MaxedOutMama

This will never get the coverage it deserves. It's stupid and cliche but we don't need laws banning weapons, we need laws that punish people for using them on other people.

Oh we have that, well then maybe we should try enforcing them and see how that goes.
 

Tommy - we are also supposed to be kind to criminals, right? On Huffington Boast I read this article by someone deploring a 16 year-old being tried as an adult. He had walked into a store to rob it, with a bandanna around his face, and put a loaded gun against a person's chest. Another person tackled him. A hole was blown in the ceiling. No one was hurt. The author was appalled to think that he would get a long prison term.

In the UK, you will get a longer prison term for fighting a robber than that robber will get for his crime. Not surprisingly, the criminals own the streets and break into houses without fear.
 

I'm not much for the excuse crowd. I don't really care what drove someone to do something the fact is they did it.

And I get really frustrated over the issue of minors, I know there has to be a legal age of adulthood and such but in general most of them know what they are doing. The last thing we need to do is create a loophole for them to escape through.
 

Tommy, How would you suggest we enforce the more? There are already manditory increased sentences for use of guns in a crime.

how about this concept. Where hand guns are legal, there is no way to get it out of the criminals hands before it is used. I places where they are illegal, you can stop them before they are used. Many guns are taken out of the hands of criminals before they are ever used here BECAUSE they are illegal.

As for cities where handguns are banned... I'll take that any day over cities like New Orleans where we were mugging us on our front door steps and you have to be careful of every mean drunk.
 

Dingo - people who commit crimes aren't allowed to have guns anyway.

As for gun control, gun control without harsh prison sentences and a very active police doesn't suppress those muggings. Just look at the UK. There used to be a sharp difference between it and the US. Now London's crime statistics are vying with NYC's.

Isn't New Orleans famous for corrupt police?
 

Yes - are you really saying that our government of the people, by the people and for the people should treat all of its people as if they are proto-criminals?

I find this point of view weirdly fascinating.
 

Tulip Girl,
In the area in which I left, it was not all that uncommon for fathers to get their daughters guns for protection. Sometimes they talked to the local police about it.

When laws are stupid, only the stupid obey them. I read about a case in the UK last year in which thugs broke into an old lady's home. They burned her with her own iron to make sure that she wasn't hiding valuables. It is the vulnerable who pay the price for political correctness.
 

I just don't have any faith in gun control being able to prevent people with less than noble intentions from getting them.

After all we have made all sorts of other things illegal and I haven't noticed those items disappearing from our society. I don't know why this would be different.
 

Tommy - when we manage to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs maybe I will have more faith in gun control. Maybe. I doubt it.

Until then... like I say, I don't want to live in a state that doesn't believe I have the right to defend myself.
 

"Yes - are you really saying that our government of the people, by the people and for the people should treat all of its people as if they are proto-criminals?"

So, why is open containers in a car illegal? possession of radioactive material? Purchases of large amounts of fertilizer? Why do we regulate illegal drugs prior to ingestion?

What about that more people get killed every year in 'mistaken' and very questionable self defense by hand guns than 'actual' self defense.
 

Dingo, do you mean more people get killed every year in "mistaken" attempts at self-defense then lives get saved by it?

Unless you are referring to incidents when cops have to shoot offenders, I think you need to come up with some stats to support that. Not Bellisles-type stats, but real ones. So do your best, and I will do my best.

And just remember that in many cases these laws operate to prevent any reporting of "successful" attempts at self-defense, because the self-defense itself is illegal. I didn't report this incident to the cops.

Filing a false incident report is a crime, as well it should be. But if I had filed a true report, I would have been admitting to a crime. I forget what the penalty was, but there was prison involved. What I did was tell the company that I had seen someone hanging around the van when I was getting ready to go out, and I thought that person might have been planning to break in. They called the cops and the cops cruised around. No further incidents.

Think about it, Dingo. I probably wouldn't have been killed. Yet I still wonder. If he had just wanted to rob me, I certainly could have identified him. His face was clearly visible. If he hadn't been intending to commit a crime, than why did he leave without saying a word? My socially unacceptable instrument was no threat to him at a distance. He could have simply asked me to go to the police station and send help. He could have, but he didn't.

Basically you are saying that I don't have a right to defend myself. Dingo, you are a good man and you mean no harm, but I certainly am glad that you alone are not making the laws in this country. I'd probably be in Mexico.

Criminals have no moral sense and little self-control. That's why they are criminals. Non-criminals tend to have a lot of sense and considerable self-control.

I don't need beer, radioactive material, fertilizer and illegal drugs to defend myself. You are not making any sense there. If I had had the time I would have gotten in the car and fled, but I didn't. Frankly, I think it was safer that I wasn't trying to start the car while he was trying to get into it. He was moving fast. I'd say he stopped less than twenty feet - maybe more like fifteen from me.

