Idiots

[Tero]

Grocery shopping requires a gun in AL
HAZEL GREEN, AL, 10/22/15: Two people received minor injuries Thursday when a dropped gun went off inside a Hazel Green supermarket. WAFF 48 reports that a customer's gun fell to the floor inside Griner's Supermarket and discharged, with the fired bullet striking the gun's owner and another customer. They were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. No one else was injured. The incident remains under investigation.

[Seth]

Grocery shopping requires a gun in AL
HAZEL GREEN, AL, 10/22/15: Two people received minor injuries Thursday when a dropped gun went off inside a Hazel Green supermarket. WAFF 48 reports that a customer's gun fell to the floor inside Griner's Supermarket and discharged, with the fired bullet striking the gun's owner and another customer. They were taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. No one else was injured. The incident remains under investigation.

So what, the dumb-ass who dropped his gun will get sued and or prosecuted and learn a valuable lesson about stupidity with guns. It's one of an increasingly small number of such events so what's your point?

[Tero]

Guns are not necessary up here, in civilized world, to go to a store during the day. Maybe in Alabama.

[Seth]

Guns are not necessary up here, in civilized world, to go to a store during the day. Maybe in Alabama.

Until they are necessary...in which case it's too late to go get one.

[Tero]

My definition is a little different from yours. Any busy body with a gun out or with him for courage is an idiot. Should have stayed home or in his truck at the least:
http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... =Zimmerman

[Seth]

My definition is a little different from yours. Any busy body with a gun out or with him for courage is an idiot. Should have stayed home or in his truck at the least:
http://www.rationalia.com/forum/viewtop ... =Zimmerman

He was fully within his rights to follow a suspicious person about in his gated, private community. He was feloniously attacked without lawful justification and his assailant was attempting to murder him by bashing his skull on a concrete sidewalk when Mr. Zimmerman lawfully shot and killed his attacker.

I'd have done exactly the same thing.

No one is required to avoid confronting a suspicious person, and in this case the suspect wasn't even "confronted," he was merely followed and observed, as is entirely appropriate and lawful, and was viciously attacked while doing so and after breaking off contact with suspect at the request of police dispatchers.

[Seth]

Strict Gun Laws Have Made Australia ‘A Nation Of Victims’ [VIDEO]
Philip DeVoe
4:46 PM 11/18/2015




David Leyonhjelm, a Liberal-Democratic Australian senator, said in a National Rifle Association (NRA) video interview that Australians, because of strict gun control laws, “are a nation of victims.”

Since his election in 2013, Leyonhjelm has pushed for more lenient gun rights in the nation which, since it boasts no gun massacres since 1996, has been a talking point by many gun rights opposers. Leyonhjelm’s comments, and the video itself, came after 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton suggested the U.S. implement the Australian gun buyback scheme spearheaded by ex-Prime Minister John Howard.

“I don’t think Australia is a model for the United States on gun control at all,” Leyonhjelm said. “[The Howard scheme made] no difference to firearms violence, gun violence overall… The criminals still have guns, there’s no shortage of guns. There’s a very vigorous black market for guns, so it’s really not made the slightest bit of difference… if you want a gun, you can get one.”

Leyonhjelm, in August, negotiated a governmental one-year ban lift on the importation of the Adler lever-action shotgun next year, but Australians were skeptical since the gun resembles one used in a mass shooting in 1996, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

The senator, who owns two shotguns, said the Adler was “completely different” to the semi-automatic gun used in the attack, adding “if your intentions are malicious, any firearm is very dangerous.”

“It’s a defenseless country these days. I am absolutely in awe of the success of the NRA at holding back the tide and it never gives an inch,” Leyonhjelm said. “We love the NRA here in Australia amongst us gun owners and in fact we rely on you guys to also help us hold the line in Australia.”

[Blind groper]

http://m.livescience.com/51446-guns-do- ... crime.html

Recent study shows that higher gun ownership leads to more violent crime, more homicide, more robbery with guns, and more people shot dead.

I already know how Seth will respond. He will claim it is hoplophobes telling lies, but that is just an evasion. Seth does not want to face reality.

[Seth]

http://m.livescience.com/51446-guns-do- ... crime.html

Recent study shows that higher gun ownership leads to more violent crime, more homicide, more robbery with guns, and more people shot dead.

I already know how Seth will respond. He will claim it is hoplophobes telling lies, but that is just an evasion. Seth does not want to face reality.

It's true, you're lying.

[Blind groper]

Seth is so predictable!

But this is the reason I find these arguments depressing. Seth, and other gun nutters, have a set of beliefs about guns that are based on a kind of religious faith, instead of on data. Like any religious fundamentalist, his beliefs are (no joke) bullet proof. It does not matter how much contrary data is supplied, since the belief is based on religious faith and gullibility (which is the same thing), it cannot be swayed.

Why are so many humans so moronic?

[Tero]

There is actually some data on this "stuck beliefs" and how we decide in the first place. Some people are just followers and go with the majority. I read it in some popular psychology book but don't know how to google for it.

[Seth]

Seth is so predictable!

