You guys and your guns...

[mistermack]

the fact that it was done in urban Philly makes it pretty fucking obvious that the people carrying guns were more likely to get shot because they were criminal gang members shooting at each other.

Actually no.

It is a while now, but some months ago, I checked the original Branas paper. He had done a demographic analysis of the shot victims. We know that criminal gangs have certain characteristics. They are normally young, male, poor and uneducated. The Branas study showed the majority of the shot persons carrying guns did not fit this demographic. When the victims are middle aged, or female, or successful in business or career, or have university degrees, they are exceedingly unlikely to be "criminal gang members shooting at each other."

In any case, the study clearly proves what it claims to prove.
Those carrying were more than four times as likely to be killed, as those who weren't.
It disproves they myth that you're safer if you carry a gun. The gun isn't protection. It gets the person carrying it killed far more often than it protects. Case proved.

That's just ONE of the gun-nuts' arguments disproved. But it was pretty obvious anyway. And they didn't even count the innocent bystanders who get shot by these loonies, or people who get shot "by mistake" as in the Zimmerman case.
These people would actually swell the numbers of people not carrying, who get shot.

What they should really do is a study of innocent people killed by guns, vs people who actually are necessarily killed to save lives. ( and most of those are pretty dubious ).
The ratio would be enormous, with innocents being the vast majority.

In any case, guns won't be banned in the US in my lifetime, or in many lifetimes. The fact remains that the pathetic wankers with gunfighter delusions are in both political parties, and candidates on both sides need the wanker vote.
And the people who DON'T like guns are apathetic.

The only thing that would change anything would be if the anti-gun lobby actually got organised. Because at the moment, they have nobbody to vote for. And I can't see that happening either.

So long as gun looniness stays where it belongs, I don't really care anyway.
The only reason I post on it is because I believe that pathetic wankers should be TOLD what they are, at every opportunity.
Because a lot of them are like Seth, full of these weird delusions that they are responsible, rational, defenders of society, like Dirty Harry.

[MrJonno]

You don't have to go very far to work out why people who carry guns are more likely to get shot. You have people hearing saying that its a sensible action to draw a gun on someone trying to mug you as obviously losing your wallet is more logical to them than escalating the situation with lethal weaponary

[mistermack]

It's also absolutely obvious that the more people who carry a gun, the more muggers will carry guns.

If I was a mugger, and a high proportion of people were carrying guns, then I would of course get a gun, before I went mugging. That situation already exists to a degree in America.

[colubridae]

You have people hearing saying that its a sensible action to draw a gun on someone trying to mug you as obviously losing your wallet is more logical to them than escalating the situation with lethal weaponary

Just because giving up your wallet is of little concern to you, doesn't mean you are right.

Who the fuck are you to say that I shouldn't defend the things that are important to me?

Who the fuck are you to declare that your view of the world is superior to mine?

Some things mean more to me than others, how dare you and your ilk tell me what should or should not be important in my life.

If it's not worth risking your life for, fine don't risk your life for it. It's your choice. But how dare you dictate to me what is or isn't important to me in my life.
You live your life the way you want, I'll live mine the way I want.
If you want to hand over your wallet/life/whatever to the first scumbag that comes along that's your choice. I'll defend your choice at all costs.

But don't tell me what I should or should not do when confronted with any situation

It's arrogant, ill-mannered and self-rigtheous. Just like chrisians


For Jimc
There you go jim, a nice long meangingless anti-american rant. True they stood their ground as best they could.
So much for your 'fact finding thread'

You should aplogise to gallstones for the jibe about insularity.
You should apologise for your jibe to me about getting a grip.

I apologise to you for comparing you to a skepchick. It was uncalled for.

[Seth]

It's also absolutely obvious that the more people who carry a gun, the more muggers will carry guns.

If I was a mugger, and a high proportion of people were carrying guns, then I would of course get a gun, before I went mugging. That situation already exists to a degree in America.

Actually, you'll find if you ask criminals, which several researchers have done, you'll find that they are LESS likely to engage in personal crimes like robbery in places where concealed carry is lawful, because their intent is to get the cash, not get shot. This is one of the reasons why, in places where concealed carry is lawful, violent crime rates make substantial drops and stay down.

