What did this girl have that she needed?

[hackenslash]

Three dead robbers would have been preferable

There really is nothing about you worth keeping, is there?

[Seth]

Also, it's impossible to "get rid of the guns"

...and there's your problem.

It would be a start if the NRA would endorse at least cursory background checks for new purchases - their intractable stubbornness on this has always astounded me. Perhaps refuse to sell them to morons that would leave them next to an iPad in a handbag where a 3-year-old could reach it...?

They do. Every new firearm purchase from a licensed dealer in the US goes through the NICS check and has for decades.

And how exactly are you going to distinguish parents who make a serious mistake from people who don't, who comprise the vast, overwhelming majority of gun owners using a background check.

Don't bother answering that, because I know your answer will be along the lines of "we have to ban all guns because one ten-thousandth of one percent of gun owners might do something stupid or unsafe with their gun."

Do you think a NICS check on the mom in that case would have prevented the incident? Clearly not, since I'd venture a guess that she passed a NICS check when she bought the gun.

I'd be interested to know if she had a concealed carry permit in New Mexico...not that she needed one in the hotel room, which is considered one's "domicile" for such purposes.

People are going to do stupid things and accidents are going to happen, as they do every day with items ranging from bleach under the sink to matches on the coffee table to guns in one's purse. That's no reason to panic and try to make it more difficult or impossible for anyone to use potentially dangerous objects.

These people are being investigated for felony criminal negligence and if appropriate the DA will charge them and if they are guilty a jury will convict them and then neither of them will be allowed to possess a gun again.

This incident doesn't begin to justify your agenda.

However, this is a good illustration of why carrying concealed in a purse, shoulder bag or other carry location not physically attached to one's body is not the best plan. When you carry your gun in something you can put down and distance yourself from, you always run the risk that you will forget the container and leave it behind or someone else will have opportunity to access the container and find the gun.

It is always best practice to wear your firearm in a holster attached to your body where you cannot forget it, leave it behind, or get far enough away from it that it's of no use to you in a shooting situation.

[Seth]

Three dead robbers would have been preferable

There really is nothing about you worth keeping, is there?

I'm not a bleeding-heart liberal who thinks that armed robbers are victims of their circumstances who ought to be forgiven and coddled. I believe in consequences following actions and in the individual being held responsible for his or her actions. I also believe that letting three armed robbers get away is a very bad idea because it means they now have an opportunity to rob and or kill someone else.

If you don't want to risk being killed when you try to rob someone, then don't rob someone. Pretty simple logic I'd say.

It seems that a very large number of my fellow citizens feel the same way, so I really don't give a flying fuck what you think, Hack.

[Seth]

As I have said before, getting rid of guns is not an all or nothing situation. You cannot get rid of all the guns overnight. But you can make a start.

Places like Canada, Sweden etc still have guns, though almost no hand guns. Their gun crime rate is much lower than the USA.

Currently 8,000 people per year are murdered with hand guns in the USA. Reduce hand gun numbers by 10% and we would expect a reduction in murders of a bit less than that. Even a reduction of 5% in hand gun murders will save 400 human lives each year. Every little bit is worth while.

Simpletons shouldn't try to use math in situations like this. Your thesis fails because you forgot one small but important factor: criminals aren't going to turn in their handguns, so the handgun murder rate isn't going to decline at all, it's going to go up as those who obey the law turn in their handguns and become disarmed, helpless victims.

Your particular obstinate blindness to the 30 years of data regarding crime and guns in the US since concealed carry began to be liberalized renders your opinion worse than useless.

More guns, less crime.

[pErvinalia]

Three dead robbers would have been preferable

There really is nothing about you worth keeping, is there?

I'm not a bleeding-heart liberal who thinks that armed robbers are victims of their circumstances who ought to be forgiven and coddled. I believe in consequences following actions and in the individual being held responsible for his or her actions. I also believe that letting three armed robbers get away is a very bad idea because it means they now have an opportunity to rob and or kill someone else.

If you don't want to risk being killed when you try to rob someone, then don't rob someone. Pretty simple logic I'd say.