Well, the truth remains the truth no matter how many times you repeat the lies, so it's perfectly predictable that I would simply tell everyone you're lying, because you are. If you don't like the answer, don't tell the lies.

The actual truth is: More guns, less crime.

[Seth]

There is actually some data on this "stuck beliefs" and how we decide in the first place. Some people are just followers and go with the majority. I read it in some popular psychology book but don't know how to google for it.

Indeed. BG is stuck in his belief, which I've proven wrong a hundred times with actual facts. More guns in the US, more guns being carried by law abiding citizens in public, less crime in the US, specifically less violent crime and fewer murders. Facts are facts and the truth remains the truth no matter how psychotically the anti-gun propagandists deny it.

[Blind groper]

Seth

The reference I posted shows the opposite. More guns means worse crime. Not more crime, but worse crime.

The number of guns do not affect the number of crimes, because the number of crimes depends on the number of criminals, and that is independant from the number of guns. But if there are more people who possess guns, there will be a larger percentage of those crimes carried out with guns. That means more homicides, more armed robberies, more assaults with guns.

The USA is rife with all of that. Other western nations have much, much less in the way of gun crimes.

I can assure you that if I am to be the victim of a crime, I hope to hell the criminal is not carrying a gun. In the USA, with lax gun control, he is much more likely to be carrying a gun than here in NZ where we have tight gun control.

The study just published shows clearly that where there are more guns, there is more gun crime. And that is much more serious and damaging crime.

[Seth]

Seth

The reference I posted shows the opposite.

The reference you posted is bullshit anti-gun propaganda.

More guns means worse crime. Not more crime, but worse crime.

All the more need for the victims of crime to be armed in order to thwart such crimes.

The number of guns do not affect the number of crimes, because the number of crimes depends on the number of criminals, and that is independant from the number of guns.

Precisely, but only half the truth, something you're an expert at trying to foist off on the gullible.

But if there are more people who possess guns, there will be a larger percentage of those crimes carried out with guns.

Well, this contradicts what you said just above.

That means more homicides, more armed robberies, more assaults with guns.

Even if true, which it's not, that militates for arming law abiding citizens so they can defend themselves.

The USA is rife with all of that. Other western nations have much, much less in the way of gun crimes.

I can assure you that if I am to be the victim of a crime, I hope to hell the criminal is not carrying a gun. In the USA, with lax gun control, he is much more likely to be carrying a gun than here in NZ where we have tight gun control.

The study just published shows clearly that where there are more guns, there is more gun crime. And that is much more serious and damaging crime.

But they have more victims of violent crimes committed with a host of other weapons, all of which are capable of inflicting harm or death. Your obsessive focus on "gun crimes" and your lame attempts to bolster your patently false arguments by deviously and mendaciously slipping "gun" into the violent crime equation is utterly intellectually dishonest and always has been.

Violent crime is violent crime, and as you have again admitted above the number of guns in a society does not affect the number of crimes because, as you say, the number of crimes depends on the number of criminals, not the number of guns. The point of an armed citizenry with respect to crime is to give potential victims of violent crime effective means to deter, prevent, thwart or put a stop to violent crime. Since the number of guns carried by law-abiding citizens does not, as you admit, affect the number of crimes committed by violent criminals there is absolutely no rational argument to be made for disarming such potential victims, because their being armed does not, once again, in any way facilitate or enhance the criminal's ability to commit violent crime.

The argument you make is two-fold: The first half of your argument is that if there were fewer guns in society there would be fewer guns available to be turned to criminal use by violent criminals. This is probably theoretically true, provided that there was a way to actually accomplish the goal of keeping what guns are in society out of the hands of violent criminals. But of course that is impossible, so your thesis fails on that premise. The second half of your argument, which contains the subtle and mendacious goal-post shifting that makes your entire argument nothing more than propaganda is your claim that, while (you admit) the number of guns in society does not affect the overall crime rate, you mendaciously argue that banning guns will reduce the "gun crime" rate.

In making this fallacious argument you try to shift the focus from "violent crime" or "crime" specifically to "gun crime' without any rational justification for doing so. The only evident premise in this mendacious argument that I can see is that you, personally, thing that "gun crime" is somehow "more bad" than any other kind of violent crime, and that this justifies attempting to disarm everyone in society, criminal or otherwise on the unfounded and unsupported premise that reducing "gun crime" by doing so is somehow morally superior to reducing all forms of violent crime by allowing law abiding citizens to be armed for their own personal defense.

While you're entitled to your opinion on the matter, nothing you cite as evidence supports such an argument because the simple fact is that when you reduce the number of guns carried in public by law-abiding citizens, you increase the amount of violent crime committed by criminals and you increase the number of injuries and deaths to law-abiding but disarmed citizens.

What's clear from your argumentation, such as it is, is that you don't actually care how many people are victimized, injured, disfigured, robbed or killed by violent criminals so long as those criminal attacks do not involve the criminal using a handgun. And that is exactly what you are saying in your second-to-last paragraph where you say, "I can assure you that if I am to be the victim of a crime, I hope to hell the criminal is not carrying a gun."

