Guns used for lawful self defense

[FBM]

The attempt to remove guns from Americans would increase the homicide rate immediately and drastically. You're tilting at windmills, man. That's just not going to work.

Educate people how to store and use firearms safely and responsibly. Educate people how to deal with homicidal and suicidal thoughts and impulses. Educate people on how to prevent being targeted by criminals in the first place. Et cetera, et cetera. Education is a peaceful approach that has a much better chance at success in the real world than starting a war on guns. We see how well the war on drugs has worked. What makes you think a war on guns, which are at least as pervasive as drugs, would stand a better chance? It'll be even bloodier and costlier and divisive than the war on drugs. Sorry, but doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?

[Blind groper]

The Japanese did it. They declared war on guns, and most especially hand guns. They now have the lowest rate of gun murder in the world. Last year, the total number of gun homicides was two.

It can be done. You won't achieve the Japanese success overnight, of course. But to reduce the number of shootings from 100,000 per year to anything less would be a gain. I read recently that, since Bobby Kennedy was assassinated with a gun 44 years ago, a full million Americans have been murdered with firearms. If you look at all gun murders in the world's richest 23 countries, the USA has 80% of them.

I mean, the sheer deliberate blindness of Americans is unbelievable. You have this staggering problem, with an obvious cause, and an even more obvious solution, and you argue round and round in circles. The arguments are so emotion based, most of the time. Look at Seth, with his ridiculous "its my right" argument. He thinks that his 'right' to own tools for committing murder are somehow supernatural (but without a deity).

You think education will work? That thought fits perfectly with Albert Einstein's dictum on insanity. " Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result." Education on handling guns safely and legally has been a part of American culture for decades, and does not work. Repeat, it does not work. Another dictum is "You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink" or in other words : "You can lead an American to gun education, but you cannot make him learn."

[FBM]

Did the Japanese have a history of settling their land with the aid of firearms? Has there ever been a time in Japanese history when the majority of ordinary citizens had firearms and used them to put food on the table? Just a few posts ago you were insisting on comparing apples to apples, now you're comparing the US to Japan. You can't have it both ways. Are we going to stick to a group of cultures that fit your racial/cultural/economic biases, or are we going to open it up to the whole planet? I prefer the latter, because I don't see poor, colored humans as any less human or fundamentally different from us in any significant way. But maybe you do?

I was exposed to firearm education through the 4H when I was round 10 years old. I have never forgotten the safety rules I learned back then, and that was 40 years ago. Following those rules prevented me from shooting one of my uncles during a deer hunting trip and a close friend at his home. There's no telling how many times following the safety rules have prevented accidental discharges. Education works. I was also required to go through an educational program before I could get a concealed carry license. Can't say it taught me anything I didn't already know, but I saw quite a few people in the class who were learning new stuff. It works. The problem is that it isn't done enough. And it isn't universally required. You're trying to convince me that you can take Einstein out of context and make it look like he was against education? Srsly? Universal firearm education is almost certainly the reason that certain Scandinavian countries can have so many guns and so little gun violence.

[JimC]

Did the Japanese have a history of settling their land with the aid of firearms? Has there ever been a time in Japanese history when the majority of ordinary citizens had firearms and used them to put food on the table? Just a few posts ago you were insisting on comparing apples to apples, now you're comparing the US to Japan. You can't have it both ways. Are we going to stick to a group of cultures that fit your racial/cultural/economic biases, or are we going to open it up to the whole planet? I prefer the latter, because I don't see poor, colored humans as any less human or fundamentally different from us in any significant way. But maybe you do?

I was exposed to firearm education through the 4H when I was round 10 years old. I have never forgotten the safety rules I learned back then, and that was 40 years ago. Following those rules prevented me from shooting one of my uncles during a deer hunting trip and a close friend at his home. There's no telling how many times following the safety rules have prevented accidental discharges. Education works. I was also required to go through an educational program before I could get a concealed carry license. Can't say it taught me anything I didn't already know, but I saw quite a few people in the class who were learning new stuff. It works. The problem is that it isn't done enough. And it isn't universally required. You're trying to convince me that you can take Einstein out of context and make it look like he was against education? Srsly? Universal firearm education is almost certainly the reason that certain Scandinavian countries can have so many guns and so little gun violence.