It seems that a very large number of my fellow citizens feel the same way, so I really don't give a flying fuck what you think, Hack.

We should also shoot little kids who steal lollies. Pretty simple logic.

[Seth]

Three dead robbers would have been preferable

There really is nothing about you worth keeping, is there?

I'm not a bleeding-heart liberal who thinks that armed robbers are victims of their circumstances who ought to be forgiven and coddled. I believe in consequences following actions and in the individual being held responsible for his or her actions. I also believe that letting three armed robbers get away is a very bad idea because it means they now have an opportunity to rob and or kill someone else.

If you don't want to risk being killed when you try to rob someone, then don't rob someone. Pretty simple logic I'd say.

It seems that a very large number of my fellow citizens feel the same way, so I really don't give a flying fuck what you think, Hack.

We should also shoot little kids who steal lollies. Pretty simple logic.

If the little kid is pointing a gun at the owner, then that may well be the required response.

There's a scene in "American Sniper" where Chris Kyle shoots a jihadi coming out of an alley with an RPG he's going to shoot at troops. After Kyle shoots the jihadi, a small boy comes up to the corpse and picks up the RPG launcher and tries to shoulder it and aim it at the troops. Kyle mutters "Don't pick it up. Drop it. Don't do it" as he trains his rifle on the kid, knowing that he may have to kill a child to save the lives of his fellow soldiers. Fortunately the kid drops the RPG launcher and runs away.

But, earlier in the movie, Kyle is on overwatch when a woman in a burka and a young boy come out into the street in front of an advancing column of troops. The woman is carrying something, which she hands to the boy. It's a mortar round. She directs the kid towards the soldiers and Kyle waits as long as he can and then shoots the boy. The mother then rushes forward, picks up the shell and throws it towards the soldiers, and Kyle shoots her too.

Sometimes, some things you might do give other people just cause to kill you in order to protect themselves or others. That's just how it is, and it doesn't matter if you're an innocent man with a bomb strapped to your body that can't be removed or defused (The Hurt Locker), you're a threat to others and as long as you remain a threat taking your life is justified.

Armed robbers forfeit their right to life the instant they place others in mortal peril. I have no sympathy at all for any criminal who uses a weapon of any kind to threaten or harm others, and I consider it to be good public policy for them to cease to exist as an imminent threat as expeditiously as humanly possible.

If they don't like that public policy, they should take up another line of work.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Don't bother answering that, because I know your answer will be along the lines of "we have to ban all guns because one ten-thousandth of one percent of gun owners might do something stupid or unsafe with their gun."

No. My response is, "Thank fuck I don't live in such a ridiculously gun-obsessed country."

You keep your "Freedom to bear arms." I'm happy with 0.25 gun-deaths per 100,000 per year, as opposed to your 10.3!

[Svartalf]

doesn't change the fact that
a) malefactors still have access to guns, even assault rifles and heavy stuff
b) the police is unable to efficiently protect the population
c) the population at large is defenseless
d) yes, I've been dubbed an honorary American

[Hermit]

Well, you're fat enough to qualify.

Also, point b) and c) apply in Australia, NZ, the UK and so on even more so, yet the homicide rate is a fraction of that in the USA.

Cue Seth pretending that statistics don't matter, but the impending tyranny of the government does. Or he'll pick some statistics to suit his "more guns less crime" mantra. He always does that sort of thing, so my prediction is a dare for him to come up with something new. In the unlikely event that he does, would someone please let me know? He doubled the membership of my ignore list last week.

[Blind groper]

Seth also forgets that the data is actually pointing to the reverse of his favorite conclusion. If we compare different countries, we see that more guns mean more killings, which is what common sense would tell us. Guns are tools for killing, so more guns means more killings. Simple.

The morons who reject good data will go to lousy data to support their bullshit. They do this by saying that states with better gun laws, like Chicago, also have high murder rates. They ignore the simple fact that anyone in Chicago who wants a gun can go to the next door state and buy one. Ineffective laws do not help.

