It is killing someone. Got it?
holy sh*t!
- Thread starter crazydoc
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How do you explain the state wide per capita violent crime in Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri? Way higher than New York State or Illinois?
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Yes. If you violently assault someone, your own death is one possible and justifiable outcome. Or would you prefer that the attacker kill the defenseless victim? Reality. It isn't rainbows and unicorns.
Handguns serve only one purpose. To kill people. Not all killing is illegal. Self defense being one case. I am not a pacifist. I have no problem killing someone who threatens my life.
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AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Hint: look at FBI UCR shooter demographics and plot vs state population demographics. It isn't pretty.
I live a few miles outside the county seat (~30k pop) of a small county (~65k pop) in a southern state. I served jury duty last summer on a murder & attempted murder trial. The event was a gang ambush of a guy in a different gang who had allegedly gunned down one of theirs (case unsolved). It happened in broad daylight at an apartment complex right after the lock downs began. Lots of kids and families home when it went down. Four shooters fired wildly at the target and his cousin (who was not the intended target, but was breaking parole for a drug charge with firearm possession enhancements at the time) using pistols.
They hit both, the cousin severely wounded in the legs and hips and the target in the foot. I cannot unsee the first responder video of the cousin writhing around on the floor in pain smearing his own blood all over the place. Both of these young men survived.*
One of the shooters was not as lucky. He was hit by one of his gang cohorts and died within the two minutes it took them to dump him at the nearby ER. Another of the shooters severely wounded himself in the hip/groin when stuffing his illegally possessed pistol into his waistband. He was involved in another shooting (along with several others) at the local mall.
Two of the six involved had been shot before. The two victims were in prison at the time of the trial for other violent and drug offenses.
I also cannot unhear the testimony of a fearful young mother who witnessed part of the event from an adjacent apartment where her mother and child were also present.
*Less than a year after the trial the original target was gunned down with an illegally possessed rifle outside the same apartment where the first ambush occurred. He was killed and his pregnant girlfriend was wounded and lost her baby.
This kind of stuff accounts for 50-60% of the violent crime in my area. Much of the rest is meth, fentanyl, and opioid dealers and users. A few percent is drunk angry idiots. At most 5% of the population are causing 90% of the crime. And the demographics don't lie. I'm certainly not giving up my right to self-defense with this stuff going on. At least it gets prosecuted here even if the judges are often too light on sentencing for repeat offenders, IMO.
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AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Then why are you ranting about handguns having one purpose? The purpose can be valid. Violent humans exist.
Because handguns are for *******.
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
What are you going to do when some thug mugs you with a pistol? Argue that the 2A is only for standing armies (which the founders did not want)? Pull a knife like a macho man? Tell him he's a pussy and offer to fight him bare-knuckles for your wallet and phone?
Or what about a small woman trying to defend herself from a stronger man? Or an older person confronted by a violent youth? Magical thinking and stupid platitudes don't work in the real world.
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Better than your fearmongering by a long stretch.
So, so much garbage in this thread. There's plenty of very strong evidence that gun control is quite effective. Even when it doesn't stop violent crime, it reduces the deaths caused by violent crime.
My personal take is that the increased laxity of gun laws is designed to jack up crime and feed the fear that AP seems so eager to truck in. When people are scared, they're far more likely to give up their freedom and give in to oppression and minority rule, which is what folks like the Federalist Society want. The irony, of course, is that all of this is done in the guise of supposedly protecting one particular freedom.
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
I'm not fearmongering at all. I'm prepared to deal with problems should they arise. Conversely, several of you are fearmongering about the vast majority of legal gun owners who pose zero danger to you.
Effective at what? Ceding more power to authoritarians?
What reduced both was tough on crime laws in the mid 90s such as the now-maligned three strikes laws.
What actually jacks up crime is laxity in prosecution and sentencing.
the Branch Covidians want. Or the "evil black guns" crowd.
It actually protects all freedom. If the people have no effective deterrent to tyranny we know what happens.
I'm not sure why "criminals don't obey laws in the first place" is such a difficult concept to grasp. That's why they're called "criminals." The last I checked, homicide, armed robbery, etc. are already illegal in all 50 U.S. states, yet they still happen using a variety of means. If they're committed with firearms versus knives, blunt objects, a chainsaw, hunting bow, car, machete or whatever, it's because the criminal had the intent to commit the crime. The weapon used is irrelevant.