A few points:

1. It is certainly true that the US has real historical ties to firearms, particularly handguns, but the ties have been nurtured over the years with a lot of romantic nonsense about the wild west, aided and abetted by Hollywood, and constantly linked to a fear of loss of personal freedom and a particular brand of right wing fervour. It has almost been a process of cultural self-conditioning...

2. The gun safety and responsibility ethos is not being questioned - it applies quite clearly to rifle use. But however much education is applied to hand gun use, it remains such an easy to use and conceal means of killing other humans.

3. "certain Scandinavian countries can have so many guns and so little gun violence" - I would be pretty certain the guns in question would be rifles and shotguns, for hunting or target shooting. No concealed carry of handguns there... Oz has a lot of rifles and shotguns too, but very few handguns, which is the way I like it.

However, unlike BG, I doubt very much whether the US will either want (in terms of a majority push) or be able to make serious inroads into the prevalence of the handgun. Too entrenched, too many committed survivalist types...

[FBM]

A few points:

1. It is certainly true that the US has real historical ties to firearms, particularly handguns, but the ties have been nurtured over the years with a lot of romantic nonsense about the wild west, aided and abetted by Hollywood, and constantly linked to a fear of loss of personal freedom and a particular brand of right wing fervour. It has almost been a process of cultural self-conditioning...

I wholeheartedly agree there. As you know, Jim, I'm much more of a centrist on this issue than most of the other participants in this debate. One reason that you and I can swap ideas on it without frothing at the mouth is that your position isn't very far from mine in the first place. Yes, Hollywood and other entertainment media do what they can to profit off of whatever they can. Bastards have long since figured out how to use marketing to create a demand for what they have plenty of. Dunno what to do about that. Capitalism, "free market," free speech, etc. We've painted ourselves into a corner there, seems.

Nostalgia is a human thing, and when there's a strong enough emotion, there will be people profiting from it, whether it be for money or political gain. Our history, and therefore our nostaligia, includes guns. But it's not just nostalgia. I grew up hunting for meat, not for trophies. And I used large-caliber handguns for big game sometimes when I didn't have a rifle or shotgun. Rural poverty hasn't disappeared from the US, so I'm pretty sure there are still plenty of people out in the countryside who increase their protein intake with all sorts of guns, long or short. Whatever they can afford or whatever's handed down to them. It may be hard to convince non-Americans that this is true of the same country that's been spearheading space exploration for the past few decades, but take it from someone who grew up there. NASA's lunar program ended about the time I was old enough to hunt. It's very likely that I was cleaning squirrels, rabbits and whatnot while people were walking on the Moon. Poor people like meat, too.

2. The gun safety and responsibility ethos is not being questioned - it applies quite clearly to rifle use. But however much education is applied to hand gun use, it remains such an easy to use and conceal means of killing other humans.

True. And still one of the best ways defend yourself from a criminal who has one regardless of what the law says. In several of my earlier responses, mostly to Bg, I've mentioned that attempting to disarm the law-abiding citizens while the criminals still have guns is setting the stage for a big increase in gun crimes and murders. It's not murder to kill someone who's breaking into your house or trying to kill you, is it? Stop the murderers first, then you may find out that there's not enough firearms homicides left to justify trying to disarm the peaceful people. But anyway, I still don't see, speaking purely pragmatically, how a war on guns is going to turn out to be any more successful than the war on drugs. We need a very different approach, I think.

3. "certain Scandinavian countries can have so many guns and so little gun violence" - I would be pretty certain the guns in question would be rifles and shotguns, for hunting or target shooting. No concealed carry of handguns there... Oz has a lot of rifles and shotguns too, but very few handguns, which is the way I like it.

