lol @ British law enforcement

[Seth]

That seems to be the problem

That's the problem anywhere you go. Home invasions can and do turn sour. No amount of risk to my life is justifiable in the context of a home invasion. If I can stop a home invader without violence and without risking my own life, that's great and definitely a desirable outcome. But I'm not going to stick my neck out in some misguided attempt to be Mr. Nice Home Invasion Victim. If they present a threat, they'll be treated accordingly.

A home invader, in my view, is always presenting a threat. They're already invading your personal space. They're already invading your privacy. The police aren't even allowed to enter one's home without cause - and here we have a home invader off the street, doing what those hired by us to serve and protect are not privileged to do. There is no reliable way to ascertain their intention for burgling the home. Are they a rapist or a murderer? What are they after? Would it even be helpful if you asked them and they told you? What proof is necessary to show their reasonable benignity, other than their exit posthaste?

I took measures needed to protect my 'Family ' (Told the GF to hold the dog and make sure he didn't make a noise ) while I cut off their escape route .In the UK the possibility of facing a gun does not occur

I'm sorry, what? Did you not read the OP? The "possibility" of facing a gun absolutely occurs in the UK, just like it does in every other nation on earth. There is NO place where that is not a possibility anywhere on earth. The statistical likelihood of that happening is 100 percent if your burglar is carrying a gun, and you have absolutely no way whatsoever to predict whether or not your burglar will be carrying a gun, or a knife, or a crowbar that he can bash your brains out with.

That simple fact militates for homeowners responding to burglars with overwhelmingly superior force in the form of a firearm. That way you are prepared to use maximum lethal force if your burglar happens to be one of the 14,000 in the UK who DO carry a gun. Anything less is coming to the fight with inferior force, which will get you hurt or killed.

I would have had a gun in my hand if I had seen a gun in theirs I would have killed them both in a heart beat , Now please explain how that would have been a better outcome ?

Er, they would be dead and you and your GF, and your dog, would be alive. I consider that a much better outcome. Don't you?

Please explain how I or my GF (or more importantly my Dog ) would have more safe in the US than in the UK ? Everything involving firearms is life and Death , should I have killed them just in case ?

If they are in your home, at night, armed with ANY weapon, their presence there is not benign. They are a direct and immediate threat to your life merely by being in your home with a weapon, which they certainly intend to use for something, most likely to threaten you to gain compliance, but perhaps to kill you and eliminate witnesses.

Are you going to wait around to find out if they are just going to tie you up and leave, or tie you up and slit your throat with a knife from YOUR kitchen?

I'm not. I'm going to kill them as quickly as I can if I see a weapon in their hands because I'm going to rationally and reasonably PRESUME that they are there to do me harm or kill me.

[Clinton Huxley]

The vibe I'm getting from this thread is that Merkins are terrified of the society they've created. Good work!

[Bella Fortuna]

Yeah.... I'm gonna go post pictures of kittens and ice cream now...

[Coito ergo sum]

The vibe I'm getting from this thread is that Merkins are terrified of the society they've created. Good work!

I'm more than a little surprised at your silliness.

News Flash: After discussing this issue with the Brits on this page and doing a bit of research, which has been posted and linked to above, the law of both the US and Britain on self- defense is identical, or nearly identical, and there is very little if any difference in public opinion on the topic. If people break into your house in England, you have every right to fight them and you don't have to be attacked first. You can't, of course, shoot them in the back while they're running away, or beat them to death after they have been subdued. But, that's the same rule as we have here in the U.S.

And, you know who invented this rule? The English, basically, although they appear to have gotten the concept from old Anglo-Saxon common law. This isn't something new, and it's not something peculiarly American.

The US is quite a peaceful place, and if you've ever been here (which apparently you haven't since you seem to be talking squarely out of your posterior on this one) you would see that there aren't gunfights in the street and we don't walk around brandishing weaponry left and right. MOST Americans - the overwhelming majority of Americans - despite having the "right" to own guns, choose not to do so.

