Time for ANTI-GUN people to put their money where their mouth is!

[GtoRA2]

We decide whether or not you can have a gun while you're here.  

I think thats Laz's point and it is not you making the call anymore, it's your government.

I agree with Laz on this, it should not be your choice, or the governments.

[beet1e]

GTO - yes, that remark was very tongue in cheek. You know how Lazs and I like ribbing eachother.

I tell you what... There's a gun shop in a nearby town. I'm going to go up there tomorrow, and find out just what gun I can have. I already know that I can own a shotgun if I want to. Someone here said they use a shotgun in the house - Ripsnort? The only thing is that I also know that it's not legal to shorten the barrel, so a shotgun might be cumbersome.

[lazs2]

good idea beetle... go see what is involved with your buying a gun and keeping it in your home or motor home while traveling.   Let me know what types of guns you are allowed to have.  find out about ammo too... how much you can have in the home and what tyes of reloading equipment you are allowed to have.  I also said that given a choice... I would go armed in england on occasion.   I would like to have a gun in the car or hotel for instance.   I really don't feel that your criminals, while just as busy, are as violent and bloodthirsty as ours.   We have a particularly hopless and drug addicted segment to our criminal class that takes delight in inflicting pain and death.   Even the fairly harmless ones seem to be too talkative.   If nothing else, the times I've used a gun have shortened the conversation.

puck... don't bother with the stat it's a myth but... I give you permission to not have a firearm.   I won't vote for a law forcing you to have one.
lazs

[easymo]

To reiterate, the preceding discussion concerns the actual use of guns to thwart crimes in progress. At first glance the evidence also supports the gun lobby's claim that widespread gun ownership deters the criminal from even attempting confrontation crimes. In 1982 the redneck Atlanta suburb, Kennesaw, became a laughingstock by requiring that a gun be kept in every household. But the joke redounded as the resulting publicity seemed to produce a virtual end to residential burglary which continues to this day. [36] Similar results appeared from a highly publicized 1966 program in which 3,000 civilian women received defensive handgun training from Orlando, Fl. police. As of 1967, rape had dropped 88.2% in Orlando and aggravated assault and burglary 25%. While rape gradually increased again after the year-long program ended, five years later the rate was still 13% below the pre-program level; during that same period rape had increased 64% nationally, 96.1% in Florida and over 300% in the immediate area around Orlando. [37]

If every city adopted such programs to dramatize civilian gun ownership confrontation crime would drop (though not as much as in the examples described which probably involved some displacement of crime to the communities around Kennesaw and Orlando). In fact the experience in Orlando and Kennesaw is by no means unique; similar programs have produced similar results in Detroit, New Orleans and other cities. [37] But, as a practical matter, the controversiality of private gun ownership precludes such programs in most cities. That is apparently why the Orlando program lasted only one year.

Oddly, I found this in an ANTI-gun artical

[beet1e]

Lazs - OK, I will do that tomorrow. By the way, I'm not trying to take away your right to have a gun if that's what you want. I am not into the "rights of citizens to bear arms" argument. For me, it's a simple case of wondering why people feel the need to have guns, against a somewhat sinister backdrop of appalling loss of life caused by guns in the USA.

[Puke]

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But it is ok for the intruder to be????

So you think it is wrong to defend yourself?
-gTora2
===========

No one said it was okay for the intruder to be judge/jury/exocutioner.  I never even touched on the subject of it being wrong to defend yourself.  We need to work on our reading/comprehension skills, don't we?  I was just mentioning some things about the law in the area of "defending your home" as I understand it.

I'm just talking about my understanding of the law and I do have some law background in my studies though I'm not a lawyer.  Yes, the law allows you to defend yourself but you better be able to prove that the use of potentially deadly force was necessary by you.  I still remember what one law professor told the class "if there is an intruder in your home, lock yourself in your bathroom and if he comes after you, shoot to kill and not to wound so he can't tell his side of the story in court."  Well, something very close to that.  Did you know if you leave your garden hose out and someone trips on it and gets injured (whether he is tresspassing or not) and can prove it was negligent to leave it out and it's a hazard there is a case against you?  Or your porch step has a crack in it and someone trips on it and falls...   There is a duty to tresspassers (whether a criminal, a child, a police officer inspecting something or fireman to check on smoke) that your property is safe and just hauling off and shooting someone who says "boo!  I'm gonna take your stereo" is not warranting of deadly force.  You are *supposed* to call the police and let them handle the situation.  But in practice, we have oodles of examples to the contrary and all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say "i just don't understand."  Trust me, the judge will not send the criminal to the chair for stealing your t.v. so you are not *supposed* to use that kind of force in that situation.  So be careful when you hear a bump in the night and pull out your gun.  The end result may be something worse than just losing a few posessions.  But what do I know?  I fly for Knight.

[GtoRA2]

Jeez, so you think gun owners are going to just shoot anything that moves?

