I made that point, IN THIS SPECIFIC CASE, it did work, but that IS NOT THE NORM! The norm is when you have a gun in your house you are MORE LIKELY to injure yourself or hurt someone you love or shoot someone you mistook for a criminal.

She got lucky. I am glad she did. But a minute here or a second there, or if she didn't hear them sooner, instead of having her gun drawn, she could have been reaching for it with her back turned, and certainly at that point things would have been different.

Think of it this way. When someone is out to harm you, it is no different than shark stalking a seal. Certainly if the seal gets lucky it can avoid the attack. But that shark is relying on stealth. The reason she got the drop on them was because she had enough time.

Thought experiment.

Lets say we are face to face literally. I have a gun to your head. Now try to reach for your gun. Do you think you could if I had the drop on you, with my gun at your head, draw yours and pull your trigger before I pull mine?

With assholes who want to rob, be it with a gun or without, are looking for an easy target and even if they know they are going to encounter another human, are still going to look to sneak up on them. The main reason what worked for her wasn't that she was armed, but moreso that the guys who wanted to rob her house did not expect her to be there. If they did, and didn't care, I have no doubt they would have had the advantage.

Evidence of this? I posted the evidence in the other thread recently that only about 600 odd accidents occur every year with guns (that includes hunting accidents), while even the conservative study suggested that over 60,000 crimes per year are prevented by armed citizens, the NRA's study suggested over 2 million which even I consider probably a stretch. Granted, both of those studies are old (early 90's). Do you have newer statistics?

And the alternative is she wouldn't have had a gun at all and she would have been completely at their mercy regardless of when she heard them. How is that any better?

Completely depends on your training and whether you are actually prepared mentally to pull the trigger. If the person holding the gun to my head is well trained and has killed before or at least has psyched themselves up with the intent to kill me, I am most likely eating a bullet. If they are using the gun to intimidate and have not made the conscious decision to commit murder they will most likely freeze up giving me ample time to draw and fire. Unless you have already made the decision to kill me, by the time you realize I am drawing a gun and make the decision it will be too late. If you have already made the decision to kill me then I have nothing to lose from trying anyway do I? 

No no no the reality is that Beyond is Dirty Harry and we owe him an oath to no regulations on anything, fuck speed limits in school zones.  Let our libertarian delusional friend here brandish his Paul Hogan invisible knife because feeling good is much better than reality. He feels rich, loves weapons so we are all subject to his religion because he knows what "true" freedom is, and idiots like you and me don't.

We owe Beyond our gratitude and thanks for all the conflict that continues despite his cries that nothing is wrong. Everyone needs a 50oz soda and tommy gun drum clip with 100 rounds. He is just being a good daddy telling us the cool aid is not poison but cotton candy.

Exactly what am I forcing you to do? If you don't want a gun, don't buy one. If you don't want a 50oz soda, don't buy it. 

Compared to some countries (Canada, UK, France) our violent crime rate exceeds theirs even if you eliminated 100% of the guns. Switzerland and Israel both have much lower gun crime rates than the US despite having much more relaxed gun control laws. When you consider that violent crime in the US is extremely heavy in some areas, while quite low in others, it doesn't take much to determine that legal gun ownership isn't the main source of our crime problems. 

Who said anything about legalizing child molestation? Strawman much?

Sure, maybe they could legally own a gun, they could also own one illegally- since they are committing a crime I doubt they would worry about committing another. It is fairly easy to purchase an illegal gun, I could get one delivered to my door within 24 hours if I so desired and if I am willing to drive, probably pick one up within a few hours. Guns are neither rare nor expensive in the US.

If guns were illegal, then Grandma would probably follow the law and not have a gun and you have a guarantee that only the bad guys will have a gun. Since they are legal, the criminals have a 50/50 chance of running into someone who owns a gun. Approximately 50% of households have at least one gun, now how many of those households keep the gun in a location where it would be accessible in such a situation is difficult to say.

Do you seriously believe that even a 100% ban would prevent criminals from breaking the law? Why is a criminal going to worry about breaking a law? Especially if the law they are going to break is murder. Once you decide to murder someone, I doubt you are worried about following gun laws.  

There is nothing you can do to prevent the occasional crazy from committing a mass murder, they happen in every country regardless of what gun control laws you have. Fortunately, those kinds of nutcases are rare.

