Gun Control (from Thats' Gonna Leave a Mark)

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Why, exactly, would 'Bob' need a gun? If he is suddenly attacked while outside, he won't have enough time to bring his gun to bear from wherever he is carrying it. If he is at home and suddenly finds himself face-to-face with an intruder, the gun is unlikely to be anywhere near him. How does owning a weapon help Bob in either situation? Does the minuscule chance the gun will be nearby in a situation like that outweigh the self-evidently large dangers of making weapons available to anyone who wants one?

 

Maybe Bob is a farmer. Maybe he is a hunter. Self defense isn't the only reason to own a gun. My point is that punishing BOB for what Andy did is not just or logical. Also, the story involved the fact that the squeaky wheel (Andy and his lawyer) are more likely to come up with some BS excuse for a crime and then get away with it, while law abiding citizens are more likely to be cooperative.

What I see is that people are constantly telling the decent (ie: non criminal) people that they shouldn't be able to defend themselves, whether we are talking about guns, tasers, or whatever. THAT line of reasoning aggravates me.

There are plenty of law abiding gun owners. I get nervous when the government starts telling me what I "need" and "don't need". I'll make that decision myself, thanks. If I violate a law, THEN is the time to put restrictions on me. Before then, the government should focus on keeping the criminals disarmed and away from society.

 

Despite all the arguements to the contrary, studies consistently show that gun owners can successfully defend themselves with firearms, whether discharging them or not, and do so without hurting anyone other than the offending criminal.

What I mean by that is that there are plenty of instances here in the US when an individual successfully defends him/herself from a violent crime by using a gun or threatening with a gun. There are actually very few instances when innocents are mistaken for criminals or people are hurt by accident. It only looks otherwise because everytime anyone is accidently hurt by a gun it makes local news and frequently national news (here in the US at least), whereas if someone shoots a criminal breaking into their home, you'll be lucky if anyone but the lawyers hear about it.

As for why people need to defend themselves, the answer is simply because most of us (especially women) aren't muscular body builders, experienced pit fighters, or martial arts experts, and thus the thugs that are experienced street fighters have a difinitive edge against us in any equal fight. And again, studies show that guns do make a difference. I guess most gun owners in the US keep their gun somewhere it would be accessible.

Personally, though, I'm an advocate for returning to swords. Inside most houses, a firearm really has no advantages over an equal length of blade.

 

Let's look at some statistics, why don't we? First of all, the statistic brought out to establish that guns are more often used to stop crime than to perpetrate it is Gary Kleck's survey which concluded that 2.5 million people in the US each year use guns to defend themselves. One percent of the US population is between 2 and 3 million. So if only one percent of the survey respondents had answered the survey dishonestly, that would make the results of the survey inaccurate by millions. An article published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (not exactly a liberal rag) revealed that using methods similar to Kleck's, it could be concluded that nearly 20 million Americans have seen aircraft from another planet and that one million Americans have had contact with aliens.

There is a better study available. According to the NCVS (National Crime Victim Survey) guns are used defensively less than 100,000 times each year. The NCVS surveyed over 90,000 people in contrast to Kleck's 5,000, so it would be reasonable to conclude that the NCVS provides a more reliable estimate of the number of defensive gun uses in the US.

Using the numbers from the NCVS, the number of gun accidents and crimes that occur each year would far exceed the number of times in which civilian gun possession actually prevents crime.

 

I'll make it here clear for you why guns are such a good idea. Guns are not only there to prevent other people from doing me harm, they are also there to prevent the state from becoming too powerful. Important people like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin will probably agree with me, after all, didn't they penned that down into the US constitution?
My country, the Netherlands would be a good example here. The ruling parties, two Christian and the Labour party, form a gang of incompetent idiots who see it as their mission to take more of my money and more of my rights. They are, unfortunately, not incompetent at those two parts.

This month, a man was a unlawfully arrested by a police force of 10 man and kept in jail for 30 hours. The only reason they did this was so that they could interrogate him about some complaints they police had been receiving.... three years ago. This is ofcourse ridiculous. It's clearly over the edge of what can be seen as lawful. Why a lawful police force would not simply call him and make an appointment is totally beyond my imagination. He is not a dangerous criminal and had no reason to flee, because he knew about those formal complaints since the day they were filed.

The victim is a drawer of anti-Islamic comics and he put those on his homepage. Imagine this, you have these religious nut jobs who visit his page and instead of closing the browser, they become insulted. Becoming insulted is a passive action that THEY DO THEMSELVES. How about forgetting it and shrugging it of, or, if you're a Christian, turn the other cheek?
They then file a complaint with the police. That's their right, sure, but instead of making an appointment with the drawer, the police decides to do a raid on his house. The secretary of Justice then tells us that he wants to create laws that will make it illegal to insult such important things like religion and culture.