Criminals are cowards, you see, and they are not out there to get shot, and when they don't know whether or not their next victim is going to be armed, they are more careful and selective about who they victimize. As I said before, criminals are very adept at reading body language and the smart ones carefully evaluate a potential victim before deciding to attack. One does not even have to carry a gun to capitalize on this fact, one need only walk like a wolf instead of a sheeple, and that will substantially reduce the potential that a criminal will view you as a victim.

Carrying a gun is a good way to help you stay situationally aware because it's a reminder that life is not safe and oblivious sheeple get eaten.

[Seth]

You don't have to go very far to work out why people who carry guns are more likely to get shot. You have people hearing saying that its a sensible action to draw a gun on someone trying to mug you as obviously losing your wallet is more logical to them than escalating the situation with lethal weaponary

You don't shoot someone because they want your wallet, it's illegal to do so. You shoot them because they have a weapon or have engaged in behavior that gives you a reasonable belief that you are in imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury. That's the only legal justification you have.

However, you're not required to inquire as to the intent or seriousness of the armed threat you're presented with, you are permitted to react to the evidence of your eyes. If someone produces a gun, or produces a knife and is within 20 feet of me and shows an intent to use it to facilitate a robbery, thereby placing me in fear for my life or safety, I'm very likely going to shoot that person and will be justified in doing so.

Now, in Colorado that rule is modified by the "Castle Doctrine" law we have here that gives me the right to absolute safety within my home. That law says that if a person makes an "uninvited entry" to a residence with the intent to commit another crime (any crime) within other than the uninvited entry, and that intruder uses, or reasonably leads me to believe that he is about to use ANY DEGREE of physical force, NO MATTER HOW SLIGHT (even trying to shove past me to escape) against ANY occupant of the residence, I am legally entitled to use deadly physical force. And if I do so under those provisions, I am immune from both criminal and civil liability.

But again, it's not permissible to shoot someone merely because they have your TV or jewelry in their hands when you encounter them in your bedroom hallway in the middle of the night. But if they have a weapon, or move towards me or another occupant, or do anything but run away or surrender instantly, they can be shot.

It's about the right to personal safety in the face of a potentially deadly physical attack, not about your wallet. The wallet may be the motive for the robbery, but the threat of the use of physical force to compel me to surrender my wallet is something else entirely, and I'm permitted to respond to that threat appropriately, as the law allows, because I do not have to trust that the mugger will not harm me. I may lawfully assume from the fact that he has a weapon that he WILL harm me, and I may defend myself.

This is why burglars in the US very often do NOT carry guns or other weapons. They want the swag, but they don't want to give the homeowner any reason to shoot them. That's also the reason that US burglars generally commit "cold" burglaries, which means they carefully scope out the house to make sure nobody is home before breaking in so they don't get shot dead. On the other hand, in the UK, "hot" burglaries are quite common and burglars will enter occupied homes knowing that the occupants do not have firearms available to them and have been well trained by their government (under penalty of law) to not resist being burglarized lest they be prosecuted for harming the burglar.

I prefer our system, where burglars and muggers are afraid of getting shot dead. It lowers the incentive for them to engage in such crimes rather a lot.

[Seth]

Can't be too careful around people who casually use the word 'tyrant' in conversation

Just don't try to be a tyrant and you have nothing to worry about.

[Seth]

Would-be tyrants are fully aware of this, which is why we don't have many instances of the attempt over here. Such would-be tyrants tend to crop up in places like banana republics and socialist societies where the citizenry is ALREADY largely disarmed.

My country is not a banana republic. We have tight gun control. We also have a government that is more to be trusted that anything the USA has ever unearthed.
http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/new-zealan ... -cw-105485

That it is more trusted doesn't mean it deserves to be trusted, it just means Kiwis are naive children who don't understand that any government can turn into a tyranny given the right circumstances, and the only remedy for such tyranny when it happens (just ask the Germans) is an armed citizenry willing to use force to take out a tyrannical government.

Our enviable position as having the world's most trustworthy government has nothing to do with citizenry carrying guns, because they do not.