It has been used twice the first time obviously successfully and the second time the rebellion lost. Our country is still very young, a couple hundred years is nothing. Not to mention the role it has played in wars along our borders such as the War of 1812 and the Spanish-American War. Hopefully, we will never get to the point where it is needed again, and I seriously doubt it will happen during my lifetime. But history has shown that every country on the planet has become tyrannical, it is utterly foolish to assume that just because we are a democratic republic that somehow it will never happen here. Hitler was democratically elected. Just because there is a little piece of paper promising our government will not become tyrannical by no means guarantees that it never will. He who fails to learn from history is doomed to repeat it. 

ok say the gun laws become much tighter or the ban them all together.  what makes you think that will stop ANYTHING? only crooks would have guns then and crooks prefer unarmed citizens. now i understand that gun violence is at an all time high but stricter gun laws or banning them will do NOTHING yes gun violence may go down a little bit but the guns would be in the hands of the people we are trying to protect ourselves from...  im liberal about most things but i dont agree with that... like i said im not trying to start an argument im just stating my opinion as a gun owner myself if someone busted in my house i would be secure in the fact that i can defend myself having had firearms training... now what i think should happen is that anyone who wants to buy a gun for the first time should take a training course to be safe... also blaming guns for killing people is like blaming mcdonalds for making someone fat...  i would love some feedback on this

It isn't. All the data clearly points to gun violence being significantly lower than it has been for decades (since the 60's). Ironically, it was during the time of long wait periods and the assault weapons ban when gun violence was at all time highs. Gun violence steadily fell at the end of the 90's and throughout the 2000's as many states legalized concealed carry and the assault weapons ban expired. Anyone who looks at the statistics will realize that our crime problem is significantly concentrated on a few demographics, specifically among the young black male population which has a murder rate six times higher than average as both victims and perpetrators. Furthermore, it is significantly concentrated in a handful of urban populations. If you are not black in the US the odds of you being a victim of murder is pretty close to average for the developed world. It is even lower if you avoid the worst cities and the southern border.  

http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/pdf/htus8008.pdf

Except the guns are already here. Perhaps you could limit them to some extent if they were not, although even that is questionable, look at how prevalent illegal drugs like cocaine are despite being illegal and not domestically produced. Here in the US there is estimated to be over 200 million firearms. How would you get rid of all of them?

And automatic weapons? Virtually never used in the commission of a crime. How would outlawing a weapon that is never used to commit a crime reduce the amount of crime? Which shooting spree used an automatic weapon to kill dozens? The last shootout I remember where automatic weapons were involved was the North Hollywood bank robbery in California and the only people who died were the two robbers. The police had to go to a local firearms dealer to get guns powerful enough to penetrate the robbers' body armor.  

I'm fully on Beyond's side of this.

There are almost 25 million guns in my state. THAT THEY KNOW OF.  Which means... probably closer to 35 million.

Both my parents and I have a couple guns that even if the government went through all records of gun ownership and took them from everyone, would not show up. 

Sure, it takes a criminal background check to buy a gun from a dealer.

What if Joe Smoe is selling a gun of his and I decided to buy it?  No criminal background check, no transfer of some record that I'm the new owner, nothing.  And Joe Smoe, he got that gun from his great Uncle's trailer when he passed away 23 years ago.  And then poor Joe passes away a couple years later after the gun is sold to whoever.  How many times do you think this exact type of transfer of guns has happened over the past 50 years?

How many times have criminals broke into a car or house and stolen guns that are still not accounted for?

I have an Uncle that snuck a handgun down to his summer residence in Mexico in pieces, during different trips, through the airports in checked in baggage.  He managed it without a hitch.

So go ahead and illegalize all guns.  I'll still own one.  So will my parents.  A hell of a lot of, for the most part, law abiding people I know will still own them.  And don't worry about ammo.  We've got a little packed away.

Why?  Because we don't want to be the only person without a gun if a criminal breaks into our houses and threatens our family.

Guns are a fact of life in the US and are here to stay.

well i do see your point,  but yea i agree the automatic weapons are unnecesary unless your in the military... ive heard alot on the issue im for keeping the 2nd amendment right.. yes this amendment was written back in the day.. but if someone were to outlaw guns do you honestly think murder will stop? there are plenty of other ways to kill eachother... but the problem i have is there are stupid assholes out there who use gun violence on impulse or premeditation.. and that yucks it up for the rest of us..

I agree totally.  You want to own a weapon, fine.  Go hunting, fine.  Shoot the occasional bad person, fine.  None of these activities require a semi-automatic, let alone a 100 rounds.  If you are that bad of a shot, you need to not own a weapon.  Personally, I believe we should be limited to something like the 25-30 saddle carbine my mom owned.  (Think Rooster Cogburn.)  Lever action, open sights, light, almost no kick, and extremely accurate. 

(Sheeze, I didn't realize it was an antique and she gave it away!)