The people to worry about in the US are the ones who don't have or want a concealed carry permit in the first place, though. Those are the same people who inspire the rest of us to get legal permission to carry a firearm for self defense. Because we need it sometimes. I've needed it twice so far.

However, unlike BG, I doubt very much whether the US will either want (in terms of a majority push) or be able to make serious inroads into the prevalence of the handgun. Too entrenched, too many committed survivalist types...

That's true, but I think the media have exaggerated the prevalence of survivalist types who hoard firearms. They are far, far outnumbered by people like me, who rarely make the headlines. The silent majority, as it were. I don't want a handgun because I think a global collapse of civilization is imminent; I just want one because I know first-hand how fucked up some of our criminals are. I used to be a guard, then a counselor in an adolescent halfway house. I took the groups to Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Tennessee several times a year. We'd listen to the inmates' stories, the guards' stories, the counselors' stories. I was a lot more gung-ho about keeping a handgun nearby after those experiences. Any one of those multiple-murder lifers looked just like another person you'd pass in on the street. The banality of evil, and all that.

But as I've said before, unlike certain...people...I'm all for stricter controls, training and educational requirements and so forth for legal firearm ownership. It should be at least as hard to get a license to carry a handgun as it is to get a license to drive a car. I'd be fine if the US followed the Scandinavian models. They seem to work quite well. But then again, the average Scandinavian criminal doesn't already have easy access to handguns, as far as I know. American criminals do, and no amount of legislation is going to make that fact go away. No more than the war on drugs made drugs go away. Cracking down on firearms will make illegal trafficing that much more profitable. Just like with drugs. I remember when I used to be able to get a quarter ounce of weed for 15 bucks. That was before the War on Drugs(R).

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Comparing U.S. and Japan is as crazy as, say, comparing Russia and Sweden.

[Blind groper]

OK

I accept that Japan is not a good comparison. I was just trying to point out that at least one country has solved the gun homicide problem with a war on guns, and especially hand guns.

Inside the USA, there is (according to Wiki) about 40 to 50% of the population who support free availability of guns, including hand guns. That implies 50 to 60% of Americans are smart. At this point in time, 50 to 60% is probably not enough to see proper and effective action, and you Americans will continue to bite the dust with bullets through you for many decades to come.

At least I do not have that problem.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hello Kitty doesn't kill, Hello Kitty sheets kill.

[Seth]

Seth

Several points.

First. You tried to say my earlier reference was invalid due to biased sources. So what do you call Blaze magazine?

A truth teller.

Second, compare apples with apples, for Finagle's Sake! Adding places like Russia into your so-called comparisons are stupid. Why not try Somalia. makes it look even better. The USA is supposed to be a western civilised nation. Thus, it needs to be compared to other western civilised nations. Not to bloody Russia. Sheesh!

Nonsense. If your theorem holds true, then it will hold true everywhere. It doesn't.

Third, I see you have changed your tune on rights. No longer a 'natural' right.

Of course it's a natural right. It accrues as a component of my nature as a living creature. I've previously discussed the non-theistic natural rights theory I use, but I see no point in arguing it with you because your mind is a tightly closed crack that I have no particular interest in trying to pry open.

Holding guns is a 'right' because you claim no one can take them off you without you committing multiple murder.

Self defense is not murder, it's self defense, or in other words, it's justifiable homicide. Any attempt to disarm an otherwise lawful citizen places that citizen in grave and imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury, as the Jews of Germany discovered to their horror. Therefore, any attempt to disarm me is a hostile act that is unsupported by any moral argument, just law, or rational reasoning and it may therefore be resisted as necessary in order to prevent victimization, injury, tyranny and death. At the core, as I said, ALL rights are simply freedoms of action claimed by one individual that can be defended against intrusion by others. The same is true of the right to free speech, or religion, or habeas corpus. Whether the right is recognized by others is, ultimately, dependent upon the ability of the claimant to enforce that exercise against infringement. That enforcement may be by moral argument and authority, or by mutual agreement, or by law and government, each of which are simply methods of enforcing the hierarchy of rights that each of us enjoys. But in the absence of outside support for the enforcement or defense of one's rights, ultimately the responsibility, and the moral authority to claim a right and enforce it lies in the ability of the individual to do so against all those who would seek to take that right away or infringe upon it.

