Guns used for lawful self defense

[Blind groper]

I agree it is a pragmatic decision. I am a pragmatic sort of fellow. Would I rather be submissive and alive, or aggressive and dead? The former every time.

I also think there is a kind of false pride involved in what many people say. If someone is truly psychologically well balanced, instead of as neurotic as a barrel of monkeys, acting submissive at need is not going to upset the old self image. Anyone who cannot, out of pride, temporarily act submissive, is a neurotic freak who belongs in an institution.

[Robert_S]

I agree it is a pragmatic decision. I am a pragmatic sort of fellow. Would I rather be submissive and alive, or aggressive and dead? The former every time.

I also think there is a kind of false pride involved in what many people say. If someone is truly psychologically well balanced, instead of as neurotic as a barrel of monkeys, acting submissive at need is not going to upset the old self image. Anyone who cannot, out of pride, temporarily act submissive, is a neurotic freak who belongs in an institution.

If I had a chance though, I'd have shot the worthless scum and felt not a twinge of remorse.

[Blind groper]

How worthless the scumbag is, and how much remorse you do or do not feel, is irrelevant to my argument. My argument is about doing what gives the best chance of surviving unhurt.

Let me add to that.
Would you not feel really great, after it is all over, and the police have arrested the scumbag, to sit in court and watch him being sentenced to a very long stretch?

[Seth]

Prove he was in no danger.

Read my post again.
I said "Most of the time".
This is a statistical truth based on the fact that most cases where a victim submits, no shooting happens. Police records show that this is true, not only most of the time, but almost all of the time.

No, it's not a "statistical truth" and you have no valid statistics that demonstrate your claim. What you do have is a bunch of bullshit put together by anti-gun groups that ignore completely the 2 million times a year when self defense using firearms is successful in thwarting crime.

However, the moment you draw a gun, all bets are off, and there is a more than 50% chance that you will get shot.

Lie.

The assailant may also get shot, as in this case, but the victim gets shot, and that is the point. So this makes the idiot who tried to draw a gun into a f%$#ing moron.

Except he's alive and the crook is in jail (though he should be dead). What it really means is that pussies like you prefer to lie back and enjoy it, which is fine with me because crooks know your type and can smell the cowardice a mile away, so they will victimize you and leave me alone because I'm dangerous and they know it.

Me, I'll take my chances in a gunfight because I'm a damned good gunfighter, far better than any scumbag I've ever met precisely because I train regularly on responding to a lethal threat and I know exactly what I'm going to do and all I need is the trigger event and the rest is foretold, whereas the criminal is focused on stealing stuff, not shooting, which puts him at a serious disadvantage, which is exactly why Leone was able to escape restraint, recover a pistol and shoot the burglar.

Pretty fucking good for a 90 year old. Kudos.

[Seth]

Let me show you what the professionals advise.
http://www.mulhollandsecurity.com/artic ... _tips.html

I quote :

"Don’t ever try to pull a weapon on an armed perpetrator who has you covered with a handgun unless you feel it’s your last chance."

Simple and sound advice. I know it goes against the general insanity known as American gun culture, but nevertheless is sound. If you ignore that advice, you are an idiot. You are also very likely to be a dead idiot. The idiot in the case quoted was lucky to be hit only in the jaw. An inch to the side and he would be dead. it is not worth it.

The point is that whether you try to draw when someone's got the drop on you depends on your level of skill and the precise situation. In my case, I have a demonstrated ability to draw and fire two rounds to the chest and one to the head in under 0.75 seconds after I initiate the draw. The average reaction time of most humans is 0.75 seconds to perceive the threat, and ANOTHER 0.75 seconds minimum to make the decision on how to react. This means that I'm able to draw and fire in half the time it takes an average person to even decide to shoot back, which makes them dead and me the winner. That's certainly not the case for everyone of course.

In this case, the burglar released the victim so he could go to the bathroom, where the victim armed himself and came out shooting, which is far different from being held at gunpoint. He did exactly what I would do if given the chance to arm myself, and that's the right thing to do because any other choice is leaving your life, and the lives of everyone in the house in the hands of an armed intruder with unknown intentions.

You may not mind ending up dead with piss around you and a bullet in the back of your head, but if I die, it'll be with bullets entering my chest as mine enter his, or my teeth in his throat if that's my only weapon. You do whatever the fuck you like, but don't presume to give other people any advice at all because you are completely and utterly unqualified to do so.

[Seth]

I agree it is a pragmatic decision. I am a pragmatic sort of fellow. Would I rather be submissive and alive, or aggressive and dead? The former every time.

One small problem with your theory: Submission does not guarantee you won't be killed. Just ask any cooler full of dead convenience store or pizza parlor employees who submitted to being herded in there thinking that the crook would stand by his promise that nobody would get hurt, only to shoot them all dead after securing them so they can't attack him. Just happened the other day in Denver, where five bar employees were brutally murdered by three crooks robbing the place, who then set the bar on fire to cover the evidence. Didn't work though, they are arrested. But the bar employees are still dead, and the crooks had no bullets in them, which is a great shame because if they had to die, it's better that they died fighting tooth and nail (better yet shotgun and pistol) and taking out as many crooks as possible first.