I grew up in a small town, with a house full of always-loaded guns; ditto for everyone I knew. We all drove pickup trucks, and parked in the high school parking lot every day with a couple of guns hanging in the gun rack. It was legal back then, yet there was NEVER any thought of shooting someone; it never entered our minds. Why? Because we saw guns solely as tools for target shooting and hunting, and not as "instruments of slaughter." We were all taught stringent standards of gun safety, on top of traditional values instilled since a very early age.
If you don't want to kill somebody in cold blood, you won't, even if surrounded by a hundred capable weapons and immunity from prosecution. It's just that simple. If you don't want to drive drunk, you won't, even if furnished with a free car, free liquor and a legal contract saying you won't get in trouble for it. If you don't want to steal someone's money, you won't, even if you could become invisible and walk right in and out of their house with it. It's all about an act of the will, and 99.9999% of people don't will to do it, so they don't.
Speaking of that, where's the strong evidence that gun control lowers crime? I've yet to see it. In both red states with a strong gun culture and permitless carry, and vehemently anti-gun blue states where getting a concealed carry permit is nearly impossible, the majority of gun homicides involve gang and drug violence in the big cities. Which by the way, regardless of red or blue state, are virtually all majority-liberal. It's the mindset, worldview and mental state of the individual, not merely whether or not a gun is present (see 2nd paragraph). On that note, the vast majority of gun crime overall (and nearly ALL of it in the inner cities) is committed with stolen guns; a criminal committing yet another criminal act, not law-abiding Joe Blow Citizen.
As AnalogPackrat stated, sometimes nothing but conveying that you're armed and unafraid to defend yourself and others will deter the intentions of a criminal attacker. I personally know several people who have been spared from carjacking, burglary, kidnapping and aggravated assault, for the sole reason that they had a gun and demonstrated the fact that they were ready to defend themselves. All of these thwarted attacks happened in cities or big tourist-trap vacation towns.
My wife and I own handguns for the exclusive purpose of plinking, and others exclusively for hunting. All are specialized, "one trick ponies," that for various reasons are not even remotely practical to carry for self-defense. And, certainly not optimal for committing violent criminal acts. I would digress that the sole purpose of all handguns is to kill people.
We do agree that self-defense is a universal right. A reasonable, responsible, mature person who carries a gun for the defense of themself and their loved ones will readily tell you that they do so to neutralize an imminent threat to life and limb, not to "kill" per se. Should one ever find themself in that unfortunate scenario, drawing and firing a gun is ALWAYS the absolute final recourse when all others have failed.
Finally, on a different note, if "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" clause of the 2A refers only to the police and military proper, then we also must uniformly apply that correct interpretation throughout the Constitution, as in the 10A, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the Police and Military."
I grew up in a small town, with a house full of always-loaded guns; ditto for everyone I knew. We all drove pickup trucks, and parked in the high school parking lot every day with a couple of guns hanging in the gun rack. It was legal back then, yet there was NEVER any thought of shooting someone; it never entered our minds. Why? Because we saw guns solely as tools for target shooting and hunting, and not as "instruments of slaughter." We were all taught stringent standards of gun safety, on top of traditional values instilled since a very early age.
If you don't want to kill somebody in cold blood, you won't, even if surrounded by a hundred capable weapons and immunity from prosecution. It's just that simple. If you don't want to drive drunk, you won't, even if furnished with a free car, free liquor and a legal contract saying you won't get in trouble for it. If you don't want to steal someone's money, you won't, even if you could become invisible and walk right in and out of their house with it. It's all about an act of the will, and 99.9999% of people don't will to do it, so they don't.
Speaking of that, where's the strong evidence that gun control lowers crime? I've yet to see it. In both red states with a strong gun culture and permitless carry, and vehemently anti-gun blue states where getting a concealed carry permit is nearly impossible, the majority of gun homicides involve gang and drug violence in the big cities. Which by the way, regardless of red or blue state, are virtually all majority-liberal. It's the mindset, worldview and mental state of the individual, not merely whether or not a gun is present (see 2nd paragraph). On that note, the vast majority of gun crime overall (and nearly ALL of it in the inner cities) is committed with stolen guns; a criminal committing yet another criminal act, not law-abiding Joe Blow Citizen.
As AnalogPackrat stated, sometimes nothing but conveying that you're armed and unafraid to defend yourself and others will deter the intentions of a criminal attacker. I personally know several people who have been spared from carjacking, burglary, kidnapping and aggravated assault, for the sole reason that they had a gun and demonstrated the fact that they were ready to defend themselves. All of these thwarted attacks happened in cities or big tourist-trap vacation towns.
