Shooting at Elementary School (est 27 dead)

[Jarochai Alabaster]

While I personally agree with you about the value of life as opposed to property (I wouldn't shoot a robber unless I felt I or my family was in immediate physical danger), I'm not about to lay that morality-based decision on another. Some would argue, quite persuasively, that shooting the sumbitch between the eyes (or more likely center mass) is a perfectly justified and rational response to a home invasion, no matter what the intent of the invader.

Self-defense is only applicable if life or limb are in jeopardy or if there is imminent threat of sexual assault. Shooting a burglar for trying to walk away with your property is murder. We already lay these morality-based decisions on others as it is. You're on the right page with your attitude regarding when you would or would not shoot - same page I'm on, and most people I suspect.
Seriously though, all things equal if you want home defense get a security system, some heavy-duty deadbolts, and bars for the windows. Or a dog. Either a security alarm or a barking dog will scare off just about anyone.

It almost sounds like you're protecting these types of people. Why is that so?

What could have possibly given you that idea? Seriously, explain this.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Last question first.

It sounded to me like you were protecting criminals since you didn't really talk about the inherent danger they willingly put themselves into, nor did you really explore the rights of the homeowner to protects what is hers/his.

Also, the right to self defence is different in every state. There is much wider latitude to engage in the use of deadly force in places like Texas or Florida, than say California. In some states, you have the right to use deadly force to protect property, as well as your persoanl safety.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

It sounded to me like you were protecting criminals since you didn't really talk about the inherent danger they willingly put themselves into, nor did you really explore the rights of the homeowner to protects what is hers/his.

How is that relevant to the determination that life > property? Also, this doesn't answer the question. Explain how anything I said could be construed as "protecting those people." Quote the text.

Also, the right to self defence is different in every state. There is much wider latitude to engage in the use of deadly force in places like Texas or Florida, than say California. In some states, you have the right to use deadly force to protect property, as well as your persoanl safety.

Joke states. What is legal is not necessarily what is right. If someone doesn't present an actual danger to life or limb, it should not be legal to kill them. There is no legitimate justification for doing so.

[Massterloo]

Don't need to state an example of how it could be - construed as-....... no one does. A person's perception is thier perception. But I'll give it a try for shits and giggles.

"if we want to play that game, no. My PS3 isn't as valuable as someone else's life."

*Sounds like you rather give away your game system, then try to protect it, and want influence others do the same. This robbing scumbag wearing a mask? He have a weapon? What kind?, A knife? A pistol? You have a weapon? Your fists? A hairbrush? A Bat? A spatchula? Anyway...Please take my PS3 and go, is what I get from this. You may file a police report, boy oh boy he's in trouble now.

Lets go off track for a sec. We have to, its where my thoughts went....my perception.

Who would stop at just a game system? Im thinking at least the TV would go too....your wallet/money/wedding ring/credit cards...hmmm, nice car/pretty wife, kids. No, no, you said "to play that game." This is the game. Someone enters your home, and you are just happy to survive what ever happens. Hey, that worthless terd just may think he can come back at anytime since you were so easy. And instead of attacking him, you let him go. And you would have us do the same. -----*****Having others do the same******------ Is a form of protecting that kind of criminal - From Us. At least to me. Yes, I know it took a while to get to the point. but its where my mind lead me.....my perception of what you said. I have no fucking idea where Embar got his. He could have shacken a Magic 8 ball for all I know.

Now I dont have a gun....kinda wish I did. Is what if games like this that make me think I rather Shoot an intruder just for the sheer fact that I feel violated that he entered my home.


Now lets talk about other people's state of mind...criminal...sane, or insane, and the fucks they give about being caught with a legal, or illegal gun. Ddrak, Jaro, Embar, or myself don't know shit. All we know is what one person would give a fuck about...Thier own self.


Embar...You think you can actually find a stat like daytime robberies in England with or without guns. You poor stoned bastard. Good luck trying to find an indidual city, much less a country. USA or England. You cant even find stats 2 variables much less the 4 you talked about. Oh but there are millions of sound bites of what people think.



And Jaro. "Shooting a burglar for trying to walk away with your property is murder". No its not. Only if the Burglar dies. You can still shoot people and not kill them. I'd would like to incapacitate my intruder with rock salt shells from a shotgun....Then break thier kneecaps, and elbows with a bat.

[Embar Angylwrath]

http://www.captainsjournal.com/2012/07/ ... and-brits/

Australia bans guns.