Civilization, law and government are nothing more than Law of the Jungle trial by combat by other means. Lawyers and politicians are merely our proxies in the struggle to defend and balance the exercise of rights by individuals. It's not markedly different than actual trial by combat, where the accused may prevail against intrusions on his rights (like life and liberty) by being stronger, quicker and more ruthless than his opponent. Courts are the jousting lists of our age, and the combat is largely rhetorical these days. But it all flows from the same place: the right of the individual to use force to defend his claim to exercise a right freely.

And you still do not see your arguments as irrational? Wow! And you still offer yourself as a martyr to your religious beliefs. Yep. Sanity is not strong in your ideas.

Says the sheeple. I'm proud to be insulted by you and your ilk because it demonstrates just how weak your arguments are.

Fourth, your table 4 shows how terrible hand guns are with respect to suicide. Such small numbers of hand guns and such a large number of successful hand gun suicides. The bright side is that both murders and suicides from hand guns in those countries are still way less than in the USA, due to much fewer hand guns being around. Kinda makes my point.

Again, I don't care about suicides. They make choices, I make choices, we all make choices...some better than others. I respect everyone enough to allow them to make bad choices so long as they don't initiate force or fraud against me in doing so. If someone wants to end their life, that is their absolute, unquestionable right. The right to commit suicide is the single most essential right that any human can have. The right to end an intolerable life of slavery or pain is, in my opinion, absolute, and I support providing easy, quick, painless methods of suicide be made available to everyone, on demand. Anything else is slavery of the worst sort. You have no right to demand that an individual continue to endure unendurable torment. It's their life and I honor and respect their plenary right to end it whenever they please, so long as they do not harm others in the act.

You, on the other hand, would deny people the solace and comfort of death and would doom them to ongoing mental and/or physical torment. That's fucking twisted and evil beyond belief.

It's none of my business if someone wants to commit suicide, just as its none of your (or anyone else's) business if I want to commit suicide. So fuck off with your faux concerns about suicides, which you wear like a hair-shirt as you try lamely to justify your pathological and paranoid fear of handguns.

[laklak]

Hello Kitty doesn't kill, Hello Kitty sheets kill.

Particularly when you wrap them around the slut bitch's neck and start pulling and then...

Oh, sorry. Wrong thread.

[Seth]

But as I've said before, unlike certain...people...I'm all for stricter controls, training and educational requirements and so forth for legal firearm ownership. It should be at least as hard to get a license to carry a handgun as it is to get a license to drive a car. I'd be fine if the US followed the Scandinavian models. They seem to work quite well. But then again, the average Scandinavian criminal doesn't already have easy access to handguns, as far as I know. American criminals do, and no amount of legislation is going to make that fact go away. No more than the war on drugs made drugs go away. Cracking down on firearms will make illegal trafficing that much more profitable. Just like with drugs. I remember when I used to be able to get a quarter ounce of weed for 15 bucks. That was before the War on Drugs(R).

The problem with licensing of firearms as you suggest is that the power to license is the power to destroy. Licensing itself doesn't just imply, it flatly states that the State has the authority to determine who may exercise a right and who may not. For the same reason that we do not permit licensing of printing presses (something that King George did in his time) we do not permit (or at any rate cannot constitutionally permit) government to determine who may and may not exercise the RKBA.

