Guns used for lawful self defense

[mistermack]

I never insist you believe anything I say. Mostly because I don't care if you do or not. That's worked well for me for many years.

I can believe that. I think it's likely a talent you need fairly often.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I never insist you believe anything I say. Mostly because I don't care if you do or not. That's worked well for me for many years.

I can believe that. I think it's likely a talent you need fairly often.

That's something you'll never really know for sure. But do keep trying, this is kind of fun.

[JimC]

'Zilla's example is not really relevant to most of this debate, since it is not a case of a civilian carrying a hand-gun and using it in self defence. Military/law enforcement use of weapons has its own rationale.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

'Zilla's example is not really relevant to most of this debate, since it is not a case of a civilian carrying a hand-gun and using it in self defence. Military/law enforcement use of weapons has its own rationale.

It was declared self-defense shooting, not a police action, by the Board.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Oh, and when I dream about I always pull something beside a gun, including a banana in one dream, and then I die.

[Seth]

Seth

You are a classic case of self delusion.
You cling to your firearm security blanket and think you are free.
You are a slave. Only people like myself, who walk without fear are free.

Only mentally deficient moron walks through this world without fear. Do you have a fire extinguisher? Do you have car insurance? A health program? Locks on your doors? Do you wear sunscreen and wash your hands before you eat? Then you live in fear. Living in fear is a survival trait. Animals that have no fear soon become dead one way or another. Same thing happens to humans.

The question is whether your fears are rational. It's about assessment of risk versus the burden of preparedness.

Sure, there is always risk, in anything and everything we do. I quote the example that happened a few years ago, not far from where I was living. A car at high speed driven by some teenage nutters, left the road and flew through the air into the side of a house, and killed a small boy who was asleep in his bed. We live with death always just a hairs breadth away. But that is a problem only if we let it affect us. I choose not to allow fear to affect me. I live proud, and without fear. I involve myself in dangerous sports, and I drive a car (arguably the most dangerous thing of all). I am free since I do not live with fear.

But is that rational or irrational? You seem to believe that you have nothing to fear from your fellow citizens. I put it to you that the crime statistics in NZ prove that yours is an irrational denial of risk, not a rational analysis of risk.

Have I "needed" a gun for the 25 years I've been carrying one? Yes, on several occasions even as a civilian. Do you "need" a gun where you live? Perhaps, perhaps not. But what's the harm in carrying one even if you never need to use it? It can be something of a nuisance to carry a gun at times, but once you're accustomed to it it's no different than carrying your wallet or purse. It's an inanimate lump of metal that poses no danger to anyone by being carried, and it's available for use should the unlikely occur.

I ask you, have you ever had a fatal dog mauling, or merely a serious dog attack in New Zealand? Yes? I suspect so. Has anyone ever been beaten, robbed or killed by a criminal in New Zealand? Yes, that's a fact you cannot deny. Therefore, you are, in fact, at risk from criminal victimization. You own a fire extinguisher? I bet you do. What do you suppose your chances of having a fire are as compared to your chances of being the victim of violent crime? What they actually are doesn't really matter, what matters is that you make a rational analysis of the risk and you respond accordingly. You don't believe that you are completely safe from a fire, so you buy a fire extinguisher and insure your home and contents against that peril. That's a rational analysis.

But you flatly deny that you are at risk from criminal victimization even though obvious facts prove you to be wrong.

If you had a very high fire risk, or if the consequences of a fire would be too drastic, you might enhance your fire protection schema by having multiple extinguishers, or a hose and pump, or a fire alarm system. If you stood to lose everything and couldn't replace it, you might increase the insurance protection you have. The magnitude and probability of the peril both figure in to what the rational person does to prepare for the situation.

If you live in a hurricane area, you have a different plan than those who live in avalanche country, but you rationally assess the risks and the magnitude of the peril in making a plan.

You get vaccinations for flu and whooping cough and TB and other medical perils that might afflict you in any place at any time because you come in contact with a carrier. That's another rational assessment of risk and a prudent plan to deal with the potential magnitude of the peril.