Another example. As you probably known, this year our favorite peroxide politician released his anti-Islamic film. Which was, by all standards known to man, extremely tame. It associated Islam with violence. Thousands of Muslims around the world then sprang up. They were insulted about this ridiculous association, and threatened him with... violence. Dolls with his image were burned to the ground along with the flags of Denmark, Israel and the U.S. The fact that no one had seen the movie did not prevent to current ruling parties to have discussions about making rules and laws that would shut him up and jail him. This slavish attitude is called dhimmitude. They already surrendered to the fight that should be won at all cost.


This is why guns are needed. Without guns, you will not be able to defend yourself from an unlawful raid by the "justice" system nor from some idiot with a problem. Neither will you be able to remove the current system if democratic rules no longer apply.

Because you have three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.

 

Or they can be completely (mis)understood by someone who wasn't paying enough attention to what he was (mis)reading!

One percent of our entire population is 3 million. The population of the United States is a little over 300 million, so if the survey is off by 1% and its results are extrapolated against the entire population of the United States (which, in this case, it was), it can be off by as much as 3 million.

I'm pretty sure that resisting lawful arrest wasn't what the founders had in mind when they wrote the second amendment. Our government's military has grenades, rocket launchers, fighter jets, Tanks, Apache Helicopters, Bombers, Tomahawk missiles, Aircraft Carriers, Destroyers, and Ballistic Missile submarines. Good luck overthrowing it with a pistol or a hunting rifle.

Unless you want to legalize the private ownership of cruise missiles, destroyers, fighter jets, tanks, and nuclear weaponry, resisting the government in such a manner really isn't possible any more.

 

The survey was only 5,000. Extrapolating that to the entire US population gives a 50000:1 ratio. A 1% incorrect response rate is 50 (5000 x 1%). So extrapolating that would be 2,500,000 (50000 x 50)

Edit: How the heck did I miss Drew's response?

 

sorry drew, as i have pointed out numerous times in our gun discussions of the past the dept of justices own records indicate 2.5-3 million defensive uses of handguns per year. now unless you are saying that the dept of justice is lieing about it i don't know what else to tell you, also john lott's book showed a very clear case of lower crime rates occurring when carry laws are enacted in states that previously did not allow them.

as far as your post about the need for the tanks , jets , etc. ummm, no it would be a strictly guerrilla warfare. it has been estimated by some military think tanks that a well trained group as small as a 1,000 members could all but cripple the u.s. our country is in need of some serious defensive reconstruction.

 

@Morgoth - I'm not sure that owning a gun would help much in any of those situations, personally. If you ask me, it sounds more like a rant at religious extremeism and government ruling than gun enthusiasts is what you're after.


Okay, it's all well and good saying that guns are used to defend against guns, and pulling statistics out of various people's nether regions to prove of disprove that point is fine too. But what about those statistics compared to a coutry where guns are made illegal (such as England, for example)? While an outlawed weapon will always be available to the outlawed one way or another, giving the okay to everyone simply makes the crimes more accessable.

People stop worrying about going to prison any more. If you have no job prospects, no life, no money, and going to prison means 3 square meals, a bed, cable TV and a wage packet each month, the only thing stopping people is the moral fibre they were apparently not born with. If you then handed them a bill saying 'Go ahead and blow s**t up', it's just adding fuel to the fire.

People, as a whole, don't change. There will always be ways to hurt each other so people can get what they want, and they will always be willing to do so due to the underlying anarchistic nature of the human psyche, or as I call it, the 'I want pretty things' syndrome. Whilst common law legally retracts the right of the individual to hurt another individual, if the law is disregarded then greed will almost certainly take control. And as I said before, there is and always will be varying ways to do this; take away the guns people will stab each other; take away the knifes and people will throw loaves of bread at each other until they choke on the doughy baked goods of assassination. But by saying it's okay, it makes it only more attractive.

 

And as I have pointed out, those numbers actually come from your own ass. The only way our justice department would actually have such numbers would be if there are 2.5 million reported and tracked yearly instances of crimes being averted due to civilian gun usage (there aren't). The justice department doesn't do surveys.

The problem, Gnarff, is that these people -at least in North America- really don't exist. Unless you are mentally unstable, a felon, or the gun you want to keep happens to be an AK-47, gun control advocates don't want your gun. While there may be a few extremists and idealists who actually believe it is somehow feasible to disarm a society in which there are almost as many guns as there are people, they are but a tiny minority of gun control activists.

