Hixter

I'm going to assume you only had one free hand with which to type that.

The other one is wrapped around a Smuttynose Finestkind.

Man, you guys are quick to kill.

When it comes down to killing or being killed, I'll always choose the former.

 

Maybe the gun-toting person who smashes their way into my home in the middle of the night is just really eager to give me a foot massage, but I'm not going to take any chances and I'll try to give them a chest full of #4 buckshot every time.

I can be that guy and prepare myself for that nightmare scenario, regularly take the locked box down from the shelf in the coat closet to check the magazine in a 9mm. 

 

I guess what I'm saying is our worst fears aren't often realistic and there's a price to pay when we devote our energy into preparing for them

I see where you're coming from, but it's not as if people are spending their days consumed with fear and frantically checking the preparations that they've made. It's more of a Boy Scout "be prepared" sort of thing. Keep a loaded 12-gauge handy in the unlikely event of a break-in. Install smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors in the unlikely event of a fire. Carry a seatbelt cutter and window breaker on your keychain in the unlikely event of becoming trapped in a submerged car. (I have one of these: http://www.amazon.com/resqme-Original-Keychain-Escape-Orange/dp/B0042VTYXM/)

What about classroom training on shooting one?

 

Grant it, you can buy a bunch of rounds and go to range and have shooting practice -- but is that training one to properly own a gun or how just aim a gun?

Any training is always good. People should know how to aim, fire, load, unload, carry, store and clean their firearms.

 

Everyone should know when it's OK to shoot someone and when it's not, but common sense is the biggest determinant. Let's face it, the overwhelming majority of us aren't murderers and wouldn't even consider shooting someone unless it were a grave emergency.

Common sense is the problem. Anyone you deem entering illegally should be shot!?

 

For the hell of it I did some stats. Using conservative estimates of the number of home invasions reported and the US population, chances of being shot in a home invasion is .023%. This is just from the raw data. The numbers get a lot more interesting when other variables are considered. No one needs a gun. The risks far out weigh the actual advantage.

First of all, I think you've greatly overestimated the number of home invasion shootings. But that said, yes, I think anyone illegally entering my home should be worried about being shot and I may very well do so.

I don't mean anything by the "gun school" jargon -- I just mean classes in gun self defense. But one doesn't have to take any classes like that to own a gun, correct?

 

Again I am not baiting here - just curious --- I have never owned a gun. But I think if I ever decide to get one to protect my family, I would take some classes and was wondering what is taught in those classes.

No training is required to purchase/possess a firearm, but training in the safe handling of it would be a very good idea. It could be a friend or a teacher in a classroom, but everyone should know how to safely load, use and store a firearm.

So that is what is taught in gun school --- process the situation.

 

 

I am assuming the law, in the vast many states, that any intruder, armed or not armed, is a 'legal' target.

I've never been to "gun school." My only training was in the Army and a healthy helping of common sense.

 

I think you're within your rights to shoot any intruder who has illegally entered your home. Again, common sense prevails. But I don't think a court would convict you for shooting someone who has illegally entered your home.

Would it matter if the intruder is armed or not armed?

 

Curious - is one taught in gun school to shoot at any intruder, whether the intruder is armed or not? Does one look for gun first or ask if the intruder if they are armed or tell the intruder that you are armed?

There are a million variables to process in mere seconds, but it doesn't really matter if the intruder is armed. You're basically going to process the manner and time of entry (smashed window, open door, middle of the night) and try to make some sort of ID (young kid, large masked man, neighbor, police officer) and then based on your position determine whether or not it's best to run, hide or shoot. It's a lot to process, but the human brain is very, very good at it.

This is not an intellectual exercise, it is a genetic, evolutionary impulse.

Absolutely. Self-protection is our most basic, fundamental instinct.

Yeah, I can just let 97 of my fellow Americans get shot down so the other 3 assholes go down in a legally defensible manner.

Or you can remove those 3 people's right to defend themselves and reduce the number of survivors to zero.

This terrible story about intruders and your loved children is exactly the same one gun advocates keep imagining over and over.

And that's the whole crux of the gun "advocate" argument: if you don't want to own a firearm, then don't. But don't try to take the constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms away from those who feel differently.

Oh shit you're right. Ha! So 3% sounding pretty good? Still getting kicked off of my baseball team.

Percentages are a funny thing. A .030 batting average won't cut it if you're not a pitcher, but if you had a 3% chance of winning the lottery you'd buy tickets every week. And you know what's even more important to me than winning millions of dollars? My life.

If you come into my house with a weapon and my baby girl is there, I have no moral or ethical issue with you getting dead.

Exactly.

That's a fairly sick and dangerous position to say this girl deserved to be murdered. What a sad way to see human life.

She was not murdered, she was killed. There is a big difference between the two.

What is statistically significant is the ratio of 259 justifiable homicides- that is guns doing what they're designed to do (kill living beings) in a legal situation- to 8,342 criminal homicides by firearm. That means guns are batting .003, or .3% when lethally fired at someone.

