Life sentence for self-defense?

[Toad]

Yep, another dang gun-owning opportunist here!

There have been guns in my family since at least before WW2.

Handguns, rifles, shotguns; the usual, common sporting stuff. Every single family member has attended a minimum of one safety course.

My boys learned to handle guns around age 7, had their hunter safety card by age 8. Never have had an accident of any type at home or in the field; they always KNEW what a gun could do and what a gun was used for. More importantly, they knew what a gun WAS NOT used for.

Primarily we hunt with our guns. Small game, large game, waterfowl...and if we kill it, we eat it. Period, no exceptions.

We also target shoot. Clay targets, paper targets, all at a licensed family range. It's fun..way better than a Hollywood or Danish movie.

So, my family, which has NEVER used a gun illegally, used a gun against a person, used a gun for anything except sport should be in favor of giving them up? Should be required to give them up?

Nope.

The car analogy? License, registration, insurance? Yes, cars have all those things. Traffic fatalities are STILL higher than firearms fatalities.

So License/Registration/Insurance doesn't stop autos from killing does it? Isn't that the real concern, the deaths and not the reimbursement of the correct individuals for someone's untimely demise? <American Trial Lawyers now target me, I guess   >

We have pretty strict drunk driving laws...so how come I keep reading about guys that have had their license revoked 3 times being arrested yet again for DUI? There's a clue for you.

I think it can easily be shown that a LARGE number of crimes, including those in which a gun was involved, are committed by individuals that have previous criminal records. Somehow, however, these PROVEN CRIMINALS find their way back out into society...and guess what trade they resume?

A very small percentage of people is causing 90% of the problem. Solution: punish EVERYONE!  Great..now I'm back in the Air Force!  

Sheesh! What am I thinking? People aren't BAD! These guys don't WANT to be criminals! Society MADE them do it!

Yeah, sorry...it is the guns fault....and any law-abiding gun owner should be PUNISHED for even liking guns!

OH NO! HELLLLLLP! I'M AGREEING WITH CAVE!!!!

 

[Creamo]

I would like to go wild boar hunting this Sunday F4U, could you drive over the the armory, and pick up my hunting bow for me? You know, the one that is silent, leaves a 1” diameter hole in the flesh of anything the razor broad head blows through? If a guy had a mindset to kill, it would sure beat the hell outta a crack punk gangbanger shooting his 9mm really cool sideways, so I guess they outta be banned too.

A gallon of gas and a empty wine bottle in the wrong hands could potentially ruin someone’s day. A truckload of toejam and kerosene could ruin 300 peoples day.

 I really miss the point of me supposing to feel bad for owning guns. I use them to hunt, and put occational meals on the table. I don’t expect to have robbers in my neighborhood, but if they do, they aint going to running into a mut, and I’m not going to say “Gee fellas, lets have some honor, and fight fair. Boxing only, no kicking or scratching, please.”

I’ll just shoot them..... Twice.

[F4UDOA]

Well Gents,

It's like this, you can kill someone with can opener if you want to right, so why not outlaw can openers? The obvious answer is that can openers were not meant to kill and guns are meant for. Too obvious though. Here is the more base reason. If you want to kill someone you have to get dirty. With a knife, bat or otherwise you have to get close and get messy. Most people, as much as we all like to talk toejam don't have the stomach for that type of behaivor. What a gun really does is make killing impersonal. It makes it easy and you don't have to even see the other persons face. It makes it a cold cowardly act. It also gives people the abilty to make mistakes that they just can't come back from. Once you pull a gun out you've got to do something because you have crossed the worlds largest line in the sand. I'm not talking about shooting ducks either. I mean people just like yourselves that react to a situtation like they think John Wayne would and they either get killed or kill someone that they would not otherwise have done.

Toad I hear were your coming from because we all want to be the masters of our own destiny. I grew up around guns too and I have fired many since I have been an adult. It's fun stuff. But how many accidents do you have to have before you live the rest of your life with a regret instead of a child. It's just not worth it to me. You say don't put my beliefs on you right? Well that means that my families safety is now at the mercy of my neighbor and his family who may be a drunk with a family of A-holes. So I have to live my life afraid that him or his kid is going to blow me or my family away for no reason? I can defend myself and my family but I can do nothing to prevent a gun from killing and that is wrong. My right to live is greater than your right to carry.

