol? Or tobacco? Or, y’know, violent criminals? Why are you railing against guns possessed by people like me, when the violence is caused by the multitudes of people to whom it is apparently no big deal to take the life of another human being?
Yup, there we go again with the “fetish” chestnut. It’s all about mature, rational debate with you, isn’t it? :rolleyes: Anyway, you’re wrong: there are plenty of safes from which a loaded firearm may be accessed in seconds.
So, even if you could reduce the amount of violence involving guns, what exactly do you propose to do about all the violent criminals in our society? If there were ways we could, I dunno, reduce crime, wouldn’t that do away with any “need” to reduce the availability of weapons?
Well, let’s be honest - in this country, there aren’t very many of these (mainly fully-automatic weapons that were manufactured after 1986), and pretty much none of them would be significantly more useful to a criminal than what’s already available.
And in ones where they ARE allowed to own guns.
Which is my point; at best they are useless. They don’t do what their advocates claim.
Because the subject of this thread is guns, not cars or tobacco, for one. And because those people who don’t mind killing find it rather easier with a gun than they would otherwise; killing is what guns are for after all.
Given how many gun owners seem to regard guns as some sort of object of irrational lust or as a magic talisman, ‘fetish’ is the word that comes to mind.
Not unless they are owned by ninjas who can leap past flying bullets in order to get to a safe that’s two or three rooms away.
Considering the people who get killed by mistake or in moments of anger, no. Among their many flaws, guns make it much easier to kill by accident.
Don’t be silly; there are a huge number of such weapons. It’s just that they are in the hands of the military, and not in someone’s private home, easy pickings for any burglar. And those weapons are “already available” because we allow private ownership of guns; that’s where criminals get their guns, not some secret factory in some supervillain’s private mountain hideout.
No, it doesn’t work that way. The only thing you can really draw from this without in-depth analysis is that country-to-country comparisons of gun availability and violence are at best inconclusive. You can’t take inconclusive cursory data and summarily claim that, because it is inconclusive, it supports your position. :dubious:
So, I’m assuming you support banning alcohol and tobacco, then, on the grounds that they kill tens of thousands of people every year, and nobody needs to drink or smoke, right?
From what I’ve seen, this assessment comes exclusively from your personal prejudices, not from reality. In any case, using purely emotional invective in a debate does nothing to support your argument.
Right. Because home invaders always choose a tactical entrypoint and come in shooting. A person who hears a forced entry in the middle of the night would never have a chance to get a gun out of their safe. :dubious:
Honestly, you seem to have this habit of imagining that all violent criminals are infallible, ruthless cutthroats who are always armed, always shoot first, and against whom a “good guy” with a gun is powerless. Several times in this debate, you’ve used this blatant mischaracterization to support your argument against armed self-defense. Reality just doesn’t bear this out - criminals are brazen when they think they have the upper hand, but they tend to fold quickly when confronted with force. After all, just think about what motivates them to commit crimes in the first place: easy gains. When they encounter sudden resistance (not even necessarily armed resistance), it’s often a better choice for them to run away and find an easier target.
So, what’s your point? Accidental firearms deaths are less common than swimming pool drownings. Do you honestly think something should be banned because people might hurt themselves with it? If that’s what it comes down to, it’s just a matter of disagreement between us: I won’t tolerate nanny-state policies, no matter what the alleged benefits are.
Really. Can you give me some examples of firearms prohibited to the general population that would be useful to a criminal?
Irrelevant, because it is impossible for politicians to make a firearm, or anything else, into an object that one can’t own. There are, and will continue to be in any case, large numbers of crimes committed using weapons that the perpetrator may not own.
No, they are, and will continue to be, available because the costruction of firearms is fairly simple.
But maybe you’re right, and a comprehensive legal ban would remove them from society. If so, maybe we ought to try it with crack cocaine… :rolleyes:
Seriously. In fact, going further - it’s illegal to commit crimes. So why are people still committing them?
BobLibDem in the other gun thread said that if the Supreme Court rules for Heller, it’s going to be “a dark day in American history.” Let me tell you what’s a dark day. A dark day is when some woman is getting raped and can’t defend herself because she doesn’t want to become a criminal by getting a handgun for protection. A dark day is when the government says to some poor shop owner in a ghetto with a wife and 4 kids, “you can’t protect yourself - you’re a lamb, at the mercy of the wolves.” A dark day is when my uncle in New York City, who served this damn country in the Marines, has to give away his Mini-14 and M-1 Carbine because they were on a list of “assault weapons” that he got in the mail.
The Constitution is about giving people freedoms, not taking them away.
The Founders undoubtedly would have supported my decision to carry a loaded blunderbuss at all times. It acts as a handy check on people who would otherwise bug me at work.
<uncle fester> “I’ll shoot 'em in the back!!!”</uf>*
*note to Big Brother et al: I am kidding. My blunderbuss is never loaded.