In order to address any of these perils you inconvenience yourself and invest money and time in preparing for them. You base your decision on how much preparation to take on the type of peril and the magnitude of the injury you face if you are unprepared.

Does it hurt you or inconvenience or endanger anyone else to have two fire extinguishers, or five, or an alarm system if you never have a fire? No. Does it hurt you or inordinately inconvenience you or anyone else if you get a TB vaccination along with a tetanus shot? No.

Does this mean that you are a slave to fear because you make a rational analysis of risk and magnitude and take reasonable precautions to mitigate any harm? Of course not.

It's no different for me and my handgun. The investment in acquiring and training with my firearms is no burden because it's also a hobby that I enjoy. The investment in time and inconvenience to carry my handgun every day is very small as compared to the potential for harm should I be the target of a violent criminal. The risk to inconvenience ratio is huge. it's a small thing to carry a gun, it's a huge thing to need one and not have one. That's what all those people in the theater in Aurora discovered, to their horror, on that fateful night. Every single one of them made an incorrect risk analysis and failed to prepare to mitigate the potential harm, and a dozen of them died, and nearly 50 were injured as a result of that mistake. They thought like you did, that they had nothing to fear and that they didn't need to prepare for a violent criminal attack by taking a few simple, common sense precautions...like obtaining, training with, and carrying a concealed handgun, which is something they are permitted to do by law with a minimum of fuss and a relatively small investment of money.

When I interviewed witnesses to the Columbine High School shooting the evening after it happened, the majority of them said some version of "I wish someone other than the killers had a gun." I've never met or spoken with any victim of a violent crime or mass shooting, and I've interviewed many, who said "I'm really glad that restrictive gun laws kept guns out of my hands and the hands of other law-abiding citizens who might have intervened."

You get to make an analysis of your risks and plan accordingly, for better or worse. But you also have to live or die by your decisions.

Me, I'd rather carry a gun for 25 years and never once have the need to use it in self defense than need a gun once and not have one.

I'll live or die by my decisions.

You allow fear to direct your actions. You live with a neurotic's security blanket - guns. You are a slave.

No, I'm free because I get to choose whether or not I carry a gun. You don't get that choice, it's been taken away from you by your government, which doesn't trust you and doesn't want you armed. That makes you a slave to your government, not a free man.

[Seth]

A guy came at me with a knife in LA. I shot him.

I had an interesting experience once in Auckland. A friend and I were walking rather late at night, and we heard some ruckus. We went to see, and it was a bunch of teenage guys bashing up another teenage guy. I said to my friend to stay put and have his cell phone ready to phone the police if he needed to. I walked up to the teenagers, and in my most powerful voice asked them what was going on. In spite of the fact that there were about 6 assailants to my one adult, they immediately backed off - tried to tell me there was no problem - and let their victim go - who immediately ran for his life. I told them to behave themselves and walked back to my friend who was standing there totally gob smacked.

He told me that I sounded like a plain clothes policeman, and the teenagers would have wanted to avoid trouble with the police. Whatever. The point is that I encountered a serious situation of violence, and dealt with it without guns, knives or other weapons. I am convinced that, in most cases, guns are utterly unnecessary to deal with life's little incidents.

Gawdzilla's example is a case where, it appears no other tactic was tried, and the result was lethal. I regard that as seriously unfortunate.

That's not a rational analysis, that's stupidity in action. I was a cop long enough to figure out that if you don't have the force to back up the command voice and show of authority, you're just as likely to end up being the other guy in the ambulance. You were extremely lucky, that's all I can say. But you could just have easily had that gang turn on you and beat you to death for interfering with them.

And you want me to believe that you have made a rational analysis of risk.

What you did was allow your utter DENIAL of risk lead you into a situation that could have very easily cost you your life, and there wasn't a damned thing that you, your friend or the police could have done about it because you would have had your brains kicked out before the police could possibly arrive.

You are a lucky, lucky man. Here's hoping that your lucky streak continues.

Me, I don't believe in luck, I believe in Messrs. Heckler & Koch and the Remington Arms and Ammunition Company.

[Seth]

The person in question pulled his knife, stated he was going to kill me, and charged. I drew and fired once,

Were you in the police at the time?
I can imagine some moron high on methamphetamine having a go at a policeman, and getting shot.

