The case against guns

[Blind groper]

Your logic is non-existent, your reasoning is faulty and your math skills are abysmal.

This kind of reply is another way of saying : " I cannot answer you, because I have no answer. I will continue to believe my garbage even though it is obviously garbage. I will evade the issue with insults."

In other words, you fall back on religious faith, instead of rationality.

[Seth]

I don't know about you, but I don't ever open the door for someone I don't know and cannot identify using my video surveillance system unless I am armed and ready to react.

Surely admitting thinking that way is sufficient to lock someone up in a padded cell with a straight jacket, its certainly a mental illness

In every metropolitan area on earth I know of it's called "common sense." Plenty of people keep a baseball bat behind the door for just that purpose.

I suppose you just leave your door unlocked and throw it open without a thought. Sounds like a fast-track to the morgue to me, but hey, live your life as stupidly as you like, no skin off my nose,

[Seth]

Your logic is non-existent, your reasoning is faulty and your math skills are abysmal.

This kind of reply is another way of saying : " I cannot answer you, because I have no answer. I will continue to believe my garbage even though it is obviously garbage. I will evade the issue with insults."

In other words, you fall back on religious faith, instead of rationality.

Nah, it's my way of saying that I'm tired of debunking your bilge and having you completely ignore everything I say while YOU fall back on your religious faith instead of rationality. You've never once intelligently addressed any of the refutations of your tripe I've taken the time to post, so I just quit putting any work into it.

[Blind groper]

Seth

I have refuted every one of your arguments that tries to use data. I have not refuted any of your arguments that are based on pure biased opinion, because why should I.

When you quote a survey conducted by a friend of the NRA, presenting an extreme view that matches the NRA bias, and which is refuted by his academic peers due to lack of evidence, that is not an argument.

[rainbow]

I don't know about you, but I don't ever open the door for someone I don't know and cannot identify using my video surveillance system unless I am armed and ready to react.

Surely admitting thinking that way is sufficient to lock someone up in a padded cell with a straight jacket, its certainly a mental illness

In every metropolitan area on earth I know of it's called "common sense." Plenty of people keep a baseball bat behind the door for just that purpose.

I suppose you just leave your door unlocked and throw it open without a thought. Sounds like a fast-track to the morgue to me, but hey, live your life as stupidly as you like, no skin off my nose,

...but supposing you lived in a civilised part of the world like Zambia, where you can leave your door unlocked at night and not be attacked?

[Tero]

Politics is not about numbers from the NRA or from the social workers. If the majority decides hand guns are wrong, then they are wrong.

[MrJonno]

I suppose you just leave your door unlocked and throw it open without a thought. Sounds like a fast-track to the morgue to me, but hey, live your life as stupidly as you like, no skin off my nose,

My door is generally unlocked during the day (and people are in), I do generally lock it at night but that as much to stop the wind blowing it open as much as stopping psychos as luckily we don't have too many Seth's here and I'm sure they are quite capable of kicking the door in before I even wake up if they really have the desire.

When the house is empty which is roughly 50% of the year its a peace of piss to burgle it but that's what contents insurance is for.

Must pass within 6 inches (yes 1/2 foot) of a 1000 + people in any given day commute, if anyone really wants to kill me they will succeed extremely easily and there is nothing personally I can do about it

[Seth]

Politics is not about numbers from the NRA or from the social workers. If the majority decides hand guns are wrong, then they are wrong.

Well, yes and no. It depends on exactly how "the majority" makes and implements that decision and what "the majority" means. Unfortunately for you, it does not mean 50 percent plus one. It actually means a decision in that regard by three-quarters of the state legislators AFTER a decision by either three-quarters of the Senate and House or after a Constitutional Convention called to order by three-quarters of the state legislatures.

So, it takes a lot more than a simple majority to declare handguns "wrong" in the US.

[Seth]

I suppose you just leave your door unlocked and throw it open without a thought. Sounds like a fast-track to the morgue to me, but hey, live your life as stupidly as you like, no skin off my nose,

My door is generally unlocked during the day (and people are in), I do generally lock it at night but that as much to stop the wind blowing it open as much as stopping psychos as luckily we don't have too many Seth's here and I'm sure they are quite capable of kicking the door in before I even wake up if they really have the desire.

So, you are lying. You do lock your doors because you fear criminals.

When the house is empty which is roughly 50% of the year its a peace of piss to burgle it but that's what contents insurance is for.

And yet I bet you still lock your doors when you're away.

Must pass within 6 inches (yes 1/2 foot) of a 1000 + people in any given day commute, if anyone really wants to kill me they will succeed extremely easily and there is nothing personally I can do about it

That's because you don't care to recognize the risks, train, prepare and protect yourself. That's fine with me, you're welcome to be a helpless victim, but you're not welcome try to make me or anyone else into a helpless victim just because you are.

