Bush / Kerry / Nader

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

I understand that.

And you know this because........??

I highly suspect that the DOJ numbers are only for incidents where a shot was fired. As I mentioned already, the NRA numbers are all incidents where the presence of a firearm stopped or deterred a crime. That's what it's all about.

I would never make a recommendation on such a personal decision. However, if someone meets some common-sense criteria (no mental illness, no drug/alcohol abuse, no felony convictions) and is willing to take a course in firearms safety & deadly force, I think the government has no business to deny that person a firearms permit.

Tom, I have news for you....most police officers are lousy shots. We shoot holes in paper targets a couple of times a year, and call that "qualification". Most civilian gun enthusiasts would put us to shame (as a group) when it comes to marksmanship.

I go to the range at least once a week, and I always score 100% on "qualification", but I am most definitely the exception.

You really should read a journal article on this subject that was in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, which is published by the Northwestern University School of Law. I used it as a major source for my senior paper at UMass-Lowell.

You can read it by clicking here.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

2.5 million can't be correct, as it would imply that 1/2 of all violent crimes involved the victim using (perhaps, as you say, not actually firing) a gun. Common sense dictates this can't be correct. With 80 million or so handgun owners, it would also imply that handgun owners are victims of violent crime in wildly disproportionate numbers.

Your site says "each year". You say cummulative, which implies over time. 2.5 million over a very long time is plausible - not in one year.

Unlike the abortion issue, I don't see carrying handguns around in public as a personal issue (yes, belive it or not, there is no contradiction there). Government has a role here, just as they tell us we can't drive our cars on the sidewalk. If citizens decide to start arming themselves, then it affects all of us. Cops may generally be lousy shots as you say, but I trust that the vast majority of them no when, and when not, to pull their guns. I don't have the same trust in the average joe, and it matters not a whit to me that he can hit a bullseye from 50 yards.

The mere fact that someone thinks it's worthwhile to carry a gun in order to prevent a one in ten thousand encounter with a murderer on the street should probably disqualify him/her from doing just that. (the same goes for Presidents. If you want to be one, you shouldn't be one. I have no doubt that the only potentially great Presidents are people who wouldn't touch the job with a ten foot pole, but that's another thread.)

I'm all for gun owners using their guns for sport. I don't hunt, and I could never imagine shooting a deer etc. for sport, but I respect others' right to do so. I just object to the vigilante attitude that society is inherently better off if all of us have the opportunity to pull a gun out of our briefcases and start firing away whenever we feel threatened.

I live in a transitional neighborhood in Oakland (where the media likes to keep a running tally of the murders each year), and I have been held up at gunpoint not 3 blocks from my house. I still would not want to carry a gun. Even if I had one in that situation, I am not at all confident that it would have done me any good, and I fear it could have made the situation a whole lot worse. My kids might not have a dad today. Better to give em the damn wallet. Cancel the credit cards, chock it up to experience and be done with it. I know a lot of pro-gun advocates are probably shaking their heads and saying "Wimp. I'd have blown them away." I wonder how many really would. Most cops that I've seen talking about the subject don't recommend using guns for defense in a crime. More often than not, it just escalates the situation and someone gets killed. You have a more informed perspective on that, I'm sure.

Thanks for the link to the article. I'll read it tomorrow.

Tom

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

And create what is known as a Police State. We should no more wish arms to be limited to government agents than we would want the press limited to government agents. The Second Amendment, like the First Amendment, is a check on government power.

Ask people who go to gun ranges if it is the LEOs who are most often proficient in the use of firearms.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

I'm all in favor of the 2nd Amendment .... EXCEPT for where I live now, South Florida. Did you know that you can have concealed weapons permits here? With 6 million people/yayhoos on the highways everyday, armed and dangerous (whether armed or not)?

I mean, you have a mixture of immigrants, old people, young bucks with jacked up cars, and yuppies in their imports mixed in with tons of semi trucks all competing for the same 5 feet of concrete. Oh yes - throw GUNS into that concoction.

2nd Amendment for the entire USA EXCEPT Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties of the State of Florida!!!

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

How about the South Bronx? I've been through all sorts of NYC neighborhoods and at times been one of the few people classed as white. I know full well that many of the people around me are armed despite the gun laws.

Is someone going to shoot me? Hell, they could beat me to death so what do I care about some guns?

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

In other words, keep them in Bruce's hands???

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

What I mean is keep the guns in the hands of police on the streets. I have no problem with properly trained citizens taking their guns to the range or hunting, or even keeping them under their pillow if it makes them feel better. I don't want them walking around with their guns in their jackets or under their car seat thinking that they're going to unload a magazine of lead into the first person that looks threatening. Hell, that's already happening in many urban neighborhoods, and we all know how that's turning out.