 Remember Charles Whitman, Austin, Texas, 1966 ?   He killed ten of his victims with a scoped, bolt-action hunting rifle while on the observation deck of the UTA clock tower.  Are you okay with that class of weapon ?  Gun control advocates already have these weapons on their agenda and refer to these types of rifles as "sniper rifles". 

 Incidentally, I usually don't trust the motives of anyone, particularly elected officials, who claim to want to ban only certain types of commonly owned weapons.  Such approaches are intentionally misleading and presage a continued series of ever restrictive laws until civilian gun ownership itself is a crime. And that is the goal.

  For example, the whole anti-smoking movement began when airline stewardesses started to complain about the patrons who legally smoked aboard the planes.  Successive laws were passed which constantly expanded where one could and could not smoke.  Today even privately owned businesses such as restaurants, bars, pool halls, etc  are not allowed to decide on their own how to accommodate the preferences of their customers.  ( Here's a novel approach, let the market decide whether people will patronize a smoking or non-smoking establishment, not anti-smoking crusaders )

  Now years later, there are movements to restrict smoking in one's own home.    Incidentally, Democrat, Frank Lautenberg  ....who was instrumental is passing some of these anti-smoking laws... is behind a push to ban "certain" types of weapons.  If anyone believes he will  stop only with the banning of military style weapons then they are willfully blind.    These government prohibitionists are evil, not stupid.  They know what works and what doesn't.

                    Does anyone want to quess what the authers of the 2nd ammendment  [Monroe, Madison, Jefferson] would have written if they had even an inkling of .50 cal. semi-automatics with 50 round clips? Single shot muzzle loaders was all they knew has firearms,  and hostile Indians on the frontier was all they were concerned with.   Don't forget [has most gun-lovers do] the first line of the 2nd ammendment reads,  "To insure a WELL REGULATED MILITIA..."  .So excuse me if the rest of the constitution makes it clear that "Regulated Militia" are government concerns, not privete ownership.  Somewhere in Americas history SCOTUS made a ruleing about "firearms being only what one man can carry in his arms"  otherwise the NRA would be clammering for ownership of cannons, howitzers, recoiless rifles...etc.                    Do you realy think the founding fathers would have wanted 30 round pistols  and 50 round rifles in privete "unregulated" hands.  I  think they were too smart for that.  

Exactly my point. The correlation between gun laws and crime rate is hardly strong. There are dozens of other factors and several factors that are much more important than the rate of gun ownership. If you are attempting to predict where the most murders are going to happen, the guns laws are an unimportant factor. 

Demanding that individuals be unable to protect themselves in the name of the greater good is immoral. Society would be much safer if we simply locked up everyone in a high risk demographic for committing crime, just because something may make society overall more safe does not mean it is a good idea.

Yet if you remove drug/gang related violence the homicide rate is suddenly right in the middle of the pack. So no, the gun culture is not the major contributor to those numbers. We have a homicide problem because of our drug and gang problem. We do not have a higher homicide rate across the board, the sources of our high homicide rate are isolated among a few demographics and a few geographic locations. And a review of state laws will show that state gun control laws are not an accurate predictor of crime rates.  

I think it is quite clear that the founders intended firearms to be held by the populace for the main purpose of overthrowing the standing army. That would imply an ability to have weapons that are powerful enough to battle against soldiers in the US Army. Indeed, there was significant argument over whether there even should be a standing army. You can read the debates where some argued that a militia could replace a standing army while others argued that we needed both. Then they argued about whether the militia should be subject to federal control or the states. The argument against authorizing the federal government to arm the militia was the fear that they would fail to do so and effectively disarm the people by not forming a militia, which is ultimately why the duty of arming was left to the people. 

http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7048612M/Debates_and_other_proceedings_of_the_Convention_of_Virginia (argument starting on page 271)

James Madison commented on the issue in Federalist 46 where it is clear that he imagined widespread citizen ownership of weapons.

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm

Richard Henry Lee wrote in his "Letters from the Federal Farmer to the Republican"

Clearly, the term "militia" was understood to have a much broader context than the National Guard as many in the gun control crowd try to pretend. 

The initial wording of the Second Amendment was 

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llac&fileName=001/llac001.db&recNum=227

Clearly putting the right of the people separate. 