You're off by a factor of 10.

https://youtu.be/wOeI7nRYUE4

I know it's his band, but it seems kind of pointless to include Josh Homme in the interview, since he wasn't even in Paris when the attack took place.

So she deserved to die because she was allegedly, potentially, maybe not going to rob/murder someone?

Absolutely. She and her crew broke into an occupied home while armed with guns, knives and burglary tools. They had already stolen several items, so there is no reason to say "allegedly."

 

The shooter actually did murder someone! 

No he didn't. Apparently you don't understand the definition of murder.

 

I bet the shooter and the assailants knew each other and had a beef.

That's irrelevant. The burglars broke into a home and committed burglary. One of them paid the ultimate price for their crime.

 

Only the second half of the second amendment is important anymore, that part about a well regulated militia is pretty much lost to the dustbins of history.

The Supreme Court has ruled time and again that it covers the right of individual Americans to own firearms.

 

Yes, it's horrible, but the majority of humanity is living in poverty 24/7 (that includes gun owners).

...

And, would ultimately become a non issue if the majority of people weren't miserable. 

Since this gun ownership/control discussion pertains to America and Americans, I'm going to disagree that the majority of us are miserable and poverty stricken.

 

Not sure why are guys are still arguing about this.  Americans are going to own and use guns until every last one of us is dead: it's our constitutional right to blow the shit out of each other

Yes, we are all going to die eventually, but only a fraction of a percent of us will be killed by guns and the vast majority of those deaths will be suicides.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-guns-self-defense-charleston-20150619-story.html

 

This one says opinion but also utilizes facts.

First of all, the only reason that I responded was to refute the ridiculous assertions that burglars never strike while people are home and that gun owners don't know how to use their weapons and couldn't possibly use them in self-defense situations.

 

As for the opinion piece cited above, it's just that: an opinion piece written by someone with an anti-gun axe to grind. But even his article admits that nearly 70,000 crimes are stopped by by armed citizens every year. That's nearly 200 incidents per day. Gun control advocates would like to ban so-called "assault rifles" yet rifles of all kinds account for fewer than 300 murders in the United States every year. Why is that figure so important, yet tens of thousands of armed self-defense incidents are considered statistically insignificant?

Is this knowledge, or belief?

Cold, hard facts.

Yes, the homeowner shot and killed a burglar. Good for him. The invaders were armed with knives and a gun, so he probably saved his life. It happens many times a day across the country.

I don't know anyone who keeps a gun for home security who doesn't keep it loaded and doesn't know how to use it or "shoot it correctly." And, yes, burglars do break into homes at night when people are home.

 

This happened about a week ago in my city:

 

http://www.ksat.com/news/1-teen-killed-1-injured-in-home-invasion

The downing of a Russian jet by Turkish F-16s is worrisome. The Turks have been aggressively warning the Russians over the last few weeks and this was almost bound to happen. I expect Putin to retaliate and it could get ugly since Turkey is a member of NATO. Hopefully the Russians will just settle for a Turkish eye for a Russian eye and concentrate on deconflicting future flights near their border.

The other twist is the planners of the Paris attacks weren't from Syria.

But the leader was very active in ISIS activities in Syria and bragged that he traveled freely between Syria and Europe at will. It will be interesting to learn how he was able to do so. It won't do the pro-refugee crowd any favors if it turns out that he was blending in with the wave of people pouring into Europe.

What I don't understand is why you are so focused on the government using a terrorist incident to erode our right to bear arms but not concerned with its efforts to use the same incident to erode our right to privacy and the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The calls for more gun control that come after a school shooting or whatever aren't really related to terrorism as we know it. They are the acts of deranged individuals, not organized terror groups with clearly defined goals. And politicians using them to criminalize law-abiding gun owners in order to be seen as "doing something" doesn't make the nation any safer.

 

As for the NSA, their programs are vetted by an army of lawyers. They don't just sit down with Verizon and say, "Hey, we want to spy on millions of Americans and we expect you to go along with it." They bring a team of lawyers to meet with a team of Verizon's lawyers and then they hash out a deal where they pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a little metadata. The NSA's programs aren't directed at Americans.

Any examples you can cite from the last 35 years?

I don't really pay any attention to them other than to write a check every few years when the president starts talking about enacting additional laws which will do nothing to solve our gun problems while simultaneously turning me into a felon at the swish of his pen.

You're ok with big government possessing a massive surveillance system but not ok with big government regulating guns?

Yes, I'm ok with the government possessing a massive surveillance system. That's the NSA's whole purpose. Several other acronyms', too. Every government does it. It's important for a nation's safety.

 

I'm also ok with the government regulating guns, but knee-jerk reactions to mass murders that infringe on our constitutional rights are another story entirely. Don't let bad guys have guns. Don't let drug abusers have guns. Don't let crazy people have guns. Murder is already illegal, so that about covers it. Restrictions on magazine size, so-called "assault weapons" and handguns are just blatant attempts at slowly chipping away at our right to bear arms.