It's an issue of prior restraint. Censorship is usually imposed because of some perceived harm from published materials that will presumably happen if the content is allowed. No actual showing of harm regarding any particular bit of information is required. What always happens when the government censors free speech is that it very quickly begins censoring mostly that speech which is directed against the power of the State, as is the case in every Communist country on earth. This leads to suppression and greater tyranny in every case.

The same is true of the RKBA. If the State has the power to determine, by policy, who may and may not bear arms, then you inevitably end up with Chicago and New York, where it is virtually impossible for the average law-abiding citizen to own a gun. The Supreme Court just ruled that the right to keep and bear a handgun in one's home or business for self defense is constitutionally protected by the 2nd Amendment. The ruling is crystal clear, but still state agents all over the U.S. are attempting to cling to their authority to limit the keeping and bearing of arms in their jurisdictions. They throw up every obstruction they can think of, including in Cook County (Chicago) a $25.00 tax on firearms purchases that forces law-abiding citizens to pay for the alleged costs of gun violence not caused by them, but rather caused by criminals, which is a cost that all of society must bear, particularly when it is the State's fault that there is so much crime to begin with because it disarmed the citizenry and made them easy prey for criminality.

In NYC, for example, it is theoretically possible to get a concealed carry permit. However, the rules are such that it is factually impossible to do so unless you are a well-connected political ally of the incumbents. You must submit your application on the form provided by the NYPD, and ONLY that ORIGINAL form, which must be obtained from the NYPD. For more than 50 years however, NYC has failed to fund publishing of the forms, and only a very few "authorized" forms are printed each year, and they are jealously guarded. The average citizen is told that the NYPD is "out of the forms" and that they "do not know when more will be available."

This is precisely the sort of abusive tactics that are always used by gun banners to obstruct the exercise of rights by citizens where that exercise goes against the power and prestige of the State.

In the 42 states that now have "shall issue" concealed carry, those laws were passed EXPLICITLY to remove from local authorities any power to discriminate and abuse their authority by arbitrarily choosing who does and does not get a CCW permit. I experienced this myself many years ago. In the county where I lived, because the Sheriff had the sole authority to issue a permit, and because it was entirely discretionary on his part, it was impossible to get a permit for decades, unless you were quite literally a crony of the incumbent Sheriff. Moreover, if a new Sheriff was elected, all the old "permits" (which were often nothing more than the Sheriff's business card with a hand-written notation on the back) were voided and the new crop of cronys had to barter for a permit.

Then our incumbent Sheriff finally saw the light when he was forced to explain why a woman who had come to him to apply for a permit because of her violently abusive husband who had broken two restraining orders and beaten her twice, was not given a permit and was subsequently murdered by her ex-husband. He realized that he had been wrong and started issuing permits to any law abiding citizen who could pass his extensive background examination, which was very detailed and involved detectives interviewing family members and neighbors.

I was issued the 10th formal CCW permit ever issued in that county, which I still hold today.

But in the county next door, NOBODY but a police officer could get a permit under any circumstances, because that Sheriff didn't like citizens having guns.

So, the State stepped in and passed a uniform concealed carry law that requires a Sheriff to issue a permit to anyone and everyone who meets the fairly simple criteria in the law, which includes a clean background, no federal disability from firearms ownership, and a minimal training course in concealed carry law and handgun proficiency.

This is not optimal, and gun owners would prefer the "Vermont Model" of CCW, which says that any person of good character and without a legal disability can carry concealed without a permit. Strangely, there has never been an orgy of lawful concealed carry violence leaving the gutters running with blood in all those hundreds of years that it's been legal to carry concealed in Vermont.

But the Colorado Constitution explicitly restricts concealed carry, although it expressly authorizes open carry everywhere in the state, so that it's necessary to have a permitting system for CCW.

But as you can see, before the State acted, this system was arbitrary and capricious and depended entirely on the preferences and proclivities of the local Sheriff.

That is not the proper way to regulate the exercise of a fundamental right.