Reading commentary on the Constitution from the time it is clear that the Second Amendment was widely understood as providing individuals the right to bear arms. For example, William Rawle commented,

http://www.constitution.org/wr/rawle-00.htm

The idea the the right to bear arms is an individual right has also been consistently supported by SCOTUS. In United States v. Miller 307 US 174 Justice McReynolds wrote for a unanimous court,

The Court actually upheld regulation of sawed off shotguns because no evidence was presented to them that a sawed off shotgun was a military weapon. Following the logic of this decision, you do not have a right to a bb gun since it has no military application, but you do have a right to an M-16 because the former does not have a "reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia".

http://www.oyez.org/cases/1901-1939/1938/1938_696

It is clear that government can regulate where guns can be carried and it can require background checks to prevent felons or the incompetent from getting firearms. It has the power to require registration, and the Court is apparently willing to give more leeway to the government the more dangerous a weapon is. For example, the requirements to purchase a machine gun are much more time consuming than to purchase a rifle or typical handgun. Although in recent cases District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago the Court made it clear that government cannot use a burdensome permitting process as a method of denying firearm ownership. 

From my point of view, ownership of all personal firearms is protected by the Second Amendment and the remaining state laws that are a barrier to this are unconstitutional. However, it is reasonable that government has the authority to have a basic permitting process, provided that process is conducted with a level of efficiency with the goal to prevent criminals from getting them. When the process is deliberately slowed or the process of getting a permit becomes burdensome to the point that the average law abiding citizen cannot get one, the process is unconstitutional.

Given that the main purpose of the Second Amendment was to provide the people a method to fight the US military, I believe our founders would include all standard military weapons. The amendment is pointless if the people are not allowed to have weapons that can effectively be used to resist our standing army.   

I fully agree with Prozac on this one.

Taking guns out of the equation for a moment, think about all the other methods of terror that are out there. Anyone that has taken a couple of chemistry courses could rig up some serious explosives if they so desired, with everyday household detergents and a couple of other things. What laws should we pass to prevent people from doing so ? Where does the law end ? Smoking laws being one good example. In this state, if you have children in the car with you and are caught smoking, the cops can actually fine you or all the way up to arresting you if they so desire. I remember a couple of years ago when it first went into effect, because there was a HUGE controversy over a mother going to jail for smoking a cigarette with a kid in the car.

Shit, I even had a job where you could not smoke in your own damned car or in the parking lot. When I was on break, I had to ride the bike down the street to smoke a cigarette. People with closed vehicles and cars had to do the same. I lasted a month and quit. I coudn't work for a company that told me I couldn't smoke in the parking lot.

I have a friend that has suffered from severe sinus problems for years. He told me the only thing that REALLY helped him was Sudafed. Don't know about anywhere else, but in this state, your only allowed to buy so many boxes of Sudafed before a red light goes up and they come after you due to the highly out of control meth epidemic that we have in this city. So he has pretty much quit taking it.  It is no longer over the counter and every time you buy it, they ask for your driver's license and enter your name and address into the computer.

Not a day goes by in this city, that it doesn't make the headlines  of the newspaper,that yet another meth lab has been busted and there is even a thing on the streets called "shoppers" where meth dealers hire several people to buy the amounts of sudafed to supply them with. There have been many arrests over that. Not to mention all of the people that have made headlines for going to work in places like Walgreens and throwing inventory out of the back door.

So certain over the counter meds, that you used to be able to just buy, are now being monitored by the government, yet it has not curbed the crime one bit. In fact, it has increased it.

So where do we draw the line on government control ? Call it slippery slope fallacy if you will, but I just see it more and more.

Hmm, on a another board that I play around on once in a awhile, a guy in England said that you might not have to worry about a gang shooting you. But that does not prevent them from using bricks, bats, and glass bottles to smash you in the head with and then beat you to death while you are down.

I don't know if anyone remembers, but back in the 80's, England was one of the first countries that had a group of skinhead thugs that liked to engage in what they called " Paki bashing".  The recent rise of immigrants from Pakistan and Asia caused several groups to go out " Paki bashing". They would corner an immigrant walking down the street and promptly beat him for as long as they wished. Sometimes to the point of permanent injury or death.  Not to mention setting immigrant owned businesses on fire, as well as apartment housing that had a large immigrant community.

I was watching Gangland the other night, and several neo-nazi gangs out there earn points for ganging up on homeless people, or people that they don't think are white and simply beating them with bats.

While I despise a group of cowards that need strength in numbers to beat on ONE defenseless individual, should we outlaw baseball bats too ?

  Afghanistan is a war-torn, Third World country.  Even in that bombed out, technologically deprived environment they have many, many gun smiths who reverse engineer existing weapon designs ( mostly AK assault rifles ) so that they maintain a sufficient level of weaponry to use against their enemies.  Their copies are crudely finished but are obviously suitably reliable for use in even the most unforgiving environment. 