Criminal acts invovling guns don't drop. (Makes sense since why would a criminal give up his gun)

Other crimes skyrocket. Australian women now get raped three times more than US women.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

I think the law would be the exact wrong framework to solve the gun problem, even assuming we had competent lawmakers, which obviously we don't. What we have now is a self-serving circus of finger pointing and hot air. I think the actual solution probably involves us as a society evolving past the point of desiring to harm one another. Anything short of that is going to be varying degrees of theater. But we're turning into a society that is "all show, and no go." Who the fuck cares if we actually solve a problem when declaring it solved is so much easier and cheaper.

Two fairly new and unaccountable government agencies, spending billions of taxpayer dollars doesn't make me feel any safer to fly. With the gun debate, all I see is more people stepping in to use our suffering as fodder to advance their own careers and competing agendas at great cost to the common man on the street. Fuck both extremes of the spectrum.

[Ddrak]

@Embar: Those stats are bullshit. Did you look at the source for that article? It's a post on Free Republic!

Factcheck has a good article on what really happened - firearm related offences dropped by 50-60%, which significantly dropped the lethality of assaults and therefore the homicide rate went down.

Comparing numbers from the sources (Australia, US non-homicide US homicide):

Sexual Assault, per 100,000: Aus = 93; US = 81 (Definitions are slightly different, Aus is wider)
Assault, per 100,000: Aus = 795; US = 1630 (Definitions are significantly different, US is wider)
Homicide, per 100,000: Aus = 1.4; US = 5.4 (Definitions are slightly different, Aus is wider)

I believe the Freeper was comparing "Forcible Rape" from the FBI stats to "Sexual Assault" in the Aus DCI stats which are insanely different. Groping someone's boob can get you "sexual assault"...

Essentially, the rate of crime is pretty similar but the intensity and lethality appear correlated with the availability of firearms.

Edit: This should in no way be made a parallel to what may or may not happen in the US if gun laws are changed. Australia has always had very strict gun control and the 1996+2002 changes just made tight controls tighter. There's never been a significant gun culture here and the idea of people commonly hunting for sport (or food) is generally thought of as ridiculous.


As for having a gun to defend your PS3, stats basically show that it doesn't change the rate at which PS3s get stolen but more people (both robber and defender) get killed in the process. It just ups the ante.

Dd

[Massterloo]

I love polite rape.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

Just gonna leave this and this here for everyone to peruse.

Like I said, security system and a dog. Best deterrents available.

[Embar Angylwrath]

Wow, non-sequiter for the win.

How about this Jaro... what I can infer from your linked data is states/districts such as California, NY and DC, which have some of the most strict gun control laws, have much higher deaths from guns than say... North Dakota, which has very lax gun control laws and no deaths since the massacre.

Both inferences from those stats are ridiculous.

As is you saying an alarm and a dog are the best possible deterrents to getting fucked over in your own home.

Let me give you a real life example, although it wasn't in our home, but the parallel still applies. Happened to my mother. You can probably find it on the boards, I think I have shared this before. My parents used to own a liquor store. They were robbed, twice. Once, the clerk on duty shot the guy. The next time, my mom was there, and she shot one guy, and the clerk that was on duty on that day shot the other. All three who were shot, died. All three had rap sheets longer than your roll of toilet paper. Because my mother took out a shitstain and the clerk took out another, we had heat in our house and food on the table.

I hope you're never in a situation where you have to choose between watching someone take the rent, food money, gas money, utility money, etc., and taking their life so you can proceed with yours. You relating it to a PS3 just shows how... fuck, how do I say this... it shows how sheltered you are and how little you know about hard life choices. And honestly, I hope you get to live in that world for the rest of your life. No one should have to make the choice my mother did that night.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

Because you know everything that's ever happened to everyone else. And because anecdotes are evidence. And because.

I'm sorry it's a statistical fact that owning a gun is more likely to hurt you than save you. QQ moar.

[Fallakin Kuvari]

Sounds like a lot of fallacies to me.

Take this data, for example.

[Ddrak]

I love correlation = causation pages, especially where the graphs are pretty obviously independent of the point effects trying to be claimed. Comparing firearm accidental deaths to automotive accidental deaths is so far chalk and cheese it's just ridiculous.

Jaro's statement is correct and has been statistically validated on a number of occasions. Owning a firearm makes it more likely that you will be shot, mainly because it raises the stakes in any confrontation. Take Embar's example - I assume the thieves were armed. Had they attempted the same thing unarmed it's unlikely they would have been shot. Had the clerk or Embar's mother been unarmed, the likelihood of their being killed over the money in the register would be significantly lower as well (though the likelihood of the money staying in the register would also be lower). I believe the saying is "An armed society is a polite society".


Source data:

A study of 626 shootings in or around a residence in three U.S. cities revealed that, for every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides (Kellermann et al, 1998).