Well, I will tell you how it is for me. I sleep with a locked door, If someone tries to come through that door they will get shot, ONLY after I warn them off by yelling the police are on the way(yes I would call the police). AND only after I confirm who I am going to shoot.

I will not go hunting for them.

You may want your life in the cops hands, but 15 plus minutes for them to show up if you have an armed intruder in the house.

Maybe you should post in more clear manor before you insult me next time. What you said implied what I asked and you really should have explained it better, if you had I never would had to ask.


I also noticed no facts to back up your last post about how guns kill their owners and kids etc.

[Karnak]

I don't own any guns.

I own two swords though.

The only person I have heard who had to use a sword to defend his home made the intruder run in terror.


(I'm not anti-gun, I just don't own any.  If you want to own 500 assault rifles, have at and have fun.)

[Puke]

Jeez, so you think gun owners are going to just shoot anything that moves?

No.

[steely07]

Very interesting thread guys,i just have a question for Lazs,and a comment as well..
 Laz you said

I do like the way the aussies found out how much you can trust your government and regestration... pitiful.

 I am an aussie,and don't know quite what you meant by that,unless it's the fact that semi auto and full auto rifles are now illegal,fair enough IMHO,even a big croc can be killed by a single shot rifle or pistol of large enough calibre,and that's about the biggest,nastiest animal in Oz you are likely to encounter,and then only in the N.T or far north queensland or W.A.
 This ban was put in place after the Port Arthur massacre (24 dead),and i've never heard a good enough argument (at least for aussie conditions)for the owning of these kind of weapons (unless you are an arms collector,fair enough in that case)

 My comment,
Living in a relatively gun free environment(yep the criminals still have em of course)is a good feeling,and i ask you to consider this,if someone is shot in Australia,it is headline news,i think you would need a 24hour channel to list the victims in the 'States(no offence intended at all),just think about it folks,:)

 Steely
flame away at my ignorance if you will

[bounder]

I had a look around, and i know there are lies, damn lies and so on. But this really got my bile duct swimming with joy

However this



tends to suggest that keeping the status quo on gun control in the US is likely to result in significantly fewer American children around.

Now you have to ask yourselves, is that a bad thing?

I accept that many people in the US need a gun to make them feel safe from everyone else in the US with a gun. But then again, that also seems to be the problem.

I get the feeling you are living in fear of armed robbers all the time. I'm kinda thankful that I don't feel that I need a gun in the house to defend my family from unspecified horrors.

Of course a gun is not going to stop them being killed by a car or much else. In fact the chances of them being attacked by an armed stranger are minute compared to the chances of them being murdered by a member of their own family.

Those of you with guns and children in the house know all about safety, however, so you're not going to wake up one morning to find your disgruntled adolescent high on drugs and pointing that smoking, cheap die stamped, far eastern SMG loaded with Glaser Safeties, at your dead wife. Even though it's far likelier than being assaulted by armed perps.

I wonder if they make Darwin awards to entire nations?

Seriously though. No one in the US is going to make gun control stick. They're wedded to the gun, their nation was forged by it, the west was won with it, it's a symbol of fierce independence from a fiercely independent country. It would be a bit like people trying to get Tea Control Laws passed in the UK, or an Anti-Videogames lobby in Japan. Why bother when the tide is against you?

[bounder]

Originally posted by Krusher
The same can be said for the argument that we license and register cars why not guns... but then  again, you probably already heard that one.

The English gun control experience provides a concrete example of American gun owners' worst fear: the goverment steadily whittling firearms rights away over a period of decades.

(taken from the BBC)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1440764.stm

A new study suggests the use of handguns in crime rose by 40% in the two years after the weapons were banned.

Absolutely, but also absolutely no correlation, anywhere, between the two. Gun crime had been rising steadily anyway, and the measure was to prevent Dunblanes, not Kwik-E-Mart hold ups. In that sense it has so far been 100% successful.

Sheesh

Incidentally this survey was commissioned by the Countryside Alliance (sort of British Redneck Assoc) to prove that they should be allowed to kill burglars for sport.

And we're still only talking about 3,685 handgun crimes (not even deaths) a year in the UK. Thats about .000061 crimes per head of population. How does that compare with US?

[Fatty]

Welp, I'm glad I was born early enough to shoot my pellet gun as a kid before the UK (and their territories) started advising us on gun laws.

[funkedup]

Originally posted by Karnak
I don't own any guns.

I own two swords though.

The only person I have heard who had to use a sword to defend his home made the intruder run in terror.

Didn't you ever see Indiana Jones?  You start waving that sword around like Zorro and you are likely to get a bullet in the brain.

My uncle keeps a samurai sword in his garage, along with various types of ammo, some spare bayonets, and parts of various guns he has modified, etc.  I asked him why he would leave such dangerous things in an insecure place, where an intruder might access them.  His answer, "I want him to be armed when I come down stairs with my .357 and shotgun.  It wouldn't be fair to kill an unarmed man."

[Monk]

I'm still trying to figure out why you guys are worried about us, and our guns.