You want this happy-happy world where anything violent can be evaded, but that is not reality.
 

I know that there are very good arguments for being able to carry a hand gun. It is one of those types of situations where you are damned if you do and damned if you don't. If you ban them, you can't protect yourself, but there are less criminals who have them also. If you don't ban then, you have the ability to protect yourself, but there are more criminals with guns also (not to mention just plain ol'e idiots). If I had a daughter in New Orleans, I might actually be inclined to get her a gun and take her to a range. But that is also what I was saying before. Different areas demand different levels of control.

I'll see if I can find those numbers for you. It has been a couple years since I saw the article on it. And what I mean was stats on people shot during episodes of 'actual' vs. 'perceived' self defense situations. I think 'perceived' ranged from shooting you kid who was sneaking in after curfew to bar fights. I don't remember is cop shootings were included.
 

I don't know anyone that has had a mistaken self defense shooting. I will pretend that in my family it is the result of responsible behavior and that in the case of some other people it was probably dumb luck.

I do know 2 people that are still alive today because they shot first, and a friend of mine grew up without a dad because the shots came too late.

Don't know how that fits into the statistics but personal experience always counts for more.
 

Tommy, I'm not surprised.

Dingo, I know, I know. It is troubling and there are no easy answers. Of course everyone hopes to avoid the situation. Unfortunately, when you are getting mugged in front of your house avoidance is not an option.

Some of what I have read of police tactics in NY bother me. But on the other hand it is a much safer city than when I was in the area. I do not think there are perfect answers to these questions.

And then too, you can get out of a dangerous place. You are educated, etc. You have choices. What about the poor families?
 

> I just don't have any faith in gun control being able to prevent people with less than noble intentions from getting them.

First off, Europe has much stricter gun laws than we do, but, despite this, manages to have much higher crime stats in every arena but murder
http://www.tinyvital.com/BlogArchives/000220.html
There's a US DoJ report out there, dated ca. 1996, which shows the trends in US-vs-UK crime rates. Crime, as you likely know, is skyrocketing in the UK, despite having virtually draconian gun control laws.

Second, the whole argument is irrelevant, immaterial, and unimportant.

The second amendment has nothing to do with crime prevention. Not one thing at all.

The entire *stated* purpose of the second amendment is to prevent the federal government from being able to get out of control. Go ahead, read The Federalist #46.
It's all there, in black and white, no uncertainty about what they meant, or why they meant it. Guns, in the hands of the people, make a Federal takeover of the nation, in defiance of the will of Americans, impossible.

A slight paraphrasal of Robert Heinlein,
"A potential tyrant should always have their necks in a noose. It keeps them upright."
In the USA, that noose is the guns of the average citizen.

I certainly would not want to have to go up against the U.S. Military armed only with handguns and rifles -- but, you know, I'd damned f'ing HELL sure not want to try it without them.

Further, consider:
The point of arming anyone generally is not to use them.

We don't give cops guns so they can go out and shoot people. We give cops guns so they don't have to shoot people.

Wierd as that sounds, it's true.

If cops were unarmed, then they would have more situations where someone defied them, and then they WOULD have to bring up reinforcements and shoot that person to stop them. By having at least as much force as anyone they encounter, people behave with respect and concern for their authority.

People who encounter the cop -don't- act on the impulse (we all have them) to tell the cop to go F-himself in our moment of anger, annoyance, pique, or bullheaded stupidity. The gun overrides our bullheadedness by catching our attention most strongly, and having us all STOP and think.

So, think about that, and remember it. It's a critically important piece of information.

Don't let lefty idiots frame the debate in the only terms they have ANY sort of responsible arguments. Keep it where it belongs, in the controlling governments area.

Ask any of them, even (or perhaps most especially) the European lefties. Do you REALLY want to risk a US government, backed by a US Military which has dismantled easily every force it has come up against in the last two decades, to have the slightest chance of going out of control?
 

OK, now, the above said, one other "quick" point:

Some years back (ca. 1998) I did a calculation with regards to the dangers of murder vs. the dangers of government.

I took the US gun murder rate for each decade year, 1930-1990, and, applying it back to the previous years, got a rough stat for worst case gun murders for each decade (i.e., since the trend is upward, the numbers were higher, not lower, than likely was correct -- the 1930 figure applied for 1921 through 1929 as well). I then applied that to the world pop stats, presuming (again, worst case) that ALL nations had weapons available as in the US, and the same (rather high) proclivity to shoot one another, and came up with a proportional estimate of murders as a result of increased gun availability worldwide.