EDIT: Out of curiosity, who was I insulting, here? I could see why someone who really does think disarming a society in which there are almost as many guns as people is feasible may take mild offense to this post, but I certainly never called anyone mentally unstable or a felon, and I'm pretty sure that whoever called this post insulting is pro-gun.

 

Sorry, Drew, but I, living in North America, have heard this arguement many times, and right now, the District of Colombia (Washington 'City') is fighting for the legal right to effectively do just this, which they have been doing for the past 30-ish years. Ok, technically you can own, but it has to be unloaded and kept in a locked container unless you are currently using it, and the only legal use is to defend yourself. I think they may have outright banned handguns, too, but I'm not sure. Realistically, there are people out there that want all guns destroyed, and they can be a fairly powerful political activist group.

Oh, and Drew, I was only looking to compare the number of times guns are used in defense to the number of times they accidently harm someone, or the gun owner is harmed by his own gun. Someone else using a gun to commit a crime is a seperate matter, though also one to be considered.

 

Realistically, yes, there are people out there that think this. The problem is that these people are not, in fact, realistic. There are almost as many firearms in the U.S. as there are people. Finding and disarming the entire U.S. populace is less realistic than finding and deporting the 12 million illegal immigrants in the country - neither one is happening any time in the foreseeable future.

I'm still with Bill Maher on this one: "If you think the Government is going to take away your Bible, you're an idiot. If you think the Government is going to take away your gun, you're an armed idiot."

While I think that tasers are more suitable for personal defense than guns as they can, theoretically, neutralize a threat in a non-lethal manner, it still seems a bit of an extreme over-reaction. Sure, a woman may feel safer if she is carrying around a taser or handgun in her purse, but muggers don't announce their presence ahead of time. They typically come up behind the woman, and grab their - you guessed it - purse.

I have a security system in my home that automatically contacts the police if I do not deactivate the alarm within 60 seconds of it going off. I don't feel any need to own a gun or a taser. A would-be thief is most likely going to run away as soon as the alarm goes off. But this is what is going to happen as soon as the alarm goes off: I'm reaching under the bed and grabbing Mr. Louisville Slugger while the wife runs across the hall and locks herself in the baby's bedroom.

In the 1% of cases where the thief doesn't run off, then he is in the house to do me and my family harm. I personally don't care what kind of gun he is carrying, as I have the distinct advantage of knowing my house while he doesn't. I know that my wife and son are in the last room at the end of the hallway. I know which of the other three doorways which need to be passed to get to the end of the hall offers me the opportunity to see the thief without likely being seen by the thief. Finally I KNOW that 36 ounces of solid wood to the head is going to ruin your day just as much as a bullet. In fact, in could be argued that in close quarters a baseball bat isn't much of a less lethal alternative than a gun. You can kill someone with a baseball bat - pretty easily in fact if you get the first swing in to the back of his head.

 

Sorry, aldeth but as a crook the first thing i would do is look for one of those little yard or window stickers that security companys like to put up & check at least 3 windows for sensors. Than the next step is take the knife out and cut the phone line going into the house & turn off the main power breaker(most of your residential security systems don't send an alarm when the phone systems are disabled unlike commercial systems which often have a dedicated secondary backup & 99% of people don't put locks on their breaker boxes which are usually on an exterior wall). cut a window pane out & bang, i'm in your house standing over you & the wife sleeping soundly in bed without ever waking anybody. see the lack of any dog related items in the yard let me know you didn't have one. not all crooks are stupid & it is not smart to assume so. security systems scare off the dumb crooks but let the smart ones know that you may have a false sense of security. always plan for the worst & hope for the best. semper paratus

oh aldeth, about the govt taking your guns, talk to the people in new orleans. there are vidoes on youtube about this. you might be suprised.


the washington dc handgun ban has been in place since 1976 you had to have it registered before than or you couldn't register it in the city limits. now dc has consistently ranked in the worst cities for gun violence so it has proven an unequievocal failure.
no please back on topic before tal comes in and gives us the pink dragon breath of doom

 

Man, the crooks in the US must be somekind of supervillains. Every criminal I have encountered that would have any interest in breaking into houses to hopefully grab a few 100$ worth of jewellry has had serious problems forming a more coherent thought than: "I need my fix now!" Any criminal smart enough to actually look for alarms and cut wires really have no business burgling normal houses, there are bigger fish to fry. You need to be seriously stupid and not to mention ignorant to go down the path of petty crime. Maybe you get a different kind of criminal in the US though, you sure seem to considering how incredibly afraid many of you are of people sneaking into your house to kill and maim you but all criminals I have encountered (and there have been a few) have been desperate wretches and sure their desperation makes them dangerous but their wretchedness makes it possible for basically anyone to outthink and even outfight them.