So no, one needn't be an MIT graduate or have access to CNC lathes to manufacture this type of weapon.  The difficulty is only limited by one's determination.

A simple lathe in a machine shop would be all that one would need to build a weapon. I wonder how many unemployed machinists out there would be more than happy to work for a gang or individuals to manufacture a gun ?

A gang member is not going to buy a pistol the way that I did. When I walk into a gun store, I have to fill out an application, have a background check, and wait for approval. If I want to carry the thing, I have to go register with the state, take a class about gun safety AND have the permit with me.

A simple computer check will show that I own a .357 mag and a 9mm.

I doubt very seriously that someone who wants to commit a robbery or a murder would wish to have all of that public information.

Sure, they can buy them legally and file the serial numbers off, but being caught with a pistol that does not have a serial number in my state can land you some serious jail time, even if you have a permit to carry. A gun without a serial number is not a crime to be taken lightly. It's a felony in of itself.

That's why most criminals will buy one off the street with a serial number filed off, use it, and then dispose of it or sell it to someone else.

As for the gangbangers. They're breaking the law and probably committing felonies on a daily basis anyhow. What's a hot gun to someone like them ?

I wasn't implying there wouldn't be "home made" guns out there if guns were totally banned, just that it takes far more effort and skill to build em than it takes to make drugs, and therefore I think they'd be much rarer than drugs are if they had also been outlawed as long. This doesn't really have much to do with the topic though as there's no serious effort to ban guns altogether.

Uhm.  What?

Somehow comparing smoking to gun ownership is an enormously unsound argument.

I don't even understand what point you were trying to make.  But whatever that point was, it failed.

Because you're an idiot who thinks I was comparing guns to cigarettes, when I was comparing the culture of smoking to the culture of gun ownership.

Every other time you write a post, you make a complete fool of yourself.

No, sir.   Actually I don't.

Because if even "10%" of Americans owned guns, the occasional deranged psycho could still legally obtain guns and blow you away in your local quickymart.  That's the exact reason why I said that I wasn't sure what point you were trying to make but, whatever point you were trying to make, it failed regardless.  So this in no way can be comparable to how many people smoke.

Do you really think that if twice as many people smoked in America that it would be twice as easy to buy tobacco?

By the way, it's roughly 20 percent of Americans that smoke.  Not 10 percent.  I know you don't care to be accurate or anything, so feel free to ignore that.

You need to try and be a little more mature, Vastet.   You come off as being a little snot nosed kid that only knows enough to get themselves in trouble.   You are so completely certain that you understand everything (in other words you assume a lot of shit that is not factual) that you consistently make an ass of yourself.

Case in point.   You assumed that I thought you were comparing guns to cigarettes.   I did not assume that was what you meant, hence my comment stating my lack of understanding on what you meant. I did not assume of you but you did of me.  Who's the idiot?

And you seem to be an odd mix of being arrogant but being very insecure at the same time.   You're all bluster and bluff.   What's up with that?  

It comes off as you being really immature.

"That is just absurd. I have had a gun blow up in my face, it scares the shit out of you, but it isn't deadly. At worst you get small pieces of shrapnel that strike you leaving small cuts.  "

That is absurd. The gun that blew up in your face wasn't home made by a criminal hiding from the law.

"Criminalizing anything is easy. Effectively enforcing the law is another question entirely, assuming that because something is illegal that it will disappear is foolish given the hundreds of things that are illegal but are still used."

And yet the criminalisation of guns has never failed, rendering your argument as laughable.

"Then you should be more accurate"

I said for the purposes of my argument. You can take my words out of context, but you automatically lose when you do.

I don't consider your contention that gun violence is directly correlated to gun ownership as being based on reality.  How did you come to this conclusion?   Is there a scientific study that you can point to in order to support such a statement?   Or are you just making this argument up as we go along?

Common sense?

Having a culture of only 10% of Americans owning guns (which equals 30 million gun owners) does not equal there being no guns in America.

You seem to think that if fewer people in america have legal ownership of guns that there would be fewer criminals using guns.   I don't understand how you are confusing law abiding citizens with criminals.

You are putting forth an assertation that having the legal right to own guns increases the illegal use of the same.  

Prove it.

"Common sense" is not proof.

I don't have a study that refutes the simple logic that there is a god, because the burden of proof is not on me to refute it, the burden of proof rests on the person making such a statement.

You put forth that point of argument as being based on something, well what is it based on?

Or are you assuming the privilege that so many theists do on here?   "God exists, I contend, and it's your responsibility to provide proof that is not a factual statement."

No.   It's not my responsibility to disprove your unfounded made up beliefs.   Justify your own personally invented facts.