The figure I came up with was that about 12 million people would have been murdered worldwide from 1921 through 1996 under those circumstances, to wit: Had the entire world had guns available to them in the same manner as Americans did.

Sounds bad, right?

Except for the fact that NON-WAR genocides by the Soviets, the Nazis, the Chinese, the Cambodians, all totalled, estimates range from a total of 70 million to 180 million. Throw in WWII Euro-theater deaths as a result a single out of control government and you can tack on another 40-odd million to that.

12 million doesn't sound so bad now, does it?
 

Nick, I agree totally about armed cops. I gather the UK is having to arm more of them. A lot of the people that cops face are drunk or on drugs. They aren't rational; that's the problem. The police are facing a lot of people who are just flat out of their minds. I just can't understand people who think we should tell police officers to go out and get the bad elements under control with night sticks.

As for massacres, when I think of the Warsaw ghetto human kindness vanishes from my heart. Relatives of mine were in the Nazi concentration camps. A lot of people seem to buy into the "it can't happen here" scenario. That was what everyone thought back then. Every sick sadistic government out there always disarms its population as much as it can. That isn't disputable. However, logic tells me we would be a lot better off ensuring that our government stays democratic rather than planning to fight it out in the streets.

Democratic Underground was making your argument recently. They were debating which guns to buy and whether the people could hold off the army. They finally decided they could, just because they could inflict enough casualties to make it a losing proposition. I'm not sure. Nor do I think the US is going that route. Nor do I think the US armed forces, which are made up of very decent people, would be likely to obey orders to charge the populace. I don't understand DU's mindset at all, but it is probably related to their belief that the US crashed those planes into the WTC and the Pentagon. I have my doubts about DU's collective sanity.

Still, you have a point I can't deny. I am wary of gun control for that reason. So far I do not think that guns cause crime Paradoxically, I think an armed population tends to suppress violent crime, because it shifts the balance of power from the criminal to the victim, raises the risks of preying upon someone, and lowers the rewards of crime. All the stats I've looked at seem to show that as criminals perceive home invasions, etc as a losing proposition, they search for easier and safer ways to victimize people.

When I think of Darfur, Nick, my heart fails me. The only thing that might succeed at this time would be to arm the victimized group. This would encourage a more peaceful attitude among the attackers.
 

But Nick, something else must be said. Arms alone don't create a sane and virtuous people. There are higher goals, better avenues, and other basic strategies. For instance, let's try this thought experiment:
Suppose we handed out rifles and ammunition to every non-felon in the US population who chose to take a course on how to use them.

Would that make us much safer? I don't think it would. It might cut down home invasions in certain areas, but it wouldn't solve most of our problems. In fact, since guns would be more widely available, it would probably end up that some more nut cases would get their hands on them. Because so many people would have them, you would have a higher rate of random violence, etc.

Clearly there must be some medium course which offers better results. Long sentences for criminals may be harsh, but they do protect the innocent population. Given the very high rate of drug problems and illiteracy among the US prisoners, I think better education and treatment programs for those incarcerated might do a lot of good.

So while I can't dispute your points, I also can't say that they represent the whole picture. The entire point of having a democratic system is so that we don't have a victimized population and a marauding government. We all have a huge stake in ensuring that we never get a Nazi-like government.

And although a cursory look at the situation in the UK will show that good social programs forming a safety net plus gun control doesn't prevent violent crime, yet a very unjust system does engender violence. There are checks and balances in a functioning society that provide a maximum of safety. That golden mean is what we should search for.

As long as we have a truly representative government (no matter what DU thinks), the US armed forces will not be sent marauding through the suburbs to round up Democrats. As long as we have a decent economy and people have legal ways to earn a living, the vast majority of people will do so peacefully. As long as we allow people who are in risky situations (such as being out at night) to defend themselves, criminals will be relatively cautious. The marginal effects from allowing a few at-risk citizens to carry is probably the golden mean. If an area becomes a haven for violence, people will naturally acquire means of self-defense.

And if, Nick, the citizens of a particular state want to try banning weapons, that, IMO, is their right underneath the Constitution. The 2nd was meant to prevent Congress from disarming the population, not the state governments from regulating themselves. We have 50 states; they are a good laboratory for social experimentation and they also have different social conditions.

In those 50 states, the citizens have a voice. If a state chooses to try to handle its crime problem by banning all weaponry and making it effectively illegal for victims to defend themselves, the citizens can demand a change in legislation or vote with their feet. I voted with my feet. I'm glad.

Democracy is meant to allow citizens to experiment and try different solutions. Conditions will always change; society will always adapt to meet them. Non-violent strategies are the preferred practice in our society and I would hope that will always remain so.