My wife and I own handguns for the exclusive purpose of plinking, and others exclusively for hunting. All are specialized, "one trick ponies," that for various reasons are not even remotely practical to carry for self-defense. And, certainly not optimal for committing violent criminal acts. I would digress that the sole purpose of all handguns is to kill people.
We do agree that self-defense is a universal right. A reasonable, responsible, mature person who carries a gun for the defense of themself and their loved ones will readily tell you that they do so to neutralize an imminent threat to life and limb, not to "kill" per se. Should one ever find themself in that unfortunate scenario, drawing and firing a gun is ALWAYS the absolute final recourse when all others have failed.
Finally, on a different note, if "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" clause of the 2A refers only to the police and military proper, then we also must uniformly apply that correct interpretation throughout the Constitution, as in the 10A, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the Police and Military."
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The weapon is absolutely relevant. A better comparison than state to state, or city to country, is US to Canada. Canada has very strict gun laws, and probably have a greater concentration of people in urban areas than the US does. And they have a similar amount of violent crime. However, the rate of death by violent crime is much, much lower. Why? Gun control. It's a lot harder to kill with fists or a knife than with a gun. It's a lot harder to kill yourself without a gun as well, so you're liable to see fewer successful suicides, which I would certainly consider a positive.
crazydoc
Well-known member
No, I don't. But I was in the army in Viet Nam. Your point?
Viet Nam and Afghanistan were fights against puppet regimes controlled by foreign nations. I suppose if Russia or China gained control of our government, enough of us citizens might be outraged enough to give up our easy lifestyle to revolt, but I doubt there ever will be a large enough segment of the population to revolt against the perceived usurpation of the "freedoms" of the few. And should they try, the military has enough firepower and willing troops to quash a few "militiamen" with assault rifles skulking in fields and forests and blowing up infrastructure.
Enough thread veer - gun control arguments are fruitless in this day and age.
Well I’d undo my pistol from the holster, undo the safety, point and shoot. Easy peasy.
crazydoc
Well-known member
Well, it's too bad that the Texas legislature can't continue to use their time for important legislation like this. I guess they'll have to move on to more trivial aspects of governance.
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Canada has less than 10% of the US population, no 2A, less gang activity, and very different demographics. Hardly a good comparison.
Yet countries like South Korea have much higher suicide rates than the USA despite having nearly zero private gun ownership rates. A person who intends to kill themselves will find a way, be it a bridge, pills, a shard of glass, a gas appliance, or a car.
USA is 31st among all countries and not in the top ten among developed nations by suicide rate. It is still very high, but this has little to do with guns.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Read Left of Bang and do a better job of situational awareness and reading your environment. If you let the thug get the drop on you, you've ceded the initiative. The best defense is avoiding the bad encounter by recognizing it before it happens. I agree that you probably shouldn't carry.
Also, modern striker-fired pistols have trigger safeties (no extra step required). But I wouldn't expect you'd know that given your bias.
Okay, I agree that it's easier to kill with a gun. But again, 99.999% of the populace will never commit a violent crime anyway. So, do you take away a fundamental right granted by the highest law of the land from the entire population because of a few evil apples with murder in their soul, who will still have guns after everyone else's are taken away? It doesn't solve the problem of the .001%, who will continue to be a problem.
The number of deaths and crimes caused by alcohol, tobacco and cell phones every day completely eclipses that caused by firearms, yet nobody seems to be concerned. It's illegal to drink and drive or to text while driving, and it's common knowledge that tobacco absolutely will kill you. However, tobacco causes tens of thousands of deaths yearly and costs the taxpayers millions in medical care, and drunk driving causes untold deaths and costs millions in property damage. Ditto for texting and driving. Yet, nobody wants to ban cars, alcohol or cell phones, because they're legal, inanimate objects (even though "they" kill millions), and it's up to their users to handle them responsibly. Hmmmm.....
AnalogPackrat
Well-known member
Asymmetrical warfare and combatants mixed with the general population offset modern weaponry. I guess you missed the lessons.
That isn't important. Fighting a determined foe on their turf where they are indistinguishable from non-combatants and may be receiving support from them is not winnable by simple overwhelming force.
Strange "Russia, Russia, Russia" fantasy scenario.
Poor assessment.
They've always been so.