Seth also likes to quote Lott, who has made millions out of lying about guns, and who has been denounced by his acedemic peers.

The problem is that, in the USA, guns make too many people into mega millionnaires, and so the corruption sets in, with gun makers spending multiple millions of dollars on spreading lies. As I pointed out earlier, and which is public knowledge, gun makers give mega millions to the NRA which, like a good little minion, spreads the gospel of the gun.

I demonstrated the impact of gun ownership by calculating the correlation coefficient between gun ownership and murder rate for 20 wealthy advanced western nations, and it came out as plus 0.6, which is a very strong correlation, showing a powerful relationship between those two factors. If Seth was correct, it would be a negative correlation. It is not.

In additon, a number of American Universities have done similar, but vastly more accurate work, and shown exactly the same thing. Harvard, Boston University and the New England Journal of Medicine, have come to precisely the same conclusion I came to with my correlation. But of course, Seth will accuse those eminent universities and that eminent journal of being hoplophobes and liars.

[Blind groper]

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/51 ... wing-guns/

Eminent American universities continue to show that they, at least, have smart people running things. The reference above is from M.I.T. showing that they, too, have a sane and sensible attitude to guns and gun control.

[Svartalf]

Well, you're fat enough to qualify.

Also, point b) and c) apply in Australia, NZ, the UK and so on even more so, yet the homicide rate is a fraction of that in the USA.

Cue Seth pretending that statistics don't matter, but the impending tyranny of the government does. Or he'll pick some statistics to suit his "more guns less crime" mantra. He always does that sort of thing, so my prediction is a dare for him to come up with something new. In the unlikely event that he does, would someone please let me know? He doubled the membership of my ignore list last week.

I know that point a) applies in France... I sincerely hope it doesn't in your countries

[Hermit]

I know that point a) applies in France... I sincerely hope it doesn't in your countries

It is possible to get your hands on assault rifles and heavy stuff in Australia, but it's incredibly difficult. You'd have to scout around for yonks to even find anybody who knows someone who owns that sort of thing and prepared to tell you that he knows. And it's incredibly expensive. Anyway, if you actually have the 30 grand to buy one lousy vintage AK47, what's the point? You got 30 grand, FFS. There are easier ways to make a profit with that than to buy an assault rifle with it in order to make more money. And less risky ones too.

[Seth]

Don't bother answering that, because I know your answer will be along the lines of "we have to ban all guns because one ten-thousandth of one percent of gun owners might do something stupid or unsafe with their gun."

No. My response is, "Thank fuck I don't live in such a ridiculously gun-obsessed country."

You keep your "Freedom to bear arms." I'm happy with 0.25 gun-deaths per 100,000 per year, as opposed to your 10.3!

That's what I demand, that the rest of the world respect my right to keep and bear arms and mind its own business...but it won't, as we see from the UN Small Arms Trade Agreement, which flatly infringes on my Constitutional rights and which is therefore null and void as applied to the citizens of the United States.

And since the hoplophobes of the world keep right on trying to negatively influence my rights, I'll keep on defending them.

Oh, and I'll keep on defending the right to keep and bear arms on behalf of all of the people of the world who need or want them in order to resist tyranny and crime whose fundamental natural rights are being denied and infringed upon, including those in your country, because they need someone to speak on their behalf.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

doesn't change the fact that
a) malefactors still have access to guns, even assault rifles and heavy stuff

...and always will have, if they want it bad enough. The difference is that a large number of guns in private hands vastly reduces the amount of effort that a malefactor needs to go to in order to acquire them.

b) the police is unable to efficiently protect the population

...and always will be. No police force, however well-armed, well-trained and however large, can prevent every crime from happening. But this job is made even harder, not easier by a situation where many of the public are armed and so ALL criminals will be.

c) the population at large is defenseless

And made even more defenceless if criminals are routinely armed. Also, better defenceless, than holding a deadly weapon when angry and/or scared. Just look at the statistics for domestic disputes resulting in murder in the USA as compared to France or the UK.

d) yes, I've been dubbed an honorary American

American? Or redneck?