I have to admit that I don't understand this profound sense of threat that gun owners feel in the face of gun control laws, mainly because I don't understand the assumption that guns make them feel safer and more independent (I guess). To me it's like the hogwash from car companies re SUV's. The commercial is always about driving into the wilderness (or to the north pole to pick up the hubby arriving in a submarine ), dodging falling rocks and logs. They promote this myth that you are so much safer and independent in an SUV (when in fact, SUV's are more prone to rolling, so one should be careful when evading falling trees and rocks).

Nevertheless, have the gun (and buy the SUV) if you must. You think it makes you safer. I think it makes US less safe. We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one.

 

Tom57,

Instead of making a a futile attempt at responding to your speculative irrelevancies, I'll ask you to consider something. Firearms are an ancient technology. Should you succeed in restricting firearms then you will spur the development of more modern weapons. Weapons that need no special expertise or equipment to produce and that have no serial numbers.

 

Never thought of that. Interesting...

 

Thanks for sparing me a futile reply. I’m sure everyone appreciates that. Talk about speculation. Exactly what expertise do current weapons require that you fear will become irrelevant? Let's see, you have to be able to squeeze your finger. Oh, I guess you have to point the thing too. Are either of these particularly difficult for you? How exactly will this “expertise” be circumvented with gun control? Plus, I have news for you. Those guns that you call "more modern weapons" already exist on the streets of any major city. So what was your point again?

 

What!!!???

 

There are some less-than-mood-enhancing thoughts there, Unc.

 

No kidding.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

Carl, you really need to read the journal article that I referenced. Florida was one of the first "shall issue" states, and their violent crime rate nosedived as a result.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

Because it's the ultimate slippery slope. The gun control people won't be satisfied until private ownership of guns is outlawed. There is no compromise with them.....if you give them an inch, they want 100 miles. The NRA needs to fight them on everything.

As mentioned already, the 2nd Amendment is the ultimate check on the Federal government. The first thing that dictators do when they gain power is to ban private ownership of firearms. The second thing they do is to go after organized religion. After the Cold War was over, Soviet files showed that an invasion of the United States would be impossible in their opinion, since so many citizens owned firearms.

Tom....I've been a cop for 16+ years, and have been on the front lines the entire time. Doesn't it tell you something that I have no fear whatsoever of the law-abiding citizen owning firearms?

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Bush / Kerry / Nader (a slight variation)

 

To Bruce - on guns...

Bruce,
The journal article you posted is interesting reading, and it is "preaching to the choir" as far as my own thoughts are concerned. I agree with it pretty much entirely.

The dilemma, however, is that here in South Florida people are a little bit whacky and more than a little paranoid. They aren't necessarily stalwart, conservative, even-tempered types like I grew up around in the Midwest (all of whom had guns, and were entirely trustworthy with them).

For example, in Boca a few months ago some lawyer was awakened in the middle of the night by teenage kids in his neighborhood who were knocking on doors, and then hiding in the bushes to giggle while the confused homeowners were left wondering who was there. Yes, this is a prank, and it is also "criminal behavior" for the kids to be doing this.

But the lawyer, who was naked and half awake, decided to bring his handgun to the door, and he SHOT the 16 year old honors student IN THE BACK as he was running away from the door. The kid was tall, so the lawyer's defense was he thought he was about to be assaulted, even though the bullet holes in the kid were in the BACK and the kid's friends testified that he was running away when the lawyer opened fire.

Worse yet, they didn't even arrest the lawyer for several weeks. He was kept "under surveillance" while the police investigated the case. Finally he was arrested, but kept under "house arrest" because of the self-defense issues that will be resolved (apparently) in the upcoming court case.

Meanwhile, there are two parents in the neighborhood with a dead son, who by all accounts was a great kid and was out doing some stupid prank like 16-year-olds sometimes do, and paid the ultimate price for it.

What do we do about stuff like this?

I can pretty much guarantee you that no one back in my home state of Wisconsin would have ever killed a kid in cold blood that rang his doorbell, prank or not. But here in South Florida, that's the first alternative selected.

- Carl

 

Re: To Bruce - on guns...

Throw the lawyer in prison for the rest of his life. There is never justification for deadly force when the only crime is trespassing.

In addition to supporting "shall issue" legislation, I believe that mandatory training in firearms safety & use of force should be part of the deal.

 

This is scary...

You know Bruce, I find myself agreeing with you all too often as this thread progresses....

 

Sometimes that happens, Carl, when reasonable people reasonably express intelligent disagreement with one another, the way you two have been doing. The kooks and wackos never find this happening, so their craziness fuels craziness at the obduracy of their opponents and the alleged defalcation of their "friends." (If fetuses had guns...)

This has been a really interesting off-topic thread, especially for somebody who is a constitutional fundie (pro Second Amendment meaning free private arms ownership) but also nervous at the proliferation of guns. I'm not a gun owner--probably could not physically operate most firearms with any kind of accuracy, even with training--but I'm glad I have friends who are gun owners, and entirely content with an armed magistracy/police fulfilling their Biblical mandate to use force for the protection of innocence and punishment of guilt.