The thing is, even this opinion is an ignorant, uninformed, dogmatic, ideological falsity, and here's why: FBI statistics show that in violent crime episodes where the perpetrator fires a weapon (99 percent of the time a handgun), the perpetrator's round hits any person less than fifteen percent of the time. And, according to the FBI, of those rounds that actually strike a person, fewer than three percent of the shots are fatal.

This means that out of 100 rounds fired in criminal episodes, eighty-five of them miss and of the fifteen rounds that strike a human, less than one of those rounds (0.45%) inflicts a fatal wound.

The reason for citing this statistic is to demonstrate that, in point of fact, you are far less likely to be injured or killed by a criminal shooting at you than you are if he gets close enough to you to use a baseball bat, knife or other close-range weapon.

One of the reasons this is true is precisely because a handgun or other firearm is a "stand-off weapon" intended to be used from a distance beyond corp-a-corp hand-to-hand combat range, whereas bricks, knives, bats, iron bars, fists, feet and most other weapons are "body contact" weapons that require the assailant to get within arm's reach of the intended victim, which is a much more dangerous and unpredictable method of attack for the criminal.

In most cases, criminals use firearms not with the intent of discharging them and killing or wounding their victim, but rather merely as a means of presenting overwhelming stand-off force intended to intimidate the victim into compliance. The average citizen being mugged by a criminal armed with a gun is unlikely to be shot because the criminal wants the wallet, watch, purse and jewelry, not a homicide investigation. This fact again reduces the risk that a non-gang-affiliated average citizen being robbed will be shot.

The vast majority of criminal shootings, including resulting murders, are committed by criminal gang members against other rival criminal gang members. These attacks still generally run under the same statistics for fatal wounds, which is to say that most gang shootings are not fatal, but those that are fatal far outnumber the number of average citizens being robbed or burgled being killed.

The part that you like to not just ignore, but ignorantly and mendaciously deny is the fact that a handgun, being a stand-off weapon, is far more effective as a deterrent to criminal victimization than it is as a weapon of criminal victimization. First, the stand-off nature allows the potential victim to react to emerging criminal threats before the criminal can get close enough to use body-contact physical force simply by exercising good situational awareness habit patterns which allow him/her to, when necessary, draw the pistol, preferably while moving to cover, and present it as a deterrent threat against an emerging criminal threat. In all but the most rare of cases where the victim happens to be facing a deranged murder or terrorist whose intent is not to rob or rape but to kill, such presentation of overwhelming physical force (the handgun) is sufficient to end the threat and see the criminal running as fast as possible in the opposite direction while begging you not to shoot him. This is true because, as I said above, the intent of most street criminals and burglars is to get the booty, not get shot dead by their intended victim, so they will run away and seek easier prey.

And, if one has the misfortune to encounter someone whose intent is simply to kill as many people as possible, as in the Port Arthur attacks, where only ONE person even had a gun with which to attempt to stop the killing, not having a gun is not going to save your life because even capitulation and surrender of your wallet isn't going to stop the killer from killing you because he doesn't want your wallet, he wants your life. Therefore, in such an event, having a handgun with which to at least attempt to put the killer down is far, far better for you, and for everyone else, than unarmed surrender, which is what the UK police demand of their citizens when it comes to street crime.

There are of course no guarantees in a gunfight, but one well-placed, timely bullet from the handgun of an armed citizen can stop or prevent a mass killing, as has been the case here in the US several times, and in some cases mere presentation of the gun (as in Pearl, Mississippi and Colorado Springs, Colorado) is sufficient to thwart an attacker who is not expecting resistance and picked the venue for his killing precisely because it was an advertised "gun free zone."

And if you shoot and miss and don't kill the shooter and get shot dead yourself, you're no worse off than you would have been if you had not been armed, and at least two important things were accomplished: You showed the killer that there ARE armed persons in the area that are a direct but unidentified threat to him, which may give him pause or stress him into missing his own shots; and you have given others moments more time to take cover or escape as the killer engaged you in a gunfight rather than just easily executing his unarmed victims.

So, while you would rather face a violent criminal armed with some weapon other than a gun, your paranoid fear of gun-armed criminals is both ignorant and misplaced, as you are likely safer when facing a gun-armed street thug than you are facing an attacker with a knife or other weapon, who already has overcome his fear of body-to-body contact that is a threat to him merely by his choice in weapons. Moreover, if you understood knife-fighting, which you don't, you would know that your chances of permanent disfigurement and death from a knife attack are much higher than they are for a shooting, due to the nature of the wounds inflicted and human anatomy. I'm fully aware of the difference and I would much rather face an assailant armed with a handgun than one armed with a knife if I'm unarmed.

The main failure of your argument is that you put inordinate, unsupported weight on the specious, cherry-picking category of "gun crime" while ignoring every other category of violent crime and every other possible weapon used in violent crime as the basis for your conclusion that banning guns for the law-abiding will result in less violent crime. That is simply and provably not true, as the gun numbers and violent crime statistics in the US prove absolutely and irrefutably: More guns, less crime.