Guns used for lawful self defense

[laklak]

If someone is shagging your wife, are you more likely to kill him, if you have a gun at home, or not?

If he's shagging her without her consent then I'm highly likely to kill him. Almost a certainty, actually, if I can get to a gun. If it's consensual sex then there are plenty of divorce attorneys for that sort of thing, murder is a bit OTT for infidelity.

[mistermack]

If someone is shagging your wife, are you more likely to kill him, if you have a gun at home, or not?

If he's shagging her without her consent then I'm highly likely to kill him. Almost a certainty, actually, if I can get to a gun. If it's consensual sex then there are plenty of divorce attorneys for that sort of thing, murder is a bit OTT for infidelity.

If bullets were as easy to dodge as questions, there wouldn't be much of a problem.

What I don't like about high levels of gun ownership is the knowledge that the pathetic wanker in the next car or sitting at the next table could be carrying a gun.
Americans are used to living with that shit. If you live in shit all your life, you don't even realise there's a smell.
Guns just reduce the quality of life, simply by being there. But if you've never known anything else, you can't know that.

[Blind groper]

But please, tell me again about how all we have to do is make a law that says "No more guns, guys!" and the bad guys magically won't be able to get them anymore.

If you search hard enough, you will find instructions on the internet for making an atom bomb. There is a big difference between getting simple instructions and actually doing it, and doing it successfully.

As witness all the other western civilised nations, who do not have a problem with hand guns.

[laklak]

[Americans are used to living with that shit. If you live in shit all your life, you don't even realise there's a smell.
Guns just reduce the quality of life, simply by being there. But if you've never known anything else, you can't know that.

Ah, but I do, MM. I grew up in Thailand and South America until I was 14. Then boarding school, with people from all over the world. Prior to university I worked in Nigeria, Niger and what used to be Dahomey for two years. For the greater part of my adult life (25 plus years)I lived in many different countries - South Africa, Swaziland, Bahrain, Egypt, United Arab Emirates, England, Denmark - I lived in those places, not as an expatriate by as a local. Then there were all the countries I spent time in as a consultant but didn't actually live in, i.e. I lived in hotels for several months on end. Those include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the Philippines, Mali and Malta. I married an expatriate Brit who was born in Zambia, raised in Swaziland, educated in England and South Africa and spent a great deal of her younger life bobbing around the South Pacific in a sailboat. I don't live in "shit" now and I never have. I don't need Big Brother to take care of my privileged, male, white ass, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself.

When Mrs. Lak and I decided it was time to give up the work-a-day world we spent a LONG time looking at various options. The two countries that topped the list were South Africa and the U.S. The UK didn't even register, the standard of living there is simply too third world for our tastes. We chose the U.S., because we know that the chances of some blustering dictator taking over the country and kicking out all the white people was pretty damn slim. The fact that South Africa was eliminating private gun ownership was a major factor.

Your view of life in the United States is, to say the least, a bit uninformed. Not that I think you're a bad person, you just don't know any better.

[Jason]

Has Groper actually attempted a valid response to the issue yet? Ah.. nope.

[Jason]

Difference being, Groper, you can make a firearm with a piece of pipe, some sheet metal, and a few springs and screws.

Ever seen this little guy in a history book?

[mistermack]

I've lived in the US and Canada, and have about 14 first cousins living all over the US.

And I've had plenty of contact with guns in the US.
I had an aunt who owned a liquor store in the Bronx, and I lived there with her for a short while.

So I have more than the average brits experience of life in the US.
I've met americans who really do think they are Clint Eastwood.

One guy actually said to me " there's only three things that mean anything to me, my gun, my horse and my dawg" !! It's like they are living a film script.
I said, what about the wife? ( who was putting breakfast on the table at the time ).
He said " TAKE HER !! " but don't touch my horse or my dawg.

When I said shit, I was talking about shit like that, people with a gun fixation, who could be driving the car that cuts you up, or sitting at the next table. We've all got shit, but ours don't carry guns.

[klr]

I've lived in the US and Canada, and have about 14 first cousins living all over the US.

And I've had plenty of contact with guns in the US.
I had an aunt who owned a liquor store in the Bronx, and I lived there with her for a short while.

So I have more than the average brits experience of life in the US.
I've met americans who really do think they are Clint Eastwood.

One guy actually said to me " there's only three things that mean anything to me, my gun, my horse and my dawg" !! It's like they are living a film script.
I said, what about the wife? ( who was putting breakfast on the table at the time ).
He said " TAKE HER !! " but don't touch my horse or my dawg.

When I said shit, I was talking about shit like that, people with a gun fixation, who could be driving the car that cuts you up, or sitting at the next table. We've all got shit, but ours don't carry guns.

There's a "Yeeee-Haawww!!!!" missing at the end of that quote.

[laklak]

I've lived in the US and Canada, and have about 14 first cousins living all over the US.

14 first cousins? You sure you ain't Southern?

I've met americans who really do think they are Clint Eastwood.

So have I. I generally try to avoid them just like I tried to avoid the toothless yobbos who thought they were extras from Snatch.

One guy actually said to me " there's only three things that mean anything to me, my gun, my horse and my dawg" !! It's like they are living a film script.
I said, what about the wife? ( who was putting breakfast on the table at the time ).
He said " TAKE HER !! " but don't touch my horse or my dawg.

Take my wife, PLEASE! (Henny Youngman). That's actually pretty funny, in a redneck sort of way. I can see Jeff Foxworthy telling that story.