Individuals in possession of a gun at the time of an assault are 4.46 times more likely to be shot in the assault than persons not in possession (Branas et al, 2009).

For complete fucking stupidity: 10% of families admitted to having unlocked and loaded firearms within easy reach of children (Patterson and Smith, 1987), and two-thirds of accidental firearms injuries occured in the home, and one-third involved children under 15. 45% were self-inflicted, and 16% occurred when children were playing with guns. (Morrow and Hudson, 1986)

Dd

[Partha]

I love correlation = causation pages, especially where the graphs are pretty obviously independent of the point effects trying to be claimed. Comparing firearm accidental deaths to automotive accidental deaths is so far chalk and cheese it's just ridiculous.

The best part about it? Think how many guns are shot a day versus how many cars are driven. Orders of magnitude that somehow never end up in their calculations.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

What boggles my mind is that this is standard training/knowledge for any cash handling job in the US - you give them the money and don't argue about it specifically because arming yourself and fighting over the cash is what gets people shot. Like, if you so much as verbally argue with a robber you get fired. Same for bringing a weapon to work for "protection." Seriously, if these aren't the established policies you can't get insurance for your business. It's common knowledge and a part of every non-joke employer's training.

But extend the same reasoning to home invaders or frame the stats in a way that can be construed as an attack on the 2nd amendment, and they're automatically the product of some liberal commie conspiracy to disarm Murrca so the Muslims can take over.

[Embar Angylwrath]

I think everyone understands your very simplistic rationale Jaro. No guns means no deaths from guns. Yeah, we get that. Just like no cars mean no deaths from cars, no drugs means no death from OD.

This issue is gun control. There is no correlation between stricted gun control laws and lower deaths by firearm in the US. In fact, some of the strictest gun control laws are in places that have the highest incidence of gun violence. Why? Here, let me make it very simple for you.

Criminals don't care about laws.

You can put all the restrictions you want on the books, and it won't make a difference to criminals. They won't turn in their guns, and they will be more emoldened to use them if they know others are less likely to have them.

@Dd - My mother was physically assaulted by one robber, the one she took out. There were three robbers that night. After she shot the first one, one of the others fled on foot, and one headed for their vehicle. The clerk working with my mother came around the corner, and the guy charged him, so he got shot and died as well.

Things would have been a lot worse had they not put those two criminals down. Oh.. and the first guy? He was released from prison just the day before.

Although I don't think I would ever kill someone over property,a s I mentioned before, I would defend myslef with deadly force if I was attacked and feared for my life, using whatever tool I had. And a gun is a very effective tool for protecting oneself. I would not ever take that tool away from someone else, and limit their chances against an otherwise more powerful attacker. The guy who attacked my mom was 6'3' and weighed about 250, he was a big guy. My mom is about 5"3' and weighs in at around 120. However, a firearm is a great equalizer.

[Jarochai Alabaster]

No, you don't understand a god damned thing anyone here has said, and that's actually very sad.

[Ddrak]

This issue is gun control. There is no correlation between stricted gun control laws and lower deaths by firearm in the US. In fact, some of the strictest gun control laws are in places that have the highest incidence of gun violence. Why? Here, let me make it very simple for you.

Criminals don't care about laws.

You can put all the restrictions you want on the books, and it won't make a difference to criminals. They won't turn in their guns, and they will be more emoldened to use them if they know others are less likely to have them.

There is no evidence to support this theory, in fact, there's evidence to suggest that you've got the causal relationships the wrong way around:

i) Places with the highest degree of gun violence enact the strictest laws to curb the violence. Whether it works is certainly debatable (most laws are ineffective in their primary intent because they get watered down by special interests).
ii) Someone who breaks *a* law is a criminal. This has little correlation with how much they care about other laws, and in fact the more organized criminals take great pains over the law because they know that it's usually an unrelated offence that gets them caught.
iii) There's no evidence to show that effective gun restrictions make no difference to criminals. That's NRA propaganda.
iv) There's no evidence to show that effective gun restrictions embolden anyone, In fact, quite the opposite - in general gun crime is correlated to the legal availability of guns, with the exception of (i).

The biggest problem the US has if it wants to curb gun violence is the sheer number of weapons available. There's no convenient way to remove them in the way many other nations have because there's simply too many, and a very active gun manufacturer's lobby spending millions trying to keep it that way.

Dd

[Harlowe]

No, you don't understand a god damned thing anyone here has said, and that's actually very sad.

It's frustrating to read at times. It's like..no,no,no that's not what he's saying at all.

[Massterloo]

I've read these posts as trollers trolling each other, stupid people calling stupid people stupid, and stupid people being trolled.....And I LoL-ed each time.