 

And my argument still stands, because police departments also don't do surveys. Again, if the 2.5 million figure were derived from "various police departments", that would mean that there would be a total of 2.5 million (yearly!) reported cases of defensive firearms use. We don't!

In other words, they aren't going to take away your gun. Right to own and right to carry are not the same thing, after all.

They did, and that's what's being challenged in the supreme court right now. In all likelihood, they will lose.

We have dry counties and cities all over our country, but I think we can all agree that the idea that there is a number of activists out there substantial enough to restore prohibition is patently absurd. On a state or federal level, it will simply never happen. The same is true of gun laws, since local politics is not the same thing as state or federal politics.

Whether it was an unequivocal failure is debatable, but it hasn't worked as well as was hoped. There is an obvious reason for this, though. Arlington, where you can buy a hand-gun, is as little as a 5 minute drive away (and literally runs right into DC, so you can end up in Arlington without even realizing you've left DC). DC isn't very big, so anyone who wants a handgun can just leave the city and buy one.

 

sigh, ok lets settle your points. 1) you dont like kleck however he was PeerR eviewed by non other than Marvin Wolfgang, the late director ofthe sellin center for studies in criminology &criminal law at the Univ. of Penn. who is considered by many the foremost criminologist in the country. he wrote the following in the journal of criminal law & criminology, volume 86,number 1,fall,1995

"I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists in this country. If I were Mustapha Mond of Brave New World, I would eliminate all guns from the civilian population and maybe even from the police ... What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. ["Armed Resistance to Crime: The Prevalence and Nature of Self-Defense with a Gun," by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, published in that same issue of The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology] The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator. ...I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research. Can it be true that about two million instances occur each year in which a gun was used as a defensive measure against crime? It is hard to believe. Yet, it is hard to challenge the data collected. We do not have contrary evidence. The National Crime Victim Survey does not directly contravene this latest survey, nor do the Mauser and Hart Studies. ... the methodological soundness of the current Kleck and Gertz study is clear. I cannot further debate it. ... The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well."
he expressly states that they have no way to refute the evidence gathered even though he is expressly prejudiced against it to start.

well that doesn't stop them does it handgun control & the clinton administration get a grant from the dept of justice given to 2 pro gun control researchers, philip cook & jens ludwig to do their own study on defensive gun use to prove the national self defense survey was too high. unfortunately for the gun control groups it did the opposite and suggested that if anything their methodology was too conservative & a figure as high as 4.7 million per year was possible.

oh the new doj stats about defensive uses aren't surveys they are tabulations of people reporting the failed crimes so they are if anything under reported. have a nice day

 

No, instead they track instances that are reported to them, and I have no idea how many of those there are, but I'd need to see some real data before I assumed anyone's guess.

You're right, they do have the right to own, as a collector. The constraints on these weapons are such that no one would reasonably be able to use them to defend themselves, which is the number one arguement for having them and (allowing for cultural updates) the constitutional reason for allowing them. It's actually the effective ban being challenged that's getting all the press in D.C.

Ah, but there's a huge difference between alcohol and guns, and the anti-gun lobbyists actually have a good bit of pull in American national politics.

joacqin, actually, the big fear is of the people that aren't doing it for petty cash, but for kicks. Now my guess is that this isn't nearly as common in the US as many people think it is. I blame the thrill-seeking media for turning us all into paranoid psychos. Let's face it, though, it does happen, and it seems to be happening more and more frequently.

 

Name a single bill banning all gun ownership - hell, banning all handgun ownership - that has seen the house or senate floor and gotten more than a handful of votes. Name one. If you can't, that means that those extremists don't have has much pull as you seem to think.

Criminologists are obviously not statisticians. We do have contrary evidence. We've had it for a long time, though we may not have had it at the time of Mr. Wolfgang's writing. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a better study was already conducted, taking a sample from 90,000 people instead of 5,000....18 times as many respondents. The results they came up with pegged the number of defensive gun uses at a little less than 100,000 per year, which, if you think about it, is still a pretty damn good number. Now both of these sets of numbers come from surveys, so neither is gospel, but the NCVS survey drew 18 times as many samples as Kleck's survey. In terms of accuracy, the NCVS survey carries a lot more weight. The difference in number of respondents is so great that even if we added Kleck's respondents to the NCVS survey, the NCVS results would barely even change. They took that many more samples.

Then link to the statistics. Since they don't actually exist, I already know that you can't, but hey, surprise me.