Look at that story that Rip posted in the beggining of this thread. If that old man had bought a German Shepard instead of a Gun he wouldn't be in jail and he wouldn't have been robbed or hurt. On the otherside if those crooks had guns he would be dead too. It is a loose, loose the second you add a gun into the mix.  

On the subject of Auto deaths. If gun owners are ok with registering their vehicals how come registering their guns is such a problem? If there was a proper ballistics record kept then gun crimes would be solved in minutes just as vehicals can be identified in minutes. The NRA doesn't even want one day waiting to perform a backround check? That is insane and unreasonable. The NRA won't even come out with a stance on what weapons shouldn't be allowed in public hands. There are people in this country that privately own 50Cal sniper rifles. Have duck and dear gotten that large and dangerous??
How about cop killer bullets? Why did Dick Chaney vote against restricting them? How about Biological weapons, stinger missles or nuclear devices? When is enough enough?

F4UDOA

[Sn1p3r]

When you can answer the following question, things like guns and gun control will cease to exist.

"Is your glass half empty or half full?"

[Toad]

F4,

Like it or not, your family is at the mercy of a nation full of neighbors who may impersonally do you or yours in with tools ranging from a Ford Excursion to a crowbar.

What you choose to ignore is that CRIMINALS are responsible for these acts, not law-abiding citizens. Responsibility most certainly does NOT rest with the inanimate objects used by those criminals in the commission of a crime.

If you get swacked by a drunk in a Toyota, he was breaking the law by DUI. Odds are very high he is a repeat offender.

If you get nailed through the forehead with a golf club in a burglary, the odds are the guy will be a repeat offender of some sort.

If you get shot in a drive-by "gangsta" shootout, odds are incredibly high that the trigger man has already been in trouble with the law.

So the guns are the problem? Sorry, the way we deal with CRIMINALS is the problem.

Check with Santa here and see what they do with DUI drivers in the Scandanavian countries. I went to pilot training with four great Norwegians..they really opened my eyes.

As for registration and your other panaceas, I have two personal beliefs which you won't accept <and I probably won't change   > either:

1. Nothing will change until we seriously deal with the criminals first.

2. All of the rhetoric from your side of the church makes it ABUNDANTLY CLEAR that you won't be satisfied until guns are totally banned and confiscated. No matter what your side gets, it's never enough and the assault begins again immediately.

Well, I'm not inclined to make any of that easy for you. I and others like me are also entitled to our viewpoints and have the right to defend them in all public forums.

I'm an NRA member too...but you know what? I never was until your side of the aisle made it clear to me that confiscation was the ultimate, unswerving goal.

Why does that guy that owns the .50 cal sniper rifle bother you so? If he doesn't break the law, you'll never know he has it. How many .50 cal rifles HAVE been used in a crime? That should be an EASY statistic to run down. I'll wager it's about zero.

Is it the POTENTIAL for danger or murder or mayhem that bothers you?

Well, we're going to have to confiscate a lot more than guns and autos to remove THAT!

[Hangtime]

Hmmmmmm...

Case in point. Switzerland. Peaceful country. Has not been to war for many hundreds of years.

Each and every male citizen of appropriate age and physical health has a miltary weapon in his closet. And he's trained quite extensively on how to use it.

I wonder.. why are there so few gun deaths in Switzerland.. and why have they been at peace for so many years??

I'm probably talkin out my bellybutton here.. but seems to me; it's our society thats sick. And takin my gun away ain't gonna make it well. Not by a long shot. (pun intended)

The following is from a guy that normally makes me nuts.. but here he strikes a chord that has a ring of truth in it.. some small kernel of understanding; so I'll share it with you here.

 

For the life of me, I can't understand what could have gone wrong in Littleton, Colorado. If only the parents had kept their children away from the guns, we wouldn't have had such a tragedy. Yeah, it must have been the guns.
   
It couldn't have been because half of our children are being raised in broken homes.
   
It couldn't have been because our children get to spend an average of 30 seconds in meaningful conversation with their parents each day. After all we give our children quality time.
   
It couldn't have been because we treat our children as pets and our pets as children.
   