Wherever you fools are getting the childish notion that the US women and children go to sharpshooting school, and have to dodge crossfires on their way to schools and shopping centers, need to wake the fuck up and shove your self-righteous, snot-nosed, pseudo-aristocratic bullshit right up that posterior out of which you plainly like to pontificate. Fuck, a bigger bunch of self-satisfied, solipsistic, and smug snobs would be hard to find. That attitude must be where your "class system" went. Is it genetic?

Thank you.

[Coito ergo sum]

Yeah.... I'm gonna go post pictures of kittens and ice cream now...

Don't forget your American made Uzi and Kalashnikov. Have you gotten your son one, yet? Or, are you waiting another year?

[Clinton Huxley]

Clearly touched a nerve, CES.

[Coito ergo sum]

Clearly touched a nerve, CES.

"Irked" is a more appropriate term.

[Clinton Huxley]

Clearly touched a nerve, CES.

"Irked" is a more appropriate term.

People have been shot for less.

[Seth]

... everyone knows that .50BMG is a heat-seeking armor-piercing explosive tipped bunker busting anti-aircraft murdergun round.

Are you being sarcastic? If so you need to make that clear. I'll await criticism of this statement until I know whether you're being sarcastic or serious.

[Coito ergo sum]

Clearly touched a nerve, CES.

"Irked" is a more appropriate term.

People have been shot for less.

In Britain, probably. I hope you haven't been poaching the king's deer again...would be a shame to lose you, CH.

[Wumbologist]

... everyone knows that .50BMG is a heat-seeking armor-piercing explosive tipped bunker busting anti-aircraft murdergun round.

Are you being sarcastic? If so you need to make that clear. I'll await criticism of this statement until I know whether you're being sarcastic or serious.

I'm being totally serious. John Moses Browning personally designed the .50BMG round as an all purpose round fit both for slaughtering poor starving cancer babies AND for taking out 747s in mid flight with a single heat-seeking nuclear murder bullet. If you don't know that, you just don't know history.

[Wumbologist]

Clearly touched a nerve, CES.

"Irked" is a more appropriate term.

People have been shot for less.

Like breaking up a fight at Mickey D's in London?

[Seth]

hey ok the Washington post is not a reliable news source .I'm sorry, it was a flippant comment , I avoided the left wing articles that claimed US complicity in gun running to Mexico if favour of what I thought were more measured articles . And I AM well aware Mexico is not just a fucked up mess just because of Texan gun dealers .

Couple of problems: The BATFE has been complicit in running more than 4000 guns into Mexico as a part of "Operation Gunrunner" which was a purported attempt to trace the destination of smuggled firearms from the U.S. which unfortunately failed utterly as the BATFE lost track of almost all of the guns that THEY INDUCED Texas gun dealers to sell to known straw buyers. One wonders how many of those "traced" guns so touted by the BATFE as originating in the U.S. were actually guns that the BATFE knowingly allowed to be smuggled into Mexico as a part of this debacle?

Second, the stories about "traces" run in Mexico on guns found at crime scenes are almost all highly distorted and outright mendacity on the part of left-wing journalists. The actual number of guns traced to US gun dealers is quite small when compared with the total number of guns seized by Mexican authorities, the vast majority of which are not submitted for tracing by the BATFE because they are MILITARY ARMS not available on the market in the U.S. which have been imported from other countries, like Russia, China, and Cuba, or which are U.S. made military-issue weapons stolen from the Mexican military and police.