But you can't imagine the same moron having a go at a civilian. That's simply not rational.

As I said before, I do not have a problem with the police carrying hand guns. They are trained to use them, and trained to use them with restraint (although, in the USA, it appears not with the restraint shown by other police forces, such as the German example I quoted earlier.) Here in NZ, the police do not normally carry hand guns on their person, though they usually have a rifle and a hand gun in a locked steel box in the trunk of the police car. We see very few cases of police shooting people here.

How many cases of assault and murder of police officers do you have?

We had a case last year of a policeman who pulled over a stolen car with two guys inside. He made the mistake of turning his back on one of them and got whacked over the head with a lump of wood. Then, unconscious, they beat him up very thoroughly. He lived, but only just, and needed a long hospital recuperation. If he had been carrying a hand gun, the crims would have taken it and shot him dead, and then gone off, armed for more murders.

If he'd had a gun, and been properly trained in high-risk vehicle stops, he never would have placed himself in proximity to unsecured unsearched car theft suspects in the first place so that he could be attacked, and he'd have had the necessary tool to either dissuade or take down anyone who attacked him. Over here we call it a "felony stop" and it's set up so that any attempt to attack officers by the suspects ends up with them being out of the game and the officers going home unhurt. But his gun was locked in the trunk, if he had one at all, and he was nearly beaten to death BECAUSE he, his superiors, your politicians and YOU made the wrong risk assessment and preparation plan.

The main lesson the police learned from that incident is to operate in pairs.

That's it? What a bunch of ill-trained rubes NZ coppers must be.

[Blind groper]

Actually, Seth, our police are well trained and very professional. The case I mentioned, where the policeman pulled over a stolen car, was due to a traffic offense. The cop had no reason at the time to believe it was stolen. So there was no reason to expect an assault.

And I am well aware of risks and how to evaluate them. Unlike you, though, I do not live in fear of low probability risks. You talk of Columbine type shootings. The odds against you ever being in such a situation are astronomical. To take silly precautions for such an event is just irrational.

Certainly I have fire insurance, wear a car seat belt, have a fire extinguisher at home, and take sensible precautions against all high probability harms. I do not get silly about things that are seriously unlikely. I do not wear a crash helmet outdoors in case a meteor falls on my head. I do not expect to encounter a murderer after my blood. However, a lot of people get seriously harmed in car accidents. So it makes sense to take precautions against car accident.

I evaluate risk coolly and sensibly. My highest risk is heart disease, and I limit that with good diet, not smoking, and exercise. Second highest is cancer, and I take what precautions I can, including medical checks any time I show symptoms that might be cancer. But I know damn well what hazards are very low risk, and I do not let myself get paranoid about them. Only a slave to fear lets himself get his behaviour modified by risks that are insignificant.

I have, as I pointed out, been in potentially violent situations. I do not carry a gun, and I have escaped those situations each time without a gun. Usually by talking my way out. These are situations where an idiot would pull a gun. I am not an idiot.

[Seth]

Actually, Seth, our police are well trained and very professional.

Not if they let two guys with a hunk of wood beat them nearly to death they aren't. I learned as a rookie in the Academy that if someone proposes to beat my brains out with a hunk of wood, I'm not only allowed, but encouraged to shoot them dead.

The case I mentioned, where the policeman pulled over a stolen car, was due to a traffic offense. The cop had no reason at the time to believe it was stolen. So there was no reason to expect an assault.

That's because NZ police are fatally dismissive of the second-most dangerous activity that a policeman can engage in. Exceeded only by response to violent domestic disputes, traffic stops are THE most dangerous activity police anywhere engage in. As you can clearly see, you never know who is in the car or how they are armed. NZ cops are incompetent, poorly trained, poorly supervised and completely blind to the true risks they face. This poor sod almost fatally so.

And I am well aware of risks and how to evaluate them.

If your police aren't, how can you expect me to believe you are?

Unlike you, though, I do not live in fear of low probability risks.