It couldn't have been because we place our children in day care centers where they learn their socialization skills among their peers under the law of the jungle while employees who have no vested interest in the children look on and make sure that no blood is spilled.
   
It couldn't have been because we allow our children to watch, on average, seven hours of television a day filled with the glorification of sex and violence that isn't fit for adult consumption.
   
It couldn't have been because we allow (or even encourage) our children to enter into virtual worlds in which, to win the game, one must kill as many opponents as possible in the most sadistic way possible.
   
It couldn't have been because we have sterilized and contracepted our families down to sizes so small that the children we do have are so spoiled with material things that they come to equate the receiving of the material with love.
   
It couldn't have been because our children, who historically have been seen as a blessing from God, are now being viewed as either a mistake created when contraception fails or inconveniences that parents try to raise in their spare time.
   
It couldn't have been because we give two year prison sentences to teenagers who kill their newborns.
   
It couldn't have been because our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud.
   
It couldn't have been because we teach our children that there are no laws of morality that transcend us, that everything is relative and that actions don't have consequences. What the heck, the president gets away with it.
   
Nah, it must have been the guns.

Paul Harvey

If this ultra-right wing conservative twit with ears can see society is sick.. and that it ain't guns; then maybe there's a problem. Yah think??    

Hang



[This message has been edited by Hangtime (edited 08-03-2000).]

[F4UDOA]

Toad,

Why do you feel that you have somehow earned the right to possess a weapon capable of killing so many people with so little thought? Do you think the goverment is trying to get you? Do you think some minority is going to come and take what some valuble possesion of yours? What war exactly are you fighting? Do you feel threatened when asked to register your car? Why not register a gun, why the pushback from the NRA about simply registering weapons at gun shows? How about doing background checks to weed out criminals and the criminally insane? Why is owning cop killer bullets important in anyones life?

The answer, you have been convinced that you are fighting a war against an invisible enemy. Where or what this enemy is I do not know. Maybe your afraid of democrats or minorities. Trying to get gun owners to open their eyes to the world is like the largest hostage negotiation in history. You've locked yourself inside a house of cards hiding from the boogie man and you won't come out without a fight. For you I am in some evil church pursecuting you. But everytime you turn on the news more people are dead because either some honest gun owner went berserk or some guy with a stolen or illegal gun decided to shoot up the neighborhood. So tell me Toad, who's winning your war?

Also the concept of criminals commiting these acts is a complete fraud. For every criminal with a gun there are many numbers of law abiding citizens who assist. #1 The manufacture who sells it to an irresponsable dealer #2 the Dealer who sells the gun without proper documentation #3 The lazy owner who puts the gun under his bed only to have a criminal who is smarter than the gun owner come and steal the gun when he is not home (then the gun owner washes his hands of the gun and seals his fate). And finally the #4 criminal who kills an innocent with the gun. Who is guilty? Every single person in the loop is guilty of undermining the laws that exist today to control gun violence. The laws in this country will never work as long as people treat guns like baseball cards. Thats why you need to get a grip on reality. Other peoples survival is more important than your part time hobby. If I put a gun to your head and said "give me your gun or else" you would hand over your guns. So if your survival is more important than your gun, why isn't someone elses survival more important than your gun?

Toad, you live in Kansas and other than the "Wizard of Oz" I don't know much about Kansas. I grew up in Philadelphia and I now live in NJ in the most dense population base in America. In your idealogical society everyone would be armed. With that logic if one shot were fired it would set off the worlds largest chain reaction and gun battle in history. What bizarre logic can this satisfy? Will that help you win the war against your boogie man? Is that life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happyness?

F4UDOA

[StSanta]

Hangtime:

Check out the regulations and restrictions in Switzerland and how they must handle their guns. It sure ain't as in the US  .

Just saying it because the differences between laws and culture are too big for them to be comparative  .

------------------
StSanta
JG54 "Grünherz"

[Toad]

Actually,I do have the right to possess a gun. Even a Class III fully automatic rifle  requiring a special license, if I choose to buy one.

I have that right through the 2nd Amendment. It's the same way I have the right to free speech and the freedom from unlawful search and seizure. The EXACT same way.

You folks don't like to hear that but there it is. It will eventually come to the Supreme Court and it will be so clear that even the "antis" can figure it out. Or, we'll lose. But you and I won't settle it here.  