Third, gun dealers in Texas follow U.S. law in identifying and running instant background checks on all firearms purchased in Texas. Mexican gunrunners use "straw buyers," who are legal U.S. citizens who are fully eligible to purchase firearms, to obtain the weapons. It's almost impossible to detect a straw buyer if the people funding them are at all smart. Gun dealers cannot possibly know that any particular individual who is legally authorized to buy a gun and has passed the NICS check got their money from a Mexican drug cartel gun smuggler and that they intend to turn over the weapon to the disqualified person after they leave the store. It's not the gun dealer's job to use other than ordinary common sense and abide by the law in selling a gun. What a buyer does with the gun AFTER he or she leaves the gun store is NOT the responsibility of the gun dealer. And straw buyers are committing a federal felony when they buy a gun with the intent to turn it over to a disqualified person, so THEY are the ones committing the crime.

Fourth, how many guns get smuggled into Mexico is not, and should not be a problem for the United States, and it certainly does not justify further anti-gun efforts that affect lawful commerce in arms in the United States, as Janet Napolitano and Barack Obama argue. Mexico's gun problems are THEIR PROBLEM. Mexico controls what gets smuggled into Mexico. If they don't want American guns in Mexico, then it's up to THEM to secure THEIR border against gun runners. It's not our problem and we should not spend a dime on it. But we SHOULD focus on closing the border to both illegal immigrants and drug running.

If Mexico did its part by sealing its border to smugglers going south, and we did our part by sealing our border to smugglers of all kinds going north, neither the drug nor the gun smuggling would be a problem.

Obama is using a vacuous and mendacious argument about Mexico's gun "problem" (which is a lie...the problem in Mexico is that NOT ENOUGH law-abiding citizens have or can have arms with which to defend themselves and their communities...only the police, the army and the cartels have guns) as a stalking horse argument for imposing further restrictions on the rights of law-abiding Americans to buy guns.

It's pure anti-gun politics and nothing more.

[Seth]

But I wasn't the one who mentioned Mexico in the first place was I . It seems you can blame gun crime one US state on Mexico but when I quote articles from reputable US papers that say a significant amount of the guns in Mexico come from the US then somehow I'm in Error ?

You're in error because the amount of guns in Mexico that came from the U.S. is not "significant" to begin with, nor is it our problem how poorly Mexico controls its border against gun smuggling (which is a crime even in the U.S.) into Mexico. How on earth is the U.S. in any way responsible for criminal acts or lax border controls on the part of Mexico?

Whatever, I have tried to explain in this thread how I feel about the free and easy availability of fire arms I have not posted gun phobic nonsense ,If you disagree with me then fair enough

Problem is it's neither free nor easy. Firearms are the single most regulated consumer product in the United States. Law abiding citizens are not responsible for the criminal acts of either U.S. citizens or Mexican drug cartel gun smugglers, and our rights to free commerce in firearms in accordance with our laws should not be infringed merely because criminals exist and Mexico refuses to close its border with the U.S. to smugglers...going either way.

Mexico DOES NOT WANT to secure its border, and bitches every time we propose to do so because it gets BILLIONS of dollars in U.S. currency every year from it's 12 million illegal aliens who work here and send their money to Mexico. The Mexican economy would probably collapse entirely if we instituted monetary export controls to stop the flow of money from here to there. Mexico also gets billions of dollars in U.S. drug money which circulates in their economy, which is another reason they don't ever try to seal the border. What they get as an unintended consequence of their sub rosa open border policy is gun smuggling into Mexico. Fuck 'em.

If it were up to me, I'd dump plane-loads of fully-automatic military weapons and ammunition on every village and city in northern Mexico, so that the peons and oppressed law-abiding citizens of Mexico could have sufficient arms to overthrow BOTH the drug cartels AND their corrupt government and restore their safety and liberty. I'd even commit U.S. military personnel and resources to locating and exterminating the drug cartels using 2000 lb. JDAMs and Daisy Cutters, just to give the peons a leg up in the battle for liberty.

But in the end, I don't give a fuck how many guns are smuggled into Mexico from the U.S., because it's their problem, not ours.

[Coito ergo sum]

[

Problem is it's neither free nor easy. Firearms are the single most regulated consumer product in the United States.

I get your point, but I'm fairly sure that pharmaceuticals are more closely regulated.