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First paragraph - paranoia at its finest, you are more likely to harm a friend/relative than fend off a criminal with a gun.
How? I know of many gun owners who have owned guns for decades and havent harmed anybody.
Time to break out the greenProtection or Peril? An Analysis of Firearm Related Deaths in the Home." The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 314, no. 24, June 1986, pp. 1557-60.
43:1 more likely to kill someone you know accidentally than an intruder.
and<link removed as it was preventing me posting, you can find it by looking up firearm injury U.S. UPenn it is an official resource book regarding fire arm injury
http://ww w.uphs.upenn.e du/ficap/resourcebo ok/pdf/monograph.p df
There it is with spaces>This one is less science and stats (but still loads of it) tabular and graph form should help.
Incidences by trained police make my later arguments weaker (a policeman shot and killed his 17 old daughter after she tries to sneak back into the house after a late night out. aimed for the leg, hit femur, ricocheted upwards. died in hospital)Quote:
They let the police do it, trained professionals
How do you suppose the police would stop instances like the batman massacre or the one seth posted? You need personal protection in many instances. Being proactive is way better than being reactive. If its about training, many americans do train themselves in handling guns. Untrained people actually cant shoot. When I visited the US, I met with some friends from BD and they took me to the Range and we all shot some guns and had a lot of fun. The guy that taught me, well I have to say he is simply awesome the way he handles guns. Be it handguns or assault rifles. He wouldnt and hasnt hurt anybody, heck he makes his own bullets at home.
By being better equipped, better trained and more knowledgeable than the ordinary citizen. Do you think you have what it takes to handle a hostage situation, if a man takes a child hostage as a meat shield and keeps firing at an ordinary but armed citizen, what do you think is going to be the result?
What is going to be the result of encouraging people who dont have bullet proof armour to engage in a gunfight with a man looking for death and equipped for a massacre? A massacre like this is the double edged sword of gun freedom. Massacres dont occur at the rate and frequency that they occur in other developed nations. You can say people kill people as much as you want, but you have to accept that guns do play a role. Trained in the ability to shoot is not the same as trained in the ability to shoot to kill, to deal with perhaps multiple hostiles, to adequately take on an opponent better armed than you unless you carry an automatic SMG/rifle and wear body armour all the time. Real life has no respawns and the last thing you want to do is bring a gun out when the crowd and mob are running around, they hear gunshots, they dont know how many gunmen, they see another man they dont know pull out a pistol. Do you run? do you seek protection? bam. Sorry, that was another gunmen. Police come in, they are told there are 2 gunmen in the building but there are 5 non uniformed people with guns out. Shoot on sight to disable/kill (before being shot at) becomes a lot riskier and worse for police.
Not everyone can dedicate the amount of time that man in your anecdote does to guns.Quote:
Stuff like this can be traced and controlled. If its blackmarket, it can still be traced
Like the drug war. You keep spending billions to find a needle in a haystack. The whole point of the black market is that it cannot be traced cuz there is no paperwork involved.
Actually you can trace it, you dont need paperwork. News organisations have the info to adequately show the public the drug routes in mexico. THE DRUG ROUTES. They can show how its siphons up, which cities the drugs pass, where the drugs are taken by sea. You seriously think that educated people who specialise in the field cant give you a highly educated guess as to who (organisation) is supplying and roughly where they are operating from? Whereas people who have a journalism degree just do a little digging and it pops out? The black market is most surely logged by the US government, it cant be shut down, but they keep tabs on it. CIA have tabs on explosives moving around. FBI likely have a good idea of arms and drug movements. You think busts are conducted because of one rat? no. Weeks into months of collecting info then coordinated raids at several locations.Quote:
forcing an otherwise normal medical student to buy a AR assault rifle from a potentially tracked dealer would have raised alarm bells. Why would he want an assault weapon? Why is he also stockpiling explosive material? Why did he order bullet proof gear recently?
Agreed. Certain types of weapons have ot be controlled. Fully/Semi automatic machine guns, 50 cal sniper rifles etc., I wouldnt mind kevlar though, atleast its defensive. It doesnt hurt anyone.
But you only buy kevlar expecting to get into a gunfight. This limits it to official purposes, drug dealers (etc) and those that are paranoid and mentally unstable enough to warrant getting onto a government watch list. When asked why you want to buy kevlar, how would you answer other than "Im expecting to get shot at by police or get into a turf war with the crips"Quote:
Zimmerman was packing, ignored the actual police and resulted in the death of a 17 year old. You think that is off topic but it isnt.
Well you know, stuff like that happens. But then again there are numerous instances when people get killed, assaulted, raped, molested, mugged just cuz they werent armed. Recently a 17 yr old girl was molested in full public view by a gang of 20 goons for 30 mins before police got there and rescued her. I wish she had a gun and shot a couple of them *CENSORED* dead. When you talk about actual instances, there are many examples on both sides.
1 seventeen year old. 20 goons. Most likely a handgun, being a high school girl it would have to be relatively small, might even be a revolver. Highest number killed - 3? 4? (gun shot wounds can be survived). Most likely number of them killed? 1? before the rest of them turn a rape into a murder. This is an instance where gun or lack of gun could play no part in saving her.Anyway, I support gun rights. I do think that certain military grade weapons should be banned like fully automatic or semi automatic machine guns, 50 Cal Sniper rifles etc., These are designed to take people down in a war. These are also not useful while defending yourself.
I would however support owning handguns and shotguns, hunting rifles, tasers, pepper sprays etc., for personal protection.
I am a liberal. But this is one conservative view point I support
Relevant. This man has a concealed weapons permit.