When I said shit, I was talking about shit like that, people with a gun fixation, who could be driving the car that cuts you up, or sitting at the next table. We've all got shit, but ours don't carry guns.

No, they don't have guns, which is probably a good thing. The UK is the only place I've been mugged, on the Manchester tram from Victoria station to Altrincham. If they'd had guns I'd probably be dead. As it was I just ended up with a black eye and a few bruises, but hey, that's the price of public transport, eh? The rest of the passengers sat and watched from behind their newspapers. It's only an American and there's one of him and four of them. Best not to get involved, eh? I'd rather deal with rednecks, at least they understand that I might be carrying also.

[Blind groper]

To Pord.

Sure, I understand that it is easy to make a gun. You can make a quite deadly version with a tiny firecracker, a ball bearing, and a piece of pipe. It needs a match to ignite it, rather than a trigger, but it is real easy to make.

However, home made pieces of shit like that are very different to a professionally made hand gun. You can see how that kinda slows down the would-be gun maker when you see how few hand guns, home made or otherwise, exist in any and every western civilised nation, except the USA (where criminals can get the professional version).

For your home made hand gun, you also need to buy ammunition. While small bore rifle ammunition would work, there would be no specialist hand gun ammunition in a country with rational gun laws.

However, the real point is that you can see how few home made guns would be in use by looking at countries where you cannot buy the professional version.

[Wumbologist]

But please, tell me again about how all we have to do is make a law that says "No more guns, guys!" and the bad guys magically won't be able to get them anymore.

If you search hard enough, you will find instructions on the internet for making an atom bomb. There is a big difference between getting simple instructions and actually doing it, and doing it successfully.

As witness all the other western civilised nations, who do not have a problem with hand guns.

I can buy everything I need to make the machine pistol described in those plans at a local hardware store. It would take a bit of trial and error to get everything to fit just so, but I have no doubt, upon looking at the instructions, that I could manufacture a functional firearm with relatively little trouble. An atom bomb is an entirely different story, there are entire nations that haven't gotten the hang of that yet.

[Blind groper]

I can buy everything I need to make the machine pistol described in those plans at a local hardware store.

Yet in all those western civilised nations other than the USA, very few people have done that.

You are trying to suggest (your personal opinion) that banning hand guns will be pointless because people will make them. Well that logic is invalid, because in other countries people do not make them. Or at least very few people. A fact trumps a bit of personal opinion.

[Wumbologist]

Yet in all those western civilised nations other than the USA, very few people have done that.

You are trying to suggest (your personal opinion) that banning hand guns will be pointless because people will make them. Well that logic is invalid, because in other countries people do not make them. Or at least very few people. A fact trumps a bit of personal opinion.

Prohibition didn't work because Americans wanted alcohol. The war on drugs is failing because Americans want drugs. If Americans want guns (and our criminals most certainly do) they will similarly get them one way or another. Smuggling, manufacturing, the demand is there and will not go away. If people in other countries are not manufacturing firearms (though they sometimes are in Australia and the UK) it is likely due to not having the same level of demand for them as the US. That and maybe a lack of that American entrepreneurial spirit.

The people who will be successfully disarmed are the law-abiding members of society. Disarming the law-abiding so that they have no way to protect themselves from the still-armed criminal element is simply immoral.

[Blind groper]

Wumbo

I have already admitted that the cure will take time. In the short term, you will be correct, and the law abiding citizens will no longer have hand guns, while many criminals will retain them. However, the number of murdered people will drop, in relation to a reduction in number of hand guns in circulation. For home defense, paranoid citizens can use rifles, which are actually better, since they are more accurate. The truth is, of course, that the number of ordinary citizens murdered in their homes by invading criminals is a very tiny number. Most murders are criminal killing criminal, or ordinary citizen killing someone he/she knows. The latter group will drop in number substantially, and very quickly, as ordinary citizens no longer have hand guns.

These numbers are not insignificant. In the USA, between 1500 and 2000 people are murdered by their spouse each year, and the dominant murder weapon is hand gun.

In the longer term, though, hand guns will become few and far between. There may be a few (but only a few) home made weapons around, but they are usually not as good, and prone to problems. Professionally made hand guns are more reliable, more accurate, and take more lives.

In time, even criminals will no longer have access to hand guns, and the murder rate will drop dramatically. But only if the government has the courage to do the right thing, which I seriously doubt. Politicians are known cowards, who will never do anything that may cost them votes.

[Blind groper]

Wumbo

I have already admitted that the cure will take time. In the short term, you will be correct, and the law abiding citizens will no longer have hand guns, while many criminals will retain them. However, the number of murdered people will drop, in relation to a reduction in number of hand guns in circulation. For home defense, paranoid citizens can use rifles, which are actually better, since they are more accurate. The truth is, of course, that the number of ordinary citizens murdered in their homes by invading criminals is a very tiny number. Most murders are criminal killing criminal, or ordinary citizen killing someone he/she knows. The latter group will drop in number substantially, and very quickly, as ordinary citizens no longer have hand guns.

These numbers are not insignificant. In the USA, between 1500 and 2000 people are murdered by their spouse each year, and the dominant murder weapon is hand gun.

In the longer term, though, hand guns will become few and far between. There may be a few (but only a few) home made weapons around, but they are usually not as good, and prone to problems. Professionally made hand guns are more reliable, more accurate, and take more lives.

In time, even criminals will no longer have access to hand guns, and the murder rate will drop dramatically. But only if the government has the courage to do the right thing, which I seriously doubt. Politicians are known cowards, who will never do anything that may cost them votes.