Once again, your most recent diatribe is a fine example of why no one I know wants to register. Because obviously that won't be enough for you. Would that do it F4? If we register will you agree to our right to keep and bear and leave us alone?

State it right here. Is that enough for you?

I'm betting you'll say no...because the entire rest of your post centers on you opinion that guns have no place in society. So after you get registration, it will be confiscation, right?  

Anyway, let me see if I have this criminal chain thing down...

The manufacturer that sells a car to a irresponsible dealer who sells the car to a guy with 2 DUI's already on his record and whiskey on his breath. The lazy car owner that doesn't lock his car, which is stolen and crashed by drunken, partying teenagers (then the car owner washes his hands of the car and seals his fate). The liquor company that stocked a store where the irresponsible dealer didn't check ID's on the kids. The tavern owner that pours one last shot for a "regular customer" even though the guy's already tipsy. And finally the DUI Driver who kills an entire family in a minivan but walks away from the crash. Who is guilty? Every single person in the loop is guilty of undermining the laws that exist today to control DUI driving.

...and cars are killing more people than guns.

Did I get them all F4?  We work this right, we can arrest the whole country! Don't forget the guys in the auto shop that keep those cars running, either.


Kansas is not New Jersey, thank god. I lived in Jersey; the East seems to have more gun laws than it can keep track of. We have almost none. We don't have much trouble out here with guns but apparently you folks do. What am I to make of that? More laws, more trouble?

I'm not breaking any laws, State or National. Yet you see me as the "bad guy". I think you should focus on those who do break the laws...and not let them back out in 6 weeks or 6 months.

I think perhaps the basic underlying conflict is that I believe what Jefferson said: "That government governs best which governs least."

[Hangtime]

Santa.. Truly; as I mentioned above I'm clueless as to the Swiss regulations... but I know they have em... and that's a very safe place to live. Possibly safer than canned-ham land.  

FU4DOA.. tell yah what.. you get the goverment to disarm and I'll THINK about handing my rights to bear arms back. Till then; I want the means to resist; to survive and/or defend my own property in a worse case scenario.

It's quite possible that a big reason we are NOT a military dictatorship right now is those very same rights. (remember "I'm in charge!" Al Haig?)

The only thing that truly seperates a mob from a batch or marauding barbarians is the clothing style. If there is a social breakdown (and if you've never seen a riot first hand you are clueless) on a local or (heaven forbid) a larger scale yer gonna wish you had something more substantial than a golf club to protect your family.

You don't wanna gun? Great. Don't get one. You don't wanna feel threatened by yer neighbor who has a gun?? Great. Be a policeman; join the force. You'll get a heluva education on 'gun control'. Don't want yer kids in danger?? You better be damn careful about who you let 'em hang out with. Better yet; do as Toad did. Educate them..  

I hear Wyoming is nice. Damn far between neighborhoods.

Or; you could move to Denmark and settle in next to StSanta. He'll cover yer six.  

Hang

 

[Tac]

Well, let me tell you guys my personal experience on this matter:

I come from Colombia, albeit one of the most violent countries in the world. We don't have gun control laws (ok, we do have some, but there is no enforcment on them) and you can easily have anything from a slingshot to a machine gun on your house if you can get your hands on it. Personally, my family only owned a 22 caliber pistol which was prone to jam in the second shot (wee), and that was because "its better to have SOMETHING just in case", but we never were raised to think that guns solved anything. I have a cousin who is a total gun freak. He'd be the head of the NRA here if he could. He owned and fired AND engaged other people (aka guerillas, thiefs, street shootouts) with pistols, assault rifles (Galil) and shotguns.

What am I getting to here? Well, to get such weapons back there is really hard, as it is more dangerous to get them than to face the law because you got them. My family and my cousin's family moved to the US a few years ago (you can guess why). We couldnt bring any weapons of course (except my WW2 era rifle, I dont know what kind it is, so if there are any know-about-rifles folks here let me know ill give you as much info as I can on it..i'd love to know what it is!).

When we got to the US my cousin got himself a shotgun and a very advanced pistol... and he wasn't even a resident yet... and he got it all in less than a week! That really, really freaked me out.

Back in subject... in the US you can only "legally" shoot someone else if they are in your property, 20 feet away, FACING YOU with a weapon and other stupid rules of the sort.