[MrJonno]

Lock my doors at night mainly because its a requirement for home insurance
I will with almost 100% certainty be burgled at least once in my life while the house is empty and again locking your doors is a home insurance requirement. While I'm in we are talking lottery jackpot winning chances

[Seth]

Lock my doors at night mainly because its a requirement for home insurance

And why do you suppose insurance companies make that a condition? Could it be that unlocked doors are a major invitation to criminals? Derp.

I will with almost 100% certainty be burgled at least once in my life while the house is empty and again locking your doors is a home insurance requirement. While I'm in we are talking lottery jackpot winning chances

Nice strawman evasion.

We're discussing personal physical safety, not the safety of your belongings. Except in Texas, you would not be authorized to use deadly force to protect property, only life and safety.

If you were a pretty girl, leaving your door unlocked would be an invitation to rape. Even locking your doors and windows won't always keep a rapist out. Having a handgun in the nightstand has saved many women from being raped, and ended the careers of many rapists. I like that.

[Blind groper]

Having a handgun in the nightstand has saved many women from being raped, and ended the careers of many rapists. I like that.

Hand guns kill 8,000 people per year in the USA due to hand gun homicide.
How many rapists have their careers ended? I do not have the figures, but I can guarantee it is only a tiny fraction of those 8,000. Not to mention the 100,000 people each year in the USA who get a bullet through some part of their anatomy each year.

Seth, your priorities are screwed.

[Seth]

Having a handgun in the nightstand has saved many women from being raped, and ended the careers of many rapists. I like that.

Hand guns kill 8,000 people per year in the USA due to hand gun homicide.
How many rapists have their careers ended? I do not have the figures, but I can guarantee it is only a tiny fraction of those 8,000. Not to mention the 100,000 people each year in the USA who get a bullet through some part of their anatomy each year.

Seth, your priorities are screwed.

One dead rapist justifies everyone being armed in lawful self-defense. If you don't think so then you won't mind when a rapist rapes you and your daughters and your wife and your mother, because after all, you're just a statistic, and it's more important to ban guns for law abiding citizens than it is to worry about your or your family's safety and health. They'll just be another, as you say, "anecdote" that ought to be ignored because, well, your priorities are screwed.

Try personalizing it a bit and see if your idiot policies stand up to scrutiny.

Here's the scenario: You are at home in the living room with your wife and teenage daughter watching TV. On the coffee table is a semi-automatic .45 Colt Government Model handgun in Condition zero (loaded, cocked, safety off) within arm's reach of you. Suddenly a thug armed with a knife breaks into your house, runs towards the couch where you're all sitting and slashes your wife's throat. As she bleeds out, he grabs your terrified daughter and rips her panties off and starts raping her right in front of you.

What are you going to do?

Will you sit there and do nothing because the rapist is a human being and has "rights" and really ought to get a trial by his peers after proper due process before lethal force is implemented against him?

Or will you pick up the pistol and shoot him dead as he comes in the door and presents a threat?

You have two seconds to decide.

Go!

[Blind groper]

Neither, because I do not, and never will own a hand gun. However, in that situation, I would tackle the asshole and try my best to clear the threat. If I die, I die. Accepting that risk is called courage. Having a gun instead is called cowardice.

[Seth]

Neither, because I do not, and never will own a hand gun. However, in that situation, I would tackle the asshole and try my best to clear the threat. If I die, I die. Accepting that risk is called courage. Having a gun instead is called cowardice.

It's a hypothetical which you try to evade. It's not about whether you die, it's about whether your wife and daughter die horrible deaths while you ignore an effective tool that could save their lives.

And I say you're lying. I've encountered many people who claim to be "pacifists" but every single one of them has a limit where their pacifism ends, usually at a deadly threat to their wife or children. Most of them are like you when they are trying to defend their position on the web...they lie about their true feelings, or they simply don't think carefully about the scenario and make knee-jerk responses that try to save their egos and their arguments but which do not reflect what they would truly do in such a situation.

I'm confident in saying that if such a thing happened, you would use ANY object at hand that was useful as a deadly weapons, from a table lamp to a cricket bat to a kitchen knife...to a readily available firearm...to protect your loved ones. Not doing so would be cowardice of the highest order.

You should watch the original "Straw Dogs" with Dustin Hoffman and Susan George for an interesting look into what actual human beings will do in order to survive and protect their families.

You just don't want to admit that you would use the handgun because it makes your anti-gun diatribes hypocritical in the extreme. Like most hoplophobes, the gun debate is academic. It's dry statistics viewed from ten thousand miles away.

For people like me, it's not in the least bit academic, it's very real and having witnessed the glistening, jelly-like congealed blood from the victims of violent crime covering the floor and the waxy white skin and dull eyes of the dead, people like me have greater moral authority to judge your arguments than those who have never suffered a violent criminal attack or had to deal with the aftermath hands-on.

Anyone who would NOT use maximum lethal force to end the life of an attacker in the situation as presented is the coward in this debate.

In other words, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, nor will you listen to those who do.