I also think there is a kind of false pride involved in what many people say. If someone is truly psychologically well balanced, instead of as neurotic as a barrel of monkeys, acting submissive at need is not going to upset the old self image. Anyone who cannot, out of pride, temporarily act submissive, is a neurotic freak who belongs in an institution.

Has nothing to do with pride. The only reason to act submissive is to get the robber's attention diverted away from you so that you can draw your pistol and shoot them in the back at the first opportunity. That's good tactics, but only when it's followed by action to decisively resolve the situation by killing the assailant. Of course that requires that you have a pistol, which pussies like you never have, so you'd best just lay back and enjoy it while courageous people like me shoot the bad guy for you.

[Seth]

How worthless the scumbag is, and how much remorse you do or do not feel, is irrelevant to my argument. My argument is about doing what gives the best chance of surviving unhurt.

Let me add to that.
Would you not feel really great, after it is all over, and the police have arrested the scumbag, to sit in court and watch him being sentenced to a very long stretch?

Or be kicked loose by a sympathetic jury or because some cop made a mistake when he arrested the scumbag.

Given the chance and the legal authority to do so, I prefer to make sure armed scumbags never have a chance to victimize anyone ever again, especially not by trying to sue their victims. It's a matter of public sanitation, you see.

[Blind groper]

Seth

Ever hear of the Darwin Awards?
With your approach, you stand a great chance of being awarded one of the best!

These are statistical games. No matter what you do, there is no guarantee you will live or remain unhurt in such a situation. But the odds are better if you do the smart thing, which is to act submissive. The guy in your case was by means in dire straits. The mere fact that the assailant let him go into the bathroom when he said he needed to shows a lack of desire to hurt. A real psychopath would have let you piss your pants. If he had simply acted submissive, he would not have been shot, and the assailant would have been arrested later and ended up doing time. Probably, since there are no guarantees. The idiot, though, had to do a Seth, and ended up with a bullet in his jaw. Very close to dead.

[Seth]

Seth

Ever hear of the Darwin Awards?
With your approach, you stand a great chance of being awarded one of the best!

I stand with the two million people a year like me who demonstrate that Darwin Awards are for cowardly pussies.

These are statistical games.

That's your fundamental error in reasoning, it's not a statistical game at all, each individual crime is a separate and unique event that has absolutely no "statistical" connection to any other crime. "Statistical games" are what statists use to try to justify disarming the public. They can only do so by reducing each individual life that's at risk in a violent criminal attack to a "statistical game" piece and by completely disregarding and disrespecting that individual's absolute and sovereign right to defend themselves effectively when someone tries to victimize them.

You can only use the statistical argument as an abstract that might or might not apply in any individual incident. The statistical odds that a victim of a violent criminal attack will be the victim of a violent criminal attack is 100 percent. Anyone with any small amount of intelligence knows perfectly well that statistical arguments CANNOT be validly used to predict the outcome of an individual event.

No matter what you do, there is no guarantee you will live or remain unhurt in such a situation.

Yup. Sometimes you die.

But the odds are better if you do the smart thing, which is to act submissive.

No, they aren't, for the reasons cited above, as the victims of the Luby's Cafeteria massacre in Killeen, Texas learned to their dismay. Your noxious and fallacious argument imprudently and improperly relies upon a presumption about the nature of a home invader that simply cannot be predicted using statistics.

The guy in your case was by means in dire straits. The mere fact that the assailant let him go into the bathroom when he said he needed to shows a lack of desire to hurt.

No it doesn't.

A real psychopath would have let you piss your pants.

Or would have enjoyed toying with you and making you think you were going to survive as a manifestation of his insane need for power and control over his victims. You can't use a statistical argument to predict the behavior of a psychopath, or an ordinary street criminal who may, after letting you pee, decide that it's too dangerous to leave you alive because you've seen his face.

If he had simply acted submissive, he would not have been shot, and the assailant would have been arrested later and ended up doing time. Probably, since there are no guarantees. The idiot, though, had to do a Seth, and ended up with a bullet in his jaw. Very close to dead.

You're pulling your prediction out of your ass without understanding anything about statistics and how they are used, the tactics of armed encounters, the psychology of violent criminals or any experience at all in proper armed self-defense procedures.

In other words, you have no fucking clue and you're handing out advice about how to stay alive based on your own personal anti-gun biases and gross ignorance. I hope nobody listens to you.

[Blind groper]

Actually, Seth, I do understand quite a bit about statistics, having done a university course on applied stats, and having made use of statistics on a professional level. I am not a professional statistician, of course, but far from ignorant.