This is why licensing is so very dangerous. By having the authority to deny licenses, the State gains too much power to discriminate and abuse its authority and thereby infringe on the rights of the citizens. This is why we don't license printing presses, and why we should not license guns.

What we do is to create a structure of law regarding the USE AND DISCHARGE of firearms that is very, very stringent, and we hold every gun owner to that meticulous standard and punish those who misuse their firearms. That's perfectly reasonable and necessary. But hoplophobes are simply so mentally deranged that they cannot distinguish between the "keeping and bearing" of firearms and the operation, discharge, use or misuse of those firearms.

I've carried a concealed handgun now for more than 25 years in perfect peace and tranquility, never once being forced to discharge it, although I have been forced to display it as a deterrent to an attempted crime a couple of times in my life.

Owning and carrying a handgun are a far cry from shooting someone with it, and the former does not inevitably result in the latter. But this distinction is beyond hoplophobe understanding. They delusionally equate firearms possession to firearms abuse and are under the false impression that people who possess firearms are bound to suddenly snap and become random mass-murderers.

Sadly for their twisted and insane agenda, the facts prove this is not the case, and those who trouble themselves to obtain a CCW permit are in fact much more law abiding and less likely to be involved in ANY sort of crime than even your Joe Average law-abiding citizen. CCW permittees tend to be the MOST law-abiding and careful citizens in the community, by far. In some cases more so than police officers and public officials.

But I agree wholeheartedly that education is the key to reducing gun violence and gun accidents, which has been proved by a 98% drop in gun accidents since the 1920s largely due to the NRA's firearms safety and education programs.

I would go much further and require gun safety, education and marksmanship training in public schools starting in the first grade and continuing through high school graduation as a mandatory part of the curriculum. Congress has full authority to require this under its power to organize, train and equip the Militia, and I think it should do so.

[Blind groper]

Self defense is not murder, it's self defense, or in other words, it's justifiable homicide.

Actually, if the situation described ever happened, and the police came to take away your guns, and you fought back, inflicting death, it would be murder. The word 'murder' has a legal definition, meaning an unlawful killing. Killing an officer of the law because he was doing his duty is most definitely unlawful. Thus, by definition, your act would be murder. Not only that, but murder of a policeman, meaning it would receive the worst punishment that the law offers. Your name would go down in history, in whatever tiny way it was remembered, as an exceeding evil person.

On suicides.
Evidently, what I said before about suicides went right over your head. So here it is again.

Researchers have discovered that the impulse to suicide is a temporary one and not normally repeated. If a person fails to find a method of killing him/herself during the short duration of that impulse, then he/she will probably never try again, and will have a chance to recover from whatever emotional problem afflicts them.

If a hand gun is available during that critical period, we end up with someone dying who should not. It is not a case of a person in terrible pain finding a way out of their horrible life. Instead, it is a case of a temporary madness taking a human life, when it can be avoided.

[laklak]

That was a damn good post, Seth.

[FBM]

That was a damn good post, Seth.

...
But I agree wholeheartedly that education is the key to reducing gun violence and gun accidents, which has been proved by a 98% drop in gun accidents since the 1920s largely due to the NRA's firearms safety and education programs.

I would go much further and require gun safety, education and marksmanship training in public schools starting in the first grade and continuing through high school graduation as a mandatory part of the curriculum. Congress has full authority to require this under its power to organize, train and equip the Militia, and I think it should do so.

I would be happy to send my tax money in for this program. If the gummit started a War on Guns, though, I imagine that a number of people would stop paying taxes altogether and spend that money on ammo.

[Blind groper]

But I agree wholeheartedly that education is the key to reducing gun violence and gun accidents, which has been proved by a 98% drop in gun accidents since the 1920s largely due to the NRA's firearms safety and education programs.

Wrong.

Why is it wrong?
it is wrong because gun accidents are not the real problem. Very few people relatively die in gun accidents. But 100,000 people each year receive a bullet - most from homicide attempts. Education aint gonna make a blind bit of difference to that!