In my country, if soemone is in your property, even in your front yard (everything is fenced over there) without your permission, you have ALL the right and the obligation (to the safety of your own family) to shoot the intruder to kingdom come. In most cases when that happens, the police doesnt even question you. Body in house, family safe. Most of the times they even had the kindness of taking the body away and dump it in the river and go on as if nothing had happened (too much paperwork to process and investigate the intruder). And yet here in the US, where my house now has no security devices except a lousy IR alarm (over there the windows have bars and everything.. and yeah policein US does work, but they generally arrive AFTER the intruder does its thing).. and they now tell my cousin, tell ME that I cant shoot someone who broke into my house and who I am sure is NOT the neighbor coming in at 3am to borrow a cup of sugar???? WTF? Thank god those regulations do not cover my marble-ammo, full CO2 pressure Paintball gun (that thing makes a hole through 5 cm's of plywood... HA! try that on skin!   ). Or the bow and arrows im planning to buy (quite an interesting sport once you try it).

Ermm.. in short, I support the right to defend your family from any threat, even a potential one. That guy in the UK shouldve been let go and be at peace (even if they were thiefs or hostile, that guy still has to live with the fact that he killed someone else).

[Toad]

Very interesting, Tac.

We don't get much of the South American viewpoint here.

Thx.

[10Bears]

Ripsnort, the case you cite above had happened in Texas, it might've been perfectly legal to mount the two heads on the study wall  

Waaaaa Squad mates promoting blatant socialism, I can't belive it! Of course all these new gun control laws have brought the crime rate down but some crime stats are just part of the high price of independence and freedom. To register your long arms puts you on somebodys list.. They know exactly where you live and what weapons you own F4 why do you want me dead? (aw now 10Bears isn't that a stretch) No not really, they come out to my house to confiscate my hand guns (which have to be registered) I say "no way" and go back inside, well, the cops are armed, I'm armed.. therefore I'm dead

\Solution, short of banning the private sale of guns all together which is no sweat of \my back I propose the same solution used by the US Armed forces. If you live on \base and you own a firearm the weapon stays in the armory when you are not using \it.

F4 what is this stuff you've  been reading?!!!!!! OH MY GOD!! This is the most UN-AMERICAN statement I've read in a long time.... Don't you think us adult Americans know better where to store weapons?

1776 wrote:

\Hmmmm, let's see. Hitler gave every German a handgun when he took power \in 1933,right??

Wrong 1776 dead wrong! first thing he did was confiscate all privately owned firearms Now maybe your right about nazi party members getting a luger

Tac Wrote:
\When we got to the US my cousin got himself a shotgun and a very advanced \pistol... and he wasn't even a resident yet... and he got it all in less than a week! That \really, really freaked me out.

Ahhh ain't America Grand?

\Gun owners, the route of the problem. You have to ask yourself why you want to \own a gun in the first place.

Because I can. Its an American right even says it in the Constitution and it won't be infringed even thou your trying awful hard.

\Do you honestly think you will fight off an intruder in a blazing gun battle?

Yes!

\Or do you just enjoy fire arms. I was on the fence of buying a gun for a long time \before I realized that it was entirely impractical and that I had a better chance of \shooting my wife than any criminal.

Thats you F4 that was your choice other Americans are able to choose as well... Ya know, all these nanny laws do nothing but take away more freedoms not add to them. And before you think I'm some right-wing gun loon I'm not. Just wait until religious right comes in and decides its in society best interest to confiscate all guns....You'll wish you'd have re thought this argument  

[funked]

nm  

[This message has been edited by funked (edited 08-04-2000).]

[Ripsnort]

F4UDOA-in response to your post and solution: Try telling that to someone that has had a gun pulled on them 3 times (fired at from point blank range once, good thing he was drunk!) and try telling that to my wife that avoided robbery and possible rape when she brandished her weapon while pretending to look for keys. And  that, my friend, in the land of Lattes, thats as liberal as it gets...Seattle.

If you'd like further explanation of these stories, I will send them to you via email. Meanwhile, everytime I go out, I'm holstered.

I do  agree with alot of  the stricter gun control laws, but I do not agree with trigger locks or banning them altogether(or, having someone else hold my gun for me)