The probability of a victim of a violent criminal attack being violently attacked by a criminal is 100 percent. Since you cannot predict when or where a criminal will strike, trying to assign a probability to that eventuality and basing your response plan on that assessment is, as so many helpless victims of violent crime even in New Zealand have discovered to their horror, a fatal or extremely harmful mistake.

You talk of Columbine type shootings. The odds against you ever being in such a situation are astronomical. To take silly precautions for such an event is just irrational.

Astronomically small probability, potentially fatal consequence. Potentially fatal consequence versus the inconvenience of carrying a gun = no contest, I'll take the gun every time. And my personal experience is, as I have said, that the chances of being the victim of criminal violence is far greater than you would like to think. As I've said, I've had to use my gun to thwart criminality on several occasions as a civilian, all without having to shoot anyone, and I'm leaving out entirely the times I used it as a police officer.

Certainly I have fire insurance, wear a car seat belt, have a fire extinguisher at home, and take sensible precautions against all high probability harms. I do not get silly about things that are seriously unlikely. I do not wear a crash helmet outdoors in case a meteor falls on my head. I do not expect to encounter a murderer after my blood. However, a lot of people get seriously harmed in car accidents. So it makes sense to take precautions against car accident.

I evaluate risk coolly and sensibly. My highest risk is heart disease, and I limit that with good diet, not smoking, and exercise. Second highest is cancer, and I take what precautions I can, including medical checks any time I show symptoms that might be cancer. But I know damn well what hazards are very low risk, and I do not let myself get paranoid about them. Only a slave to fear lets himself get his behaviour modified by risks that are insignificant.

Whoops! just proved what a slave you are because you admitted to modifying your behavior to avoid the risk of heart disease. And your risk of being the victim of violent crime even in NZ is significantly non-zero.

I have, as I pointed out, been in potentially violent situations. I do not carry a gun, and I have escaped those situations each time without a gun. Usually by talking my way out. These are situations where an idiot would pull a gun. I am not an idiot.

Lucky you. One of these times you won't be able to talk your way out of it, then what will you do?

[Blind groper]

Seth

You have a seriously jaundiced and distorted view of things.
You probability assessments are affected by your paranoia. Here in NZ, police pulling up traffic offenders are rarely at risk. I am aware that the media give the opposite impression, but anyone believing the media is an idiot.

For myself personally, I know that the odds against me ever suffering a serious physical assault are low. Not zero, but not high enough to get all paranoid about. Certainly, I have never carried a weapon and never will. Nor is such a weapon needed, except by those who are terminally neurotic.

[macdoc]

You have a seriously jaundiced and distorted view of things.

just getting around to noticing that are you??

[surreptitious57]

I walk about fearlessly because I'm armed and I know I'm prepared to respond to ANY emergency quickly and effectively. I don't have to worry whether some beer-soaked thug is going to try to steal my wallet when I'm walking home from the pub late at night precisely because I know I can deal with any such eventuality. I don't worry about driving through a bad part of town because I'm armed, and can take care of business if called upon to do so. You may trust your fellow citizens, and you may be justified in doing so in main, but the one time you're wrong, it will be your last mistake. The one time I'm wrong in assessing the character of my fellow citizens, it will be the last mistake THEY make.

You appear to be absolutely convinced of your own invincibility here, but no matter how well armed you are, you can still end up dead, just like anyone else. Soldiers routinely do in combat and they are armed to the teeth. So in spite of your assertion that you can deal with any eventuality, in reality, this is not so. But what compels you to be armed every time you leave the house anyway? Is it just your belief in upholding your constitutional rights or have you ever had to defend yourself? And if so, was it absolutely neccesary to do so with a firearm?

[Blind groper]

1. what compels you to be armed every time you leave the house anyway?
2. Is it just your belief in upholding your constitutional rights
3. or have you ever had to defend yourself?
4. And if so, was it absolutely neccesary to do so with a firearm?

Answers.

1. Insanity.
2. Not a belief. just a convenient rationalisation.
3. and 4. No and no. However, Seth will answer yes to both, and we have no way of knowing if he is telling the truth or experiencing a perceived truth invented by a feverish imagination.

[JimC]

BG is developing a very sizeable points lead here...