Your position is very tenuous, and if things go badly for you someday, which they might, you will be slaves to whomever does have the guns. I saw a really bad NZ version of "Red Dawn" (well, about 10 minutes of it) called "Yesterday, when the war began" that involved some unidentified asian country invading NZ and how a bunch of dipshit teenagers tried to stay free. I don't know how it ended, but if it ended with anything other than their getting slaughtered, my willing suspension of disbelief would have been nonexistent. I thought what I saw was pretty accurate in that these fuckwits don't have any weapons with which to fight, and when they steal ONE from a dead soldier, one of the fuckwits uses it to shoot at a helicopter that's looking for them rather than hiding, which results in the whole place being blown up by jets with bombs.

I may have to watch the whole thing just so I can point out how well and truly fucked you Kiwis are if somebody decides to take over your country, much less if your government turns on you like a rabid dog, which happens all the time, especially where trusting fools let their government disarm them.

Also, Seth, your naive view that carrying a gun adds to safety is just not correct. The University of Pennsylvania study by Prof. Branas et al shows that those who carry a gun increase the odds of getting shot by 450%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2759797/
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/ ... shot-more/[/quote]

This bullshit study has already been debunked.

[Seth]

The sick gun enthusiasts seem to think that guns are a solution, when they are, in fact, a major part of the problem.

They are both a problem and a solution. So long as criminals have access to weapons that can cause lethal harm (any kind of weapons, not just firearms) it is necessary for law-abiding, innocent citizens to be able to arm themselves for self defense, and in all cases law abiding citizens must be permitted to carry arms that are compact, easy to use and as effective as humanly possible at terminating a lethal threat presented by a criminal.

Since criminals have always and will always be able to have access to lethal weapons (and in fact come with two of them attached to the ends of their arms), from rocks and clubs to machine guns and bottles filled with gasoline, it is therefore necessary for law abiding citizens to have perpetual easy access and be permitted to carry at their option, the very best defensive tool ever invented for personal self defense against criminal attack: the handgun.

In the hands of a criminal, firearms are a problem. In the hands of a law abiding citizen, they are a solution.

And it is utterly immoral and reprehensible for anyone, particularly idiots and hoplophobes who think that guns are bad, to use the force of government to disarm OTHERS so that they are rendered helpless in the face of criminal attack.

It's fine for YOU to decide to be a helpless sheeple and not carry defensive arms, but neither you nor anyone else has any right whatsoever to dictate to ME, or anyone else, what they may carry and use for personal defense against criminal attack.

[Seth]

Bringing this shit on topic (not that I derailed this thread several times).

I think a lot of people, me included, think that by choosing to own a gun one is giving into one's irrational fears. Fears like thinking you're going to be the victim of an unlikely crime even though crime rates are always dropping and that crime will somehow be prevented by carrying a gun at all times.

Just giving some perspective from my side. I don't live in fear of my safety. But I think I would if I owned a gun.

Cart before the horse fallacy.

The first question you need to address is whether or not your lack of fear for your safety is rational. Clue: it's not rational, because you are in danger. How much danger is a matter for debate, and depends on where you live and what you do, but there is ALWAYS some risk that you will be randomly chosen to be victimized by a violent criminal in a manner that could result in death or serious harm to you or your family. That fact is true worldwide, because there is NO nation on earth where violent crime is absent. And as it happens, the UK is one of the more violent first-world countries, more so in fact than the United States when all forms of criminal violence (not just gun homicides) are included. London is one of the most violent cities in Europe these days, and street crime is much more common than it is here in the US.

Next, you have to decide whether you are willing to be (or have your family) sacrificed to the politics of crime statistics by allowing your government to use statistical arguments to disarm YOU, or whether you believe as I do that you are an individual with an individual right to defend yourself against a criminal attack should it occur, regardless of what the statistical chances of that attack occurring might be, and that no person or government has the power to reduce the value of your life to that of a statistic and use that statistic to disarm you.

I don't live in fear because I carry a gun, I live free of fear because I carry a gun. I know that no matter how small the statistical chance that I will be victimized is, that I am fully prepared and qualified to defend myself, my family, and others around me in the unlikely event that some criminal does decide to act. I've gone 58 years without having to kill a criminal and I hope most fervently to live out the rest of my life without having to do so, but I have used my firearm on several occasions to thwart potential attacks without ever discharging it, which further proves that carrying my pistol is a good, rational idea.