What is ridiculous is you quoting that flawed survey on how many people successfully use guns in self defense. There are certain survey questions that create their own answer, and that is one. I remember the national car club that did a survey on driver safety. One question was : Do you consider yourself, as a driver, to be
a. Excellent
b. Above average
c. Average
d. Below average
e. Poor
Strangely, the result was 85% above average or excellent! An inevitable result coming from using a flawed question

When you ask a bunch of gun nutters another flawed question : "Have you ever used your gun successfully in self defense?" then of course there is going to be a whole bunch of imaginary "yes" answers. Like you, Seth, most gun nuts fantasize about using their guns in a heroic way to stop villains. What people fantasize about, a sizable percentage will come to believe.

[Pensioner]

Actually, Seth, I do understand quite a bit about statistics, having done a university course on applied stats, and having made use of statistics on a professional level. I am not a professional statistician, of course, but far from ignorant.

What is ridiculous is you quoting that flawed survey on how many people successfully use guns in self defense. There are certain survey questions that create their own answer, and that is one. I remember the national car club that did a survey on driver safety. One question was : Do you consider yourself, as a driver, to be
a. Excellent
b. Above average
c. Average
d. Below average
e. Poor
Strangely, the result was 85% above average or excellent! An inevitable result coming from using a flawed question

When you ask a bunch of gun nutters another flawed question : "Have you ever used your gun successfully in self defense?" then of course there is going to be a whole bunch of imaginary "yes" answers. Like you, Seth, most gun nuts fantasize about using their guns in a heroic way to stop villains. What people fantasize about, a sizable percentage will come to believe.

Good post. I have shot theaving bastards with a cannon.







These scumbags where robbing my neighbors who ended up court and Jailed.

[FBM]

I know anecdotes are almost useless until they're compiled carefully, but I have twice in my life been forced into a situation in which I finally had to show my handgun in order to make an aggressor change his mind. Neither of these incidents is a fantasy. I only drew my pistol when there was no other choice except to become a victim.

[Wumbologist]

I just logged into the "other place" for the first time in a long while to dig up a couple of my old posts on the topic of compliance with armed attackers and safety:

]Should this woman have kept complying, and let the home invaders have their way with her? Surely, it wasn't worth the risk to fight them off?

They demanded money. After she handed over the money, the men then ordered her to take her clothes off. She refused and asked the men to leave. That's when her boyfriend woke-up and heard the commotion.

When a fight broke out between the boyfriend and the intruders, the female victim was able to retrieve a gun from her purse and shot both suspects in the head and the leg.
http://www.ktul.com/Global/story.asp?S=12810493

When the victim gave the robber $50, the robber ordered him to the ground and fired a single shot before fleeing, Martin said.

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2010 ... 1-ar-4321/

The robber pulled out a gun and started grabbing for cash in the register. Shah said he backed up and the robber fired a round.

“I don’t know why he shot. I didn’t do anything, you never know what people like that will do,” Shah said.

http://www.journal-news.com/news/crime/ ... 35374.html

Once inside the office, Suber said the men pulled out guns and held a store employee there at gunpoint. The employee cooperated with the two robbers and put an unknown amount of cash into a bag and gave it to them.

The two men then began to walk out of the store, but Suber said one of them suddenly turned around and fired more than once at another store clerk, Dana Patterson. Patterson was hit and the two robbers fled the scene, but it was not known why the robber shot at her.

http://moultrieobserver.com/local/x9934 ... in-robbery

A man in a hooded sweatshirt and wearing a mask entered the store, pointed a small-caliber handgun at the clerk and demanded money from the register, Delaney said.

He shot the clerk apparently because he felt the man was not emptying the register quickly enough, Delaney said. After the shooting, the robber jumped over the counter and grabbed money out of the register before fleeing the store, he said.

http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/ ... store.html

Clerk Chris Spears was working alone at the Circle K off LaGrange Road in Lyndon, when police say Rickey Watson walked in armed with a gun and robbed the store.

According to fellow employee Jeff La Duke, Spears did as he was trained, but the robber still shot him in the chest and left him to die.

http://www.whas11.com/news/crimetracker ... 43372.html

Three cheers for compliance.

[Wumbologist]

And:

Surely, if you give up your purse, the nice man with the gun won't kill you, right?
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/det ... ng-on-foot

Surely, if a couple of burglars break into your home, but you empty out a $15,000 bank account to comply with their demands, they won't kill your entire family, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheshire,_ ... on_murders

If a thief just wants to make off with some drugs from a pharmacy, he'd have no reason to shoot four people dead at close range, would he?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blo ... _blog.html

If two men come into your gas station and demand money, they won't shoot you when you comply, right?
http://www.keprtv.com/news/local/Gas-St ... 61659.html

Of course they won't! And surely, they won't kill you after they've gotten what they want?
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/phillip ... gunme.html

Shall I keep going?
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/r/29341316/detail.html
http://www.register-pajaronian.com/v2_n ... 69&page=72
http://savannahnow.com/latest-news/2010 ... bluff-road
http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/201 ... -nightclub
http://www2.wspa.com/news/2010/jul/19/c ... ar-598438/

Compliance does not equal safety.

[Ian]

I'm with you. I really don't know if Blind Groper honestly has statistics on his side or not, but if I hear someone breaking into my house I'm sure as shit not going to be submissive and hope for the best. Not when I have a handgun where I can get at it quick.