Because I choose to carry a firearm, I am safer, my family is safer, and society is safer, and we can all be less fearful of being harmed by violent criminals.

[Seth]

In a way, though, it still makes the point - carry guns, for whatever reason, and you're more likely to die...

How do you figure? It seems to me that the only point it's making is that if you're in a gang, you're more likely to die, and incidentally if you're in a gang you might be illegally carrying a firearm when that happens. In order for it to prove anything about any other reasons for carrying a gun, you'd have to do targeted studies, and carefully too, if you actually wanted results that tell you something about the real world. One would have to be very careful not to confuse "if you're more likely to die, you might carry a gun" with "if you carry a gun, you're more likely to die". Many people who carry guns do so because for one reason or another, be it a job that has them handling valuables, or pre-existing threat to their life, or perhaps they live in a bad part of town and they know it, and carry a gun because of that. In any of those cases their risk to be shot is naturally higher than normal. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that a courier who handles jewelry was more likely to be shot than a McDonald's employee, but it wouldn't be on account of whether either of them was carrying a gun.

I suppose that makes sense in a society where hand-guns are prevalent, and gun-crimes are high.

I still don't think I have got the point across to US forum members how utterly weird the whole thing seems from the outside...

It's weird to you because the inhabitants of the UK, NZ, and most other nations are of a servile and malleable mindset and are vulnerable to the propaganda that their government uses to keep them in line, and disarmed. You're sheeple, and sheeple can't imagine anything other than what's right in front of their noses.

And that is not a blanket criticism, simply trying to get you guys to see that what you consider normal in the sense of guns and society is a statistical outlier as far as the rest of the developed world is concerned...

Fucking right we are a statistical outlier. We're quite literally the only sane, free nation left on the planet, excepting perhaps only Switzerland. The rest of the planet is fucking insane and abnormal and has succumbed to the propaganda of tyranny and everyone is now enslaved to whomever holds the guns. You are a slave to your government masters because you are physically incapable of standing up to them if they become tyrants. You are not prepared mentally or physically to retake your country from a despot, so you will live in slavery forever.

Not me. Liberty or death.

[Svartalf]

Seven posdts in a row, nice set.
but tl:dr.

[Clinton Huxley]

Poor Seth. He has made himself a fortress. No-one can get in. Fortunately, no-one can get out either.

[Seth]

There are really two separate arguments

1) American society is so violent that the only way for a 'law-abiding' citizen to defend himself is to have a firearm

Fact is that UK society is far more violent than the US, and the other fact is that in ANY society, the only way for a law abiding citizen to defend himself is to do it himself. This is because no police force anywhere in the world that is not a tyrannous organ of despotism that abuses everyone in sight will be around when the individual law abiding citizen is suddenly and unexpectedly victimized by a criminal. That being the case, it behooves all law abiding citizens to be prepared with the tools and training needed to effectively defend themselves should such an attack occur. As it happens, the single most effective and flexible defensive tool in existence is the handgun. It is small, easy to carry and conceal, and can be used to project varying levels of force, from threat to lethal force, depending on the severity of the attack one is subject to.

When someone develops a Star Trek "phaser" that is 100 percent reliable in instantly stopping an attacker, no matter what the weather (wind makes OC/Mace ineffective), target distance (hand weapons like knives require you to allow the assailant too close), or clothing/mental state of the attacker (Tasers are not effective through heavy clothing and OC may not stop persons on drugs) then I will gladly advocate for it. But until then, the handgun is the best available defensive tool and therefore every law abiding citizen on the planet who chooses to carry one should be permitted to do so.

2) This is a good thing

They are are actually two very different points 1) is understandable and may have some truth to it 2) is so fucked it that its hard to comprehend by anyone who istn a psychopath

That means you're the psychopath in this scenario, because nobody who actually carries a gun lawfully for self defense thinks it's a good thing that society is violent, we simply recognize the facts before our eyes and respond accordingly and prudently to the inherent risks of living in a world that contains violent criminals.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Poor Seth. He has made himself a fortress. No-one can get in. Fortunately, no-one can get out either.

But what view from that mountain top.